Help Me Sister

She wrote:

I'm writing for a bit of guidance...  I started working with a male client, 51 years old, about a month ago.  He's a welder by profession, and has been doing labor-intensive work his entire adult life.  He has the arm and chest muscles to prove it too.  He is the tightest, least flexible person I've ever met.  It became clear right away that mat work wasn't going to be good for him - he can't even sit on the floor without being in a lot of discomfort - he has to be in a chair.  So I've done some reformer work with him.  I've put him on the foam roller (which has helped in giving him some feedback) But really what I"ve been focusing on is getting his muscles to relax a bit, to release and for him to open up a bit.... A month into it, I'm getting frustrated with myself that I'm not seeing results faster.  Yes, it's only been a month. Yes, this is 51 years of patterning and muscles training that I'm working to change. And there are small things - he can tell when he's using his back and not his abs.  He can tell the difference between neutral spine and not neutral.  I guess what this ultimately comes down to is the fact that I am struggling a bit being a sole practioner without the support of a studio around me.  I've been doing this for a few years now on my own, and I think it's starting to get to me...

So, there are 2 issues here it seems... my poor client and how I can help him.  And how do I keep my energy and enthusiasm up on my own?

I know that you're super busy and super swamped with a ton of stuff.  When you get a chance I'd love to hear from you.

I wrote:

Great question, thanks for sending it, I have answers on both fronts and will get you all squared away on your 51 year old welder and on your isolation issues but I'm going to need the weekend to respond - have had company, still behind from the trip, blah blah blah.

She wrote:

Thanks!  I appreciate it.  I always get such inspiration and motivation after talking with you, I really don't know why I don't reach out more often!  Take your time, and thanks again!

I wrote (a total of 5 days after her initial inquiry):

The problem: Teachers often bemoan the challenges they face in order to afford continuing their Pilates education. And especially in this horrible economy, money is standing in the way of many teachers continuing to enrich their skills. Have you read in your local paper how college enrollments are way up? That’s true pretty much all over the US because many of us are using this tough economic time as a catalyst to go back to school and get a whole lot smarter.

Although some educators are busier than ever, many have been struggling; the cancellation of the 2009 PMA conference is evidence of that and I’ve been wondering why our industry isn’t experiencing the same shift toward education that the general population is.

Why indeed, especially when it’s so easy to fund-raise within your own schedule or within your own studio to subsidize or pay completely for the cost of your continuing education.

As an educator, I specialize in giving you what you need so the following is a step by step plan to get you off the bench and back in action as the quarterback of your education game.

But first, in order for this to work, you’ve got to dismiss thoughts about how you’ve been unable to figure this out in the past. Hit the “erase” button on the voices looping in the soundtrack of your mind about how there’s no way you can spend money these days. Open your mind, soften your heart and unleash your soul to embrace a new possibility. After all, when what we’ve been doing hasn’t delivered the desired result, it’s time to try it another way. A better way. A way that works.

Okay? O-kay!

The solution: I’m going to lay out ideas about how to pay for attending two types of educational workshops. The first one is in the short term – it’s happening this year, it spans 9 days and will teach you a revenue-generating ancillary skill. The second one is long term – it’s happening next year, it spans a weekend and focuses on the teaching of Pilates proper.

Now, I’m not implying that the financing strategies that follow will work exactly as written for everyone, but they will work similarly for many of you and the point is, you’ve got to start somewhere and do something so you’ll have more money to foster your own education. Teaching even one more session a week is putting you that much closer to being able to afford an inexpensive training like a single-day workshop or even some new books or dvd’s. Rome wasn’t built in a day but surely, someone had a plan and it all started with one simple act. It’s your turn, m’dear – it’s time to see your educational future and run toward it! Let’s go!

Part 1 – short term, long-format, includes a vacation(!), ancillary: In this first example I’m going to use the specifics of Kit Laughlin’s Stretch Teacher Training workshop, http://pandf.com.au/, because it’s an opportunity for you to learn from the world’s leading flexibility expert and his work will revolutionize your ability to help tight clients; tight clients are the ones who grip in their quads on Spine Stretch Forward or Single Leg Circles, who struggle sitting for Stomach Massage or who find Front Splits agony instead of delight. In addition to that, I’m using Kit’s workshop because it’s a long one, it takes place over the two middle weekends in November (Saturday, Sunday, Friday, Saturday & Sunday the 14, 15, 20, 21, 22) and it takes place outside the US, it’s on Grand Cayman Island in the Caribbean. Exotic!

And how convenient that included in this format of consecutive weekends is a 4 day synthesis opportunity/vacation for you during the gap. Brilliant!

Pilates People, did you just experienced a twinge of guilt imagining yourself in November, enjoying 80 degree weather on sugar sand beaches after having work-shopped all weekend? Well, stop it! Kit’s format is becoming more and more popular because it builds in time to synthesize new information you’ve learned and time to work all that good stuff into your own body, on your own time, in your own unique way. Learning in this format, you’ll return home with much more directly applicable, in-your-pocket material to put to immediate use. I promise.

Expenses. Kit’s full workshop spans 9 days, it costs $1149 USD if you register before September 15^th, payment plans are available and for our example I’ve got you traveling the day before the workshop begins and returning home the day after it ends so that means you’ll be gone a whopping 10 days.

Based on that length of stay, air fare from Chicago to Grand Cayman is $232, from Seattle air fare is $540, from New York’s JFK air fare is $375 and finally, from Los Angeles air fare is $505; for our purposes, we’re using an average of those which is $413. And just so you’ll know, I used Orbitz for my searches and on all stated routes except JFK, Delta was the cheapest fare and out of JFK American Airlines was the cheapest fare.

The host hotel for Kit’s workshop, Comfort Suites, is $156 USD per night, double occupancy, that includes all taxes and high speed internet and breakfast plus there’s a microwave, toaster oven and small fridge in every room. For an extra $15 a night, you can get a room with a full kitchen – I’ve already got mine reserved! If you’re going alone, you’ll still be able to share a room with another attendee because any good host – and Kit’s host in the Caymans is excellent – will offer to serve as a housing clearing house for all attendees and will be happy to hook you up with another attendee for you to share hotel expenses. Estimated hotel expense for the ten night stay, double occupancy, is $780.

Food, or should I say food and (umbrella) drinks, will run you about $20 a day if you eat in and about twice that if you eat out. We’ll plan on a little of both and estimate our food and beverage costs to be $350.

A big straw hat, extra sun block, a souvenir coconut bra and surf board rental total another $250.

Total estimated cost for Kit’s training is:

Financing plan. Assuming you don’t have the ability to pay for this upfront and/or as you incur the expenses, be prepared to put it on a credit card.

Repayment plan. Open an additional 3 privates a week on your teaching schedule, I assume you earn at least $30 an hour for a private so this will generate an additional $90 of income a week, after taxes we’ll figure this will generate an additional $320 of income a month.

Here’s the super important part of this plan, you guys: Earmark that increased income for repaying your credit card debt and don’t you dare spend it on anything else. Be sure to make payments to your credit card with every paycheck so you develop discipline and increased motivation to pay off the sucker.

If you have time to open even more teaching hours, the payback accelerates. If you work in a larger studio with more teachers on staff where you can cover for vacations and illness, this is usually an easy way to generate increased revenue. If you work alone or in a small studio, it’s more challenging but totally possible.

