Pilates Perspectives
Pilates Perspectives is your guide to how Pilates fits into real life, no matter your experience level. We unpack the method’s many approaches and history, where it sits in today’s wellness landscape, and simple ways to apply it day to day. Episodes range from building community through movement to using Pilates in physical therapy and rehab. We also explore timely topics, including education standards, diversity expansion across the field, and embracing Pilates as a lifestyle that supports both body and mind.
You’ll hear from seasoned teachers, clinicians, and thought leaders who share firsthand experience and evidence-informed insights; useful for curious beginners and long-time pros alike. Our aim is to offer practical knowledge, foster inclusivity, and widen perspectives so the practice continues to evolve for everyone.
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Pilates Perspectives
Romana: Pilates Lineage & Lessons
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Classical Pilates teacher Amy Taylor Alpers trained with Romana Kryzanowska, a protégé of Joseph Pilates, at the original Pilates Studio in New York and was certified in 1989.
In this episode, Amy takes us inside the room with Romana. What she was really like as a teacher. How her ballet background shaped the way she taught classical Pilates: the dancer's eye, the insistence on consistency, the refusal to let a sloppy repetition slide. Amy explains why "do it again, properly" is one of the most generous things a Pilates teacher can say.
From there: the Pilates equipment. Amy and her sister Rachel Taylor Segel co-founded The Pilates Center in Boulder, Colorado, in 1990, and later worked with Balanced Body founder Ken Endelman to develop CenterLine®, the classically-inspired Pilates equipment line. Amy walks through what they were chasing, and what changes when the apparatus is right.
She's also changed her mind about a lot. Pilates cueing especially. After decades of teaching Pilates teachers, Amy talks about moving away from correction-by-command toward something that lets the body find its own answer, and where she looks for inspiration when the anatomy textbooks run out: animals, movement in nature, the way a cat organizes its spine without being told. Underneath all of it is a humanist streak; a belief that Pilates is about the whole person, not just the whole body.
This episode is powered by Balanced Body®.
Hello and welcome to Pilates Perspectives. Today we have on Amy Taylor Albers to talk about Romana's lineage and lessons. But first, let's check in. Let's start by grounding yourself where you are. If you are able, place your left hand at your heart and your right at the lower belly. Take a nice big inhale. Feel the air fill up your entire abdomen and release out as you exhale. Now I invite you to maintain this nice deep continuous breathing as I'm just gonna talk to you and just drop in an idea. So let's talk today a little bit about changing a mindset or just change in general. Today I want you to think about the last time that someone truly changed your mind. Maybe it was through being given some new information, or maybe it was witnessing a behavior that challenged a preconceived notion. Once you've identified that, think about how it felt in the moment to have that viewpoint shift. Was it in some way disquieting? Did it challenge something in you? Was it a little stressful? Were you defensive? Or was it exciting and you were open and you saw a different perspective? Was it enlightening? Compare that to your view on the situation now. Do you feel the same way that you did when you first experienced this change in that moment? Now keep taking those deep grounded breathings. This week, I challenge you to take stock in a few assumptions that you may have been making. That could be about yourself, it could be about another person, it could be about a group of people, or about the world as a whole. Can you take a little time this week to investigate further? What makes you think that way? What makes you hold on to maybe some beliefs or some thought patterns and what you can do to change your mind if presented with new information? Or flip that around when you're in the presence of someone or something, and you think, oh, gee, this would be a lovely opportunity to engage in a conversation that maybe can open somebody else's mind or somebody else's perspective. And how might you offer or how might you show up? How might you model behavior that can support that kind of change? Okay. So thank you for taking that time with me. Today we have Amy Taylor Alpers coming from the direct tutelage of Romana Kryonowska. Amy is the co-founder of the Pilates Center in Boulder, Colorado, known worldwide for its teacher training program. She co-wrote the Everything Pilates book and worked with Balanced Body to develop the centerline equipment. She currently leads the immersive Ron and Romana workshop alongside Kira Sabin, designed to guide participants through an exploration of both lineages side by side. You can find Amy at the Pilatescenter.com or at the Pilates Center on Facebook or Instagram. Welcome, Amy. So we're excited today to have Amy Taylor Alpers with us on Pilates Perspectives. Amy, thank you so much for joining us.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_02So um honestly, I'm not sure where to start. At the beginning? I guess we should, we really should start um at some of the beginnings for you. Um first, let's I find it hard to believe, but let's imagine that somebody out there listening might not know who you are. Just a little bit about um uh where where you where your studio is, what you're doing. Okay, cool.
SPEAKER_00All right. Well, my sister and I founded the Pilates Center in Boulder, Colorado in 1990. And we had both studied with Romana in New York previous to that. Um and she was part of our beginnings in the sense that she came out and helped us create and develop our teacher training program that we then started in 1991. And uh, and then we've just been doing it now for 36 years.
SPEAKER_02Right. And to put that in context, 1991 is uh almost what eight, nine, ten years before before other before teacher training became really codified.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for sure, for sure. And we had we had the help, great deal of help from Steve Giordano, who had been studying with Romana quite a bit in the city. And he was, you know, just kind of a jack of all trades and just a good organizer and forward thinker, you know. So he'd been kind of pushing, I think, Romana to standardize something, formalize something, you know, put it down in writing kind of thing. And so I think we kind of ended up being the people he and she did that with. And they were doing, uh, you know, I don't know the timing exactly. They were doing something similar in the city with Sean, but this was all new, you know. So it wasn't like there was a race or anything. It was just, nor had we ever intended, really, you know. We just started a studio, and I happened to mention to Romana when I went back a year later to she met, she introduced me to Steve. And then Steve was like, Oh, come out to Boulder. And so it just sort of tumbled, you know, like it wasn't totally planned. Right. But we did have a vision, which be careful with your vision. But you know, at one point we were looking in the studio going, like, wow, it'd be so cool to have like 10 other teachers here who all talk the same language, and you know, so it kind of manifested itself.
SPEAKER_02Uh, you know, it's funny that you talk about it like tumbling into it. So uh Ken does this keynote and and we kind of go over the 50 years of balanced body, and and with each moment in time, he kind of he chuckles and he's like, Well, it's not like I I planned it. No, it just kind of organically happened, yes, right? Yes a vision or you have like some idea of what would be great, and you just start working toward it. It was so organic back then.
