Maggie Downie, Author at Personal Euphoria: Pilates & Fitness Classes in CT

About Maggie Downie

Thank you for giving your time to stop and read my blog. I hope it encourages you to keep moving. Move and the body will be happier. And when you're moving you can hike, run, swim in Jell-O, race over non-Newtonian fluids, travel the world or build igloos--if that's your thing. If not, you can watch me do it. This is just a spot to try and feel good about life.

Plank Story: Montgomery, Alabama Civil Rights

Outside the Dexter Parsonage Museum, MLK’s home in Montgomery.

Matt and I were headed to Montgomery, Alabama to see the abandoned, dilapidated set from Big Fish. I was planning a weekend for us in Montgomery and started to worry that there wouldn’t be much to see. I was pleasantly surprised. Not only was the Big Fish set still cool to walk through, but Montgomery is steeped in civil rights and civil war history.

What is unique about the civil rights component is that some of the people living in Montgomery today were alive and in Montgomery during the 1950’s. Some knew Martin Luther King and lived through the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The civil rights history in Montgomery isn’t that old. I’d say now is the time to visit, because once the sites are actually history and not told from a firsthand experience, a piece of the story will be lost.

In a couple decades, you could go to the Dexter Parsonage Museum, MLK’s house, and get a great tour about his story in Montgomery, but probably won’t hear Dr. Shirley Cherry’s, our […]

Plank Story: Montgomery, Alabama Civil RightsMaggie Downie2017-12-29T20:27:45-05:00

Client Corner: Tishler Coaching Services: Unlock Your Potential

In case you haven’t met Steph in class, she is our client corner highlight this month.

Stephanie Tishler’s positive energy is infectious. With a warm smile she tells me how her relationship with Personal Euphoria began over 6 years ago when she started taking mat classes in Glastonbury. She was part of the original Glastonbury group. Within that time she also began taking weekly privates with Maggie. “Without it I don’t feel the same” she says. Tishler is a big believer in carving out time for yourself through exercise. In addition to her Pilates practice, she is an avid runner. As a busy mom of two, who also runs her own business, exercise gives Stephanie space to clear her head.

Stephanie didn’t always know that she wanted to run her own business. The idea first came from something she wrote down on a napkin. She was at dinner with a friend who was looking for advice about running her business. As she listened to her friend talk, Stephanie wrote down exactly what she thought her friend […]

Client Corner: Tishler Coaching Services: Unlock Your PotentialMaggie Downie2017-12-29T20:28:36-05:00

Did the Microbiome Diet Help Me?

Playing with my food.

My naturopath wanted me to do the microbiome diet for three months. The book by Raphael Kellman suggested six weeks. I was committed for five and half weeks, until Matt and I went on vacation and then I slowly descended into dairy. Though, I didn’t make my three month goal, the real question is did the microbiome diet help me?

I don’t know the answer. It’s why research on humans is so hard. There are so many variables. As I approached six weeks on the diet, the sun was coming out. We were reaching the longest day of the year. Maybe that made all the difference. My workload is less in summer, maybe that helped.

I always feel better when I eat better, so in a general sense I felt better, but never better enough to give up all that I felt I was restricting. I didn’t sleep any better. My gut felt no better. I lost some weight. I experienced some bowel trouble I didn’t have prior. You wanted to know that, right? My psoriasis did improve, but my gut actually tells me that […]

Did the Microbiome Diet Help Me?Maggie Downie2017-12-29T20:38:26-05:00

Golf Lesson

Jeannine, Barb, Jess and I get a golf lesson.

Golf is a good walk spoiled. –Mark Twain

Apparently Mark Twain never had a golf lesson, because it has become clear to me that knowing how to golf makes all the difference. This summer the PE staff took a lesson with Mike Vitale at Stanley Golf Course in New Britain.

As a Pilates instructor it should come as no surprise to me that learning how to do something makes it easier and more fun. I had been to a range before and repeatedly pegged the ball into the ground, and much like Twain drew the conclusion that I didn’t really like golf.

It wasn’t the lesson I doubted as much as myself. I presumed I was a little hopeless—a former field hockey player in a decade when they eliminated air balls now attempting to swing a long stick to put a ball in the air instead of send it rolling along the ground.

Golf LessonMaggie Downie2017-12-29T20:39:59-05:00

Michael Phelps is Cupping. Should You?

Perhaps less nice to look at than Michael Phelps, but a textbook from 1692 showing cupping.

The world is atwitter with Michael Phelps’ 22-gold medals and the black and blue circles all over his body. While seeing these spots all over Olympic swimmers makes it seem like a new fad, it’s certainly not new. Ancient Egyptians appear to have practiced cupping. It’s been recorded in Chinese practice since around 281 A.D. In George Orwell’s 1929 essay, How the Poor Die, he described seeing the cupping technique used on a patient, but he thought it was strange, something from old medical textbooks that was only done on horses. If cupping becomes a standard practice, we can probably thank Michael Phelps’ trainers. It’s never had so much media attention.So Michael Phelps is cupping, but should you?

There are two types of cupping, dry and wet. Wet cupping involves mild suction, using heat inside a small jar-like object placed on the skin to draw up the skin followed by small cuts to let blood drain. I would NEVER do wet cupping. […]

Michael Phelps is Cupping. Should You?Maggie Downie2018-01-13T16:03:01-05:00

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