What was that? You said you don’t have time to teach more? How about this: cut out a couple hours of TV a week and there you go – more time, like a gift from the universe especially for you.

Now, to maximize our investment in education, we’ve got to blatantly exploit our revenue-expanding capabilities by capturing revenue that many of our clients are currently spending elsewhere - Yoga, in personal training sessions at the gym, etc. But in order to do that, you’ve got to start planning at least 6 weeks before attending an ancillary skills workshop to make sure you’re able to hit the ground running with the programming of your new classes immediately upon your return. Make sure all your clients are educated about and know what to expect from your new offerings – you’re doing this for them, after all!

Kit’s work does not rely on Pilates experience so it’s a fantastic opportunity to bring folks from outside the studio into the studio – market stretch classes or any new ancillary skill widely within your community, not just to your current studio client base.

If you work for someone else, in order to do this you may well have to tell them how it is.

Why? Because. There’s no better time than the present to take charge of your teaching and compensation destiny. Why else? Because. By expanding your education base you’re becoming a rain maker and rain makers ensure their own success. Be powerful! Take charge! Get stuff done!

And how is it? This is how it is.

Tell them that in exchange for you having paid for yourself to go and get better educated without any help from them other than them graciously allowing you to take the time off, you expect to keep a certain amount of the revenue from your group stretch classes.

Reasonable people will think that’s fair enough but if you’ve got yourself an unreasonable person on your hands, you still have options.

In fact, you have even more options.

Offer stretch classes at other studios or better yet, rent a room at a community center or church, have your stretch classes there and keep all the profit the class generates. As a zero-overhead option, if you live where the weather cooperates, embrace Joe and Kit’s philosophy of vibrant health and communing with nature and teach stretch classes outside in parks; there are only a few jurisdictions in the US that prevent this so check with your local parks department to make sure you’re on the right side of the legal line.

But back to staying within the studio lines.

You can appropriately feature Kit’s work in any mat class, private or semi-private session you teach but it’s also a real money-maker to put a straight-up stretch class on the schedule so that’s what you’re going to do.

Let’s say you offer 2 stretch classes a week and price them at $20 each or with a punch card that lowers the price to $15 per class. Your promotion of the classes and your clients’ desire to become more flexible should produce class attendance of between 5 and 12 clients. We’ll use an average attendance of 8 @ $15 per for total revenue of $120 per class, adjusted for taxes we’ll figure that leaves you with about $100 per class x 2 classes a week for an additional $800 a month toward paying off your Kit workshop.

Here’s the summary of our debt & monthly repayment plan:

If you’re anywhere close to hitting these numbers, you’d have Kit’s workshop paid off, including interest in 3 – 4 months.

Even if your revenue earning plan isn’t 100% realistic, you’ll still be making great strides to pay off the debt and will have it done, even under dire fiscal circumstances, within 4 – 6 months.

When you break it down, when you plan well and above all, when you have fiscal discipline, anything is possible, even a winter-time Caribbean vacation with a revenue building, skill enhancing, transforming educational experience thrown in. Hey Cabana Boy!

Kit's got a great video library posted on youtube.com, go to http://www.youtube.com/kitlaughlin to see him in action.

Part 2 – long term, short format, directly related to Pilates.

The educational scenario we’re using as our second example is the 2010 PMA conference in Long Beach, California, http://pilatesmethodalliance.org/, it’s always the first weekend in November so for 2010 that would be Friday, November 5^th – Sunday, November 7^th.

As you may know, within the confines of the 3 –day PMA educational conference only historic Pilates related education is presented and ancillary topics are covered in the pre- and post-conference workshops that happen on Thursday, November 4^th and in the afternoon after the closing of the official conference on Sunday, November 7^th.

Previously, pre- and post-conference ancillary content (like Red-Cord, Integrated Work, etc.) is not sufficient to qualify you to teach what you’ve learned there so it can’t be compared to a workshop like Kit’s which is multi-day and purposely designed to expand your skills by qualifying you to teach a new discipline. Put more simply, pre- and post-con workshops at the PMA do not qualify you to teach anything you weren’t already qualified to teach. It’s a better you, it’s just not a brand new you.

If you don’t do the pre-conference and post-conference workshops, you can arrive early Friday morning, stay Friday and Saturday nights, and the conference ends early enough on Sunday for outbound flights to get you all the way back home so you can spend Sunday night in your own bed and work your usual shift on Monday. However, I don’t think that’s very reasonable so for our planning purposes, I’m adding in a 3^rd night stay.

The host hotel normally runs about $170 a night, double occupancy, and the PMA does offer room sharing clearing house services so you’ll be able to find a roommate if you want one so we’re going to estimate your hotel costs at $255 for a 3 night stay.

Early Bird registration has been running right around $500 and I bet they’ll offer payment plans next year like they did this past spring. There are some excellent pre- and post-cons – Irene Dowd is my favorite – and I’m budgeting for you to attend at least one of them so in addition to the $500 registration fee, we’ll add another $200 for a pre- or –post conference workshop so for our planning purposes, I’m figuring on a registration fee of $700.

And even with a post-con, depending on where you live, you could still make it home Sunday night which would cut your hotel costs by 1/3 but we’ll plan high, just to be safe.

I’m definitely estimating airfares because trips can’t be booked that far in advance so I’m unable to run some sample routings but for our purposes we’re going to assume the fares are similar to Kit’s Grand Cayman workshop and use $413 – this will most certainly prove to be high.

In past years the PMA has included in your registration fee a free breakfast and lunch so our food & beverage costs in Long Beach will be around $175 and that’s for dinner and drinks for 3 nights. I’m not sure I’ll be invited to the VIP party again but if I am, I’ll RSVP that I’m bringing an additional 100 guests and we’ll see if we can’t all eat together for free one of those nights! (Note to self: it’s precisely this type of behavior that may well result in me not being invited – try to care about that Rebecca Elizabeth!)

We’re going to plan for a generous spending budget for PMA that’s much larger than for other workshops you might attend because the PMA conference is the Big Show in our industry, past years have pulled about 1,000 people from 30 countries and everyone who’s anyone in our industry is there. That means the Expo Hall is packed full of vendors selling all sorts of must-haves - come see Heidi and I at our booth! – and it’s Mecca for us Pilates people. We’ll budget so that you can take advantage of the PMA conference deals that most of the vendors offer and stock up on clothes, software, props, springs, and anything else that strikes your fancy. We’re allowing a whopping $500 spending money in the Expo hall.

So, here’s our 2010 PMA cost recap:

Financing Plan. If we assume the same schedule expansion of adding 3 privates a week to your current teaching book, you’ll earn an additional $320 monthly that you can put toward your 2010 PMA educational fund. If you’re anywhere close to hitting these numbers, you’ll have your PMA fund full in less than 7 months and you’ll be all set to pay for your PMA conference expenses at the time you incur the charges – no credit card debt!

Keep it rolling. If you keep your fund refreshing whether or not you have a plan for how to spend it, you’ll always have money to draw from to use for your own educational advancement and you’ll be able, as the whim strikes you, to say yes to a workshop that you not have otherwise considered attending. Isn’t that great?

And, I hope you beat me to the expression of this thought . . . see how easy it would be to do both of these workshops, or even both in the same year? Speaking of which, when I pull out of Long Beach in 2010, I’m heading straight for Kit and his annual workshop in the Caymans . . . come on and go with me!