SPEAKER_00It really was. I mean, there was literally nothing, you know. I mean, we had been in New York with Romana the one day the studio just shut down, and it made us realize like, oh my God, this thing is is pretty delicate, pretty fly by night, you know? And so we quickly said, is there something we can do? Can we learn a little bit more? Because we'd been doing Pilates for ourselves, you know, dancer bodies that were broken, finally getting around to doing Pilates, which you knew about in New York, or you knew about it if you were a dancer through Dance Magazine and a series of articles that came out, Corolla Shares and Romana Shares. And so that's how Rachel had discovered it out in in Boulder when I was in New York. Um, and so she decided, you know, take a break from Boulder and come to New York and let's start Pilates. So wait a minute.
SPEAKER_02Wait, that's a part of your story I didn't get.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02Then you're in New York. Yes. And Rachel's in Boulder. Yep. And Rachel reads the article and tells you in New York. Yeah. And she comes out and you guys go see Romana.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02A little bit.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I was working, I had a master's in dance history, and I was working at the New York uh performing arts library at Lincoln Center, the dance collection. And so I read all those articles too, because I would um do the magazines and I can't remember what it's called, but process. Yeah, to put them in the library at the at the Lincoln Center. Um, and so I'd read them all too, and I certainly knew about Pilates just being in New York and heard from other people. And then I, you know, I still really didn't know what it was. And this would have been like '86. Um, I'd heard about Kathy Grant. Uh, and maybe like Fran Leon or someone like I'd heard some names, but they didn't mean anything to me. And I I didn't know, you know, what we were getting ourselves into, but we kind of almost immediately just fell in love. We're just like, oh my God, this is the thing.
SPEAKER_02That falling in love, right, is so common.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And it was so like, this is something I could do the rest of my life, and this is something I can do for me that just makes my body feel good and makes me feel healthy and strong and flexible and capable, you know? And so it wasn't really until that one day when I went and the studio was gone that I thought, oh dear, you know, now we're addicted. We better, we better know as much as we possibly can because Rachel was getting married and we were going to be moving to Boulder and leaving New York finally after 13 years. You know, I'd been there since 76. And uh, and so it was like suddenly there was like this little crush of time. And so this went up to uh Romana and Wee Tai, who owned it at the time, and said, you know, what else can we do? And you know, they had this little two-week kind of nothing like teacher training program that we did. And we had been teachers, both of us had been teachers for decades, really, um, teaching dance. I probably started teaching dance when I was like 16. And Rachel maybe a little later, but she had a lot of experience teaching. And you know, so we were already teachers of movement. Um, I was still thinking I might continue teaching dance, work at the university in Boulder. I really didn't know what I was gonna do. And then, you know, it just started to be like, huh, well, maybe we could open a little studio here. That could be fun. Like, you know, like casual. Like, what are you doing? I don't know. What do you want to do? Should we open a Pilates studio? You know, and then it was through meeting Steve through Romana that it kind of took on a little bit of a life of its own.
SPEAKER_02Um, I remember sitting with you in Boulder. I don't know if you remember this. Um, you were gracious, you met me at your studio, and we went and we had coffee, and and you started going through some of this with me. And I was struck then, I'm struck now again with really at the time, like you said, it was very fragile. You weren't sure if it was going to survive. It wasn't um something that like like now you can say, oh, this is a profession. I could do, you know, but you but it was again something in you and the both of you that that like spurred that love into making it not just a profession for yourselves, but a profession for others.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And I think the evolution was very organic and um and 100% totally made sense for us, you know. Otherwise, it probably wouldn't have worked.
SPEAKER_02And ballet, you were a uh ballet dancer, both of you? Um uh Romana herself was a ballet dancer. Was there a connection there?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, yeah. Absolutely. I felt very, very strongly about that. And Rachel said too like we met Romana, and she was the same age as our mother, and our mother had passed away a few years before. And so she kind of came in as this person who fit into our life so easily, and then also the dance. She was like any ballet teacher we'd ever had, you know. We just felt like we could relate to her, like this was a kind of new home for us. And um, that was serendipity too, you know, like that was just a wonderful thing. But and that's one of the things I remember saying we did that kind of conference at Kira's in Tucson. Kira did like a lineagist conference, and there was a big panel that Plaudies and uh Plaudies Anytime put together. And I remember saying they asked everybody some specific question about I don't even know, obviously, something to do with the lineage of their teacher. And I I said, and I believe this very strongly, but I never hear anybody else say it. So that because Romana was a ballet teacher and not a modern dancer and not a choreographer, she was a ballet teacher, and a ballet teacher's love form. You do the same from day one to the last class you ever take, it will be the same. And that's been designed over centuries now to produce a great ballet dancer, and I think she really related to Pilates in that way. She didn't want to change it, it already worked the way it did, and it produced what it was designed to do, which was a really healthy, functioning body. And so I I always felt, you know, just kind of glad about that in terms of her being our introduction to it, because it the form itself does the job.
SPEAKER_02You know, I I I'm so glad you bring that up because I'm struggling right now. Let's see how I wanna how I want to put this. I'm struggling with with seeing really how this open field now that is Pilates and the value in the the the method itself. And how do we how do how do how do we keep that actively a part of the profession? Uh so so when I think about the the history, what strikes me is Romano was a dancer. Uh Corolla had a very different professional life as a contortionist.
SPEAKER_00But still like a mover, dancer, choreographer.
SPEAKER_02That's right. You know, uh Kathy Grant, also a mover, dancer, choreographer, but a different style and medium.
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_02Gentry, right? And you could start to Ron, all of them. Ron and uh and Ron comes out to California, which is a whole different culture. And if you start to just pay attention to who they were, right, you but you always saw the method blossom from their approaches.
SPEAKER_00Yes, very much so. And they were so clear. I mean, I had the pleasure of of getting to speak with all of them except Eve. Um, but Deborah's worked with us, Deb Coley's worked with us since '91. Um, she had the Eve influence. No, I did, I did do a workshop with Eve, which was awesome. Who's the one I didn't meet? Corolla. I didn't meet Corolla. They were all very, very vigilant in saying, this is Joe, this is me. I don't want those two things confused. I think they had a lot of respect for Joe, and I think they also understood what their interests were, who the market was that they wanted to work with, you know. I mean, Joe had to have been like this crazy dude with this funky place on the west side of Manhattan. You know, like he wasn't who we think of him now as. He was just a guy down the street who had a studio and it attracted people. And those people were like, yeah, I like this guy and I like what he has to say. But nobody, I don't think, necessarily felt like committed to keeping it exactly that way. You know, they just learned what they learned and loved what they loved and did what they did and then went where they went and morphed it into what was more their style, you know, whereas Romana fully believed for sure that that is not what she did. She stayed in New York, she stayed at the studio, she continued to study with him and teach with him and committed her life to doing what Joe said he wanted her to do. She was young when she she worked with him. Originally, yeah. Originally, she was in her teens, and she was around for a few years, I think, you know, and and then she got married and moved to Peru for 13 or 14 years, and then came back to the city after that. And she would always always tell the story that she was carrying her daughter and she fell through a manhole that was missing its cover and tore her knee. And that was kind of what really sent her back to Joe. But I think once she got back to Joe, she just stayed through the rest of his life and through the rest of Clara's life, and then just became the person who took over the studio when they were looking for somebody to keep it going, but it wasn't easy, you know. So by the time we got there in '87, it was barely surviving.
