Karen Christiansen is a teacher and healer. She brings a holistic approach to her teaching believing in finding the balance between the body, mind and spirit. When you train with Karen her nurturing personality supports personal growth and empowerment. She educates you to understand how to take care of your own body to eliminate faulty movement patterns that could lead to pain or injury.

Karen has been a certified Pilates instructor with the Physical Mind Institute since 2003. Always wanting to enhance her teaching techniques, as of 2009 Karen completed and passed top of her class in the Body Arts and Science course also known as BASI, another internationally respected Pilates certification program.

Karen is a certified Breema® Massage practitioner. (Breema means the essence of harmonious life) Breema has helped facilitate her desire to be more present as well as offer her clients another aspect of learning that compliments with Pilates.

Karen graduated from SUNY New Paltz in N.Y. with a Fine Arts and Dance degree. She taught dance classes at the University and was on staff with the Ulster County Ballet, teaching and performing. She moved to Santa Cruz, CA to complete her graduate studies in Dance at UCSC and taught ballet classes at “The Studio.”

Injuries resulting from her dance background created opportunities to learn from both western and eastern doctors and healers. She has incorporated aspects of both in her training. Karen is equally comfortable teaching a full range of fitness levels from athletic to more rehabilitation oriented. Additionally she has experience working with pre-natal and post partum mothers. As well as clients who have Osteoporosis, MS, Parkinson’s disease and Spinal Stenosis and has written a research paper on helping to create balance in people with Scoliosis using Pilates.

Her greatest joy comes from showing people how Pilates relates to their daily life helping to eliminate pain and create strong flexible bodies. She loves to find the balance between the body, mind and spirit giving inner body awareness and overall balance.