Marianne.CoreConnect
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A fully-certified Pilates instructor and educator, women's health advocate, and core expert, I am th
A fully-certified Pilates instructor and educator, women's health advocate, and core expert, I am the founder of the Core Connect Method. Over the past 4 years, I have become one of the leading prenatal and postnatal specialists in the UAE, teaching over 400 pregnant and postpartum women, and developing a signature diastasis recti repair programme. I have 5 years experience in teaching group, priv
06/07/2026
LiLo beat me to it. But she ain’t got my family and friends ✨
Yesterday my husband, children, and friends surprised me with a private lunch party Marini Dubai free-flowing conversations, prosecco, and more love than I thought was possible.
People who don’t live here don’t really get why we always rave about Dubai.
The past few months have shown that it’s not about safety alone.
Or opportunity.
Or sunshine.
It’s about the people.
This city’s true fabric.
The kind that embrace difference.
The kind that do not give up.
On goals, kindness, building a better world, and least of all friendship.
The people you see on these pictures (and some who made the celebrations possible but did not want their pics on the gram)✨
I feel privileged to work -or have worked- with the humans who showed up yesterday.
We support others -and each other- try to make everyone feel seen, and create a safe space for real people to move, laugh and heal together.
I am still having a hard time realising 4.0. is my new number.
But with the luck I’ve had landing these friends and creating this family, it all seems rather irrelevant.
I am so thankful for them and for my health… Swipe if you want to see how I recycled my LSE graduation dress some 17 years later Nico 😂 Facebook photo proof.
Thank you all for being here.
For the messages, gifts, and love.
And see you after my Georgian escapade 🫶🏽✨
If your core only works when you think about it, it’s not really working.
A core that functions doesn’t wait for instructions.
It responds.
To load, to movement, to gravity, to breath.
Automatically.
Before you even have a chance to “switch it on.”
Bracing is a strategy.
Useful in limited contexts.
Overused in most.
Reflexive coordination is a capacity.
One that actually protects you - in the gym, in daily life, in recovery.
One that the Chair pedal helps you retrain if you’ve lost it! 🤱🏽🧘🏽♀️✨
Gravity is relentless.
It’s consistent.
And it is completely honest about whether your system is actually online.
The Chair pedal is like gravity on steroids 🔥🔥🔥
Which move will you try this week?
1 x 30-minute walk isn’t the same as 3 x 10-minute walks.
Especially postpartum.
After birth, your pelvic floor and all related connective tissues are still healing.
Like any recovering tissue, they don’t just respond to movement, they respond to how that movement is dosed.
That’s where pelvic floor breaks come in.
Giving your body a chance to recover between bouts of walking may be kinder to healing tissues than one long, continuous walk in the early weeks.
Don’t get us wrong: we want women to go for walks postpartum.
Mood. Fresh air. Blood circulation.
The benefits are many.
But what “Just go for a walk” leaves out is the very essence of collagen fibers.
This isn’t about avoiding movement.
It’s about understanding that recovery happens between the loads, not just during them.
Thank you Dr. Rachel Selman PT/DPT/CSCS/CPSS for this wonderful conversation on the Core Connect Podcast.
One that acknowledges the reality of physiological healing without wrapping women in tape.
🎙️Find the full episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
We have reduced pelvic floor training to one instruction: squeeze 🫠
But pelvic floors don’t exist in isolation.
They’re responders.
They’re the firefighters of the crew.
Not the fire itself.
The pelvic floor informs us when the way forces travel through the entire body is suboptimal.
With leaks, prolapse, or hip pain.
Since it’s a responder, training it to respond in a coordinated fashion to the body’s efforts is undoubtedly a smarter strategy than a squeeze app.
This exercise is one that I regularly squeeze in before teaching, pun intended.
It looks like legs and a few rows.
It is so much more 🌸
And if you’ve had pelvic injuries like me, the leg against the wall is a fabulous adaptation to keep your OI from getting cranky.
Inspired by a recent story from my friend Jasmine Evelyn, Pelvic Health Physiotherapist & Yoga Teacher a pelvic floor physio based in Barbados.
When you think of a core workout, this is probably what comes to mind, right?
Burning abs.
Flexion.
On your back.
That feeling that makes you question all your life choices.
And to be fair...
A real burn.
Believe me, I loved it.
(Thank you for inspiring me to try this setup.)
But here’s where things get interesting.
Though the deep abs are part of your core.
They’re not the whole story.
A truly functional core is not about the burn.
It teaches your body to reflexively:
→ Respond to load
→ Transfer force
→ Adapt to unpredictability
That’s why some of the best core exercises don’t feel like abs exercises at all.
And why some of the best abs exercises, like these, are only one piece of the puzzle.
A reminder that there’s room for both:
The burn that makes you smile.
And the movement quality that keeps you strong for life.
Which one is your favourite here?
We don’t hype our kids up before big moments.
No matter how nervous we are 🫠
A few weeks ago, Adam read to his brother’s class. (Very grateful to the teachers who made this happen)
So when I asked him: “Are you nervous?”
And he responded laughing: “Nervous about what? I am just reading to a bunch of kids.”
I knew we’d somehow managed not to instill in him what we had suffered from ourselves.
Namely the feeling that if we were not high-performers, we were not loveable.
Does it mean we are never attached to outcomes?
Certainly not.
I am glad I was working this morning when my youngest’s team lost their match 10-0.
But we do our best to strike a balance between a deeply rooted sense of enough-ness and a healthy dose of competition / performance.
It’s so hard to get it right.
And I certainly don’t claim to get it right with them every day.
But this stands as one of my proudest moments as a mama.
✨What has been your proudest parent moment this year?
Our best work is always co-created, isn’t it?
This reformer sequence wasn’t planned.
An advanced student needed more challenge for a plank series.
I told her to try a knee dip.
She tried a knee dip.
Not the one I had in mind.
One thing led to another.
This flow was born.
(The knee dip is much harder than it looks!)
One of the greatest gifts of teaching is discovering that inspiration doesn’t always come from having all the answers.
Sometimes it comes from being curious enough to explore the question together.
This sequence is one of those moments.
Does this look like a pelvic floor workout to you?
Guess what?
It is.
It’s also a gorgeous Chair workout.
Because the pelvic floor is a team player.
Isolated pelvic floor exercises have their place in a rehab programme.
But they rarely deliver lasting results on their own.
The pelvic floor needs to be integrated to truly function.
Incontinence. Hip pain. Painful in*******se.
For so many, the missing piece isn’t more Kegels.
It’s movement that brings the whole system online.
On the Chair, that might look like:
→ Eccentrically loading your deep hip rotators
→ Increasing thoracic mobility
→ Building leg strength
→ Mobilising the pelvis
→ Releasing abdominal restrictions with the Rad Center
It doesn’t look like lying on a mat squeezing.
It looks like this.
🗓️Next perinatal Pilates teacher training course starts in September 2026.
✉️ DM for info.
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