SPEAKER_02Right. Geez, it's so interesting to to to go to that. It was barely surviving it's through those ashes that today we look at very different Pilates landscape. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00No, it's really, really true. I mean, and and we feel, you know, again, it was serendipity. It was really good luck to have entered when we did. We feel for several reasons. One was it was starting to fade, it was being harder and harder to keep it alive. And so it needed a new renaissance of some sort. And there was some energy brewing around that in New York, but also for us in Boulder. And um, Romana was still Romana, you know, she was in her 60s, early, maybe she was close to 70 by the time. Yeah, maybe she was just turning 70, really, when when we were no longer able to work with her because of Sean. And so she was still vital and excited, and she also hadn't at all been turned into a teacher trainer.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00She was just a teacher.
SPEAKER_02She was a teacher. Yeah. Right.
SPEAKER_00And she loved students who wanted to learn, but she hadn't had to lock down on it quite as extremely yet. You know, I think we were one of the first places for sure, where she was really trying to codify things and trying to make sure that everything was kept.
SPEAKER_02Was that process hard to go from um sort of an intu uh uh and maybe I'm not saying this correctly, but sort of an intuitive process of teaching to um making it more of a curriculum?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think I think it could have been quite challenging for her beyond what she did to help us and Steve. I wasn't terribly involved. And I do know she eventually she went back into the archives and she pulled out a lot more material and really had to get clear. I think the big difference was numbers, really. Like, you know, when we were there, it was a handful of people and she knew everybody and she taught everybody, and they were her students. And I think she loved that piece of it. I think she always loved her New York students, you know. But I think once she had to get flown around the country and then just dropped into studios of people she didn't know who were taking her teacher training program. I I think that's when things tightened quite a bit.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, where she would be like, Well, we're not doing that anymore, we're not doing it like that anymore, and now we're doing it this way. And, you know, it you could just watch this process occur as she tried to control this thing that was suddenly right going crazy, you know.
SPEAKER_02And that was the beginning. That was that, you know, the the what was it, the the late 90s, 1990s, early 2000s is really when it took a bump. So so now you're in Boulder. Uh so uh here's an oddball question for you. Uh New York, right? It it started to take on a a bit of a life, but but you're in Boulder. What another, like if I could pick another other than Ron going out to uh the West Coast, the next best place, it would be Boulder, Colorado.
SPEAKER_00Oh, cool. I mean, there was Pilates in Boulder already, because of Boulder, but it was very eclectic stuff, more like what people would call West Coast. Um, and I had no exposure to that at all, none. You know, so we were like, okay, it's fine. We'll do what we do, and it, you know, won't it won't even be the same thing as all this other stuff that's going on in Boulder.
SPEAKER_02So, how easy was it for you to get equipment out in Boulder?
SPEAKER_00That was a big challenge. I mean, that was a huge challenge, and that's why when I met Steve, all things changed. So we had moved in in November of 89. We wouldn't know what we were doing yet. And I went back to New York in June of 90. And that's when I met Steve. And Steve was like, Well, I'll come out and build your equipment for you. Because he could like do everything. So we were like, oh, okay. And then he came out to Boulder and he just built all our equipment. The only piece of equipment that I had had was this one reformer. You've heard that story, right? Where Wheatai owed me money because he hadn't been able to get me a reformer. I bought. And so he found a guy in Boulder, coincidentally. Barry Butler, I remember his name. Barry Butler. Yeah. And he built a reformer, but Ken was like, well, it's half, not Ken. Don't get those two confused. Wheatai was like, you know, that's it's half the price, you know. And so it was for the other half that he still owed me that I asked him if we could use the name. Pilates. There you go. And that's how we became the Pilates Center, not having a clue it would mean that much in the future. Yeah. You know, but we had a handwritten being a historian and archivist myself, I keep stuff. So I still had handwritten letters from Wee Tie. Did that was that helpful to you during the lawsuit? Because this is already absolutely what saved us during the lawsuit, what connected us with Ken, what created rifts in the industry from us? Yeah, it's had a massive influence.
SPEAKER_02You know, that was a that was an interesting time. And and actually, as you talk about it, everybody was having the same sort of levels of like surprise around this growing industry and not knowing what to do with it. But it was what the late 90s that the lawsuit started. So anybody who used Pilates in the name was sued. Yep. Um uh and you guys were fine. You were able to do you were able to fight it.
SPEAKER_00I mean, uh we were deposed and I did testify. You did testify. Yeah, yeah. And you know, I I the hard part was I felt bad kind of for Romana because she kind of I don't think fully understood the situation. So when the judge asked me, what would Romana say you girls in Colorado teach? And I said, I think she say Pilates because that's what she taught us to teach, you know. And I think when they asked Romana that, she said Pilates, and that kind of undermined things. Yeah, you know, like, well, if she says that these girls that he's suing, he never sued us, but like we were in the hole, think of it, you know, um, teach Pilates, then what is this case about, you know? So it was intriguing and very interesting to testify. I'm very thankful for that experience. Um and I was also very grateful for the outcome, but also not because here we are.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, Kira, who we're also going to interview, I think she would call it a double-edged sword.
SPEAKER_00Very much so. Very much so. And, you know, it it is a shame what has happened. And we've we've tried pretty hard to, you know. I mean, Romana was so clear, and I assume maybe Joe also said this, I don't know, but she was like, you go do whatever you want, just don't call it Pilates. Because if Joe didn't create it, then it isn't Pilates, you know. So stick to your name.
SPEAKER_02Right. So have the, I don't want to say stick to, but the the the roots of the method. And it's like you said, even even the original instructors would would be really clear at this point.
SPEAKER_00Very, very clear. They did not want confusion there. So it's really the next generation and those after that have just kind of mushed it all together at this point.
SPEAKER_02Um, so what are the things that have influenced you i in those years? I would say, I don't want to say after Romana, but those bolder years.