If you have any questions or need to brainstorm ideas on how to accomplish any of this, comment and I will answer. We’ll work together to make your own individual plan and the rest, dear Pilates person, is up to you. Isn’t that exciting?!

From Miss Mariana Bell of Charlottesville, Virginia

(isn't she lovely?!)

I met the Pilates Nun about three months after a massive horse accident.  Prior to my fall, I had been a gym rat, yoga fan, competitive rider, and just started getting into pilates.  A generally active 26-year-old, I am also a singer/songwriter, often having to lug music equipment to and from shows.  However, being projected pelvis-first into a fence-post put all that to an abrupt halt. 

I was x-rayed at the hospital, and, with nothing broken, given a couple weeks' worth of painkillers and anti-inflammatories and told to rest.  "That's it??"  I thought.  For the first two weeks and as the drugs wore off, simply walking was an arduous task as I realized the extent of the soft tissue damage (and don't even ask about going up and down stairs...excruciating.)  I saw an osteopath and began physical therapy, with the enormously frustrating prescription to "walk, no more than 10 minutes a day," which turned out to be exhausting and difficult physically, and beyond aggravating on my mental health. 

Without my usual release of endorphins and only so many books or TV to keep me occupied, I was going a bit nuts.  On top of that, I had to move.  A proudly self-reliant woman, I had to beg, bargain, and helplessly watch my unfailingly wonderful friends shlep my belongings to a storage unit and my new place, without my lifting a finger to help.  Throw in a particularly unpleasant and stressful breakup for good measure, and I was one crabby camper. 

Over the course of a couple months, things were tentatively improving as I was in less pain doing normal day-to-day activities.  However, still unable to lift anything heavier than my guitar, let alone get back in the saddle, I was eager to get this healing process in full gear.  I had some of the tools to do it on my own, but was missing something. 

My physical therapist and wonderful pilates teacher recommended I go have a private session with the "Pilates Nun" who came to Charlottesville where I live.   She assessed my situation and told me I needed to bolt up!  So, lying on the ground, pulling inward and upward from all directions with imaginary bolts, my pelvis was suddenly more secure than I'd felt in my life. 

My ligaments had been all stretched out and no amount of additional stretching would make them feel better, but in fact, quite the opposite.  Strengthening the muscles deep within, while tiring at first, turned out to be the closest to pain-free I'd been. 

A little stretching now that my pelvis was stable actually relaxed the muscles of my legs and back, rather than my over-flexed joints and ligaments.  We stretched one side at first just to see how wobbly and tight I was compared to the other, now relaxed and strong. 

Through patience and the use of imagery, we stacked up my spine from the strong foundation of my pelvis right to the top.  Although there was no satisfying sweat, no wildly athletic gyrations, I was walking around with my head appropriately atop my spine for the first time in months.  My upper back and shoulders, which had been overcompensating for the weakness below, suddenly felt free and mobile. 

I was astounded at how quickly it happened.  It's been a couple weeks, and sometimes it's hard to remember my bolts all the time, but I am confident my road to recovery has become swifter and more smooth.  Thanks Pilates Nun and Bolt Up everyone!!!

____________________________________

Okay you guys, here's my process for figuring out what Mariana needed.  

She was on my guest teaching book the day after my workshops at Tru Pilates in Charlottesville, Virginia ended. Although I love working with all types of folks in guest teaching sessions, I prefer to work with people who are stuck somewhere in their bodies, people who can't do a particular move or have a recurring failure like they have no scoop or they can't figure something out, which, by the way, is always the teacher's fault, always. Or they hurt - these are often my favorite clients to work with and without a doubt the most satisfying to help -  and haven't found help anywhere else they've looked.  

I call these guest teaching sessions Developmental Privates because they're definitely not a regular session but rather, they focus on developing the client's education about the issue at hand.  My Developmental Privates are what an athlete would call "style work" or "technique work" because we get to the bottom of the problem, we build a new approach to solving it and usually, we make what seems to the client as extraordinary progress but to me, a teacher who specializes in problem solving at the very foundation of movement, seems logical and simple.  Developmental Privates are $150 USD. 

I saw Mariana come into the studio while I was finishing up with the client scheduled just before her and as I was saying goodbye to the client leaving and grabbing my water to chug a quart between clients, I watched her as she lowered herself gingerly to the floor and began doing external rotation hip stretches, folding her body over itself, never staying too long in any one position. When it was time for Mariana's session to begin, she was still down on a mat, rolling around, trying to find a comfortable position.  

I could see that her hips were really loose and I could tell she was in pain.  

She'd only had one session with the owner of Tru Pilates, Robin Truxel who's also a Physical Therapist, so Robin didn't have much information to give me about Mariana prior to me working with her.  Mariana's Physical Therapist had come to 2 of the 3 full-day workshops I'd just taught at Tru Pilate. I love being part of a team and with Mariana, because I knew both her Pilates teacher and her Physical Therapist, I was absolutely confident she'd have excellent ongoing care.  

As her session began, Mariana told me the sequence of events that led her to her current state of painful frustration.  It was clear that her life was not proceeding according to plan - she's young, smart, gorgeous, talented, a performer, and has much to accomplish, none of which mattered because she was hurting - and she felt like perhaps there was no easy fix since she'd tried several avenues of treatment with no measurable results.

Dear Readers, that's pretty common.  Pilates teachers are on the front line of injury, if we know what we're doing we can fill a huge gap in the care chain and our skills, completely within the scope of teaching Pilates, can often be the very thing clients cannot get from PTs, Osteopaths, massage, etc.  Get this: One of my favorite students is an Osteopath in England and not only is she almost not practicing medicine at all anymore because she can help more people more ways with Pilates, but she's also morphing into Clara by still wearing her medical whites as she teaches.  I love ya Jacqui! 

Back to Mariana.  I asked her to tell me what positions she instinctively felt she wanted to get into in order to make herself feel better and her answer was, without exception, positions that would stretch her back and hip muscles.  She kept chasing that instinct by getting into all those folded up positions, sometimes going to Yoga class, but all to no avail.

I knew two things at this point that would help Mariana tremendously.  

I could tell by how loose she was in her hip joints that her ligaments were loose and I knew, as a result of that, muscles that are not cut out for the job were trying to stabilize her pelvis and spine and that's why she felt this undying need to release her back and hips.  One caused the other and both were compounded by the fact that not only had her horse thrown her and she hit a fence post with her left ilium, but he'd also thrown her more recently and she'd landed on her back.  Trauma on top of a lack of stability and strength is a recipe for pain.  

And who was it that said, if you make a friend of pain you'll never be alone? I think I read that quote in Born to Run, but I'm not sure where I read it and I'm not sure who said it but what I am sure of is that if Mariana didn't learn daily maintenance skills to manage the daily use of her loosy goosy joints, she'd have more pain coming; she'd have an interstate of pain running through her, a transcontinental highway of pain.  

And, even more tragic than the thought of that, she'd have it unnecessarily.  She was an easy fix.

Again, here's what I'd figured out: her more superficial muscles were pulling double shifts trying to stabilize her wonky pelvis and that's why her back and hip muscles were tight and I knew she was loose-ligamented, or hypermobile.

