GO TURKEY: Finnish movement and dance guru Marja Putkisto resculpted herself with a deep-stretching regime that lengthens the muscles. Now her mission is to straighten out the rest of us, as MARY BOLANDdiscovers on a Method Putkisto break on Kumlubük Bay
HIGH IN a craggy canyon overlooking Turkey’s southwestern coast, the early-morning sun is already busy scorching dusty olive and lemon groves.
We too have work to do, and from our supine positions on a wooden deck nestled amid the trees we inhale collectively and take in the view – a curtain of the bluest of skies framed by massive mountain boulders – then obediently tilt our tail bones towards the winking Mediterranean.
“Stop thinking,” says Marja Putkisto, the Finnish movement and dance specialist who, for this week-long course, is our chief of police of posture and stretching. “Follow what your body tells you, not your brain. The body is so much more intelligent.”
We have come to the sleepy Kumlubük Bay region to learn Putkisto’s method of stretching, breathing and body alignment, which she devised 25 years ago in response to muscular problems she encountered as a ballet dancer. Having transformed her own body – “I don’t think there’s a single bone in the same position!” – Putkisto began teaching her technique at the National Opera and Sibelius academy of music in Finland. She has since led a quiet revolution in fitness, becoming a household name in her native country and, since moving to London, nearly 20 years ago, gradually building a diverse client base at her Richmond studio.
Today Putkisto counts athletes, dancers and singers among her students, but also people suffering from limited mobility and back pain, and others who simply want to look and feel better and lose some weight. (She is hoping to run a day-long workshop in Ireland later this year.)
“Stretch yourself slim” and achieve a supple, youthful body at any age is her trademark promise. She even claims to have mastered a technique for reshaping the face. Osteopaths, physios, sports therapists, even dental surgeons seek her out. My motivation for this trip is lower-back pain, but who could argue against such fringe benefits?
The setting for our classes is spectacular: the small, family-run Dionysos is a boutique hotel that resembles more a manicured village, its 38 red-roofed cottages and rooms dotted between colourful bursts of shrubbery and flowers around the sun-bleached canyon. Putkisto has been giving a week-long course here twice a year, in May and October, for eight years. (She also takes a group to Finland in August.) The Dionysos teeters over Kumlubük Bay, where it has its own beach club – a free bus runs from the hotel – and from the infinity pool the view stretches across the bay towards Dalyan and, on a clear day, the snowy peaks of the Taurus Mountains.
This is a world apart from the tacky beach resorts crammed along so much of the Turkish coastline, and Ahmet and Rim Senol, who built the Dionysos eight years ago, see themselves as “sharing a lifestyle, not a hotel”. Small touches such as the honour system in the hotel minimarket, where you help yourself and tell reception what you owe, add a whole new dimension to the concept of chilled out. The service is impeccable yet warm, and staff take visible pride in the hotel’s organic farm and olive-oil production, both relatively new projects.
At a svelte and youthful 50, Putkisto is a walking advertisement for her exercise technique. The method is a system of targeted deep stretching that shares many of the principles of Pilates – it marries well with Pilates, yoga and the Alexander technique – but with the focus on elongating deep postural muscles.
Her theory is that muscle length has a profound effect on the position and movement of our bodies and that shortened muscles constrict bones and inner organs, causing pain, fitness problems and ill health. The body’s shape also suffers: shortened hamstrings, for example, pull the buttocks down, which makes the stomach push out. Unlike traditional post-workout stretching, which targets large muscles that have contracted during exercise, Putkisto’s remedy is to focus on those smaller muscles that, when stretched, help realign and ultimately reshape the body, relieving pain in the process.
Putkisto spent months as a child with her legs in traction to correct an underdeveloped hip. Later, confounded by difficulties in ballet practice, she discovered that her body was misaligned. “As I got older I found that, no matter how fit I was, certain movements were almost impossible,” she says. “I was struck by the theory that the cause of the problem was that the whole of my body was too short on the inside. I finally realised that the only way to overcome this imbalance would be to stretch my shortened muscles to a length that would free my pelvis into its neutral position, which allowed my body to move freely.”
So began Method Putkisto, the first exercise technique I have tried where the body-changing effects are sometimes immediate. There are whoops of disbelief in the group when, after a prolonged stretch aimed at opening up the area inside the front of the shoulder (a great remedy after sitting for long periods at a desk), we inspect each other and see how one side of our bodies is visibly longer than the other. “Initially, these changes aren’t long term,” says Putkisto. “But if they’re done daily, within two or three weeks they become permanent.”