SPEAKER_00It is kind of after Romana because once we couldn't really be in touch with Romana anymore, was that over the lawsuit? That was over the lawsuit. Yeah. Um, we had to find our own way, you know. We didn't create anything new, but I at least very personally had to determine for myself what is this thing? What is it? How does it work? What's it for? Why do I like teaching it? What am I teaching? You know, like I had to kind of do a big soul searching. If I'm gonna keep doing this and also teach or train other people, I need to know for myself what it is, you know, and so use used mostly return to life because that's it's pretty clear in there what the purpose was. And once I realized it's supposed to be natural, normal movement, and it's supposed to heal people, and it's supposed to heal them on deep levels, not just get you musculoskeletally aligned, you know, but it's designed to get your ner your circulatory system really stimulated and flushing and get rid of the old crap and regenerate, you know, and it's incredibly great for your nervous system, for your digestive system. It's just it's just like what a human needs to do to maintain the health of their design.
SPEAKER_02So I think that's so powerful, uh, because as we're as as as we're talking about where is that Pilates line? Um, so much of like it's it's easy to, for example, not do stomach massage. And instead If you don't like it. Right. If you don't like it, or it's hard, it's a hard position to get in. Yeah, and it's hard to teach. Right. And and it's hard to teach, and it's hard, so so it's easy to bypass it and say, well, let's do this instead. Yeah. Um, and and yet there's there's there's um you miss something. Circulatory elements there, there's digestive elements there, there's fossil elements there, there's musculoskeletal, of course, and there's like is there's there's all of these other components that are intangibles and not studyable because they're multiple factors at once. Yeah. Um, and they're the things that that I guess I do believe are are what gets somebody off the reformer. It got you a young broken dancer to get up and say, this is good and right for my body.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And I didn't know how or why, and I I wasn't aware yet of the deeper health issues. Right. But as I started to teach with this mission in mind, like it really is my mission that when I'm watching a human move, that they their bodies get back to moving the way they're designed. Right. Right. So that I'm not teaching them Pilates, but we use Pilates to return their body back to its healthiest version, which is the version that's closest to the way it's designed in my mind, you know. So I watch nature move and I was so glad. He was like, it should be natural and normal, like cats and babies, like cats and babies, you know. So I would just watch like cheetahs run, and I'd be like, okay, I I get it now. You can't teach them exercises, nor do you want to get creative. You don't want to mess a cheetah up. You don't want to mess a cheetah. No, you want to like those are words for life. Yeah, right. Like just listen to it. Be nice to cheetahs and then watch them and don't try to teach them anything, you know. What if what can we learn from an animal on the planet who still moves exactly the way they're designed? And that if you mess with that design, you know, you're gonna actually really damage a cheetah. But we've all messed with our design like crazy, right? And so when I'm watching a human, I'm like, what's the design? And how should it move? And why is it overworking that or underworking that, or why is it not breathing, or why is its brain so foggy, or you know, why is it so cold or so hot or so lumpy or so taut, or all of these feelings that are are drawn from the idea that a cheetah could never operate that way. There is an actual rhythmical sequence to joints. You don't want to keep flexing your hip so much and not have already started to flex. There's just a rhythm that should occur naturally, but we have screwed it up, especially here on the chair. But also, you know, I mean, my gosh, now, now there's these crazy autoimmune issues, and oh my lord, you know, so environmental factors as well as huge, huge, huge.
SPEAKER_02And then there's we have standing desks, which are better, but you're still standing a very long period of time.
SPEAKER_00Because I have one client, he was a professor for 30 years or something, and he'd stood the whole time, and his body is broken, yeah, you know, because he wasn't standing well either. You know, I mean, none of it is easy to fix. You can't fix it by standing instead of sitting. You actually have to change the human and get them back to being the way they're and another huge probably one of the things that influences me the most today is the realization that Joe really created this for dudes, for boxers. And I think two or three of the big powerful influences over Pilates, not necessarily a good way, female and dancers, so especially female dancers, changed the work dramatically. That's yeah, but is that a relatively recent thought that you're I think that it it's gotten clearer and clearer to me as we've looked at more of the archival work. So probably for the last 15 years or so, um, we've been trying to bring the male back and get the dance out. Um, but the hard part is it is almost all women, and they do tend to be more flexible, and also the difference in the structure and that the weight tends to be more in the lower part of the body and less in the upper part of the body. And so trying to pull the boxer back in, trying to imagine if a boxer had carried this work on, what would it look like? Right. Interesting. How can we, you know, the exercises might still be the same, but how can we teach them in a way that I think is even better for women because it uniformly develops natural tendencies already.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. But if you just I I've never thought of it that way. Yeah, it's fantastic.
SPEAKER_00It's because if you can do PLD's with your flexibility, there's no doubt about it. And and you can do it with your performance skills, but they won't they won't give you the benefit or the ultimate intention of the work. You're just gonna keep doing it until you roll your joints away, you know? So, like beefing it up, putting muscle strength into it, making flexible women understand, no, no, no, no, no, you can't just throw your parts around. You have to control them and you have to build strength around them, and you have to make that movement because a muscle contracted, and not just because you have some weird, amazing way of using gravity and range of motion and thrust and whatever else your physics is helping you do Pilates with.
SPEAKER_02So um I I so I I actually think that that's a uh you just dropped a very huge little sort of nugget in the middle of the room. Um there is something about the dancer that Pilates resonates with because it does almost speak to this their strength. Yes. Would you agree with that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, 100%, which is why I think you know, they so many of them are the ones who carried it on. Right.
SPEAKER_02But we all know this anecdotally in the studios is that when our male clients would come in, they would feel this work so profoundly differently.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes, right. I know, and be able to do this stuff. And you're like, how come he? I can never I'll I don't feel like I'll ever be able to do that exercise, but he just gets up there and does it. Yeah, so he already has that much meat on his body to do it with. Interesting.
SPEAKER_02So um there's a lot of talk about strength. Is there strength in Pilates?
SPEAKER_00I think there's a hundred percent strength, but you have to coach it that way. Yeah, you can you can just use your flexibility and swing your leg around and haul your hips up over your head and roll through your flexible spine, and you can do that forever, and you're not doing it wrong, exactly. You know, and Romana probably wouldn't have had too much trouble with it because she loved dancers and she but she also did love the men.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Because and I remember having this experience at one point, you know, 10 years in, going like, oh, this is why, because you didn't have to teach so hard. You know, you didn't have to control stuff so much, you just had to get them to use their strength to do the exercises, and more often than not, that strength came with tightness. And so it became so clear to me Joe was like a strong dude with a lot of muscles, but he really felt that you need to keep your strength flexible, right? So you used your strength to increase your flexibility, but that was not the market we were seeing. No, yeah, we were just seeing flexible people, and you couldn't keep using the same words reach, lift, lengthen, stretch, all this stuff is just pulling these flexible people apart. And so realizing you have to change your words, you have to change your mind about what it is you're actually teaching. You're not trying to get people good at these exercises, especially if they're already naturally good movers. There's no there there, you know. You have to actually realize that if you're going to move, a muscle has to contract. In Pilates, there's that much control. You actually contract a muscle to move. You don't swing apart and hope the right muscles do trigger because they don't anymore.
