By Nicole Rogers

It’s been a little more than a year since Pilates-Pro.com reported on a Pilates collective forming in the San Francisco Bay Area in August 2008, but in that short span, something seems to have taken hold. Other regional collectives have surfaced across the country, and the Bay Area group—which quickly ballooned to the state level—is now taking its program national. These collectives were inspired by a desire to build Pilates community spirit or a local Pilates network, and some, on a more pragmatic level, organized for a shared business advantage. For all, the rewards of sharing information, comparing notes and pooling resources are only beginning. There is, after all, strength in numbers.

We were able to catch up with a few of these groups to bring you this update on grassroots-style Pilates organizing. Read on to find out what the various Pilates collectives are up to now. 

Support for the Business of Pilates
The Bay Area Pilates Collective, now known as the United Pilates Collective, was one of the first to materialize. It started in 2008 when Tracey Sylvester and Nancy Myers, owners of EHS Pilates in San Francisco, thought to hold a mixer for Pilates studios in the Bay Area. “We invited trainers and studio owners within a 25 mile radius to chat about business, and it was immediately obvious that there was a need in the community for this kind of support network,” Sylvester says. She and Myers, as business owners, saw a need for studio owners and independent contractors to share information, such as where to find a lawyer who understood the Pilates business or where to get good liability insurance.

We caught up with Doreen Puglisi, founder of the Pink Ribbon Program, a Pilates-based rehabilitation program for post-operative breast cancer survivors, who explained why Pilates is such an effective form of exercise for this group. Doreen, a survivor herself, holds a master’s in exercise science, and is a Pilates instructor, certified personal trainer and chairperson of the health and exercise science department at Morris County College. Read on for a closer look at what Pink Ribbon provides—for the Pilates community and for breast cancer patients—and a taste of what’s ahead for the program.

Doreen PuglisiHow did you create the Pink Ribbon Program?
I started working with breast cancer patients around 2002. At the time I owned a small wellness studio, and when clients filled out a health history form, I would check the contraindications for programming. That’s when I found out there was no true rehabilitation program for breast cancer patients. Because I’m a physiologist, I looked at the research and at the time, there was nothing. Really, it was astonishing.

Then, in 2004 I was diagnosed with breast cancer myself, and I used my program for my own rehabilitation after a mastectomy. I did have a Pilates background before I was diagnosed. (I was actually trained through Stott.) I truly do feel lucky–I was diagnosed early and had this knowledge base before. It was so scary. None of my surgeons asked me if I needed physical therapy. I thought ‘How am I going to get my range of motion back?’ I had a dorky revelation moment [about creating the Pink Ribbon Program]. I realized that I needed to do something to reach more survivors. I realized I needed to get this out there, and help women who don’t have a rehab or movement background. If it’s hard for me, what are they doing?

Pilates was a great fit for this population: it worked in terms of full range of motion, integrated movement, proper breathing. A lot of what we work with is scapular stability and shoulder range of motion. And in the Pilates world, this was very welcome.

How does Pink Ribbon work?
Well, there are two programs really, for survivors/patients and for instructors. The first is designed as a six-week rehabilitative movement program. The goal is to get them to move beyond Pink Ribbon to a mainstream form of exercise and move forward.

By Lauren Charlip

Not only is Pilates for Pink a way to raise money for a great cause, but it has given two Los Angeles studio owners—with studios mere blocks away from each other—a reason to come together and put a new spin on the program.      

Maria Leone and Shari Berkowitz both own studios with teacher-training programs, a rare occurence in any neighborhood. Leone owns Bodyline, a PhysicalMind Institute certification studio, and Berkowitz owns The Vertical Workshop, and directs Power Pilates’ West Coast teacher-training program. Together they’re putting on programming for Pilates teachers that will raise money for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation through Pilates for Pink this Sunday, October 18.

Each will be teaching a professionals-only mat class at Bodyline (which will also sponsor its own Pilates for Pink class for clients). Leone, ruminating on how she’d make her third year as a Pilates for Pink host different, came up with the idea of having a guest teacher.

The Pilates industry has a long tradition of passing on knowledge through mentorship. “Passing the Torch,” recently launched by Balanced Body University (BBU), is expanding that tradition with a formal program featuring a list of mentors that reads like a who’s who of the Pilates industry.

In the program, a small cohort of mentees works with a designated mentor for 12 to 18 months, spending three separate weeks alongside them, in addition to other curriculum. Signed on to mentor are Pilates elders Mary Bowen, Ron Fletcher and Lolita San Miguel, along with masters like Amy Taylor Alpers, Rael Isacowitz, Julian Littleford, Michele Larsson. Read the full list here.