I explained to her that from how she was moving, it appeared to me as though her ligaments were more stretchy than most peoples, I taught her about how ligaments connect bones to bones, I described what they look like and I made hand, arm and finger puppets of joints (a show in and of itself, reminiscent of the Fed Ex commercial from 50 years ago where the presentation materials didn't arrive and the presenter is making hand puppets in the spotlight of the overhead projector - like that but different).  I taught her how, when the joints come apart so easily, the muscles never really get a chance to stretch and that's one reason why she felt tight and I taught her that because she's not strong in the muscles that connect to her bones - the ones that have to compensate for how loose her ligaments are - muscles that are not designed to do the work of stabilizing are trying to stabilize and getting overused and spasmy as a result.

If we'd been in my home studio in Seattle, I'd have a full skeleton to use plus lots of pictures of ligaments, pictures of muscles as they attach to bones including pictures of cadavers to show her but even without, I got the point across.  

I always approach the body through the brain and this made sense to Mariana intellectually.

I asked her to please not ride for a while.  I asked her to please not go to Yoga until she masters stabilizing her joints so in a Yoga class she can work safely and without further stretching her already loose ligaments.  

Pilates People, I'm telling you the truth here: Yoga classes are dominated by two types of people: 1) people who have loose ligaments and who feel tight - that's why they keep going to Yoga, to try and get a stretch which they won't get until someone who knows what they're doing teaches them to stabilize their joints so the more superficial muscles can actually get some attention and 2) people (like I used to be until Kit Laughlin's work came into my psyche, my body, my life - I love Kit!  www.KitLaughlin.com, come to the Caymans in November with me! Umbrella Drinks!) who are seriously strong and tight and desperately need to stretch but can rarely get into the "go" position to even begin to release.  Those tight folks usually miss all the good stuff because they're so tight that they can't position themselves properly to be able to begin to perform the pose.  

I got Mariana to lay down on her back, knees bent, and I taught her my interpretation of Ron Fletcher's bolts.  I've adapted Ron's bolts to a more intricate vision that causes deeper muscles to fire.  To help you learn how to do that, I'll film me teaching it and get the video up on the Nun site really soon, I promise - I'm THIS close to going video on this site and believe me, that's going to help you a whole lot more than reading all these words ever will.  I digress.

After teaching her how to bolt her pelvis, the look on her face changed, she felt the pain diminishing as if it were a light being dimmed and finally turned off, and she began to do one of the most glorious things I ever witness - she began moving slowly, tentatively, into positions that mere moments ago were pain producing but now, bolted, were not.  The look on her face was positively lovely as she began to re-acquaint herself with the old pain-free version of her that hadn't been around for a while.  

Once she was confident in holding her bolts, I had her stand, then walk, then sit all while bolting.  

Confident she had it and could keep it, we moved up the food chain to her spine.

I taught her my elevator shaft image, which I'll also film for you, that is a fool proof way of engaging ever so slightly the multifidi so she could begin to unload her pelvis by using the right muscles for the job.  I use the image of a 26 story building, a floor for each vertebrae, one for the basement (which pulls weight up off the sacrum) and one for the penthouse (which floats the occipital skull bone).  

Once she was living in the penthouse in the highrise that is Mariana Manor, I again had her walk around to get the feel of it and again, she was delighting in the freedom from pain, the pain that had been her near constant companion up until just a few minutes before.

I told her about Kit Laughlin's contract/release flexibilty work and with her pelvis stable I performed a couple of assisted pnf or contract/release stretches on her hamstrings that helped her realize just how tight her muscles were and how little flexibility she really has when her pelvis is stable.  I told her she needs to learn how to stretch from strong stable joints and not by pulling her joints apart.  I asked her to consider going with me to take Kit's workshop in November down on Grand Cayman and I promised her that if she did, she'd be able to use what he teaches her to help her get strong and stay strong and released for the rest of her life.

She's thinking about it. I'm hoping for it.

Mariana is an example of what happens in my sessions over and over again.  This is what so many teachers marvel over and write glowing testimonials about and this is what is so simple to do, once you understand the basics.  And this is what Michele Larsson means when she says "the system works, work the system."  That's technically true but the problem is, if you don't understand the system, if you don't know that the pelvis has got to be stable before anything else good can happen in the body, then you're in some serious trouble with your teaching and all the slogans, all the concepts, all the formulas that exist above this fundamental level will fail you, over and over again.  

Things are so simple and elegant in the body - they really are - but as my hero Ron Fletcher says, it's so simple it's hard. 

And I get that.  I really do.  I understand the confusion on the part of teachers who haven't been taught the fundamentals of movement, who haven't been taught how to stabilize a body and I know it is really hard to find your way to teach successfully at this level when the cart's in front of the horse.  

So you see, it doesn't matter at all how many cool exercises I know on Cadillac; Mariana needed help at a level so far beneath any classic exercise and any slogan about "keep them moving" and "movement heals" is frankly insulting when we think about how Joe & Clara intended this work to nurture people back to full function.  In reality and often, movement hurts and if your school taught you to push clients through an order, even a basic order, you're going to be part of the problem and you will never be able to provide a solution to clients like Mariana.  

If you don't know how to fix problems like Mariana's, there's great news - it doesn't take much to get you there. 

Everything I teach centers on the simplicity of how I helped Mariana and when you work that way - at the lowest level of function - you really can change someone's life, in a single session, even without ever seeing them again.  Except of course, hopefully, on the beach.  In the Caribbean.  In November.  With Kit.

Never stop learning, teach well, care endlessly and you'll be joining me as I live in the spirit of Joe & Clara.  

Vibram FiveFingers.  Check it out.

It's been a circuitous route that's ended with me wearing gloves on my feet and I want to tell you about the journey and how it feels to have arrived.

Kit Laughlin and Christopher McDougall are to blame.  

I was in Kit's 5 day Stretch Therapy workshop up in Vancouver in May and Kit wears FiveFingers and he advises that we all wear them.  Kit didn't mention Christopher's book.

And because things seem to reign down on me all at once, as soon as I returned to Seattle from Kit's workshop I heard a local NPR interview with author Christopher McDougall who was in town touring on his new book,Born to Run.  His interview was fascinating and as soon as I could get my hands on my Kindle, I bought his book, it came through the air and was mine.

Christopher recommends FiveFingers. I was seemingly the target of a FiveFingers conspiracy and was bound to give in.

Here's a link to a YouTube video of Christopher telling you what his book is about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv4Se5ka9Pk and here's a link that will give you a look at one of the main characters in the book, a guy named Caballo Blanco http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o375sYfPC3w&NR=1.

Born to Run is non-fiction and is a must read for all Pilates teachers and for any clients with foot problems.  There are particular chapters that focus on foot physiology; if you only read those you're still way ahead of the game. 

I've never had foot problems but I have had the occasional blister and foot injury.  

In my 20s I threw the frisbee in the street for hours and hours until I eventually wore a deep hole, shaped like a perfect circle the size of a silver dollar, in my pivot foot, it was embedded with asphalt and filth and the next day, for work when I put on panty hose and high heels (idiot!), my shoe filled with serous fluid and I knew I had trouble on my hands.  Actually, on my foot, I had trouble on my foot.  I spent weeks - weeks - going to a sports podiatrist who used a metal brush to debride the wound, removing all the specs of dirt and debris that were embedded in the new skin until eventually, all the dirt was gone and I was healed.  

