This is post contains 2 articles, one by Jon Hawkins and the other further down by Sunni Almond.

Kathy Grant Heritage Training
by Jon Hawkins

Kathleen Stafford-Grant was one of the individuals who learned directly from Joseph Pilates, known collectively as The Elders. Kathy was one of the many dancers was sent to Mr Pilates studio with a career threatening injury. Like many of us after her Kathy made her life’s work bringing Pilates to others so that they could experience the benefits. Kathy also began to develop her own methods, often as a preparatory measure for Mr Pilates work and always drawing a clear definition between what was Mr Pilates and what was hers.
Cara Reeser first met Kathy when she was a dance student at the New York Tisch School of Arts and she attended Kathy’s morning mat class which was devised to prepare the dance students for a rigorous day of classes. Cara had not disclosed to the school that she was recovering from multiple fractures in her spine which Kathy quickly picked up on and told Cara not to come to her morning class but instead to meet her every day in her studio.
Cara did as she was told and had the usual reaction all of us know so well on first seeing the “eerie” studio apparatus. However, she soon learned as we all do that there is genius in the positioning of those odd looking springs and straps as over time Kathy encouraged Cara to regain the movement in her body that was often a daunting physical and emotional challenge. Thus began a lifelong friendship as Cara continued to learn from Kathy and Kathy continued to refine her own work.

Cara has decided to honour her mentor by passing on these gifts and has drawn on this work to create the Kathy Grant Heritage Training (R). For two years this has been running from Cara’s Pilates Aligned studio in Denver and this year was the first time it has been available outside the USA.

I was so excited to be part of this first UK cohort and over two weeks I got to meet, and play with a fantastic group of Pilates Teachers as we completed the first two of four four day modules.

We started by watching The Story of My Song, a film of Kathy’s life that had been a labour of love for Cara. If you have a Pilates Anytime account it is part of their legacy project and I highly recommend watching it to find out more about this incredible woman. As well as learning the methods of how to perform the movements it is so important to understand the stories of the people who kept the work alive and helped to take it from the little known practice it once was to the global phenomenon it is today.

The next few days were devoted to a body of work Kathy called “Before the Hundred”. This was a series of preparatory mat exercises and breathing visualisations that would build the skills to perform Mr Pilates exercises. We learned how to find and work from our centre, which can be a mental as well as physical space and how to work with the right amount of tension as too little or too much can both restrict our movement. This work also gave the group a common language that we could easily draw on and really helped to simplify our teaching. A real eye opener for me was the distinction between correcting someone and teaching someone. I think over correcting is something that many relatively new instructors like myself are prone to, especially in our quest for perfection for our students! This is not often helpful to the student as it can over burden them and leave them with a feeling both that they are not successful now , nor are they going to be. It’s quite a liberating feeling to let go of the need to constantly correct and to teach how to move. We also explored seemingly endless versions of cat stretches that Kathy created and was well known for. I thinks I could now teach an entire mat class based just on cats!
After a few days break we then got stuck into session two. Here we started to explore applying the skills learned from Before the Hundred to what Cara playfully calls bigger bolder moves on the studio equipment. Again there were also a series of preliminary exercises that would build the skills to do Mr Pilates Exercises.
I have to say this has been one of the most enjoyable courses I have done. Cara has exceptional energy and warmth, is generous enough to share her years of experience with us but also has to play the tough love card as we did have the habit of nerding out on certain things, going off on a tangent and having to be pulled back on course! Plus, anyone who has had the pleasure of taking a class with her in person or on Pilates Anytime will know that you will laugh as well as work hard. The group is a mixture of instructors from different backgrounds and experience, some only very recently having finished their instructor training and all very supportive. I have been able to apply what I have learned to my everyday teaching pretty seamlessly without feeling that I am losing my own identity as a teacher. Sometimes I feel I can copy what I have learned rather than actually integrate it. Other students have had similar success with using these new skills. One of us even had tears and hugs after a first session with a client using Kathy’s work!
The second session ended with a circle and a celebratory glass of champagne. We were there to honour the work of Kathy but there was also a welcome nod to one of Romana’s traditions. Now that’s my kind of Pilates!

Siri Dharma Galliano’s Big Bear Intensive 2014
by Sunni Almond

First of all as much as everyone loves a little Pilates gossip and drama, there wasn’t any. I don’t want to get all kumbaya, but really in all honesty, this was the nicest group of people gathered in one spot ever with a common goal in mind, to
become a better student, and really get the work into our bodies to ultimately become a more gifted teacher of our favorite thing to do.

I loved to experience the softer side of Siri, she embraced teachers from all schools, didn’t bag on any particular ‘other’ brand of apparatus, she just spoke her truth. Siri had her Siri-isms about ‘kicking the ass instead of kissing the ass’, I believe her terminology was ‘lick’. She gently humbled an obviously new, but divalicious teacher, letting her know that until there at least 10 years under your belt, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet, and are probably not worth what you’re charging….that this is a service industry, it’s not about US, it’s about THEM. It was so kindly done, no feelings were hurt.

There were the corrections, no one escaped the watchful eyes of Jay Grimes, Carrie Macy, Joy George, and Siri.
As far as issues, there were only two…one being that some of the reformers from Gratz came with straps too short to use, so we had to get creative (and were reminded to always check your apparatus). Safety was a huge part of the learning process, and it is safety first! The second issue was that the Intensive ran on ‘mountain time’ so presenters went over, and other workshops got cut a bit short. But I gotta tell you, if you didn’t get your questions answered, or have an opportunity to get on the apparatus and learn, then it was your own fault. All the presenters were generous with their information, staying after to answer questions, watch you move and each one gave frickin kick ass mat classes. Yes, the order is the order, but how they each toughen it up, give you a brief reprieve and then take you down to a hot sweaty mess… one-legged push-ups, with a clap, Mr. Jay Grimes, are you kidding me right now?!?! Yes we did the Crab, and Teasers 4 &5. Many times….many, many times.

If you haven’t been on an Electric Chair, find one and do what you used to think was just the Footwork. You want heavy springs? Baby, this is it! No school of thought was dissed, but I’m just sayin’ if you haven’t yet tried classical Pilates, you need to do yourself the favor. The work is exponentially more challenging than anything I have ever done, and I thought I’d done at least most of it at some point in my Pilates career.

Carrie Macy, 6 months pregnant, taught a mat class on the spine corrector, sounded like it wouldn’t be too tough, we crawled off humbled. She could do her nude Toe Sox photo shoot, and from the back you’d never know…The girl kicks ass in the most gentle, you never see it coming way. Siri herself was a student and picked Jay’s brain just like the rest of us did. I got a private lesson from Vil Shaynurov, I didn’t hurt afterwards, but I don’t know how jello walks, somehow I worked it out. I got some standing leg spring work from Jay Grimes, and Joy and Siri both let me experience the Electric Chair, another very telling experience. To register for next year’s Intensive in May, (It’ll be in the San Francisco area) click here, let em know you saw it in Pilates-Intel Magazine via Sunni Almond…$50 off the registration for referring, so refer away!!