AFTER DISCOVERING ITS BENEFITS AS A TEENAGER, THE DIRECTOR OF PHYSIO LOGIC PILATES & MOVEMENT NOW HELPS OTHERS FIND FLEXIBILITY, STRENGTH, AND STABILITY

BY AMANDA McCoy • PHOTOS BY AMANDA DOMENECH

Lynda Salerno Gehrman, the founder and director of Physio Logic Pilates & Movement integrated with the medical and wellness center working under the same moniker, Physio Logic, took her first class at the age of 15. A dancer, she developed a passion for movement at a young age, but is the first to admit she wasn’t born with the genetics for artistic movement.

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“Pilates was the answer to help me change structural problems. I immediately felt its corrective aspects,” she recalled.

When she left her Boston suburban home to attend college, the dance major dove deeper into the philosophy and science of the approach to physical fitness developed by Joseph Pilates in the 1930s one that uses specialized apparatus and body movements to boost physical strength, improve posture, increase flexibility, even enhance mental acuity. The son of an award winning gymnast and a nature path, Pilates believed people had the ability to control muscles with their minds to not let reflex patterns take over.
Before her 20th birthday, Lynda would become a certified teacher in the discipline and was hired to train her university’s men’s basketball team.

After college, the Roger Williams University graduate moved to London briefly before settling in the Big Apple 14 years ago. She’d only been a New Yorker for a few years before opening her first studio, Avellyn Pilates, Inc., on Remsen Street in Brooklyn Heights. She found herself working closely with Dr. Rudy Gehrman, proprietor of The Heights Chiropractic and Rehabilitation Clinic. Now her husband, Rudy noticed a difference in his patients upon referring them to Lynda’s Pilates studio. He had for some time envisioned a fully integrated wellness center, and in time, The Heights Chiropractic and Rehabilitation Clinic and Avellyn Pilates would merge and include a Pilates-based physical therapy program with partner and PT trainer Jeanine Robotti. They named the new venture Physio Logic. Three years ago, it moved into a new studio in a sun drenched office on Fulton Street.

Lynda believes in amalgamating two sides of fitness: classic and rehabilitative. The former focuses on breath and flow, while the rehabilitative centers on the corrective, with an overarching focus on alignment. In the spirit of continuing education, Physio Logic Pilates and Movement also serves as the New York center for Body Arts and Science International’s Pilates Teacher Training Program, and every physical therapist at the facility has been certified in the practice.

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“Your muscles are like clay,” Salerno Gehrman always reminds clients.

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Overlooking the buzzing junction, with Borough Hall, Brooklyn Law School, and Jay St MetroTech Station steps away in addition to the adjacent and always thrumming Fulton Street the studio is furnished with Pilates equipment like “Reformers” and “Cadillacs,” the former a carriage that moves back and forth along tracks within a frame, the latter a raised, horizontal table top within a frame to which is affixed a variety of bars, straps, springs, and levers. Salerno Gehrman also has a second studio in the Upper East Side, which is dedicated to private one on one sessions, and sees an array of clients in terms of age and activity level. A firm believer in the merits of the practice for all types, the director won’t hear an excuse of “too out of shape” or “not flexible enough,” and is activated particularly when an “I’m too old” suggestion is made.

“I find that when I train the professional basketball player and the 83-year-old, we are doing the same movements,” she noted. “Nothing will ever replicate what Pilates can do, but it’s also not meant to take over what you’re already doing. You use the work as an education, and can take it into your running, or the way you sit at your desk, or even the way you hold your baby. Before long, it starts to seep into all areas of your life. It’s not meant to replace, but to add and enhance. Pilates helps people take responsibility for their body. It’s that simple”.

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Physio Logic
409 Fulton Street, 2nd Floor / 718.260.1000 /
physiologicnyc.com

115 East 82 Street
New York, NY 10028 / 646.468.1478