There was also the time I forgot my running shoes at a triathlon down in Tampa and although I biked in my hurachi sandles, I ran in my Thorlo socks and my feet hurt a bit after that.  I was also bit by a dog on that run and, always the optimist, the dog bite took my mind off my aching feet and I did get a mini-Thorlo sponsorship out of the deal - a dozen or so free pairs of socks.  

I have clients who struggle mightily with foot problems.  Bunyons.  One has a navicular bone on the floor. Another has a short tendon on top of her pinkie that lifts it to half mast.  Yikes.

Irene Dowd's book Taking Root to Fly contains a chapter called In honor of the foot and it's a great education about what goes on in there.  So complex.  Such a hard working body part.  I know teachers who think everything about you can be read by a foot reader - all our mysteries, all our stories, are there for the trained eye to decipher.  

I'm not quite sure about that but I am sure about one thing, if your feet hurt, your health is in serious jeopardy.

In Harper's magazine several years ago, there was a featured piece on the medical specialty of Gerentology, how so few doctors are going into it and they author followed one particularly empassioned Gerentologist through several weeks of appointments and the author was surprised that, for patients who had slow growing cancers and other background type illnesses, the physician was most concerned about their feet.  The exam would begin and end with the feet.  

It's for certain, folks, if our feet hurt we'll be less likely to walk on them and we stop walking, we're essentially screwed.  That's a technical term.  Screwed.  No, it's not, but you know what I mean.

The whole system relies on movement and when we stop moving, bearing weight, shouldering the responsibility of being upright, the whole system begins to break down.

That's why we as Pilates teachers play such an important role in helping clients with foot problems manage the long term care of their feet.

I've had a brand new client who was going to have bunyon surgery and I asked her to give me 6 months to try and address her foot pain but she was already committed to the surgical path, she had the surgery, had complications and is still, almost 9 months later, battling for mobility.  My plan for her was not to cure her bunyons - there is no musculature along the inside of the foot that could pull the big toe joint back into alignment - but to get her so strong in her spine and hips that the weight of her wouldn't be falling down, down, down into those feet.  I also taught her plenty of exercises to help strengthen the arches in her feet, I love doing foot massages for her and by the end of every session, her feet felt wonderful.  

We've had other clients who've rolled their ankles more times than they can count, and one client who's broken both feet twice.

So, I'm always interested in learning more about feet and I sure got a great education from Christopher McDougall.

I went to REI and bought 3 pair of FiveFingers, two for me (a running model and another, the ones in the pictures, that I use for more formal occasions) and one pair for Heidi.  

I'm not one to go slowly into new things.  When I began wearing thong underwear, I went out and bought $150 worth of them and threw out all my other panties.  I've essentially done the same thing with my conversion to FiveFingers. 

The beautiful pamphlet that comes with the shoes (can we call them shoes? I think not. I think we need to call them floves (foot+gloves+floves)) says you should wear them for 1 - 2 hours a day at first, breaking your feet in slowly but I've been wearing mine all over town, for hours at a time and I've been doing fine.  

The only thing that's been surprising about my FiveFingers experience is that my little toes have separation anxiety - they do not want to line up and go into their little slot and if I'm in a hurry, it's possible for me to slip on my Floves with my pinkie toes riding piggy back on their neighbors, nestled completely into the slot for toe #4 and laying low in hopes I don't notice.  I've begun a toe check, quick 1-2-3-4-5 touch and wiggle that let's me know I'm locked and loaded and ready to go.   

Wearing them feels quite a lot like going barefoot, which is the whole point, but even in the city streets, full of glass, rocks and uneven pavement, the sole is thick enough for me to freely jog through it all.  They make a winter model that's more insulated; I'll get those once the weather turns.

Our feet contain about a quarter of the bones in our bodies, they are unique in that they not only can be as articulate as our hands but they also form a strong lever for propulsion during running.  

Kit taught me that there is more sensory perception in our feet than our hands.  Feet really don't do well crammed into shoes which rob them of their stabilizing power.  I remember in my UW sports medicine human performance program, one of the professors told us how when Husky athletes are waiting for their turn on the taping table, they have to do ankle strengthining exercises while they wait.  That's because by taping ankles, you're weakening ankles.  

Simple heel lifts in parallel, turn out and turn in are sufficient to strengthen feet and ankles and you can assign that as homework for clients to do every day, twice a day, at home while their brushing their teeth.  

Anyway, I suggest you hitting your local outdoor shoe store and trying on a pair of Vibram FiveFingers, they're great for in the studio, on the street or on the trail. If you feel silly wearing them because of the way they look, try to get over that and focus on the important stuff, like letting your feet do the work they were intended to do.

Here's wishing you happy feet!

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. 

Everyone thinks I'm soooo nice.  And I generally am and I'm generally happy that so many people think I am but there are those times when even the happiest, most supportive gal has to get riled up and when those times come around, I can rile with the best (worst?) of them.

I got a call a couple of weeks ago from an East Coast teacher who started out by saying that she had a dilemma in her studio that she wanted my advice about and although she was guessing I'd just tell her to never mind, over look and make do, she wanted to go over it with me nonetheless.

I'm so glad she did.

But before I get to that matter specifically, that call specifically came the very same day that I'd been on the phone to a teacher in Australia and she and I had a lovely time working through what could have become an small "issue" between us.  I think everyone should be able to work cooperatively with others through small stuff and I love it when those really skilled among us can work their way through serious conflicts, misunderstandings, mess ups, nightmares, catastrophes, melt downs and the like.  I learn not only from trying to do that, but from seeing others do it, too.  

I'd no longer finished working through a minor yet emotional review of events with the Aussie and said goodbye when the phone rang with another matter, the one that's the subject of this article, being brought to the fore.

But even before that, I'd been in a flurry of problem-solving for a few days, caught up, if you will, in the global vortex of being the Pilates Nun; the helper of any and all, the solver of perplexities, curiosities, confoundment, the Director of Means to Happy Ends, the encourager of the discouraged. 

I take all calls and they were coming fast and furious that whole week.

Including from a studio owner who's just opened up a beautiful studio about 3 blocks from mine.  She used to work for me 50 years ago, I absolutely love her and she emailed asking something about mat classes - she's not offering them but I do - and we lapsed into a mini, Blackberry to Desktop consulting session with me (hopefully) talking her into putting a 30 minute session on her fee schedule so she can still serve her clientele wanting Mat classes without actually offering mat classes. 

So back to the East Coast teacher with the dilemma.

She'd welcomed into her studio an apprentice from a teacher training program other than her own.  The teacher was planning to attend group classes at her studio and use them as credit toward her own program's sessions/observation requirements.  So far, so good.

The visiting apprentice, however, made the East Coast teacher uncomfortable when she told one of the teachers at the studio that she would be opening her own studio as soon as she clears her program and her new studio would be very close by.

That teacher, thankfully and as she should have, told the studio owner what the apprentice said and it made the studio owner uncomfortable.  She thought about it for a while and decided to call me to talk about it.

She said she thought I'd suggest that she embrace the apprentice, welcome her, help her in any way that she could.

Wrong-o, Pilates People.

It's inappropriate for the apprentice to tell a staff teacher what she should be telling the studio owner.  She knew, or should have known, that the information would get back to the studio owner and her method of delivery of the information lacks integrity and balls, which, when you got 'em are my personal favorite combination of traits. 

