What is Pilates? What does it mean to you?. These are two questions people sometimes ask me. An accurate short answer would be that it´s my job and my second career, but at a deeper level, it is a life changer. The truth is that it is a combination of both, and so much more. Let me tell you how Pilates became a part of my life.
Ever since I was a teenager I´ve been a Type 1 diabetic, dependent on regular insulin intake. The diabetes was manageable until I began my career as a department store junior apparel buyer. Sure, I loved my job and all of its perks, travelling to New York, Los Angeles and many other major cities worldwide along with dining in lovely restaurants. However, the big downside of this lifestyle was that training opportunities were scarce, hotel gyms were rarely available at this time. So while enjoying the fast track, I was out of shape, overweight, and not following my scheduled insulin regimen.
Illness is prevalent in my family. After my mother passed from diabetic complications and my father became gravely ill from cancer, I uprooted my life and career to be near him, and to assess what was important to me. While caring for my father, I found I had much more free time and an opportunity to try something new that may suit me more. It was then that I saw a possibility to embrace fitness as a lifestyle.
First I became a Fitness Personal Trainer, attending as many fitness conventions as possible. I then became exposed to Pilates and it was a little like love at first sight. I continued the fitness profession, opening my own studio in 1997, the year my father passed away. I opened on a shoestring budget in a small plaza not bigger than 1000 square feet, both a monument to my parents and my way to stay grounded in health. The studio offered personal training, fitness, yoga and Pilates. Slowly but surely, it grew. In 2002, a man ready to take yoga walked through the door. Who could have known that this man turned out to be my future husband? He, too, quickly became a Pilates devotee. After the pain of the loss of my parents, life was good again.
In 2003, I lost my left eye to diabetic retinopathy and required surgery, during which I also had a stroke. For several days I was in a coma. I awoke without vision in my left eye and with my left side paralyzed. Pilates became my rehab, my rescue and as I mentioned above, my life changer.
As our passion for Pilates grew, we gradually cast aside the other fitness forms offered at the studio and focused solely on Pilates. To expand my knowledge and education, I studied with Pilates Elder Lolita San Miguel. Lolita is a first generation Master Pilates teacher who studied with Joseph Pilates himself. After completing a two year program of study I became a Lolita San Miguel Pilates Master™ and Second Generation Pilates Teacher. Further, I became a PMA®-CPT and a member of the Balanced Body Faculty.
This year, in 2013, Lolita is celebrating her 55th anniversary of practicing the Pilates Method of Body Conditioning!
Our studio, Suncoast Pilates in Palm Harbor, Florida, has grown tremendously in response to our Pilates focus. We have educated a fine team and today we have eight talented Pilates instructors. We offer both servicing area clients as well as Pilates instructor education.
Now, rather than purchasing clothing to make people feel beautiful on the outside, I am working to make them feel wonderful from the inside. Because we must not to forget, that´s where the change truly happens.