I Don't Schedule Me Time. My Spine Schedules It For Me.
Movement professionals live a peculiar kind of paradox. We spend our professional lives fluent in the language of the body. We cue breath, refine alignment, notice tension in a client's shoulder before they have named it themselves. Yet our own bodies are so often the last ones we truly listen to.
We are the conductors. We set the tempo for everyone else's session, everyone else's recovery, everyone else's permission to rest. Somewhere in all that conducting, many of us have forgotten what it feels like to simply be inside our own bodies, rather than managing them.
If you have taught movement for any length of time, you know what I mean. It shows up as the ache you push through because there are three more clients on the schedule. It shows up as the stiffness in your own spine that you would never allow a client to ignore, yet you’ve quietly stopped noticing in yourself. We become so skilled at reading other bodies that we lose the practice of listening to our own.
This is the challenge BALLance is built to answer.
More Than Decompression
BALLance, developed by Dr. Tanja Kühne, uses a patented spring-based system to gently decompress and elongate the spine, helping restore the space that years of teaching, driving, and simply carrying life gradually compress. Clinically, it addresses thoracic kyphosis, muscular tension, and the postural patterns that accumulate in bodies that spend their lives giving more than they receive.
That’s the science.
The experience is something else entirely.
The first time I lay on BALLance, I expected relief — the kind of relief you get from a good stretch or a satisfying crack of the back. Instead, I experienced something I couldn’t quite explain. Initially, the firmness of the balls created sensations I couldn’t quite interpret. My instinct was to analyze them - to figure out whether I was “doing it right.”
Then something shifted. My body, so accustomed to holding, to positioning, to performing readiness for whoever needed me next, did not know at first how to simply be held. There was a moment where I stopped anticipating the next cue, the next session, the next thing I was responsible for; and I just dropped in. I was suddenly present in my breath, in my spine, in my body - in a way that left me free to simply receive. And that, more than the decompression itself, was what stayed with me: BALLance didn’t just create space in my spine.
It created space for me to arrive in my own body again.
A Confession From the Conductor's Chair
I should admit something.
For someone who spends so much time encouraging other people to care for themselves, I am surprisingly bad at taking my own advice. I constantly tell my students and clients about the importance of rest, recovery, and the unglamorous work of tending to your own body before it demands attention. Yet after nearly three decades in the Pilates trade, I still struggle to intentionally make that time for myself.
The conductor rarely writes herself into the program.
I don’t share this because I think it’s ideal. I share it because I know I’m not the only teacher who lives this way.
The Permission We Withhold From Ourselves
Here is the truth: BALLance creates the conditions for release, but it cannot make it happen.
As movement professionals, we're conditioned to stay in control.
We analyze.
We adjust.
We solve.
Even recovery has a tendency to become another task to complete before moving on to the next responsibility.
BALLance asks something different: It asks us to stop managing the experience.
If you rush your time on the BALLance, you will still experience the physical decompression. The springs will still do their job as designed. But the deeper embodiment arrives when you stop trying to control it. You may notice length in your spine that you thought was lost. You may observe your breath reaching deeper than you’ve felt in quite some time. Most importantly… you will discover what your body has been asking for all along.
Perhaps that’s the greatest irony - we spend our careers teaching clients to experience.
Sometimes we’re the ones who need the lesson most.
What We Owe Ourselves, Not Just Our Clients
When I introduce BALLance to fellow teachers, I see the same instinct I had.
They want to control the release.
Stay one step ahead of the sensation.
Manage the experience.
My job isn't to correct their form. Instead, I give them permission:
Finish the exhale.
Allow the spine to settle.
Embrace the productivity of stillness.
Again and again I watch teachers leave with more than a looser back.
They leave remembering that their own body is still worth listening to.
An Invitation, Not a Guarantee
If any of this feels familiar, I hope you'll give yourself permission to experience BALLance—not because it promises perfection or because it’s a “quick fix,” but because it offers something increasingly rare in our profession:
The opportunity to stop conducting for a little while.
The release of the spine it's been quietly asking for.
The comfort within your own body as you show it kindness.
Whether we meet at the Pilates Journal Expo or somewhere else along the way, I hope you give yourself the gift of BALLance.
BALLanceUSA.com equips movement and wellness professionals with evidence-informed tools, education, and certification in the BALLance Method®. Our mission is to expand access to gentle spinal decompression while helping practitioners support healthier movement, better posture, and lasting well-being in the communities they serve.