The apprentice needs to be "fired," Donald Trump-style! 

It's one thing to help someone through their program, it's another to have your own training program and be asked to welcome someone finishing up their training from another training program.

It's one thing to help someone through their program even if their program isn't your program, it's another for that person to take your help, get to know your clients and then open a studio near yours.

We do not have to facilitate the growth of others who show us, especially so clearly, that they do not respect us, that they are dishonest or deceitful. 

So after encouraging the studio owner to tell the apprentice, straight up, that she's ruined her opportunity to continue to learn at her studio because of her own disingenuous actions, I had to run to the studio to take a load of stuff down from the home office and then dash to an eye doctor appointment about 30 minutes north of the city; that's a huge trip for me because I rarely leave my beloved Queen Anne Hill. I may as well been driving to Florida, the day's miles seemed so great.

I jumped in the car and headed down the hill and on the way I saw, once again, the man who can only be called Blind Daddy of Queen Anne.  He's a 30-something blind man who walks with a red-tipped white cane, holding the hands of his children one of whom is a toddler, a tiny little boy who wobbles so much that he practically swings off his father's hand, pivoting off that one planted tiny tennis-shoed foot.  During school hours when I see Blind Daddy, his older kids aren't around and he's escorted by his toddler, this wobbly little boy.  And there they go, making their way through the streets of Queen Anne, sometimes in the road, sometimes on the sidewalk. 

I just hate it that when I see them, I don't know what to do.  

As someone with a sight disability myself, I'm extra aware of the challenges of the blind, but seriously, there's just no way this is reasonable and my heart sinks every time I see them. 

That day, I was rush rush rushing so I said some prayers for them and kept right on going. 

But I didn't get far when the next situation happened that I felt I needed to become involved in. 

The #13 bus runs from its terminus right by my house, Big Red, all the way to the other side of town.  It was ahead of me as I cleared the intersection that Blind Daddy (sounds like a punk band, no?) was in and I couldn't help but notice that there was a really old man, hunched over his rolling walker, trying like hell to make the #13 bus.  

My heart, already on the floor, sunk a little lower when I saw the #13 pull out from the stop leaving behind the hunched over old man, doing his version of running on his rolling walker. 

This, I could do something about.

I slammed on my brakes and made a sharp turn to the right scaring a runner in the intersection, I circled the block and made it all the way around before the runner got to where the old man, gasping and slumped over even more, was draped over his walker in despair.  And with that, I righted two wrongs.  I apologized to the runner, he graciously accepted and then I said to the old man that I saw the #13 blow him off and that I was here to take him wherever he needed to go.  

Without blinking an eye, he released the walker to me and zombie-walked without it toward my car.  I threw the walker in the back of my Subaru wagon and when my new friend was safely tucked into the passenger seat, I slammed the passenger door and headed down Queen Anne Avenue toward town.  

He had that fantastic old man smell, the good kind, just like my grandfather used to have minus the Old Spice.  I asked him his name and he said "Vladimir."  His accent was at once sexy, smart yet harsh.  I said "Vladimir, where can I take you today?" and he said "3rd and Union."  

Off we went.

Because I drive as if I have a rocket launcher up top and a cow catcher on the front, Vladimir began grasping a bit desperately for his seat belt once we were about half way down the hill.  Once buckled in, he sat quietly and listened to me tell him about the more memorable times I myself have been left at a stop, in hot pursuit of a bus that I missed by nanoseconds.  

When we got to 3rd & Union, right by Benaroya Hall, I unloaded his walker while he extricated himself from the seat belt and made the long hoist up out of the low seat.  A quick hug, a crinkled-eye to crinkled-eye squint signifying some sort of momentary solidarity, Valdimir and I, and with that, off I went to unload stuff in the studio and then onto my doctor's appointment.

Vladimir was easy.  Blind Daddy, not so much.  

Most teachers who call or write with questions are really easy to advise because I always categorize the problem, removing any neurotic overlays (mine, theirs, everyone's) from the issue so we can digest it for what it is: communication, ethics, bravery, compassion, consistency, etc.  Most all problems can be looked at by their generic essence and I believe most cleanly solved at that level.  

When I work with teachers who want to stay connected to me, I tell them that if they call, I won't listen to the gory details, I'll help with anything but I won't get involved on a negative emotional level or be exposed on a negative emotional because nothing is ever resolved or considered by its true merits when negative emotions are flowing all over and around it.  

When someone earns your anger, let them have it; don't misdirect it and spray discord all over everything else.  When someone earns your love and respect, let them have that, too. Everything goes much better in our lives if we give everyone exactly what they've earned and when there's no negative emotion erroneously discharged in the direction of the innocent.  It's not that hard to do.  

And once you embrace this type of honesty and clarity in your problem solving, you'll find that it's time to fire some clients.  You know the ones.  The ones who suck your bone marrow, who don't respect you, your mission, your vision, your talent, your time, your policies, your intelligence.  They sit like a landfill on your book, you dread at first the day they're in, then you end up dreading the day before they're in, then pretty much the whole week is taken over by how much you dread working with them.  Clocks stand still during sessions with these marrow-sucking, should-be-fired people who treat you like you're a prostitute - as long as they're paying you, who cares what they do to you.  Have I adequately described these people, these people who need to be fired?  

Fire their ass!  

If you don't own the studio, remember this:  nobody can make you work with anyone you don't want to.  Nobody can do that.  You have rights as an employee to protect yourself from disrespect, mistreatment in any form.  

I love the signs they have up at the British Airways counter at SeaTac Airport. I think we should have these types of signs by every Reformer, Cadillac and Wunda Chair.

Here's what it says:  Verbal abuse is construed as threatening behavior, security will be called and you will be detained.

Joe made it clear in his marketing materials that his clients had to submit to the work.  You know that I've got a bunch of his original marketing materials up on the studio site, www.PPNWSeattle.com, right?  Here's the link:   http://ppnwseattle.com/photo_gallery_arch_universal_method.html

That 8 page "Pilates Universal Method Balance of Body and Mind" flyer is a true gem.  I call it Joe's manifesto.  Read every word.  

You feel that heat?  Are you in doubt at all about what he meant, what he wanted, what he expected?  Now, overlay that onto your client base and see who doesn't match up with what Joe felt was required, what Joe looked for in clients, and I bet you anything that the clients who don't match up are the very ones who suck your marrow.  Am I right?  Can I get a witness?

Let me riff on Joe:  "Come and See Us - if you are in earnest; otherwise, keep on being slouchy and unattractive, a "MR. NOBODY."  NO MAN - NO MACHINE can correct or create vitality, power or health for you; everything comes from within, you have to unfold it.  YOU NEVER KNOW what you can do, until something spurs you to achieve it.  WE MAKE YOU DO IT."

Dear Reader, if you know what to do with your client and they're resisting, they are not coming to you in earnest.  You can't help them and you know what you have to do.  You have to do what Joe said.  You have to get rid of them.  And once you get rid of them, don't let any more of them in.

Barnes & Noble is half full of books that all say the same things as Joe's 8-pager.  Good Lord, he was such a genius. 

And the great thing about getting rid of lousy clients is, once you get the hang of it, it gets easier and easier, just like a gorgeous Roll Up.  And then, pretty soon the day comes when your radar is so sensitive that you can catch a bad one on the phone making that first appointment - be preemptive!  Don't let them in!  One bad client can ruin a whole studio!

