Geri Arnais has gained national recognition as a Los Angeles Personal Trainer. Her unique inside-out approach to fitness presents a kaleidoscope of fitness genres blending contemporary exercise with ancient body techniques. Cardiovascular, strength (weight) training, functional core conditioning and flexibility take on new meaning infusing the elements of core awareness and passionate presence.
Featured on The Discovery Health Channel, Geri was hired as a fitness trainer on The Body Challenge, one of America’s first television reality shows and predecessor to The Biggest Loser. In 2001, she produced one of the first Pilates exercise videotapes, Pilates Poise, An Intelligent Mat Technique, receiving a four-star rating in Fit Magazine. Today, she services a private clientele and conducts workshops throughout Los Angeles on The Pilates Mat Technique, The Mayan Body: The Seven Natural Curves of Divinity, and Chakra Power, The Hidden Powers Within.
“Relaxed is beautiful”, reminds Geri who cultivates centeredness, an inner vitality that expresses via mental clarity, emotional stability, and inner peace. An empowering process begins as she takes you into the space between control and surrender where willingness and curiosity suspend judgment and activate the free-flow of enormous power within. Moving into deeper terrain, she guides you into the energetic anatomy that bridges the conscious and unconscious mind. At the core lies inner power where strength, resilience and balance are by-products of underlying vital energies: receptivity, sensuality and creativity, pillars of self-power. Centered within, beauty and balance come alive and new body awareness emerges visual magnetism: outer radiance and inner glow.
Geri breaks through new frontiers in health and fitness with exceptional vision, sensitivity and knowledge interweaving the intricacies of mind, body and spirit. She paves the foundation of her bodywork with the principals of movement: breath, alignment and intention. The interplay of strength and resilience directs her in designing training programs that address the dynamic relationship between muscle and connective tissue. The fusion of opposites generates harmony, balance and buoyancy. Training sessions are highly focused, with a feeling of intensity in the moment. With enthusiasm and integrity, Geri teaches that grace, poise and agility needn’t be elusive. She instructs how to build a strong and supple body that moves effortlessly, efficiently, and radiates equipoise. Her expertise, creativity and diverse skills apply to all ages and fitness levels: from athletes and dancers to those obese and de-conditioned, including those recovering from injuries, joint problems and scoliosis. Geri’s repertoire of services is customized to fit anyone aspiring to look and feel fabulous in their body.
Beautiful, vital body emerges out of awareness”, claims Geri, who believes vitality begins with postural awareness. “Shifting into a vertical reality anchors us with new depth and ...interconnectedness.” She puts a refreshing new spin on the mind-body connection bringing the ...unconscious conscious by focusing on neuromuscular patterns that forecast our energetic anatomy, shape our body and its destiny. “The body never lies, but the mind’s a different story”, she tells us. “The body feels and the mind thinks. To feel as we think is the vital key.” Geri explains it’s the body, not the brain that brings awareness because the brain gets trapped in mentality. “The body knows the truth, wears the truth, and tells the whole truth because what we feel in the body is real and resonates through us. It’s the feeling, sensual body that carries our wisdom. It holds the intelligence of the heart; and what’s in the heart reveals our authenticity.”
Wholeheartedly, Geri guides us in accepting, loving and bringing all parts of ourselves together –especially those unwanted ones we shove aside, suppress from others, and hide from ourselves. Returning to wholeness, we find the courage to let go, trust and face the unknown –set the self free.
Geri teaches how to take control to set free. “It’s a matter of shifting down the gears –slowing down mind activity to connect with the feeling presence of the body. Uniting mind and body, we self align, find clarity and a sense of knowing what to let go of and what to hold onto.” Inner awareness lets us isolate specific muscle groups and coordinate movement with breath. In a state of receptivity, resistance-free patterns of movement flow. An open, receptive mind often initiates an unsheathing process –one that peels away layers of inertia, misconceptions and false beliefs. A profound change occurs when the feeling mind is present in the moment. We simmer with passionate presence and subtly move to expand self-margins and explore untapped potential.
Buoyancy is the ease and joy of living and being. Geri shows us how to feel light in the body as we discover a new relationship with gravity. Gravity, a cosmic force, puts us in contact with the spine. Walking tall, as if pulled up by a string, develops core awareness and aligns us with a cosmic connection. A quickening occurs –an acceleration of energy that empowers us to break out of a plateau of comfort as we intuit we can achieve more. Geri is impassioned to awaken our innate abilities to attract, inspire and influence others. She motivates us to ‘turn on’ our charisma and personal magnetism; express an exuberance that everyone can feel.
Strengthening, aligning and balancing bodies since 1988, Geri’s hands-on experience has given her access to the unseen body and its energetic network. Under her hands, the spine becomes a ‘human tuning fork’, an instrument of self-alignment. Liberating the spine, which houses the central nervous system (spinal cord and brain), we enter the core channel of self to unlock the secrets of vitality, health and longevity. Geri’s philosophy sums up best by her nature that is quick to rebuke anything that takes us outside ourselves to find love, beauty, peace and wisdom. She believes, “Everyone seeks happiness, but what we really hunger for is feeling more alive!”