SPEAKER_02Uh, I think that's great. What a what a great way to to think about it and to to look at it and really to think on uh and also as we talk about Pilates, that that so many people will default and say it's it isn't just about flexibility or or or this, you know, um, but it's a lot of it is control, organization, coordination, yeah, and you need your strength.
SPEAKER_00You have to get strong at it. And I think a great deal of the movements, when you realize they're upper body exercises and not leg exercises, you really start to do them quite differently. I mean, even something like stomach massage, if it's an upper body exercise instead of a leg exercise or long back stretch, if it's an upper body exercise instead of a leg exercise or a hip leg throwing movement, you know, you realize, oh my God, they're all upper body exercises. They're all up because they're created by a dude who was all upper body.
SPEAKER_02Upper body. Well, and so many people would say, oh, there's not enough upper body in Pilates. I'm like, oh, well, you're not paying attention.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it got taken out and it got under cued. Undercued. You know, and so, but then when we really started looking into the archival films and footage, you know, and you see Joe doing it and other guys doing it, yeah, you see the calisthenics, you see the power.
SPEAKER_02You see the calisthenics for sure, yes.
SPEAKER_00And you see a lot of upper body exercises that actually disappeared. You know, dozens of upper body spring exercises that disappeared because it turned out to be all women. But we can do them and we need to do them.
SPEAKER_02And we can do them, we need to do them. Well, it all and so much of the research it could goes into strength training, strength training, strength training. And I'm like, I actually think there's a lot here.
SPEAKER_00We just have to we have to speak it differently. You can't just say straighten your knee, bend your knee, straighten your knee, bend your knee, because mobile people can just roll their joints in and out. And even if you've got good spring tension on it, it doesn't happen automatically. All right, so what would you say? I would I would slow people down and I'd say, okay, hold on now. Feel your feet, activate some muscles in your feet, contract muscles to start straightening your leg. Don't straighten your leg first, like actually contract muscles that straighten your knee, right? Like it.
SPEAKER_02You're asking the feet to engage, yeah. Right? And and to initiate movement like the mind-body connection.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And do it, do it with muscle instead of facility or hypermobility for sure. But when we say straighten your knee, bend your knee, straighten your knee, it's just a knee exercise, and everybody can do it. And and what's happening really, I don't know, you know? Oh, yeah, don't forget to breathe. So I will put a lot more emphasis on the chest, on the breath, on the power of moving the carriage with the upper body and the torso, and a little less with the legs, but also in the legs. What muscles actually straighten a knee? Right. Could you actually contract these muscles? Yeah, so that your joints get strong muscles around them instead of they're just get good at articulating.
SPEAKER_02This episode is powered by Balanced Body. If you own a studio, you know your equipment is at the core of your business. Balanced Body partners with business owners around the world to outfit new spaces, refresh well-loved studios, and support growing class schedules with durable, innovative apparatus. From reformers and towers to Pilates chairs, barrels, and small props, we will help you create the Pilates space of your dreams. Get $20 off your equipment order of $100 or more by visiting Pilates.com slash podcast dash discount and follow the prompts. The equipment is such an important part of this. And um, you and Rachel started an equipment line, the centerline equipment. Yes. Um what made you decide to look into creating your own market?
SPEAKER_00That was also a little serendipity, right? We were we were moving from one studio to another in Boulder, and I think Ken got wind of that, and he called me and he said, you know, if you would help me build what you want, I'll build your studio for you at cost, you know. And I was like, okay, well, that's pretty hard to say no to, especially because we were going to be expanding, and we had had by that point a kind of mismatched bunch of equipment because, like I said, you couldn't get it out of New York. None of the equipment manufacturers really were big enough at that point, still. So much of the conversation about which equipment and what your equipment does, et cetera, is is very recent. Really, most of it's in the last 10 years. Oh, yeah. You know, up till then, yeah, people built reformers and people liked them or didn't like them, you know, and they didn't know why necessarily either, and nor did they understand what would go into it. There were always so many people. So, oh, my husband could build that, or you know, and then you realize, well, maybe not. And I had this kind of realization the other day, trying to describe to somebody about the wheel and the drag and the spring and the track. And I was like, some of the equipment's almost like you had the finest inline skate wheels and you're skating on ice. There's no traction, you're gonna have to spend so much of your energy trying to control it from slipping away from you, you know.
SPEAKER_02That's that's often how I talk about it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like it's too slippery. There's nothing there.
SPEAKER_02You control that you have to control the going out, but in in on your equipment, you have to do the going out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you have to do the going out, but and coming in. Yeah, so the spring is not gonna roll you home either. You have to push it out and you have to pull it home. Now, you know, to some degree, but like the old equipment was more like you know, you were pushing a bike through sand or something. Like there was just drag and you had to work. You weren't just gonna slide across the ice like that, you know, and so so much of The intention of the work is in the fact that you had to do the work to move the carriage in and out, specifically on the reformer, right? And so, so when we started working with Ken on that, that was a pretty new concept for him, you know. And so that that was the hardest piece. We had the amazing old reformer that he has here, and we were able to take all the specs from that. But there, you know, the springs and wheels were no longer something you could look at. Yeah, yeah. You know, they were degrading. Yeah. So, you know, so we tried to work on this concept, but again, it it still was a very new concept. Obviously, the people who had worked on Graz or the New York City stuff felt it, but you didn't have words for it yet, nor did you know what difference it really made. But people then started talking about it, talking about how the springs were different, the wheels were different, the track was different, and there was this need for you to have to do it and not actually stop it from happening all the time. Um, and so that then that conversation grew and it's a it's a bigger conversation now than it ever was. We didn't even know about it because once we moved to Boulder, Steve built our equipment and you build it with what you have available.
SPEAKER_02Yes, you it was so much it's serendipity the reformer, the original reformer was what it was because it was based on the materials at the time.
