Pilates Method®

While dancing with the Sacramento Ballet in 1986, a decade after his open right-knee surgery in The Netherlands, Achmed tore the medial meniscus and cross ligaments in his left knee. It is the kind of injury that is not at all uncommon in the ballet world. Fortunately, at that time, St. Francis Hospital in San Francisco featured one of the first and most advanced Sports & Dance Medicine clinics in the country. It was established and headed by Dr. Garrick, an orthopedic surgeon famous for treating and rehabilitating top athletes and dancers back into performing condition. He had co-developed and advanced the techniques of joint microsurgeries to a masterful level.

The hospital’s Physical Therapy Department was headed by a P.T. who had danced as the Principal ballerina at the Oakland Ballet a few years earlier during which she studied and practiced the Pilates techniques under coaches who had been trained by Joseph Pilates himself. After retiring from her dance career, she earned her MA in Physical Therapy and developed the Pilates Method™ into a legitimate medical rehabilitation program under the supervision of Dr. Garrick. A day after surgery Achmed was introduced to an intense, personalized rehab program focused on stabilizing, strengthening, lengthening, and mobilizing all the musculature surrounding his left knee in particular and the posture and movement patterns of his entire body to support the regaining of his professional dance performance level in the shortest span of time possible, incorporating correct breathing techniques, rhythm and flow.

Achmed became an inspired and enthusiastic Pilates aficionado and was able to teach and choreograph at an intense dance summer camp in Colorado within less than a month. Ever since this first radical introduction to the Pilates Method®, he has continued studying and perfecting his expertise in integrating the Pilates technique and principles within the entire scope of teaching movement & dance classes and in his body-mind healing practice.

In graduate school at UCI, Achmed completed a course in the Pilates Method for dance students. During his 2-year tenure as a UNLV faculty member, he maintained weekly Pilates centered physical therapy sessions at Keith Kleven’s Orthopedic P.T. clinic with Dolly Kelepecz. While serving as the ballet master/rehearsal director of The Los Angeles Ballet & Modern Dance Company, Achmed continued his weekly Pilates training at the Pilates West Physical Therapy in West Hollywood. Moving to Sedona in 1997, he continued his body re-alignment practices by complementing it with a yearlong regimen of 3-weekly intense myofascial release sessions at Therapy on the Rocks under the late John Barnes and Lori Zeltwanger. During this period of deep self-care, Achmed taught dance, Pilates mat-based stretch & tone, yoga, and water aerobics classes at the Hilton Spa where he also served as the lead massage therapist. For the next decade he served as an independent contractor as an instructor, therapist, intuitive counselor, dream analyst and HD analyst at all the major resorts & spas in the Sedona and VOC area including Los Abrigados, the Rouge, and Mii Amo among others. After his 3-year sojourn in Hawaii, he returned to Sedona. Achmed has taught and coached ballet at several private studios and coached pre-professional dancers for the Sedona Chamber Ballet and instructed Pilates to private clients at various local studios until he opened his own home studio in 2011.