Peter Burrell (bottom) and Sanchit Babbar (top)
Peter Burrell is a retired accountant, who lives in Bath, England. His story:
Peter grew up in the UK and qualified as an accountant in London, way back in 1966, "when the world was a different place", he says. Always wanting to learn a foreign language, he spent the next three years living and working in Germany. This led to over thirty years living in Europe -- in particular, Belgium and Switzerland -- and the experience of different cultures gave him a whole new outlook on life.
He has always been physically active: a lot of exercise, playing golf, skiing and running. It was not until 2010, or thereabouts, that he started to experience physical problems. He developed pains in his right hand and pains and a 'dropped' foot, all down his right side. This caused him to trip on occasion and go flying. "Embarrassing, if nothing else!", Peter confesses. No doctor could identify the source of the problem.
Then, as he remembers, in early 2012 while in Cancun for his son's wedding, the pain became so severe that during morning walks along the sea shore, he would "scream to the heavens asking for help." On his return home he consulted a neurologist, who knew instinctively where the problem was -- collapsed vertebrae in the cervical spine that were impinging on the spinal cord. Surgeries followed over the ensuing year, which largely corrected the problem with his foot, but left Peter with pains in his legs, which, despite countless therapies, he had never been successful in eliminating.
Peter and his daughter Ali in Malta
"I found that pain is a moving feast," he says, "and over the years I tried every which way to obtain relief -- cortisone injections, neurostimulation therapy, chiropractic, osteopathy, shiatsu, Pilates, and I had a personal trainer." He practices Qigong, and and has even gone on three retreats in China to work with Chinese teachers. You name it, he's tried it, but nothing offered total relief. Then through his daughter, Ali, a Pilates Instructor and Restorative Exercise Specialist, he found his way to Sanchit Babbar in Los Angeles and to the SAFE® system. Ali had herself already experienced Sanchit's Zoom classes.
What is SAFE® FLOOR, you ask? SAFE®, or Spine Advanced Functional Empowerment®, was developed by former Principal Ballet dancer Alexandre Munz in conjunction with a team of scientists. It’s a rotational micro-movement system that massages the fascia system and surrounding tissues -- “rebooting the spine,” coaches will say. Sanchit Babbar, the first SAFE® FLOOR certified coach in the US, explains that the form “helps the human body understand its own biomechanics ...once you trigger muscular reflexes, your body has what it needs to heal itself."
Also a dancer who trained at the prestigious Ailey School (of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, New York, NY), SAFE® FLOOR helped Sanchit to heal from a foot injury sustained while dancing. The system helped him to see that “you’re bigger than your body,” that our bodies are connected to multiple forces all around us, themselves interconnected to forces inside of us, he says. Our relationship with our muscular and skeletal systems, and the pain they experience, can then change. “Through SAFE® FLOOR, the body is its own chiropractor,” Sanchit explains.
Sanchit Babbar
Benefits of SAFE® FLOOR resonate deep into our physical tissues. In our fascia (also called connective tissue), we all have an army of fibroblasts ready to instantly self produce collagen and elastin. These youth proteins are triggered through using rotation/counter-rotation movement patterns. In other words, it can hydrate your muscles and organs directly from the inside, Sanchit affirms.
SAFE® FLOOR “makes the spine and spinal cord really key into what’s happening, and then patterns can change,” he affirms. Peter Burrell, just like elite dancers and Olympic athletes around the world, added this intramuscular approach to his routine. It improved his daily life and changed his body perception.
Peter reckons that as a result of his previous experience with different cultures through living in several countries, he is perhaps open-minded to more unconventional solutions. Yet he at first found SAFE® FLOOR challenging on a number of fronts, he notes. As the name implies, all the floor exercises are performed lying on the ground and the first thing is to master the exercises themselves. "It's important to remember that the movements all need to be 'super slow' and you need to concentrate on the specific muscle groups that are being triggered with each exercise in order to achieve the desired results -- it's almost like a meditation," Peter explains.
Peter in a SAFE® FLOOR session
For the past six months, Peter has met with Sanchit three times a week via Zoom. Sanchit told him that he’d likely see notable results within six months, but in the event progress has been faster than that. His pain is significantly reduced and, in addition, he’s experiencing improved balance and coordination in his walking patterns. "In layman's language, the way I see it is that through SAFE® I'm obtaining more space between the vertebrae, improved elasticity of the fascia, and through that achieving healthier posture," Peter says. “Sanchit knows over 100 SAFE® FLOOR exercises, but he’s taught me only a fraction of these. He tailors them to each student,” Peter adds. Sanchit says he always keeps in mind the source of a client's problem and draws attention to the body as a whole, not just to where pain itself is located. That approach helps the client understand that they’re more than just their pain, and gets the body to learn that it has to heal itself.
Peter in a SAFE® BARRE Session
Sanchit has recently reduced the sessions to once a week, after Peter had mastered enough exercises to be able to practice independently on a daily basis. Peter has also started taking Sanchit's classes in SAFE® BARRE, a spiral-based ballet barre form, which has the same benefits as SAFE® FLOOR. It’s not only for ballet dancers, Sanchit explains; SAFE® BARRE is a form of ballet that’s open to everyone, using ballet legacies and combines them with modern biomechanics.
That's what makes it so inclusive, and Peter taking these classes is proof of that, he believes. "These exercises were challenging at first because I'm no dancer, but they really help to strengthen the legs and lead to additional flexibility, especially in the hips. And I bet that I'm the only senior for miles around who regularly uses a ballet barre!" Peter adds.
Through SAFE® FLOOR and SAFE® BARRE, he’s achieving a normal walking pattern and experiences far less pain. Strangely, now the pains only come at night, so Peter thinks that they could now well be largely psychosomatic. "I'm working on that angle, too" he says. He admits that there is no quick fix, but the important thing is that progress is coming through his own efforts, not as a result of some external intervention.That’s a form of acceptance, and Sanchit believes that that’s the key. "Neuromuscular strategies will lead you to freedom,” he affirms with a smile.
If you'd like to learn more about SAFE®, and perhaps even try it for yourself, visit the website here. You can learn more about Sanchit and book classes with him here.
Sanchit and Peter enjoying themselves through SAFE®