Hello!

I’m Vida Hollander

Bodies are my modality, my passion and my life’s work. The body is my entry point,
the lens through which I can see and make sense of the human experience.

I use my passion for anatomy to teach Embodied Movement and Pilates, and I am a Menstrual Cycle Coach. I have over a decade of experience in my field and I am an intuitive, committed and compassionate coach.

The potential for health and wellbeing exists when we work with our bodies, rather than against them. My mission is to bring anatomy to life for the people I work with, so that they may embody their own anatomy, and open their path to healing.

injury prevention & rehabilitative exercise

Pelvic floor
& core training
& rehab

posture,
gait patterns & functional movement

Scoliosis
& spinal conditions

menstrual cycle awareness

My story

Everything changed the moment I saw the inside of a human body.
Let me tell you how I got there.
I have always had an innate curiosity about the human body, ever since I was a young child. It is a common thread that runs through my life, although I haven’t always worked with bodies. I started with language.
I studied French throughout school and into college, and decided to major in Linguistics. I was living in New Zealand and after graduating with a degree in Linguistics, I got a job working at the New Zealand Human Rights Commission in Race Relations. It felt like valuable work, but I found myself struggling to sit at a desk for 40 hours a week. I started doing Pilates to help me with neck and back pain and was instantly hooked. The combination of body awareness and conscious exercise was right up my alley. It made me feel powerful and strong in my body, something that I had never felt before.

My Immersion in the
Pilates World

After two more years at my desk job, I moved back to the US and decided to pivot into the Pilates world because Pilates had had such a profound impact in my life, and I wanted to share this with others. I completed three Pilates teacher training programs and taught at a number of different studios in New Mexico and Colorado.
After a decade of immersing myself in the Pilates world, I found that I had some growing frustrations with the Pilates framework. It felt too prescriptive in its methodology. The ethos was that the Pilates method was the holy grail, and if we put any one body through this method, that body would heal. The problem was this was not true for many of the beautifully diverse bodies that I was teaching, and it was not true for my own body. What I found was that each body responded to Pilates in its own unique way, and that every body does not, in fact, heal if you put it through the standard Pilates repertoire.
I was also frustrated by the fact that my own practice of Pilates was not supporting me in my struggle with menstrual pain. I wanted to know more. I kept asking myself why does one exercise work for one body and not another? Why do particular movements make my menstrual pain worse? What else is happening inside our bodies that Pilates is not answering?
I began searching for continuing education in anatomy because I felt that the answers to my questions lay in better understanding what was happening *inside* of the body.

Discovering Anatomy

This is when I found Gil Hedley and the Institute for Anatomical Research, and an amazing opportunity to actually be able to participate in a full human cadaver dissection. I signed up immediately. I was beyond thrilled to be able to really dive in and find the answers to my questions. It was an opportunity to fulfill a deep curiosity that had been burning in me for years.

This human dissection course proved to be one of the most transformative experiences of my adult life.

It was like pulling back the veil between me and the rest of life around me. I saw myself reflected in the forms in the lab. The lights came on for me, and the truth of the human body could not be denied. It shifted the bedrock of my life in a way that is difficult to describe. It lit a fire underneath everything in my life that felt misaligned. It was a reckoning.

The Beginning of Body Sense

When I returned home after this first dissection course, teaching standard Pilates was no longer an option for me. I opened my own studio in 2018 and named it Body Sense. With this new freedom, I dove into working with my clients on a deeper level. I was able to see bodies with what felt like x-ray vision. I could “see” the inner workings of my clients’ bodies as they went through their exercises. I found that as I shared this new knowledge of anatomy with my clients, they began to embody this knowledge and made enormous gains in the places they were previously stuck. I started modifying exercises more and more and adapting the Pilates framework to suit each of my clients’ individual needs, including my own.

In my own practice, I prioritized listening to the truth of my own body over the desire to “do the exercises right.” I stopped taking pain killers for my period pain and dove into new forms of movement and dance that nurtured my cyclical experience, and actually reduced my menstrual pain. It felt like my body was taking a deep sigh of relief and could tell that I was finally listening.

Discovering Menstrual Cycle Awareness

As part of my journey of discovery, I started listening to all kinds of podcasts about anatomy, bodies and women’s health. I discovered Claire Baker on one of these podcasts, where she talked about the benefits of practicing Menstrual Cycle Awareness (MCA). She was speaking my language, talking about how to work with the natural rhythms of the body instead of against them, and when the opportunity arose, I enrolled in Cycle Coach School, a menstrual cycle coaching program run by Claire Baker.

MCA has provided yet another layer of understanding for me about the body, and how it works for those of us who menstruate. It was a new lens through which to see myself and my clients more fully. When we can take into account a person’s experience of their menstrual cycle in their movement practice, we reach new levels of sustainable progress because we aren’t fighting the body’s natural hormonal rhythms.

Where I’m headed…

I have an insatiable curiosity about the human body, and I will always continue learning. I participate in full cadaver dissections every two years, and in workshops and continuing education that support my knowledge of the body, my ability to work with all kinds of conditions, and my ability to bring new movement modalities to my clients.
While I love working with individuals, I dream of sharing my passion for anatomy and cyclical awareness with other movement professionals and menstrual cycle coaches, helping them to better see their clients as whole, unique human beings. Only when we fully see ourselves and each other will we be able to make lasting positive change in our lives.

Professional Qualitfication & Certifications

5 Day Intensive Hands on Human Dissection -
Gil Hedley & Institute for Anatomical Research - 2018
The Pilates Center Masters Program - 2015
The Pilates Center Advanced Teacher Training Program - 2014
Pilates Method Alliance Certified Pilates Teacher since 2012
Core Dynamics Pilates Teacher Training Program - 2011
BA in Linguistics, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand - 2006

10 Day Intensive Hands on Human Dissection
Gil Hedley & Institute for Anatomical Research - 2022
10 Day Intensive Hands on Human Dissection
Gil Hedley & Institute for Anatomical Research - 2020
Human Dissection Laboratory Livestream Course
Gil Hedley & Institute for Anatomical Research - May 2020
Human Dissection Laboratory Livestream Course
Gil Hedley & Institute for Anatomical Research - August 2020