Teacher Mentoring at Body Sense

Did you know I offer Pilates Teacher Mentoring at Body Sense?

I want to talk about why.

When I started doing Pilates, I found so much freedom in my Pilates practice. It was a new lens through which to see my body, based on function and not appearance. I remember I used to feel so awkward in my body. Even when I was just walking down the street, I didn't know what to do with my arms. Everything felt disconnected, not to mention the pain I had in my neck and shoulders from working a desk job. When I found Pilates, it gave me a new mechanical understanding of my body, and an anchor for my physical sense of myself. My discomfort faded away and was replaced by curiosity and sense of confidence that I'd never had before. This is why I chose to enroll in a Pilates teacher training program when I returned to the US in 2008 after living abroad for four and half years.

When I returned to the US, I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and took a deep dive into the Pilates world. I completed three different teacher training programs, one in New Mexico and the other two in Colorado. I drank the Kool-Aid and was psyched about my practice and my new clients. I was happy working at other teachers' studios, and felt fulfilled teaching classes and meeting wonderful people. 

In the background, I started to have intense muscle spasms in my neck and upper back after workouts. Now that I look back on it, I can now see how hard I was pushing myself. This meant hours of training and studying every week, and a brutal workout routine that drained me. At the time, I thought this was how it was supposed to be. The “No pain no gain” attitude had crept into my psyche. There was a cost that was building in my body, and when I went to my Pilates teachers with my neck and upper back pain, they only said I needed to stretch my spine more. And so I did. And so my pain and spasms increased. 

It was around this time I discovered Gil Hedley's anatomy lab workshops, and thought, “Well, if my teachers can't answer my questions about my pain, then maybe I need to learn more about the human body.” I enrolled in my first cadaver dissection lab in 2018, and my mind was blown. I was amazed at the complexity of the human form and the incredible diversity of anatomy from one body to the next. I saw myself reflected in the beautiful forms we studied in the lab. There weren't just muscles and bones on the lab tables, as we had been taught in my training programs. There were all of the other structures inside the body, and the muscles and bones I had prioritized in my own body and in my teaching paled in comparison to the magnificence of the whole. Blood vessels, nerves, organs and fascia danced through my mind and my own body awareness.

I got curious about why I was asking my body to do what amounted to extreme movements in my spine in my own practice of Pilates. I started seeing my clients' bodies differently as well. It felt like I had X-ray vision, and I could see all of the complex structures in their bodies as I taught Pilates classes. I became more and more skeptical and more and more aware of how the movements I was doing were creating pain in my body. I grew to understand and feel these complex structures and what I was asking of my whole system to continue to practice at this level. My hypermobile connective tissue was screaming at me and I was beginning to listen.

Finally, I took a break from my own practice of Pilates and completely shifted the way I treated my body. I began to understand that I wanted to be in loving relationship with my body, and that I wanted to offer this same compassion to my clients. I deprioritized the classical choreography of the Pilates method and I started moving and teaching more intuitively. I started seeing the movements from the perspective of my body and my clients' bodies, rather than seeing these movements solely from the perspective of my mind and all of my intellectual training. 

I saw the people around me teaching the choreography as though it was the only right way to move. I saw them prioritizing the Pilates method over the experiences their clients were having while doing Pilates. I felt constrained by the pressure to continue teaching this way, so I decided to open my own studio, Body Sense, in order to practice more freely and to be able to follow my instincts about a new way to teach movement. I called it “Embodied Movement and Pilates” because I now saw the Pilates method as a tool, rather than the end goal. The goals I held for my clients became much more based on their own priorities and I asked them to level up and look more closely at their own agency in their practice. I asked them to be curious about their own unique anatomy and their own authentic experience of the movements they were doing. I started seeing more sustainable change in my clients' movements. They were progressing where previously they were stuck.

I offer Pilates teacher mentoring at Body Sense because when I was a new teacher I wanted someone to help me really understand my clients' movement patterns and how to help them. I want to help other teachers see their clients with more clarity. I want them to prioritize their client's experiences over what they learned in Pilates school. I want to be an ally for other teachers so more people can experience Pilates in an embodied way rather than simply “Going through the motions" or “Following the rules.”

I'm so grateful for my experiences in the anatomy lab and I offer a special thank you to Gil Hedley for opening my mind to a new way to see and feel the human form. We are glorious in our diversity and the way we move should reflect this beautiful diversity.

I know a lot of you who read this blog have traveled with me on this journey, and I would love to hear from you: What has your experience been as I have shifted my priorities in how I teach Pilates? What did you notice when I started offering more anatomy education in my sessions with you? How has your practice shifted over the years? Please reply in the comments. I love hearing from you!