Quotes from Mary Helen Bowers

Ballet Beautiful is about finding balance and making fitness a part of your life in a happy, healthy, rewarding way where you get to feel pretty and look beautiful. It's not about beating yourself up in the gym and locking yourself in a dark room with blasting music.

It's empowering to find a workout that builds strength and grace.

Ballet Beautiful is a workout that transforms the body without overtaxing the system or joints.

Generally speaking, I love a workout that includes stretching and toning exercises for legs and core on the mat paired with ballet-inspired cardio and Barre exercises to get the heart rate up and take the results to the next level.

I launched Ballet Beautiful not long after finishing at Columbia and met Natalie Portman shortly after. We began training and preparing her for her role in 'Black Swan.' From there, I continued to build and expand the method itself along with the business, always looking for ways to share the workout with others around the world.

Stretching before and after every workout keeps muscles supple and helps elongate the lines of a ballerina's limbs.

I've learned that there are many people out there who want to feel powerful and strong on their own terms, who want to tune out the noise and the punishing nature of grueling workouts. With 'Ballet Beautiful,' we have peeled back the mystery of ballet and allowed people to do these workouts anywhere and in their own time.

I want my workouts to feel like a luxury, a way to pamper yourself and add a beautiful dimension to your everyday life.

I like to customize my tights by cutting them myself to create a stirrup or convert the look into a capri.

For a ballerina, the worst thing imaginable is big thighs.

I find that the thing that makes every body look the best is great toning, and really, really targeting the muscles, and low cardio, where you're sculpting and getting your heart rate up but not beating yourself up.

If you don't have the time or money to get to the gym, work out at home. It saves tons of time and makes life more efficient.

Ballet can be hard on your joints, and when you're on a movie set doing take after take, it can become really repetitive.

A simple ballet wrap sweater heats the back muscles but is easy to put on or take off without disturbing a dancer's makeup or hair before a performance or during a workout.

Keep it simple. Layer your leotard with high waisted skinny jeans, legwarmers, and heels or high boots.

In yoga, you hold the positions, whereas in dance, you're constantly moving, extending, reaching through the legs and arms, which helps build long, lean muscles as opposed to shorter, tighter ones.

Mid-afternoon, I snack on Greek yogurt with nuts or a green juice from Juice Press.

Sometimes people feel really trapped by the body that they have. Women are told, 'You have this body shape; you're a pear or string bean, and you can't change the way you look.' That's just not true.

Most of the time, even if I'm at home in my sweatpants, I probably have a pair of slippers on.

Even if you're having a snack, enjoying it in a beautiful teacup or on a lovely plate makes it feel like more of an event.

Generally, I snack on lots of fresh fruit and raw nuts, such as almonds.

It definitely wasn't cool in junior high, when everyone else is trying out for cheerleading, to have a life consumed by ballet.

Ballet was just something that I always wanted to do.

The changes that your body goes through during pregnancy are so radical, I've really tried to embrace and celebrate my new body, and hopefully I can encourage other women to do the same.