Karen is a highly gifted Pilates teacher! After a few steps into her studio she knows exactly what I need that lesson. She is extremely knowledgeable about the body as well as the technique and creative in her approach. Karen is a very special woman and I feel honored to have her as my teacher.
Listing of all our testimonials
Below you will find a listing of just a selection of the testimonials our students have offered. Includes feedback and comments from clients, colleagues, professionals, trainees and graduates.
Judith Stein
With her extraordinary expertise, patience and good humor, Karen Carlson has, for the past decade, led me step by step in the direction of a more functional, fluid, and graceful body. Gone are the back aches that plagued me for years—it is so much fun to be getting older and better. These days, I’m tickled when occasionally I am asked if I had been a dancer, which is not the case. Karen Carlson is a masterful teacher and I could myself one lucky gal to be studying with her.
Son Silvers
I consider myself fortunate that Karen has been my Pilates instructor for the past twenty years. I sought her out when I needed help for an unusable left hand and arm and neck and spine problems after a highway traffic accident that the orthopedists and physical therapists couldn’t solve. Her unique knowledge set combined with being a pioneer in Pilates training (her teacher studied with Joseph Pilates) make her fluent in anatomy, biomechanics, and kinesiology including her use of “Butler techniques” for gentle un-entrapping of nerves, reducing pain and maintaining or increasing function.
Having been a modern dance performer earlier in her life, Karen understands the ways that dancers and musicians and artistic or emotional people in general need to use their bodies for expression and the subtleties and nuance involved when the body movement is involved in self-expression. This applies not only to dancers but to artists, musicians and other creative people as well. Consequently, with her background, movement intuition and Pilates training, she is able to take an approach to rehabilitation of injuries that addresses this very vibrant and expressive function of the body while addressing the reduction of pain, and increasing function.
When I met Karen I had little control over the fingers of my left hand, they hardly moved voluntarily and had tremors all the time, and thanks to my work with Karen, my hand is almost completely back to normal for most purposes. I remember how patiently she worked with me, explained all the exercises and stretches, and how watershed a moment it was when I was able to touch each fingertip to my thumb.
For anyone who wants to restore or maintain function and reduce pain to the highest degree possible, I cannot recommend Karen Carlson more highly. For anyone wanting to learn how to help people, especially artistic, musical and creative people to regain expressive and artistic body movement or expression playing of their instruments after an injury, or to maintain expressive bodily movement as we age, Karen is an encyclopedia of methods for helping you help others.
Dan Coren
In 1994, I came to Karen Carlson in desperation, plagued by frequent and severely disabling back spasms. Over the next few years, Karen taught me an entirely new way of using my body; my back problems are now long gone. Karen combines her profound knowledge of the workings of the human body and an almost uncanny ability to communicate it with unstinting dedication to the well-being of her students. So here I am, 17 years later at the age of 68, still seeing Karen regularly, not because I hurt, but because I would be a fool not to take advantage of the opportunity life has presented me to work with such a great master.
Ellen Shire
Karen I can not put in to 5 sentences how you changed my life.
Carol Rachel Shore
I’ve been a student of Pilates since 1997 and a teacher since 2000. I am completely dedicated to continuing education. Within one month of having tested out out of my original certification program, I attended an international Pilates conference. Since that very first conference, I have been taking advantage of every educational opportunity and have become a highly discriminating consumer of Pilates continuing education. I have never passed on the opportunity to take Karen’s workshops and have attended all of them multiple times! Karen’s workshops are comprehensive and encyclopedic! She includes classical forms, modern forms, studio-centered variations and gives attribution to every source. What is most important to me and most rare, although ever-present in Karen’s workshops, is the WHY. Why do a movement this way versus that way? Why perform or teach a movement at all? I also value what Karen teaches about how. Karen does not simply teach how to do an exercise or how to teach an exercise but she teaches the skill- building that comes before the movement. With this skill-building Karen is teaching how to teach, the science of teaching. Then there is the art of teaching for which I lack the words to describe what Karen transmits in the art of teaching. I can say that I have an enormous amount of gratitude for Karen and everything she has taught me. Karen’s workshops are about integrity: integrity of movement and professional integrity. They are invaluable and I cannot recommend Karen more highly as a teacher and teacher of teachers. There simply is no one better!