An email came in last week, to the info address from our studio website, and I asked Heidi to respond to it because I've been moving and am focused on non-studio matters. When I focus my energies outside of the studio, I find that my communication skills erode and my usually infinite capacity for being patient is also diminished.
Heidi called the potential new client and learned about her many years of dance in New York and several years of Pilates experience with a Romana teacher in Princeton, New Jersey.
Heidi cleared her for mat class - our classes are not "open classes" so new clients are not allowed to come to class without being screened.
She'd like to join a semi and it took Heidi a while to educate her that our studio doesn't run like most others; we don't have semi's new clients can simply join, we match semi partners as if it were a dating service and what they need out of the work is their #1 must have, we end up with matches so solid they usually last for years, we have a max of 3 but prefer 2. Beyond semi's, our standing book is so solid that we're essentially full, we only have a couple of mid-day slots that aren't standing appointments and they always fill with regular clients whose schedules make a one-time shift or for clients who want to fit in an extra session.
The new client agreed to do mat classes with the hope of something opening up for her to resume equipment work.
She came to the 12:15 class on Tuesday afternoon and her description of herself as severely injured was, indeed, technically correct (RA disfiguring her hands plus ankle and foot surgeries including an ankle replacement) but she's a beautiful mover, she admits she's lost her abdominal strength with the life events that brought her to Seattle (next on Oprah . . . ) and both Heidi and I were delighted to have her in class and as a new client.
Then, it happened.
She did something unexpected, something I feel is inappropriate and it caused me to speak to her harshly in front of a studio full of clients.
As clients were waiting to pay after mat class and I was, one by one, working through the line of them at the reception desk, the new gal draped herself backward over the Ladder Barrel which sits just off the tumbling mats we use for mat class.
Without excusing myself from the conversation I was having, I sternly said "I'm not comfortable with you being on the barrel, you were cleared for mat class, you came here for mat class, we don't know your ability level, the equipment in the studio is not available to you, we want to work with people who respect these boundaries."
She immediately got off the barrel, Heidi talked with her for another minute or two until Heidi's private client was ready to roll and the new gal went to the waiting area and sat in the Zebra Chair until I had finished taking care of the clients ahead of her in the line to pay.
After the fact, I apologized to the people I'd been talking to, saying that sometimes I have to be a hard ass in order to keep our impressive safety record - zero injuries - in tact.
When I was done with their transactions and was ready to help the new client, she was amazingly wonderful about the whole thing. In fact, she's so professional, worldly and overflowing with integrity that we didn't even need to discuss it.
It wasn't an issue. For either one of us.
And as we began to visit, she told me the story of her life, a bit about her travels and adventures, she casually touched on her (staggering) accomplishments and all the while she was showing me her spirit, invigorating me with her life force and astounding me with the realization that she was scheduled for Chemo on Thursday.
Now, I know a lot of people and a lot of people I know are leading amazing lives. This gal potentially tops them all. Seriously.
After she left and over the next couple of days, I thought long and hard about what effect, if any, my focus on my move to a new apartment may have had on my handling of this situation. I compared my response this time, in the middle of my move, to times in the past when I've had to do the exact same thing - intervene in a client's or teacher's (not Heidi, who's pretty much perfect) inappropriate behavior when I didn't have so much going on in my personal life.
And what I came up with is that, between this week's incident and those of the years past, there is no difference in my intensity of response or the immediacy or content of my response.
I'm still able to honestly say that, regardless of the external distraction, when I'm in the studio, I'm focused 1000% on what I'm here to do, I'm focused on the people I'm working with and I'm focused on being completely and totally present. That's professionalism. That's discipline. That's non-negotiable as far as I'm concerned.
Back to Little Miss Amazing, as I've affectionately named her.
Her fiancee' is a pain management doc with a practice full of people who desperately need Pilates, she brought him in yesterday and we spent almost 3 hours together starting with my Pilates 101 anatomy lecture, doing knee floats & stirs, untucking both their pelvises, pelvic lifts, Roll Up and Shakes, Roll Down & Shakes, and the whole while, the good doctor was validating everything I had to say about the importance of the para-spinals & the TVA to a stable and strong spine.
Pilates Note: Sadly, her years of work in NJ left her with a tucked pelvis, which was tolerated in order to get her back down, and she's also afflicted with a dainty fair weather scoop - both of which she now realizes are wrong and she's committed to letting us help her overcome.
While we're figuring out how to move forward with helping the good doctor's patients and fitting her into a completely appropriate slot, Little Miss Amazing is going to hit mat class 3 times a week between Chemo therapy appointments.
Meeting these two folks has been just about the most thrilling thing that's happened to me in quite some time.
And for our rocky start, there's just no way around it. We absolutely must set boundaries for safety, we absolutely must be constantly vigilant in protecting those boundaries and we can't always be gracious in defending those boundaries but in the process of doing so, we will find out everything we need to know about who we are, who we're dealing with and how, exactly and precisely, we'll move beyond it.
And for the clients who were here to see my rarely shown stern side, they respect that I'm on guard for every one's safety, they respect that I care as much as I do, they respect that my concern protects them, too, and they always get over how shocking it is to see the person they think is the happiest girl in the world turn on a dime and become a hard ass.
A good teacher, a good owner, must be everything all the time and be really good at all of it.
This week, I was.
Now I've gotta go unpack some boxes.