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Circling in on Gyrotonic[R]: it''s tempting to compare the conditioning system with Pilates--but the real question is who should use which modality, and when?

Article Excerpt
In a fitness market that seems eternally hungry for new ways to hone and tone the body, Gyrotonic[R] is the latest find cropping up in health centers and studios across the country. The name has the sound of an early twentieth-century blood-boosting medicine, or of a modern, health-food take on the Greek sandwich, the gyro. But it is neither a variation on one of the old iron supplements nor is it a food, although its adherents say it has tonic properties and you do apply it to the body. Having more in common with gyroscopes and other things that rotate, Gyrotonic and its older sibling, Gyrokinesis[TM], are the names of the therapeutic movement system invented by former dancer and self-healing guru Juliu Horvath.

Myth has it that more than twenty years ago, after finding some swivel-chair mechanisms in the trash, the now 60-year-old Horvath engineered a system of stretching and strengthening that he hoped would improve both his turnout and pirouettes. First calling it the Juliu Horvath Method[R], he finally opted for the more esoteric Greek name Gyrotonic, meaning a circling ("gyro") stretch ("tonic").

Today, Gyrotonic is a full-blown stretching and toning system that combines elements of yoga, the biomechanical principles of ballet, and some of the ideas of physical therapy with the buoyant...

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