StarBarre Harmony
About the Method
StarBarre Harmony is novel holistic lifestyle and rehabilitation exercise method, that harmonizes natural human movements by learning relevant full-body holistic exercises and practicing at home with a video clip for about 10 minutes a day.
The purpose is to rehabilitate from injury or disorder, prevent recurrence, ease the burden of daily life movements, enhance athletic performance and also to look and feel good and be healthy.
The level to level progression represents the natural healing power of StarBarre Harmony.
1 Star Level
6 Stars Level
StarBarre Harmony Clinical Setting
A learning experience
Overall emphasis is placed on training the relevant movement components of the body to work in synergy, creating quality harmonious functional full-body postures and movements. Similar to other mind-body exercises like yoga and Pilates, each StarBarre Harmony exercise is a learning experience at start. With good studio corrections and daily home practice, the functional exercises become automatic, and improve regular day to day movements, even without thinking about the movement. This is important because many accidents and injuries happen exactly when not thinking about the movement.
Breathing
Correct breathing and relaxation techniques are an integral part of every StarBarre Harmony exercise, as well as moving harmoniously with correct body lines in full body sync. For this, the body naturally develops good movement foundations and a good look and feel.
Studio practice with video displays
Functional exercises
All StarBarre Harmony exercises are functional in their own way, and together as a sequence they simulate a wide and balanced range of human movements required for normal function in the modern world, like walking, running, bending, lifting, balancing while moving, jumping, landing, kicking a ball, putting on a shoe while standing on one leg, and much more. Because of this, when practicing these exercises for a few minutes every day until they become harmonious and easy, regular functions of life become easier by themselves.
Focus on standing exercises
This is because people function during the day in standing positions, and many times get injured in standing positions. It is therefore naturally logical that the daily movement exercises for humans focus on functional standing positions.
When looking at nature, we see that babies start functioning on the floor however this is transitional period until they have the movement foundations to progress to standing challenges. It is observed in animals like cats and dogs that their daily stretching routine is performed exclusively in their natural standing position. This provides natural evidence for humans also to perform their pre-movement stretches and training in their functional standing position (for them).
In the rehabilitation setting there might be exceptions to this principle. For example, and injured tennis player might start the rehab process with floor exercises, but the process is complete only when the relevant standing exercises are harmoniously mastered and practiced daily.
One holistic method for rehab and lifestyle
According to holistic philosophy, nobody alive is either 'completely' healthy or 'completely' unhealthy. And there is no line that differentiates between them. For this logic, the 'Train for Rehab' exercises (Star levels 1-3) seamlessly evolve to become the 'Train for Lifestyle' exercises (Star level 4-10) for people who are generally healthy.
The StarBarre Harmony 'few minutes a day' practice of natural movements and stretches is not a replacement for other sporting activities but rather a critical supplement to them. To lead a healthy active lifestyle, it is also recommended to perform at least 30 minutes of (any) fun pain-free aerobic sport every day, and to eat modest quantities of a well-balanced diet.
Home practice without a StarBarre device
The Creator
Jonathan Hoffman is a manual and exercise physical therapist based in Herzliya, Israel. Currently Jonathan works in a busy physical therapy clinic exclusively with the StarBarre Harmony method.
Over the last decade he has traveled to all corners of the world teaching his philosophy and standing exercises to movement-based practitioners and healthcare practitioners.
Jonathan has published several scientific papers on areas related to holistic movement, which have been well cited in the literature.
Jonathan's creation is driven by his extensive physical therapy career in which he has worked for professional tennis players, basketball teams as well as tens of thousands of people with back pain, other movement based musculoskeletal disorders and sports injuries.
Jonathan is the inventor of CoreAlign, MoonRun and StarBarre.
Credits
The creation of this method was inspired by the wisdom and exercises of:
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J.P. Muller (Denmark)
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Oddvar Holten (Norway)
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Minnie Randell (England)
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Joseph Pilates (Germany, USA)
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Margaret Morris (Scotland, England)
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Moshe Feldenkreiz (Israel)
As well as elements from:
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CoreAlign®
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Ballet
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Tai Chi
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Belly dancing
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Traditional Asian dancing
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Normal functional human movements and breathing
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And the dog and cat daily stretch routine.