I think most good teachers who've been teaching awhile have lead at least a client or two more deeply into the work, more deeply into the industry.
We've had two clients already complete their Pilates teacher training and another 2 are planning it as a second career once they retire from their current professions. One of those on the delayed plan has a goal of being the Pilates teacher at her assisted living center, which she's sure she'll have to eventually move into, but I keep telling her, if she sticks with Pilates, she just might never have to leave her own beautiful family home.
This is an excerpt from an email exchange with a client who's in the process of re-jiggering her life. If my response seems, well, over the top, please remember that I am a Pilates Evangelist, I am the Pilates Nun!
And please trust me on this, when she says I "can be brutally honest" she's giving me permission to be brutally honest, not stating that I am brutally honest. I'm kindly honest. I'm not brutally honest. I promise.
Here we go:
Dear Rebecca,
I quit my job yesterday. I am going to stay on for a few weeks and then take some time off over the summer to figure myself out and where I go next. I've even consider Pilates instructor training and would appreciate your input on if you think I'd have what it takes :) You can be brutally honest. Anyways, I love you guys and may have to adjust my schedule slightly during my unemployment but I'll let you know as summer gets a little closer and I have it all figured out myself.
I find your news thrillingly exciting and my mind is spinning at the thought of your unbound potential nosing around the universe, investigating all manner of wondrous need awaiting your discovery.
Pilates training is a must.
Our industry is a refuge for people seeking a higher meaning, a coupling of both an intellectual and physical expression of helping others and, frankly, it's a fantastic way to go through the aging process.
A Pilates body simply does not crack, crinkle, sag or slump. And, a Pilates spirit simply does not descend, hesitate, bow or falter.
Plus, you can actually change the lives of people if you work with people you respect and enjoy spending time with. Our connection - connection, in a world full of our most highly talented intellectual superstars complaining of isolation - to our clients is more similar to a familial one than a service-need type pairing.
So, regardless of what your next incarnation is in the more formal business world, if we can find you a good school from the several local choices, you can start plugging away at it and, as you well know, before long, it's done.
And you must know, you're always welcome to come and work with us. We are what we seem, this is it, there's no drama, there's no pain, there's no discord. We are a house united in the hard work of trying the right way, to do the right thing, in the work of Pilates and the work of living.
Pilates, in its fullest form and in the way we embrace it, is on purpose the platform for whole body health and wellness. That's the big secret of the work; that it's tenticles reach into all facets of the mental, physical and emotional.
The way it makes your body feel is eventually the way it sets your mind - open, released but in a circumspect sort of way, as if there's a control, a perspective of reason, a deep and powerful strength that wasn't there before but that your hard work built.
The certainty of knowing an exercise - how right it feels, how strategic you have to be in your approach to learning and performing and eventually perfecting it - eventually becomes the certainty of knowing yourself, how you respond, that you can do something, that you want to do something.
The "don't's" seem to fall away and our choices are guided more by positive selections than negative avoidance. Decisions become clear, purpose - our true purpose - quietly emerges as if to say, I've been here quietly awaiting your discovery of me . . . now let's get to work.
Pilates is simply an operating system that was designed to run a healthy life well lived.
Joe was a true genius, he spoke and wrote of this effect often; it is, without bias, offered to all, free for the taking. It's guaranteed, absolutely, to all who work their way through the door of understanding the fundamentals of the work and have the discipline to embrace them.
All that, I promise, will be yours in the work, whether you fit it in on the side or make it your primary offering.
So, m'dear, change is in the air. Today, I'll hold you in my thoughts and look extra forward to hearing what you have to say about your future, what you want and why, and how we can help you along the way. We are here for you, we love you, we'll do anything for you. Anything!
Pilates is already part of you; going to school and possibly teaching isn't anything other than the next logical step.
Big hug & 3 kisses (like they do in Switzerland)