And don't take my word for it.  Would you believe an Olympic-level Figure Skating Coach? 

I've taught Pilates at Kathy Casey's skating seminars and attended her workshops with parents and coaches and she says, to the very parents of whom she speaks, that one bad parent can ruin a rink.  If you know anything about Kathy, you know there's nobody who shoots straighter, she can spot a problem a thousand miles off, and there's nobody who gets more from less than Miss Kathy Casey.  She's the bomb.  

And she's right and you know it. And Joe was right and everybody knows that.    

Here's a fun email from Sydney Craig, a Pilates go-getter with a gorgeous studio in Chattanooga.  She brought me in to do my full Pilates Excel program back in January and she just came out to my Seattle studio for Open Studio Week in late April.  Sydney, with my encouragement, fired a couple of clients while I was at her studio in January; I fired one of them for her (read The Tennessee Rule).  Right after Sydney got back to her studio from being here in Seattle, she sent this email:

As soon as I got back to my own studio I finally fired a particularly difficult client and man, it felt good. I did it with a smile on my face and the client's friend actually told me she was proud of me! It's amazing how light I feel. You really don't realize how much they bring you down until they are gone! Woo and two hoos!!! Thank you Rebecca! I love you! I plan to make this an annual trip! You make me happy! 

Can't you just feel her exhilaration?  Don't you want some of it for yourself?

I've fired clients for every imaginable reason but they all fall into a couple of general categories:  

• Disrespect of studio policies
• Disrespect of my time & talent
• Incompatible styles/personalities

I've even put a client on probation because she was what I call a "Pilates rodeo queen."  That means, with every touch, she pushed against me like we were in freakin' Kung Fu class.  If everyone I taught did that, I'd be exhausted by 9 am. Hell no!  It's not sustainable.  Pilates is about grace and effortless movement, not about shoving our bodies, client into teacher.  Let them go shove themselves around some other studio.  

Your client who yaps all session may not have anyone else to talk to, your client may enjoy being stuck on some random trivial past event and your client may not care that they're wasting their time but that doesn't mean you have to put up with it.  After all, you'll never get anywhere with these clients, you'll never be able to help these clients and they'll end up blaming you for their lack of results.  You simply cannot win with these people, except of course by firing them!  

If my standards sound harsh, relax.  

Here's the full extent of my standards:  You have to be nice.  You have to care about the work.  You have to try. That's it.  

You can be fat, you can be the most uncoordinated person ever, you can have zero chance of every doing a Roll Up and you still stand a good chance of being our very favorite client.  It's not about performance; it's about engagement, it's about wanting it, it's about teaming up, facing the future together and working toward something that we both believe in.  Ah, that's a beautiful thing.  And my studio is full of beautiful relationships that have survived all manner of naturally occuring chaos, drama and intrigue but we never, ever suffer from the purposely created chaos, drama and intrigue.      

Know this.  

You are special, you are precious and you deserve the best.  Give everything you've got to those who deserve you and get rid of the ones who don't.  It's not always easy to figure out who to help and who to cut loose.  Use your resources, think about it seriously and comprehensively.  Seek wise counsel. Then act.  Don't wait.  It won't get better.  It only gets worse.  

So the apprentice is gone, Blind Daddy still roams the city streets with toddler in tow, I've seen Vladimir at the same stop waiting for the bus and somehow, everything seems right.  If that saying is true, that God watches out for innocents, Blind Daddy should be good to go.  

I sure hope so.

God Bless you.  God Bless us all. 

And call if I can help you fire anybody. 

Question: Rebecca, what's the cadaver anatomy lab like and how does it compare to FAMI?

Answer: I think it was about 4 years ago that Gail Anderson invited me to go along with a group of her students to a cadaver class at Bastry. Gail is a marvelous person, a gifted teacher and a generous and kind soul who happens to own Balance Within Pilates over in Redmond, Washington, a Seattle suburb. www.BalanceWithinPilates.com.

I was honored to have the opportunity and of course I participated but I ended up filling a role much bigger than I'd originally intended. Gail ended up not being able to attend and she asked me to guide her students through the process making sure they understood the connection of what we would be learning to the performance and teaching of Pilates.

When I took the course, it was held over 2 consecutive Saturday mornings and the group I was in consisted of a chiropractor, a midwife, a doula, a few physical therapists, a few massage therapists and a bunch of Gail's apprentices and graduated teachers. Some of those non-Pilates folks tended to dominate the class, especially that chiropractor who I ended up knuckle whapping, figuratively speaking.

I felt the diversity of the disciplines among attendees definitely took away from my experience and I wished for a single-purpose group.

Now, all these years later, that's what I've got.

The courses I'm offering are exclusively for my students who are in my Seattle studio for either April's Open Studio Week or August's Pilates Excel. I may be able to schedule an additional cadaver anatomy class in the fall attached to another workshop in my Seattle studio but the Bastyr fall school schedule is not yet finalized and we can't move forward until it is. I'll also be adding a class for our clients but that will happen outside my workshop schedule.

And I've changed the format of the class. The courses I'm offering are 5 hours in a single day.

When I took the class those several years ago, we followed a swallow of food in and out of all the places it goes and although it was fascinating, I'd rather have spent the time exploring in a more detailed way things that are relative to my work, to the work of teaching Pilates.

For my classes, I've asked Dr. Love to tighten the focus of her presentation to exclude things that do not directly have to do with the bones of the spine, pelvis and large joints, the muscles that stabilize and move them, the organs that route directly through the pelvic floor, the organs and muscles of respiration and, of course, the thing we use most in Pilates, the brain and the spinal cord.

I'm going to set out for you what you can expect from this experience and I'm also going to tell you a fool proof way to tell if you can handle it, but first I want to tell you a bit about Bastyr.

Bastyr University is a naturopathic school just north of Seattle, from my studio it's about a 20 minute drive in moving traffic and for the classes I've arranged in April and in August, we'll provide your transportation to and from Bastyr. When I talked to Dr. Love about her willingness to make her lab available to me and my students, she told me that her belief and the philosophy of the University is that everyone who has an interest in cadaver anatomy should have access to a class in a lab - we have bodies and we should have access to bodies.

Her passion for this work and her gift as an educator is extremely impressive. Even though I took her class several years ago I've never forgotten her words, I teach with her in mind every single day and I'm constantly inspired by her way of presenting complex material but in a linear and simple fashion - I try try try to do that in my own teaching.

I'm flat out thrilled to be able to work with her again.

And I think it's great that the philosophy of Bastyr makes it possible for folks like me - uncredentialed, non-matriculated nobodies who happen to love, live and breathe Pilates - to learn what can only be understood by an experience of this nature.

The years I've spent studying anatomy books, all the videos I've watched, all the lectures I've attended - none came within a million miles of what that class meant to me, to my teaching, to my clients and to everything I've done since.

There are things that you can best learn in certain ways, perhaps only learn in certain ways, and this is one of them!

If I recall correctly, the bodies are in the Bastyr lab for 2 years so that means the families are patiently waiting for the return of the remains of their loved ones for a really long time while folks like me can have the experience of a lifetime. I think that's pretty special and, not surprisingly, I will donate my body to science and hope that there is free access to it so others like me, on the fringe but of genuine spirit, intent and desire, can have at it.