SPEAKER_00Exactly, right? And I remember Ken saying to me, Well, I'm not gonna work, I'm not gonna use like old-fashioned materials, you know. I was like, I know, but we gotta figure out how to create this a little bit, yeah, um, without having to, you know, find wheels from the 40s or something. Right, right. Or springs from the 40s. But, you know, in doing this, you you really you learn a lot trying to build equipment to a certain way of moving that isn't the exercises themselves, it's what your body has to do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, what your body has to do. Yeah, and so much of the equipment provides feedback that the body responds to.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So if it's not really, there's no feedback because it's just ice.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's I mean, it's it's it's real, it's a this is a real interesting thing for us to talk about because if you understand the differences between the equipment, then the way in which you cue the knee extension is going to change.
SPEAKER_00100%, right? So if there is drag and I ask somebody to straighten their knee, there they are going to have to use muscle. They can't just roll the wheel out and act as an emergency brake the whole time. Right. You know, so they and that I think the original equipment had some automatic stuff that it made you do that disappeared over the decades because the equipment changed so much. And I would say, in particular, the springs and the wheels and the track. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But uh, you know, knowing that is gonna go a long way because you can then, you know, find another way to add an extra spring, for example. Yeah. Um, because for a while there's different words or use different words, right? Um, or even different preps so that a client can get the sensation of extending their knee against gravity or whatever it is. Exactly. But but but you have to know then what the intention was in order to be able to make your decision on on how to approach.
SPEAKER_00It's really, really true. And I think understanding that, that was what I had to do a really deep dive on because I couldn't ask Romana anymore. Romana, what was this for? Nor would she ever really answer. She would just say, honey, it's for the whole body. And you were like, okay, all right, thanks, Romana. But um, you know, like something, and I mean, if I could just, you know, spend an hour with Joe, I mean, I'd have so many questions, you know.
SPEAKER_02But what he even mean. I know, but would he it's it's really an interesting thing because you idolize, right, the the inventor, but uh, but just as you found yourself in the right place at the right time to do this right thing and you asked the right questions, and Ken did, and and you know, uh really if you if you go on and on and you talk about if you talk to Brent or or Nora or Elizabeth or and we could go on and on and on and on and on. Um I often wonder, would he even have known?
SPEAKER_00I know. You do kind of wonder. I I think as we all have our own, obviously, unique feeling in our body. We have our unique body, which moves a certain way or doesn't move a certain way. You've had your unique felt experience with it, exactly, right? And then you had your teacher who taught you how to do the movements, etc. And at some point you realize like, there's no way anybody ever really got in his head and got him to describe what he's looking for. You know, he could write about it and he did, but what he was actually looking for when somebody did footwork, or, you know, why this exercise? Where did Schwarzbein come from, or backstroke, or you know, these kind of unusual stomach massage creative movements that you don't really see in other forms that are so kind of unique to Pilates? Like, what did he want you to feel? What did he how would he have coached you just to do a roll-up? You know, we can't see this in the old films because the old films are short and choppy and yeah, you know, they're a little hard to watch because yeah, the timing's weird, and and Joe was probably showing off because you know, film was a big deal, right? You know, and so he had like this amount of time and he had to get it. And you, you know, you just have to have a tremendous amount of perspective around the old stuff, understanding that, you know, that he had one take, and that was the one, you know. There was it. And I do remember Eve very clearly saying in a workshop I took with her that in the films where she's the body, she he was never like that when I was working with him. He was only like that on film. And I was like, Yeah, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_02Right. And those are the but those are the only points of reference that we have left.
SPEAKER_00If you hadn't heard Eve say that, yeah, we wouldn't know that was the case, you know.
SPEAKER_02Jeez, yeah. Good stuff. It's a a lot, uh really a lot to think about. So so you you started to make the equipment and you started to it forced you to have to think about what is the felt experience, what what is the feedback that we're looking for. Um, and and you you guys came out with the center line. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I don't even remember what exact year that was. I want to say 2011, but I'm not positive. I have to look back. Because it was probably, it was easily a year process, if not even more, close to two years before from the conversation. No, not even the conversation, probably the first real conversation. Not the one where it took you two years to get the equipment for your studio. It couldn't have. But we were still, we took, we probably took our old equipment with us. Honestly, now I don't really remember that. That's already. Ken would remember that.
SPEAKER_02Maybe Ken will, maybe Ken will remember.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because it couldn't have taken that long, but we came out several times. They came to Boulder several times. You know, Nora was trying to get me to describe this thing we were just talking about, but I didn't, I don't think I even understood her question because I hadn't really ever worked on other equipment that much, you know. So I didn't know. But now I I understand it better, like what we were just talking about. Yeah, you know, she was probably wanting that from me, but I wasn't I wasn't in that headspace at the time, I think.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's it's it it's I mean, it's it's definitely taken many years. It's amazing how wonderful time is for sort of helping to synthesize. Um but it's taken a it's taken a long time, like even for me to sort of say to look at these tools and and be like, you know, almost not rate one over the other, but to say, oh wait, they're they're they're providing different experience in the body. And if the method is sort of that starting point, the intention, the intention place, how do then I approach it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. Right? I had to do one thing. But then you have to know the method. You have to. You have to know the method and understand why the equipment needs to be the way it has to be for the method. If you're just doing this straight, have a seat and lie down, here we go. Right? It has to be certain sizes, it has to have a certain speed that you work at with it, and it has to have certain specs so you can actually do all of the exercises on the same piece of equipment. And um, I had to teach an archival reformer class in Europe once, and they had like six or eight different reformers. Some of them were hand-built, some of them I, you know, probably they had an Allegro, probably they had, I don't know, you know, they were every single type. And I had to do a lot of describing how, nope, this has to be like this, and this has to be like this. But you, if you do know, you often can, you know, convert it back to some degree, changing gears, changing strap lengths. The box is always hard because it just is the size it is. But there's even ways you can kind of lift the feet up a little bit if the box is too high. So I would lift the feet up, but then you got to make the strap longer. You know, I I would just be like, well, okay, on this reformer here, we need to do something like this. And then I watch them do the exercise. Let's say it was rowing or something, and I'd be like, Yeah, okay, we've got to change something, you know, but it's it's because I had built my own, but also had traveled enough and seen some SOT stuff, seen some balanced body stuff, seen some peak stuff, seen stuff that was just billed wherever they were, you know, and I would be like, hmm, I I can see there's something funny here that's going on with these people because of something in the equipment, and then looking to be able to figure it out. The headrest is a little too forward of the shoulder blocks, the foot bar is too high, the straps are too long or too short, or they don't change, or you know.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. And you find you find your you find you find your way. Yeah. Um, so think about this from uh newer instructors. Um what would you like to see from newer instructors in their understanding and their integration of the Pilates history?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. We are we are pretty vigilant about that in our program in terms of keeping the history, making sure people read Return to Life, and then talking about it to the degree that I know to talk about it. You know, having been around long enough, having met a lot of the original players, I I feel a little more confidence in being able to speak to it. Um, and then just having had so many decades now of experience around the world, seeing what's out there, seeing what people are saying, seeing what it looks like from place to place, because cultures are different, you know. And um, but there's there's this this simple thing, a human is a human, and it doesn't matter if the cheetah is living in America or California or Boulder or New York or if they're living in Dubai, it's still a cheetah, and it still has to move the way it's supposed to. And so for me in the teaching of it, he's so clear in Return to Life about that, you know, this concept of uniform development and however he puts it, but always natural and normal, naturally and normal, the way a human is supposed to move. And there shouldn't be anything overdeveloped or underdeveloped, it should be uniformly developed. And you know, over the years, just developing my interpretation of what that looks like, specifically by just watching nature in action and learning the sort of physics of it, learning the reality of the way birds murmurate, you know, these words that are so great, or cats bandiculate, or you know, like just watching it and being like, well, that's how nature works, so that's how the human has to work, and you know, getting my anatomy stronger, etc. But very, very clear in my mind that the thing about it is that the human body and human movement completely predates all information, and so information and data and all that stuff is good. Don't not know, but also if it's inconsistent with the way the human actually moves, and it knew how to do this way before there were words for it, and it did it better probably because it wasn't impacted by so much new technology, you know, that there's a natural and normal way a human should move, and and yes, learn your anatomy, don't not know it because it comes in very useful, but understand that you might know something about human movement that conflicts a little bit with some of that data because that data is a little it's a little inhuman.
