In my most recent email blast I wrote about a teacher from Australia who emailed me on a Saturday to get more information about some of my Seattle workshops and the following Monday, 48 hours later, she'd booked her flights to come for workshops that started in less than 2 weeks time. She also quit 1 of her 2 jobs.
Natalie is someone who makes things happen.
Many teachers who go through my secondary education program, Pilates Excel, return to their studios and make big changes because, so far at least, I've been successful at getting them to understand the futility of teaching in an environment that is not set up for success. Among the many things my program teaches them to do is to fire difficult clients, quit dead end teaching jobs and if they're interested in taking the plunge, to open their own studios and take control of their Pilates - and financial - destiny.
Natalie is the first teacher who has presented herself to me having preemptively quit her dead end teaching job.
I like Natalie. She's super efficient.
Natalie is a Kundalini and Ashtanga Yoga teacher (with India experience under her drawstring,) she's a Shiatsu practitioner, she's successfully completed a BASI based Pilates training program in Australia and she's the fitness director of a large, well run gym. She's also in grad school working on her Masters in, well, something having to do with all aspects of communication and learning and how we synthesize everything. Once she's out of school, I think she'll be qualified to run the whole world.
Natalie's challenges in the teaching of Pilates all center around her lack of training in the fundamentals of Pilates - the scoop, the length of the spine, clean biomechanics - and her lack of familiarity with the historic work and as we've filled in those gaps, all of her other wisdom has found a place to root and grow.
She's been here for almost 2 weeks and, being in the studio day after day, immersing herself in 9 long days of nothing but Pilates, she's birthed a scoop that's growing more impressive by the minute, she's understood and solved difficult-to-overcome movement issues and when our marathon workshop is over on Saturday, Natalie, my 48 hour girl, is heading home to turn Australia on it's ear.
I'm left wondering what she'll do next and knowing her as I do from these very intense but very fun days, there's absolutely no telling what that will be. All I know is that it will be smart, it will be beautiful and it will help a great many people.
Heads up down under, a whirlwind is coming home.