“These teachers helped create the modern Pilates industry,” says Al Harrison, Director of Education for Balanced Body University. “A light went off for us—why don’t we ask all these people if they’d work together under a common banner to create this mentor program?”

By Nicole Rogers

Mentorship is extremely important to the Pilates community, as Pilates elder Mary Bowen so eloquently demonstrated here. If Joseph Pilates hadn’t passed his knowledge on to the first generation of teachers, and if they, the Pilates elders, had not passed their knowledge on to the next generation, Pilates simply would not exist. The tradition of mentorship is part of our foundation and our history.

Over the years, Pilates mentor/mentee relationships were rarely formal, yet were profound and long-lasting. They would evolve naturally because the mentors had something valuable to teach and the mentees were deeply committed to learning. The glue of these relationships has always been passion: for the work, for movement, for health, and for improving the lives of others with Pilates.

This passion doesn’t fade, rather it’s the fuel that drives Pilates masters to explore throughout their lifetimes and to build on each other’s work. We all learned from someone, and hopefully we all continue to learn every day. Mentorship is important all the way through our careers, not just at the beginning.

When I asked some prominent Pilates personalities about their own mentors, past and present, I was not surprised to hear that their answers were as diverse as the Pilates world itself. (From what they’ve said, it appears that everyone who was taught by Mr. Pilates received a different workout, so it makes sense that no two teachers are the same to this day.) Each mentor/mentee relationship is unique. Nonetheless, a few general themes about the value of mentorship emerged from these conversations.

Mary BowenYou’d think someone like Mary Bowen, a Pilates elder who is in demand to teach teachers around the world, would be done with the “learning” part of her 50-plus-year Pilates career by now. It’s just the opposite—one of the most inspiring things about her, and many others at the top of the field, is her never-ending thirst for more learning. Here she explains the importance of the many personal mentors she’s had over the years and why she’ll never stop being a mentee. Stay tuned for more on mentorship this month.

I have had many mentors in my 51 years in Pilates. For me, it all began in 1959 with visits to Joe and Clara Pilates twice a week for six and a half years. Joe and Clara have always remained alive in me. I came out of back pain with them, rapidly, and ate up the whole experience of being close in with their life commitment to total health, breath and their method of exercise. What Joe and Clara gave me was more than a mentorship. They gave me “a way of life” that freed my body, making it strong, flexible and enduring enough for any exploration and development I needed to undertake. Not knowing it at the time, it was turning me into a Pilates teacher myself, by 1975.

From there, I spent 7 years with Bob Seed, which underlined the experience of Joe and Clara, and then 7 years with Romana Kryzanowska, which expanded the movement repertoire for my body and cemented the importance of Pilates in my life, then 7 years with Kathy Grant, which instilled a kind of toughness into the work and yet a freedom to be creative in it at the same time, then 5 years with Bruce King, until he died, which was the closest to what is called “classical Pilates” and a great teacher of the value and lack of boredom in repetition.

With Bruce it was always the same way, the same forms in the same order. I was 50 when I started with him. I had the patience by then for his kind of quest for perfection through repetition. I could always find newness in it. Concurrent with Bruce and beyond his life span were 7 years with Jean Claude West, who had learned Pilates at my studio, Your Own Gym, in Northampton, Mass., and had gone on to study biomechanics and kinesiology at universities in New York City. Jean Claude was on the cutting edge of integrating Pilates with physical therapy techniques and knowledge. This expansion has continued deepening the experience of Pilates and the knowledge that one can attain as a teacher of Pilates. It has advanced the practice of Pilates for oneself and for the teaching of others. From 1995 and continuing into the present, my mentor is Christine Wright, a former professional dancer, student and gifted teacher of the body and how we can better live in it using Pilates as a fundamental grid. With my weekly lessons and my mentors I am just short of 80 and still coming into my body.

Yamuna Zake, creator of Yamuna Body RollingBy Nicole Rogers

Yamuna Body Rolling™ (YBR) is named after its creator, Yamuna Zake, who developed the technique about 16 years ago as a way to reach more people with her bodywork practice and theories. Her technique uses a small, firm ball and your own body weight to release and align different areas of the body.

A jack-of-all-trades in the world of bodywork, Yamuna was a certified hatha yoga teacher by the age of 16, and as time went on she incorporated herbology and aromatherapy into her yoga practice. With the birth of her daughter in 1979, Yamuna experienced an injury to her hip. She worked hard and experimented to eventually heal herself and create Yamuna Body Logic – a hands-on treatment. For 30 years, people have flocked to her from all over the world to consult her expertise in solving structural issues.