I've also been to FAMI, the Functional Anatomy of Movement and Injury, and will compare and contrast the two down below but first, I want to take you through what you can expect if you come to Seattle for this experience. Here's how the cadaver anatomy class works.

We just finished a Pilates Excel course in my Seattle studio and we discovered something interesting about one of the teachers who was here. She has no basement in her Powerhouse.

As the 4 day course was unfolding, she wasn't getting sore in her abdominals and I became curious and we investigated.

It turns out, she has no detectible engagement in her lower TVA fibers - nothing moves, nothing flattens, nothing works.

Pilates people, we cannot have this.

Mother Superior,

I LOVE your website. Recently recommended at a workshop on Scoliosis in London run by Jacqui Schirm.

I have lots of questions but my most urgent one is how to keep my clients warm in a matwork class when room termperature is cold.

Do I tell them to wear more layers?

It is a farily basic mixed ability class held in a fitness club run on a shoestring. I am badgering the management to install more heating but until that time comes I need to give them a good, safe and effective Pilates workout. .

At the moment I give a fairly fast warm up standing but they soon get cold on the mat. Ideas please would be welcome.

Thanks, Sarah

Dear Mother Superior,

She said:  I've got a client-man, banker, travels a lot.  His left foot, middle (3rd) toe bothers him.  Hurts at the head of the metatarsal, at the MP joint, plantar surface.  Mostly with direct pressure, but with forced/PROM ext/dorsiflex as well. 

I said:  Shoes?  Inspect them.  soles, insides, how he walks in them, foot bed, toe box.  You're CSI!

She said:  Same guy has a "knot" @ ~ T8, right side of the spine. 

I said:  Can you see it?  Feel it?  Can he feel it?  What does it feel like?  How long has it been there?  What's his doctor say it is? 

She said:  Also has had Lt groin/hip pain recently- fixed with knee folds, find Psoas. 

I said:  We're a one piece machine, it's all related.

She said:  The TOE is my concern right now.  I watched him walk...keeps his feet parallel...seems to push-off from middle toe... so we discussed 8degrees of external rotation in the feet (from the hip) to push off from the first toe.

I said:  Disaster form!  Train wreck!  Make him stop!  Is it coming from his hip or is his knee rotating?  

She said:  Foot work on the toes is too much, so we are only doing arches and heels for now. 

I said:  How many springs?  Even on one spring it's too much?  With one spring, it's not even as much resistance as his own body weight vertically loaded.  What hurts when he tries FW first position?  Make him tell you all about how it feels and compare and contrast to how it hurts when he's walking.

She said: I told him to stretch his toes....but I can't honestly say it is a good idea. 

I said: Should stretch his whole foot, not just his toes.  I'd suggest rolling slowly over a tennis ball, the spike balls are going to be too invasive until his fascia breaks up. 

She said: He is tight all over, so I figure it can't hurt....but I don't know which side he should stretch and which side to strengthen.

I said:  He should stretch it all, my guess is his right side will be tighter due to the overload if he favors his left side.  

She said:  I had him doing towel scrunches with toes, but he said it made it worse...

I said:  Toes are supposed to stay out of the action in towel scrunches, do you mean "scrunches with FEET? 

She said:  I can't seem to get it straight in my head... 

I said:  I'd recommend Irene Dowd's book Taking Root to Fly, the chapter entitled In Honor of the Foot.  It's a complete education on what's in there and how it's supposed to operate/load, and there are easy to follow instructions for massage that should be just fine for him.  Is he married?  Can he bring in his wife/partner so you can show them how to rub his feet?  Toe Corrector/Foot Corrector will be too much for him now, but eventually will be great.  His hips have to open a bit in order for that femur to set up the strike of the foot off the rolling big toe.  Practice walking with him, every session, bare foot, so he can begin to pattern proper form. I'm guessing his left side is weaker.  Try to find out full injury/activity history that would have been birthing ground for this defect.  Let me know what you think/find out.

The first thing you notice about Tamara is her exquisite beauty, then she speaks and you're struck by the sultry, soulful resonance in her voice and then she moves and you see the result of years of perfection-driven athletic training.  Then you notice a slight twist in her spine.  Then you ask questions and learn that she's broken her tailbone once in a figure skating fall and that she broke it again giving birth to her son. 

After both breaks, her spine slowly and slightly turned and remains such in honor of the injury.

I first met Tamara in September 2007 in Geneva where she owns a beautiful Pilates studio.  In addition to taking my workshops - I've taught in Geneva 3 times in the past year - she's also taken privates from me and I've begun learning her body and how she works it.  

My first agenda item in working with her in privates was to get her working aggressively on straightening out her spine.  I suggested several daily exercises that address the curves in her spine, hoping at the least that they don't worsen and at the most that we can pull them back toward plumb.  She's diligent in doing those exercises and her progress is plainly visible.

The Problem

Earlier this summer, she wrote with a question about how to solve a painful problem on rolling exercises, especially Open Leg Rocker. 

Where her coccyx healed, a bump of bone formed and it's in her way when she rolls through her spine to her tailbone.  Rolling over it is just like hitting a speed bump going 50; it's destabilizing, it hurts and the bobble it creates is so great that good form is not possible.

I've taught Tamara, as I teach everyone, how to use Ron Fletcher's bolts (see below for full description) to stabilize the pelvis but Tamara is unable to keep her bolts tight during rolling because hitting the bump acts as a reset button, she momentarily loses her stability, and often can't get it back in time to turn the movement around and come back the other way. 

This is what I call a flame out and flame outs are bad whenever they occur but they're especially bad on the more dynamic Pilates exercises where stability and control are essential. 

As I write, it’s the evening of September 6, 2008, I’m at 39,000 feet above the American Mid-west and I have, quite sadly, come to the realization that I’ve mismanaged my schedule to the point where the only time I have to write is when I’m aloft. And although I fly a lot, and by a lot, I mean a lot, this must change. This will change. I love to write and I especially love to write about all things Pilates. I will make more time to write. Please make a note of it.

Here comes an epic drama that unites a powerfully precious Pilates phenom who lives in Geneva, Switzerland and me, the Pilates Nun, of Seattle, Washington. We were joined by this very website and our Pilates affair has taken us all the way around the sun, plus some, all in pursuit of Joe’s most elusive exercise of all, Teaser.

I cannot believe Miss B and I began fixing her Teaser way back in August 2007 yet, it’s true.

Hopefully by the time you’ve finished digesting this very long post, you’ll be able to figure out and fix Teaser problems. Because problem solving is complex, I branch out and cover fundamental spokes off the Teaser hub; I’m overly comprehensive, I purposely try to say things several different ways so the listening styles of all my readers can be included and, as many of you have told me, it helps to have several examples to learn from. I think this will top out at somewhere around 6200 words. Oh my.

Let’s begin at the beginning; it seems boring but apparently it’s customarily the norm.

Angela Smith of Classic Form Pilates in Burlington, Vermont writes:

Help Me Sister!

I have a new client who has presented me with a puzzler.  It's a man, in his 40s, athletic all his life, in good shape, no flexibility at all.  The issue is his ribs - he can't drop them.  There's no movement at all.  I've tried every trick and visualization I know to help him out but it's not working.  He has a fairly broad chest and his ribs are just stuck.  Any thoughts on how to help him (and others who are like him) to learn to funnel those ribs?