SPEAKER_02You know, we learn by the time we've learned it, right? The the the the way a human body moves, a human body moves so much faster than anything we could speak or say or see. Or or I shouldn't say faster, but it's gonna integrate and it's gonna coordinate and it's gonna do all the things it needs to do long before.
SPEAKER_00We can't teach it how to do that.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. And we could say, we can we can train people to start to to um activate muscles that are going to extend the knee.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But at some point they've got to get up, they gotta walk out the door, they gotta go sit down, they gotta walk upstairs, they gotta, and those muscles need to do what they need to do when that joint action is happening. Yes. Um, and that happens much faster than we could think it or say it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So you feel like you can help to reprogram it, help to relearn it in your hour-long Pilates session. Right. You know, and then so that when you're out there, you can just move it. You can move it and you can be aware of a couple things. Oh, I know what I always do. I always lean on this. Let me see if I don't have to lean on that. Maybe I could feel how she was telling me to straighten my knee so that it doesn't hurt every time I go up the stairs or down the stairs. And so you, you know, you slowly can help people reprogram it, re-strengthen it, make it more flexible where it's too tight. Like you can, you can just improve the function of it all, and then they go about their life. And hopefully the nervous system itself has learned something enough to start making that a bit more.
SPEAKER_02So learning those things, right? Learning the anatomy, learning, learning uh about the physiology is all great to help that understanding happen. But but what I think I'm hearing you say is at the end of the day, we're training people to move in in the real world, in real time, yeah, in real situations.
SPEAKER_00And just trying to get them as healthy and organized as we can in the face of this life that we lead. Which is so antithetical to that natural normal human, that primal human. I remember talking once about how um I would say, you know, if you're gonna watch animals, try to watch wild animals and not zoo animals, and certainly not domesticated animals. Yes. Um, and then one day I thought to myself, ah, we're the zoo animal. Oh, we're trying to get our natural back. Like, how does a cheetah move in a zoo? They're gonna be neurotic. They're probably I wouldn't be surprised if they start getting arthritis, yeah, back pain, they can't run. So now their entire function is useless. And so don't watch that cheetah. Yeah. And don't actually do tests on that cheetah either. Like, don't learn anatomy of the cheetah from that cheetah. That's great. That's great. You know, stuff like that that just makes common sense to me, but it's not how we think mostly. I love that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um you and Kira have been doing a workshop recently.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, this was Kira's idea. She just said to me, Oh my god, I have this great idea. R R. Like a retreat. Right. Yeah. And she said, but it's also Ron and Romana. And so we just started working on it, and it turned out to be so fun. I mean, I've known Kira forever, probably since the mid-90s. And um, and when she was starting to work on codifying Ron's program, she came to me and to us to ask us how we had done it. You know, so we had started kind of working together, even though, you know, I feel like Ron and Romana were pretty different in their approaches. On some levels, they were so East Coast, West Coast. Oh, yes, they were. And they did not like each other. And but it was funny because the first time I ever saw Ron, I thought to myself, oh my God, he reminds me so much of Romana.
SPEAKER_02Well, they were like the the the the the oldest siblings in a way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, kind of, kind of. I think that's true, you know, and they were this pretty much the same age, and they, you know, they they both felt, I think, a level of ownership, but of ownership in a different way. Like Romana really felt her ownership was Joe told me this, and this is what I'm teaching, whereas I think Ron felt very much that, but also go on. And, you know, I think Clara in particular had said to him, you know, take it, it's yours now, kind of thing. And so I think he felt a little freed up to put in the gram that he loved and the dance movements that he loved. And Romana did a little bit, but more just in flourishes and stuff, not so much in actually creating ballet movements. Um, but they had two different styles of dancing. So again, she was a classical ballet dancer and he was a modern dancer, and he was a choreographer. And you know, in my mind, choreographers they can't help themselves. They're gonna create that's what they do, yeah. They make up movements, yeah. And so Romana, I don't think, ever thought of herself as a choreographer. I think she's gonna be. She was a dancer, yeah. And I think she felt a little bit that she was maybe Joe's muse. You know, I think she wanted to be Balanchine's muse, and she got a daughter-in-law who was Balanchine's muse. Yeah. And you know that's it. You know, and now her grandson is married, he's amazing, and he's married to one of the prima ballerinas of New York City Valley, too. So that lineage continues. Uh-huh. But I think she loved the romance of that. You know, she liked the idea that she could kind of continue her dance aesthetic and driven movement interest, you know, under this man instead of under that man, and and still play that same role of not of being his music, but mostly just being his one, being his person he picked, yeah, you know, or or as at least close enough to that, you know, because I don't really f obviously fully understand exactly how the whole transition occurred. But I I know she was there with him till his death, and then through Clara's death, and then became the owner of the studio. So, you know, so she just she felt the strong lineage for sure.
