I left for Miami on Thursday, January 25th for a 2-day PMA Board Meeting and it was the most fun I've had in quite a while. I hope it doesn't surprise you that I'm completely serious about that.
The intellect in the room was staggering (theirs, not mine!) and the industry perspective, wit and wisdom was unrivaled in my experience. I assure you, PMA members - and I hope you're all PMA members - that you're in good hands with this Board of disciplined and proactive professionals who love hard work and care deeply about the ascent of our industry. Praise the Lord!
After the Board meeting ended on Saturday night, I cabbed it to the airport and picked up a rental car and drove across Alligator Alley under an almost full moon. I had Latin music blasting on the radio the whole way and around midnight I hit the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, the engineering marvel that connects the small towns north of Sarasota to St. Petersburg, it started to rain and I began to feel like I was really back at home. I grew up in St. Pete; I lived there for over 20 years.
While in St. Pete, I stay with one of my oldest friends, Larry Sacco, in his gorgeous, huge Key West style waterfront home where I settle into guest quarters and begin making my rounds of friends and studios.
And I saw some truly awful teaching. And I mean awful. And I mean unsafe. And I mean bad. Super super bad. Help us Lord Jesus!
And what's worse, as my dear niece Veronica Carroll (Power Pilates, works at Authentic Pilates - fun studio, love that Victor - in St. Pete) tells me, teachers from one St. Pete studio will attend class or take a semi at a "competitors" to "spy" on who's teaching what and how.
The spirit of cooperation, the realization that no other teacher or studio can take away your happy client, the idea of community and sharing resources has not yet taken hold in the small but growing Pilates market in beautiful St. Petersburg, Florida. How sad. And how unnecessary.
Veronica and Victor, who's from Chicago and out of Romana's program under Juanita Lopez, both subscribe to the PMA-type attitude of inclusion, acceptance and professionalism. I'm glad she's working with him, and hope that together, they'll lead the way to a better Pilates culture in sunny St. Pete.
Until then, I feel so sorry for the teachers who labor under those attitudes and heavy negative vibes. Counter to the work, don't you think?
Next up, a flight to Charlotte, and a quick 2-night stay with my mom, sister and brother-in-law at their new place in Pisgah Forest.
They say they live on a mountain, I say they live on a hill but alas, altitude is relative. The west is huge, the east isn't but their puny altitude was certainly sufficient to mess me up.
I was scheduled to do a scoliosis workshop at Lynne Gast's studio, New Leaf Pilates of Asheville, on Thursday February 1st but didn't' make it because I got snowed in, as it were, North Carolina-style.
A few inches of snow, a topping of freezing rain and a few miles of bad (gravel, narrow, windy and washed out in a few places) road was all it took for me to cancel.
I rented an SUV in anticipation of the weather and in retrospect I think it was a mistake. Huge, light and with those funky breaks that pull away from you when you start to skid . . . I felt very out of control coming down the few miles of bad road from my sister's place. I really missed my little Subaru Outback.
I've been living either in or just below the Cascades for over 24 years so I'm no stranger to winter driving. In my former Bend, Oregon life, I skied Mt. Bachelor 5 days a week (leaving the weekends for the full-time working folk) and I've safely and sanely driven in horrendous winter conditions almost every year since moving to the upper left hand corner. I'm not skittish about winter weather, but at least out here we have plows, sanders, everyone has 4-wheel drive and generally, most of the bad drivers have already killed themselves in wrecks, so everyone left is pretty reasonable.
This is not the case in North Carolina, where the storm earlier this week was a true rarity and with no plows and no sanders - I'm talking rural North Carolina where the jurisdictions are tiny and can't afford such public works - everyone just waits it out until it melts. And that's what I did.
Yesterday morning I was supposed to go to Philly to celebrate a 20 year wedding anniversary with some of my dearest, oldest friends, but a version of the same driving conditions happened again yesterday morning, so I caught a flight last night out of Charlotte back to Seattle.
And it was such a lovely flight.
Clear skies the whole way across and under the glow of the full moon, it was an extraordinary experience. In seat 1A, no less. God is Great!
And I used the time productively.
After a yummy dinner and a funny movie (Man of the Year with Robin Williams), I hand wrote the column Jessica Cassity at Pilates Pro asked me to submit. I'm about to type it up and begin that horrible process of self-editing. I told Jessica, one of the editors and Co-Founder at Pilates Pro, that I absolutely hate to be edited, and of course she IS an editor and I expect we'll go back and forth a few times until they beat me into submission.
When she asked me to write a Q&A piece for her while she was with Pilates Style, I began it like this:
In the Beginning Joe made mat, and it was good, but it was hard. Too hard. So he made equipment.
They thought the whole God thing was too, too much but after all, I am the Pilates Nun and as such, I feel completely justified in taking the Lord's name, and in this case basic story line, and using it for my own purposes. But the good people at Pilates Style didn't agree so I had to change my approach and bland it up and I finally gave them just what they wanted.
This, I remind myself, is why I write for myself almost all of the time.
I hope you read Pilates Pro anyway, cover to cover and every edition, but I'll especially let you know when my little contribution is in and you can let me know what you think about it.
Under a Monday deadline, today I sent in to the fabulous Susan Heart, Conference Coordinator for Pilates Style, my CEC applications for the 4 different Pilates Style workshops I'm doing for their Hollywood and New York conferences this summer. A lot of work, but fun and it gets me super excited about seeing you all again.
And while at the Board meeting, Elizabeth Anderson asked me if I'd come to London to give a workshop for her company, Pilates Umbrella, on scoliosis, working with hyper-mobile clients, and business development. YES ELIZABETH YES! She mentioned it when I saw her at the PMA conference, and now it appears we'll be picking dates and penciling things in for something later this year.
As an aside, I told Elizabeth that there just isn't anyone better on scoliosis than Michele Larsson but Michele apparently has contractual obligations that prevent her from working with Elizabeth on this.
And I'm reminded why I'm a renegade and work alone: I don't want to get married, I want to sleep around! Forgive me Lord, I'll do 10 Teasers as pennance as soon as I hit "post."
When you are part of a big concern like some of these schools have become, you're often limited with what you can do, who you can do it for and with, and generally bound when just might prefer to be free. I'd hate that.
So, no Studio Life for me in my own studio this past week although lots of other Pilates things happening all around me. Still, I'm dying to get back to teaching come Tuesday.
And I hope we will all try and get along and not fear other studios and other teachers and really, let's not fear anything, except icy roads while driving a tank with a haunted break pedal.
PS: My fish died. The death certificate will indicate that he died today but last night when I got home, he was hanging on by a thread. As I was assessing him last night - fluffy brown stuff coming out of his gills, fluffy brown splotches on his usually iridescent blue scales - we shared a brief moment of recognition and then he just sort of heaved onto his left side and sank. He was our studio fish for over a year then I brought him home for companionship (perfect roommate, stays where you put him, only makes a little bit of a mess, eats 8 dried blood worms a day and hides most of the time) where he happily lived another 10 months. Mr. Blue Fish is gone. Tomorrow I bury him in the garden, say a prayer and wish him a better life beyond. I'm anthropomorphic, in case you couldn't tell.