In-Person, ConnectPilates™ & the Thorax, Australia, 2024

We’re excited to launch this new course in Sydney Australia in 2024!

The ConnectPilates method is based on the tenants underlying of Dr. LJ Lee’s innovative ConnectTherapy & Thoracic Ring Approach models. This unique course brings Dr LJ Lee’s innovative models and The Pilates Method together to powerfully change a person’s experience of movement and help them reach their goals. 

Are you a physiotherapist trained in ConnectTherapy & the Thoracic Ring Approach and want to know more about how to progress exercises for your patients with Thoracic Ring Drivers in the Pilates setting? This course is designed for you!

This inaugural ConnectPilates™ & the Thorax course covers key exercise and training progressions for Thoracic Ring Drivers and provides the opportunity to learn from both Dr LJ Lee and from ConnectTherapy Certified Practitioner & Pilates Educator Lisa Anthony.  You’ll take your Thoracic Ring hands-on skills to the next level and learn how to apply the Thoracic Ring Approach & ConnectTherapy in the Pilates context.

With her diverse sports and movement background, LJ brought her passion for optimizing movement to her work as a physiotherapist and to what she created in her models. Throughout her career she has used a wide variety of exercise and movement modalities to facilitate an optimal pathway for her patients’ and athletes’ movement goals – whether rehabilitation or performance focused.

Over the years, while teaching physiotherapists around the world, LJ was often asked how to use the ConnectTherapy & Thoracic Ring Approach training principles to prescribe rehabilitation and exercise progressions using the Pilates equipment and repertoire. This led to many discussions on course, teaching therapists how to integrate ConnectTherapy into the Clinical Pilates context.

Recognizing the gap between the structured and prescribed nature of traditional Pilates, and the inherent potential of Pilates as a movement modality to enhance exercise prescription for treating Drivers, in 2018 LJ expanded her clinic to create the ConnectPilates Studio, and “Synergy Physio” became “Synergy Physio + Pilates”. Clinical ConnectPilates individual and group sessions run at Synergy, alongside Exercise focused Pilates sessions.

In 2014 LJ met Lisa Anthony, a highly skilled and credentialed Pilates instructor, and over the course of Lisa’s ConnectTherapy journey through the ConnectTherapy Series, workshops, and then Practitioner Certification, the idea to create ConnectPilates courses was born.

The ConnectPilates method is shaping the way we see and engage with Pilates.

ConnectPilates for Physiotherapists

•  review & practice the hands-on assessment skills to identify a Thoracic Ring Driver in your patient’s Driver Profile – we will review the key ConnectTherapy & Thoracic Ring Approach skills and clinical reasoning process related to
  • assessing Net Centre of Mass over Base of Support (COM/BOS) during functional tasks and as an outcome measure for your treatment and training sessions
  • Thoracic Ring corrections & Drivers Diagnostics Chart™ (DDC) reasoning to identify Thoracic Ring Controllers, Thoracic Ring Drivers and practicing Co-Ring corrections to confirm Thoracic Ring Co-Drivers
• review Thoracic Ring Vector Analysis skills & understand how the location of vectors influences your choice of training positions and Pilates equipment
• review the Phases of Exercise Prescription for Thoracic Ring Drivers in the ConnectTherapy treatment framework & how to progress exercises for patients with a Primary Thoracic Ring Driver
• learn how to analyze common patterns of Thoracic Ring dysfunction and muscle imbalance in the Pilates movement context and how to design appropriate ConnectPilates programming to train and treat a patient with a Thoracic Ring Driver
• practice the powerful Thoracic Ring treatment skills such as Dynamic Thoracic Ring Stack & Breathe, Dynamic Thoracic Ring Stack & Release, Thoracic Ring Stack & Train in the Pilates context 
• learn how to incorporate ConnectTherapy patient self-management tools such as Cue Checks, Self Checks, Resets and Presets into a ConnectPilates session

Learn how to unlock better movement strategies & core function, sympathetic/parasympathetic balance, and better sleep for your patients. 

As the thorax is poorly understood across health and movement professions, and it is a common Primary Driver, together LJ & Lisa decided that the first course in ConnectPilates for Physiotherapists would be on the Thorax – and start with the central tenants, movement principles and programming guidelines from the Thoracic Ring Approach and the ConnectTherapy exercise prescription framework.

More ConnectPilates courses for other Drivers and Driver Profiles will be coming!

• Please note the Pre-Requisites for this course include a) either the ConnectTherapy™ & the Thorax course (Virtual & InPerson) – OR – completion of Part 1 of the ConnectTherapy™ Series AND b) 50 hours of teaching equipment-based Pilates
• If you want to take more ConnectPilates courses in the future, it is highly advised you take the ConnectTherapy Series, which covers Drivers in multiple regions in the body – the pelvis, hips, knees, feet, neck, shoulders, and thoracic rings… and more! 

• The ISM Series or ISM courses do not meet the pre-requisites for this course – LJ has created multiple advances in the Thoracic Ring Approach™ techniques, treatment framework and exercise prescription in the past decade in ConnectTherapy and the current ISM teachings do not include these advances. 

The 2023-24 Australia ConnectTherapy Series starts on October 28th & 29th (AEST) – find more information here.