SPEAKER_02Um so important for for people to hear and to have this information. Uh, let's let's transition into rapid fire questions. Okay. All right, ready? Oh boy. This one, I don't know how this is going to be rapid fire, but here you go. What is your definition of Pilates?
SPEAKER_00Ah, that one is always a challenge. Um, to me, it is this concept of returning, it's a system of exercises, movements, and equipment, right? Created by this man, Joseph Pilates, for the purpose of returning you back to life, for the purpose of returning your body back to its its primal organization so that it will function really effectively on all its many, many systems levels. Okay, what's your favorite piece of Pilates equipment and why? Well, that has changed dramatically over the years. And I often tell students too, I'll be like, you know, you're kind of into Matt right now, but you're not like a reformer, but that's gonna change. That's gonna change. You're gonna be back on reformer. Yeah. Like you just go through phases, you know. Um, I mean, to me, the reformer is probably the quintessential piece. Like it's the most unique one and the most, you know, like the movements you do on it are are very intriguing and very um challenging in ways that you normally don't challenge your body. That's so cool to me. But honestly, you know, obviously you can take that into Matt as you should. But the Cadillac, I mean, there's so many cool things on there, and the chair, you know, it does get hard. I I don't, it's not like they're my kids, but it is a little hard, I think.
SPEAKER_02It is, it is hard.
SPEAKER_00So yeah.
SPEAKER_02It is hard. If you, if you so the the quintessential piece, the reformer, yeah, but it but a mutual love and respect for all of it. Yeah, pretty much.
SPEAKER_00And and how they all are part of a a ten segrety system, you know, they fill in each other's gaps and they challenge the body in unique ways that you know force your nervous system to be smart and bright and new and clean and capable.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. Capable. Capable is my word coming out of today. Yeah. Um, okay. What's a uh you kind of answered this. Uh, what's a misunderstanding about either Pilates or our profession that you wish more people understood?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think the biggest one for me is there was an original method, and that method actually was complete and designed for its intention, which was to heal people, bring people back and put them back into their organization and not teach them a bunch of cool tricks to do. Um, and it is a fitness thing. And then beyond that, I think it's that realization that Joe was a dude and he was really into muscle, and he really had intended for it to be for men. And because it got carried on by mostly female dancers who were very flexible, it it lost a little in translation.
SPEAKER_02What's the one habit that you do religiously that complements your Pilates practice?
SPEAKER_00I don't know. I I do feel one of the foundational things in Pilates that doesn't really show up almost anywhere else is the articulating of your spine. Right? So even if I can't do Pilates or something like that, I'll do like a roll down on the wall or I'll just get on the floor and do a roll up. It just feels like that. I I I liken it to like, you know, if you went to a concert and you got one of those snap bracelets, or not a snap bracelet, but like they're filled with something that when you crack it, it lights up. You know, and I I think of the spine like that. If your spine's like this, it's just stuck. But if you start bending it, it's gonna light up. And that lighting up is so valuable for your nervous system, for your whole body-mind organization, and then just for your strength and flexibility in ways that you won't get if you don't do that, you know. So I do think that's a thing in Pilates that really isn't show up very many other places.
SPEAKER_02I I totally agree. Um, it it was interesting. John Gary um said almost the same thing. We were like, well, well, what's different about Pilates? And he was like, then strength training. And he's like, Pilates is asking you to move your spine. Yes. Um, and you said today um Joe was a dude, and and and you really felt he one of the things he was looking for was flexibility and strength, and strength and flexibility, right? Like those two things.
SPEAKER_00No, he wanted both, but I think he came at it more. I've talked about this too when people have asked me about like diatonics or something. He came at it much more from a normal, strong, muscular guy who wanted to make sure his strength stayed flexible. Flexible. I love that and not the other one.
SPEAKER_02Stayed flexible. Yeah. Love that. Um, uh, other than return to life, uh, any books you would recommend or podcasts? Oh. I mean, I guess you could say return to life.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. Return to life. I mean, you know, his other books, your health. Um, but that one is mostly a rant on the chair and parents not taking care of their kids correctly. Um, but it's okay. You hear Joe. You really do hear Joe. Um, I read an awful lot of different things that aren't even all just, let's say, anatomy, physiology kind of stuff, but like more understanding the human. Like get it get out of just thinking this is a a series of levers and pulleys, and you got to teach it how to lever and pulley itself. But that that it is all connected. And so reading about things like when the concept of 10 segrety showed up, I was like, well, there it is.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, duh.
SPEAKER_00You know, right. And and yet, you know, Plotties had been as if you took that whole little 10 segrety thing and just chopped it up and made a bunch of pieces and then did the pieces. But you know, it works as a whole, and so anything you can do to realize that, like you can't teach a cheetah to flex her hip. You don't want to. She her whole body has to do hip flexion. I don't know if this is gonna be a video, but I'm wearing you're wearing your cheetah pants, your leopard pants. Leopard pants, you know. But yeah, it's like understand something bigger. It and at least understand the whole system and understand how it's woven. How interrelated it is. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, okay, before we conclude today, where can our listeners find you?
SPEAKER_00Okay. Um, you know, I never exactly know all of my handles, handles, but obviously it's www.thepilotticenter.com. You can get to anything from there. Um, my email, if you want to reach me, I'm happy. Um, is Amy at the Pilatesenter.com, as are all our staff. So if you wanted to reach Kelly or someone else about teacher training, it is Kelly with an I, K-E-L-L-I, at the Pilatesenter.com. Um, and we are on Instagram and we are on Facebook. And somebody go to the go to the website, you'll find all the information there. And you could also follow me on any of those, and I'll get you there.
SPEAKER_02And and we'll also provide that information. Um Amy, thank you so much for this. Uh this was this was great. Uh just always, always lovely to talk to you. But it's there's a a really lovely brightness in bringing bringing to light um all of your experiences and and and the importance of keeping that lineage and that history moving forward.
SPEAKER_00And I think having a real mission for your own teaching. Like, why don't what is this thing? What is this thing called Pilates that I've devoted my life to now? What am I doing here?
SPEAKER_02What am I Are you still asking questions?
SPEAKER_00I all the time, you know, but I do feel, and and then another key one is why do you teach it? I I think if you don't know those answers, whether you can put them in words or not, people ask me all the time, like, how do you not get bored? How do you not get tired? How do you not get worn out? How do people not like you know dump all their shit on you? And it's like, I know it's simply because I'm very, very clear what this thing is to me and why I teach it. And whenever in doubt, I just go back to that. And it it kind of is a never-ending source of support and inspiration.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. Fan fantastic and wonderful advice. And thank you all for listening. And Amy, thank you so much for joining us. Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
