My Tuesday mornings are spent stretching, flexing and moving as gracefully as possible to modern music. Great posture, a strong core and touch of elegance, who doesn’t want that?!
Lejla Pantic Sindric’s Ballet Barre classes offer the possibility of all this with an added dollop of self love and appreciation on top. Her classes are intimate, her clientele varied – male and female, experienced to newbie. The physical improvement, I can see and feel, in terms of strength and flexibility, following 3 months of weekly practice is astounding. It’s a joy to exercise supported by such a calm, knowledgeable presence.
It’s with great pleasure I bring you my exclusive interview with Lejla…
What is your professional title, and what does that entail?
My first title was as a professional ballet dancer. Now I introduce myself as a former professional ballerina as I haven’t danced for 5 years. Ballet, however was central to my life for 18 years. During my dancing, I completed Ballet Pedagogy studies. After I decided to stop my professional career, I studied 3 years of bodywork and coaching. It helped me to gain another perspective on the body, how powerful it can be when you use it, and treat it as excellent support in your life. Now, my main work is creating and giving Ballet Barre Workout classes here in Berlin. Ballet Barre is an elegant workout where we use a barre as support while doing exercises that strengthen, shape, tone and stretch our muscles. Since ballet was such a big part of my life, you can feel its influence in my created classes. The moves are mostly ballet-inspired but adapted, so everyone who joins can perform them. We shape and tone to modern music and have an hour of happiness, as a client lovely described it, but besides that, I bring the people who visit the classes in touch with the strength, lightness, and beauty in their body and their movement that translates as well in their life.
I teach my students to embody qualities for their life, such as elegance, confidence, consistency, focus, precision, softness, balance, and feminity. That’s why the title body-life coach sums up the best of all my qualifications, beliefs, knowledge and passion.
What sparked your interest in this field?
Since a young age, I was a movement junky. I couldn’t be still, and I visited many different sports, action, and dance classes until I settled in ballet. Moving my body and dancing was my place to express myself, my feelings, feel free, sweat the stress away and come in touch with the beauty and art within myself, my body, and my life. Of course, dancing professionally brings besides the prettiness a lot of dedication, strictness, pushing yourself over your border, often not respecting yourself and your body, and finding yourself in an environment that is often not the most nourishing place.
After quite some time, not dancing, I went back to a professional ballet class. It felt so good to move my body this way, making moves that felt graceful and soft, yet firm. You need strength but at the same time you need the flexibility to perform them; they are precise, controlled, but as well free. It was a joy. I thought how beautiful it would be for people to train their bodies in such a way even if they had never done ballet. So I came up with Ballet Barre Shaping and Ballet Barre Flexibility, two different classes which I teach at the moment.
What motivated you to start your own business?
The wish to be creative and free. The need to share my knowledge in a form that felt authentic to me, and in a way that I can enjoy it and bring the most value, love, excitement and passion to people and their lives.
What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs and women in business?
Be patient, take one step, and then another. Be consistent, and you will know and learn by doing not by rethinking things in your head. Trust your intuition and, primarily, as a woman, treat yourself well. When you will feel good and take care good of yourself, your life will treat you well as well. And lastly, there is a place for everyone.
If one could turn back time, what advice would you give to your 20year old self?
There will be some significant challenges on your way, but life is still beautiful. Trust your feeling; it is right. Enjoy the way because you know reaching the goal will make you shortly satisfied, but when you learn to enjoy the way itself with all the ups and downs, the satisfaction will go a long way.
Classes take place throughout the week and restart January 5th 2020 Please see https://lejlaps.com for more information and to book!
AS
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