“Continuing Ed” is our regular look at workshops, programs and other methods of exercise and bodywork that can enhance your skills as a Pilates teacher.

Image courtesy Timothy Gordon

By Nicole Rogers

The Alexander Technique is a method for reeducating the mind and body to eliminate unnecessary tension. It focuses on changing unhealthy movement habits in everyday life, creating a more relaxed, enjoyable and energetic experience.

The Alexander Technique is popular with musicians and performers. F.M. Alexander (1869-1955), the creator of the technique, was an Australian Shakespearian actor who suffered from chronic hoarseness. Through intense self-observation and experimentation, he conquered his hoarseness and developed what he called the primary control. According to the American Society for the Alexander Technique, “He named this relationship the primary control because he perceived it as primary in controlling posture, breath and movement.”

People with chronic pain, back problems, arthritis, asthma, repetitive strain and carpal tunnel syndrome have found particular success with the Alexander Technique. The medical community has widely endorsed the method, as well as respected scientists such as Dutch ethologist Nikolaus Tinbergen, who noted Alexander’s discoveries in his 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine acceptance speech. Clinical studies have even proven some of the Alexander Technique’s benefits. Suffice it to say, this is a form of body education that is well established and respected and will be around for a long time.

THE PILATES PERSPECTIVE ON THE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE
Heather Snyder, a nationally certified Alexander Technique teacher and Pilates instructor and founder of The Graceful Body, a studio in New York, agreed to answer a few questions about the Alexander Technique and how it affects her as a Pilates instructor. She is a graduate of the Manhattan Center for the Alexander Technique, and she received her Pilates certification from Romana Kryzanowska.

A few weeks ago, a coworker asked me if I’d like to go to a “teachers-only” Pilates class taught by Alycea Ungaro at her studio, Real Pilates, in New York. I decided I’d rather go home and take a nap. The next week, my friend Clare, a studio owner, asked if I’d like to go to the same class. I decided I should eat lunch and then take a nap. But my interest was piqued. The next week I asked her how it was. She raved, “it was like being back in certification!”

I think Clare enjoyed our certification more than I did. Though formal schooling was always easy for me, my Pilates certification was not. I had trouble remembering the order, and my lack of coordination made it obvious that I was a TV producer amongst dancers, yoga instructors and gymnasts (my fellow students). I am still bashful about anything labeled “for teachers only.” I was once in a workshop for teachers, practicing the beginning of Control Balance, when a man (I have no idea who he was) decided I was going to do the back flip part of Control Balance. I protested, but he just pulled my legs over my head, and my neck was out for a week. Pilates-related traumas aside, I also recognize myself as a certain type of difficult student that, when pushed, is prone to fits of dizziness, water-drinking, ponytail straightening and sock adjusting, to name a few.

However, Clare is always so enthusiastic about Pilates, which reminds me that I am actually a huge fan of Pilates too. And that being pushed, gently, is actually the best possible thing for me. So, I signed-up online for Alycea’s class.

That Tuesday, I waited for class a bit nervously. As class began though, it felt remarkable to be in a class where the language was different — everyone was a teacher, so much of the usual mat class explanation was gone, replaced with more esoteric cues. The class wasn’t the fast and brutal thing I had imagined. It was thinking about our bodies on a different level. How was one side of my body working differently than the other? How does placing my hand here instead of there change the exercise? I have been in plenty of mat classes and workshops with other teachers, but this one was small and friendly, and most of us were trained similarly. I met interesting people—a teacher studying to be a doctor, and Clare’s friend, Sunisa, who is moving back to Thailand to teach Pilates on an island. We did some of my least favorite exercises: Jackknife, Bicycle and Scissors, but it all felt good!

As I walked to the train after class with Clare and Sunisa, we were talkative and energized. Maybe this is what she meant when she said the class made her feel like she did when she was certifying—excited about Pilates. We agreed that our Tuesday evening clients would probably be in for a treat—energetic, ethusiastic Pilates instructors who were a little sore themselves from their 2 p.m. mat class.

Alycea Ungaro’s Teachers-Only Master Class is every Tuesday at 2 p.m., at Real Pilates in New York, NY. Find out more, and/or sign-up at realpilatesnyc.com.

Clare’s studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Flesh and Bone, has a “teacher session” as well. The class is round-robin barter-taught. Teacher sessions are posted on Flesh and Bone’s live online schedule at fleshandbone.org.

Look for teachers only classes in your area, or start one of your own! If you host one at your studio, post the info in the comments section below.

Nicole Rogers is a Pilates instructor and writer. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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