ROOTS
Born and raised in Chicago, Geri was raised on music. Her musician father groomed her as a toddler to sing. An early background in music and dance developed her performing interests and talents. Pre-pubescent years vested in developing skills of discipline and technique. Under private tutelage of Chicago classical guitarist, Jack Cecchini, and the husband-wife dance team of Richard Ellis and Christine DuBoulay, founders of the Illinois Ballet Company, she recalls her formative years: “Most kids came home from school and turned on the television. I turned on the metronome, syncing to its ‘tick tock’, ascending and descending the twelve major and minor scales on my guitar fret board.” She remembers the mirror as her daily companion. Her teen world immersed in the world of dance, a world of mirror; and body image was a reflection of strength, alignment and discipline. These early years developed a powerful sense of self, earning independence, self-responsibility and a heaping dose of self-esteem.
Geri’s former musical career spotlighted her onstage as a solo singer/guitarist. Media-tagged as a ‘cafe-society’ performer who balladeered the tunes of Cole Porter, Duke Ellington and George Gershwin, she entertained nightly in posh eateries, clubs and hotels along Chicago’s ‘Gold Coast’. Accompanying herself on a Gretsch Tennessean electric guitar, her beginnings as a solo chanteuse later evolved to becoming a bass guitarist and lead singer of her own rock band. In a later career phase, Geri switched from performing Top 40 Hits to songwriting and studio recording. After winning a national pop songwriting contest, she flew to the west coast to negotiate licensing one of her songs for a movie. Soon after, Geri relocated to Los Angeles where she now lives. After two years of performing in L.A. clubs, she took a final bow in show biz.
In the early nineties, The LA Fitness Industry was white-hot at the height of The Aerobic Revolution and Geri switched from performing in clubs to performing in gyms. A seamless change, she volunteered as an aerobic instructor at the Santa Monica YMCA while earning certifications from the Aerobics and Fitness Association of America and UCLA, accumulating credits in anatomy, exercise physiology, biomechanics, nutrition and weight training. In 1995, she was introduced to Yoga and was profoundly influenced by California Yoga teacher, Erich Schiffmann. In 2001, Geri completed Yoga Teacher’s Training at Yogaworks in Brentwood, California with teachers Maty Erzaty and Lisa Walford. Still ahead lay another mind-body induction, The Pilates Method, which Geri believes ‘pulled all the pieces together’ solidifying her foundation in bodywork. She credits years of private study with LA Pilates maven, Jillian Hessel, as a time of tremendous personal growth, professional integration and spiritual transformation.
Studies in bioenergetics, quantum physics and neuroscience quenched Geri’s thirst for cutting edge developments in modern science, health and medicine. Her solo travels to earth vortexes (earth chakras) and self-pilgrimages to Egypt’s Pyramids of Giza, Peru’s Machu Picchu and The Amazon Jungle imparted their rich histories, cultures and great mysteries. In Africa, Morocco’s kasbahs, mosques and souks bared the soul of Marrakech, Fez and Rabat, spawning her curiosity for a deeper understanding in hermeticism, mysticism, alchemy and the ancient wisdom of mystery schools. More recently, Thailand’s exotic utopia of temples, monks and shrines introduced Geri to the ancient healing arts. In Bangkok, she attended The Wat Po Medical School of Traditional Thai Massage and continued further studies in Chiang Mai with Mama Lek Chaiya.
TODAY
Between training sessions, classes, workshops, and massage therapy, Geri devotes her time to non-fiction writing. Her manuscript, Face in the Mirror, A Glimpse into the Multidimensional Self, is a journey into the energetic anatomy that bridges the conscious and unconscious mind. Her recreational passion, The Flying Trapeze, takes her intermittently off-calendar, sojourning north to Sky Farm in Sonoma, Ca. to work with trapeze master, Marek Kaszuba, or to Trapeze Arts in Oakland, Ca. to work with Stephen Gaudreau. “A whole different body awareness arises the moment you leave the platform, thirty-one feet up in the air”, says Geri. “Staying present –inside the trick– while flying upside down and swinging backwards challenges you with issues of fear and trust, as you surrender to the unknown.”
Today, she credits Leigh McCloskey, Founder of Olandar, Malibu, Ca., for mentoring her in esoteric teachings and The Perennial Philosophy. She is indebted to the late Brugh Joy who inducted her into The Mystical Arts and Mysteries of the Divine Feminine and extends appreciation to the tantric teachings of Bodhi Avinasha and Ipsalu Tantra Kriya Yoga. Yet most treasured are the memories, experiences and relationships she has shared over the years with her students and clients, whom she touts to be her greatest teachers. Geri holds reverence for all illumined individuals, teachers, authors, masters, adepts and souls who have guided, trained, nurtured and inspired her on a path of presence, radiance and resonance.
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