Summer Issue 2006

Issue 2, 2003

In April/ May this year you started a Feminenza Fitness Course. As far as I know it was a great success. When did you get the idea to do this?

For some time already I had the vision of a Centre with many different activities a person can choose from, such as: well-being, counselling, workshops on all kinds of subjects and also Fitness. On New Year’s Day the idea of doing some Fitness training came up and at first I thought just to do it with some friends. But then it turned out that more women had the same idea and then Marianne, together with some others suggested doing a Fitness Course for Women. They decided to integrate some simple self-defense techniques, because they both have a longstanding experience in the field of Karate. This is how the different ingredients for the Fitness Course came together.

How does the Feminenza perspective show in this Fitness Course?

My strong motivation to start this Fitness course from the perspective of Feminenza is that I have often found that when women work on their fitness together, there can be a strong element of competition between them, and a lot of comparison whether or not you can do the right move, fit in the class, wear the right clothes, are fit, look good, and so on. If you can’t comply with these for one reason or the other, it can be quite uncomfortable to be in such a class. I have started this course so that every kind of woman can come and feel well about herself and will not find competition between the participants.

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Once we started to think about it, we came to the idea that it would be good to use the grid of the different dimensions of the feminine gender*, the Female, Woman and Lady. We prepared each session from this standpoint. Our lessons took one and a half hours and would have some of the following elements in them:

From the dimension of the Female...

This concerns physical exercises. From this idea we would do some running to get the blood cleaned out, and you get the feeling that you are getting fit. Also in this part we do a lot of stretching and strengthening exercises. The women want to get fit, so there need to be some parts in which you feel you have worked yourself. We do exercises for different muscle groups and as we do the exercises we have in our mind and speak out that we do these exercises to take good care of our body and to keep it flexible. This has a much better effect than just putting the body through the exercises, without much reasoning why.

From the dimension of the Woman...

This dimension likes to learn new things, new skills. In this part I would use my Position Purple training as well. We work with different themes, for example co-ordination. For the Female to get an idea about co-ordination the exercises would be: walking whilst you swing one arm one way and the other arm the other way. For the woman specific co-ordination exercises would mean for example exercises with clapping. In the part for the woman we also added self-defense techniques, from the notion of learning new skills and having the confidence of having some clue about how to begin to defend oneself.

From the dimension of the Lady

This would mostly be the last 10 minutes of the session, in which we would do different meditations, thus this part would be much more quiet and would have a gathering nature. Because of this every women had the chance to spend time with herself and her inner contemplations.

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I myself have done Aerobics for quite some years. I stopped some months ago because of problems with my knees and feet. I found that part of me liked the exercises in the class, but it seems to be just a bit too hard and the exercises go on too long. I had the feeling that for my feminine body it was actually a bit too much, especially because there is not soo much attention for cooling down at the end.

It is good to use your body, but you don’t need to use it that much, you just need to get your pulse up and do a little stretching, and then get your pulse up again and do some strengthening exercises. It is very easy to overdo it.

You need to feel that you have done something, to feel the satisfaction of the exercise, but as you say, there needs to be a balance. It can be taken too far and then it starts to work against you, then it is like it takes a lot of energy out of you.

The way we worked seemed to work really well, at the end we had a section of 5-10 minutes, in which we did something quiet, at this point everyone was settled, because they had done all kinds of different exercises.

It seems to me that by going through all these different exercises, it is a balanced way of working.

It was very important in the beginning when we just started, to explain how we work. We told them that we do not want to get into competition and that it is important to get their pulse up, but that it is not important how many rounds they can run for example. For one person one round may be good and another might need to do 3 rounds to get the same result. It is not about who has done the most.

Also with the exercises we emphasize that it is important you do them, but not how well you do them. Some might be very good at doing the stretching and others may be very stiff, but they need to find their own point in which they feel they have stretched enough. This is one of the ways of thinking that we give. I always explain with the exercises why we do them and what kind of effect they have. I remember one evening I told everyone that we were going to do an exercise for creativity and freedom. Then I asked everyone to just dance around and because they knew why they were doing it, they felt free to do so, whilst normally they would not do it and would have all kinds of inhibitions..

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Did you also speak to them about these different dimensions in the female gender: the Female, Woman and Lady?

No, I did not think about it when it started, it was more a grid I had in my mind. Later it came up that that would actually have been a very good idea. This autumn we will start another course and this time I will introduce the idea that there are different lives, which have particular needs and like to do specific things.

Will this new course be with the same people as the course you did in the spring time?

I think that some women will come back. Most of them said that they would really like to come back.

If lots of people come back from the first course, will you do something different or will the program be quite similar?

I think that I will increase it here and there, but the major difference will be in the conditioning and the conducting. We still want to keep competition out of it and want to promote the fact that everyone is OK as they are, with many unique qualities and talents hidden inside of them. Also this time we will tell them more about Feminenza and the Female, Woman and Lady.

What kind of vision do you have about this work?

There is an increasing problem in Denmark to get young teenage girls and boys to come to the gymnastic lessons at school. In a way I can understand their reaction, because the whole way of working has not been updated. I would like to work with teenage girls, because they could gain a lot from certain exercises, but with the right mindset. Often I wonder about schools, children and teenagers are expected to sit for 6 to 7 hours and just behave and sit quietly. When they do gymnastics and fitness the focus usually is just on the body and then in all other lessons the focus goes only to the brain, there is not much combining of the two ways of learning. It is very different to introduce exercises which can increase your confidence and timing, as these qualities can be useful in many areas of your life. So, I think it is important to not just focus on the physical body. This is still quite an unexplored territory and I have already felt for a long time, also as a schoolteacher, that you also need to engage the body in regular education.

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So, it is more a throughout fitness, not just the muscles, but also the head and the co-ordination, the whole body becomes more fit. What did the participants say about their experiences?

One of the reflections of the women who participated in the course was that they actually like the fact that they don't just do one thing, but all kinds of different things. One woman said she really enjoyed it was not just 'get fit get fit' as she was used to, but that it was effective, because after some weeks she felt more healthy than before.

A throughout feeling was that all participants felt very well with it, they enjoyed being there, they liked that there was not the pressure of needing to have the latest gear. Also they felt that they did not need to look like 20 year old models and felt accepted for what they are. The fact that there was no competition was very much appreciated.

Most of the women who came to the course had jobs with quite a lot of responsibility. They could really relax and get back to themselves in our sessions and to some degree became friends with the other women in the course.

During the sessions we would always have fruit and water available and at the end of the evenings we had some fantastic conversations. It all took place in a very nice atmosphere and it was fun to do.

So I am really looking forward to the course which takes place in the autumn. It definitely will be a further discovery journey in finding out what kind of Fitness training is natural and effective for women.

* More background information can be found in the article:'The Multi-Dimensional Woman'

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