Two sessions of 90 minutes to two hours are scheduled daily, except for one day spent cruising around the Bozburun Peninsula on Ahmet Senol’s catamaran. It is a highlight of the holiday, and we swim off the boat in an emerald cove while our guide, Ata, prepares a spread of Turkish delights that are typical of the hotel’s fresh, delicious food: local feta and olives, beef carpaccio, portly tomatoes glossy with olive oil from the farm, crisp salads and bread baked in the hotel’s wood-fired oven, all washed down with surprisingly good local wines.
Although men are by no means excluded, my classmates are all women, most of us with jobs where we sit for long periods at a computer, most with an ache we want to magically disappear. Postural misalignment is the cause of many of our complaints, says Putkisto. It leads to patterns of movement that have become so engrained that we forget there is an easier, correct way of standing and moving. “When our posture gets out of line it affects our overall well- being, inhibiting our breathing, circulation, digestion and so on.” When we correct our posture, just as when we hit the right position in each stretch, our bodies register the change, says Putkisto, so even if we later forget the exercise, our muscles will recall the positions.
Within a day she has diagnosed my problem as the result of a tendency to lean backwards. “No wonder you have pain in your lower back!” she exclaims. “If you lean on your heels all the time, you’re making your poor back carry at least an extra 30kg.”
The adjustment is slight but nonetheless takes some getting used to. By the end of the week, thanks to all the stretching and pulling but also to the fact I begin each movement from a changed starting point, the ache I’ve lived with for more than a decade has begun to dissolve, and my body feels lighter.
Many poses are held for up to a minute or two, during which we breathe calmly and try to focus on the muscle being worked on. The stretch is deepened using the body’s own weight, and extended a bit more during pauses after exhalation. The objective is not to strain but to relax into each pose and become more body aware.
One session is devoted to “face school”. Hip alignment reflects the jaw’s position, Putkisto explains, and she spends the class showing us how to release then exercise our facial muscles. Having washed our faces with an alkaline salt, we massage our cheeks, tilt jawbones, pull ears and stretch necks. Initially slightly sceptical, I find that, thanks to all the tapping and kneading, Melanie, sitting next to me, has slightly “lifted” one side of her face. Putkisto doesn’t dismiss cosmetic surgery but says we can do a lot to help ourselves before taking drastic measures.
My classmates are impressed, and say they’ll continue the technique at home. “This was the best last-minute decision I ever made,” says Sheila Enright, a 40-year-old chief nursing officer at a London hospital. “I really feel my posture has improved. It’s like my whole chest area has begun to open up.”
For 42-year-old Lisa Hurst, a London-based civil servant, the main benefit is freer movement. “I feel very liberated, and very aware of my body, especially of the middle back: I don’t think I’ve ever felt that area before!” says 55-year-old Melanie Hart, who works in human resources. “She talked about space, and I can really feel the space now between my abdomen and diaphragm, and it’s much easier to move there.”
Afternoons are free to pop into the local village of Turunç, visit the ancient ruins of nearby Amos, which date back to the fourth century BC, or take a shopping trip by boat to the more touristy and crowded Marmaris.
Rooms at the Dionysos are spacious and airy, all with sea views, outside terraces and a CD player (but no TV). No single supplement is charged for this holiday, which, at about €1,500, includes all tuition, flights from London Gatwick, London Heathrow or Manchester to Dalaman, transfers (of about two hours) to the Dionysos, seven nights half-board, with superb breakfast buffet and any à la carte choices for dinner, plus half a bottle of wine, and a day cruise with lunch.
* Mary Boland was a guest of Exclusive Escapes (exclusive escapes.co.uk; methodputkisto.com). The next course takes place from October 10th to 17th
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Exclusive Escapes’ Putkisto package includes flights from London Heathrow, London Gatwick or Manchester. Aer Lingus (aerlingus.com) flies to Heathrow from Dublin, Cork, Shannon and Belfast, to Gatwick from Dublin and Knock, and to Manchester from Cork and Dublin. Ryanair (ryanair.com) flies to Gatwick from Dublin, Cork and Shannon, and to Manchester from Dublin and Shannon. BMI (flybmi. com) flies to Heathrow from Dublin and Belfast, and to Manchester from Dublin, Cork, Knock and Belfast. EasyJet (easyjet.com) flies to Gatwick from Belfast.