Episode Show Notes
Our guest in this episode is Allison Brown from Ivanhoe Pilates and Health Management
Allison is based in Ivanhoe in Melbourne’s inner-northeast and has been a long-term contributor to the Pilates Industry in Australia.
[01:22] Allison shares some of her background – her fascination with science and the way the body works, her experience as an operating theatre nurse and her interests in three-dimensional drawing and teaching.
[05:46] Allison explains how she and her husband decided on a career change and both went into remedial massage therapy. In their exploration of other methodologies to help their clients in the late 80s and early 90s, they came across Pilates.
[10:33] Bruce quizzes Allison about her first impressions of Pilates and she explains the difficulty of finding teachers willing to work with people not connected with ballet until she meets Robyn Fynmore.
[12:20] Allison remembers her initial Pilates Teacher Training with Rael Isacowitz as being intimidating and that it was on that course that she met Paul Cini.
[17:54] Allison describes how her experience of being helped by Pilates enables her to empathise with, and relate to, her clients, and how her foundation in the Pilates Method is complemented by more recent understandings of human movement and neuroscience.
[24:59] Allison stresses the importance of both the biomechanics and the client’s experience of feeling an exercise when it comes to enabling a person to move with optimal efficiency and effectiveness.
[26:49] Bruce asks what Allison didn’t like along her Pilates journey and she reflects on the old school ballet way of teaching and regimentation that put people down rather than built them up.
[29:47] Allison recalls her early mentors, colleagues, and involvement on the APMA education committee, and the formative years of the Australian Pilates industry.
[33:09] Bruce probes into the history of the APMA.
[41:31] Allison reflects on what drew her to Pilates – that it satisfied her intellectually and emotionally, and enabled her to teach, feel, express, and understand movement.
[43:28] Allison describes some more recent challenges – her recovery from breast cancer and a total hip replacement, and having to balance the demands of running a studio with being a parent and partner.
[49:10] Allison gives some details about her current work set-up, owning her commercial space and sharing it with another Pilates business and contrasts it with her previous studios.
[1:02:19] Allison reflects on her trajectory and how she is now in a place where she is comfortable with who and what she is and where she’s heading. She credits The Method with giving her the ability to be present in every facet of her life.
[1:05:14] Bruce asks what advice Allison would give someone starting, or struggling with, their Pilates journey.
[1:11:26] Allison concludes with her counsel that it’s got to be for the client, and that it’s not a sin to teach functional Pilates.
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Episode Transcript
Bruce Hildebrand: In the spirit of respect, The Pilates Diaries Podcast acknowledges the people and elders of the Bunurong people, members of the Kulin Nation, who have traditional connections and responsibilities for the land on which this podcast is produced.
Hi, I’m Bruce Hildebrand and this is the Pilates Diaries Podcast.
The mission of this podcast is to share the stories of the impact of Pilates We’re inviting Pilates enthusiasts to share with us the notes they’ve taken down in their Pilates journey as we seek out the answers to the intrigue Pilates has been able to ignite inside millions all over the world. Our hope is that The Pilates Diaries podcast goes some way to answering the question " What is it that makes Pilates so special?" Join me for privileged peek into this episodes Pilates Diary.
Today we’re joined by long-term Pilates teacher Allison Brown. Allison is based in Ivanhoe in Melbourne’s inner-northeast and has been a long-term contributor to the Pilates industry in Australia. Allison, welcome to the show.
Allison Brown: Hi, thank you, Bruce. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Bruce Hildebrand: Allison we’ll begin by taking a look back. Can you tell me about life before Pilates? What were your pursuits, and in hindsight, what do you now see that were perhaps some threads that might’ve led you to discover Pilates?
Allison Brown: When I left school, I went into nursing and did my nursing training at the Alfred so my career pathway was in medicine and health to start with. I was certainly always interested in science- that was always my fascination right through to matriculation as it was then not even VCE so that’s sort of one common thread, obviously the way the body works, I was always a really good operating theater nurse and the nuts and bolts of what I was looking at- blood didn’t bother me, but the way that body worked and how it could be negotiated by a surgeon, particularly orthopedics was already my thing- bits, braces, mallets, hammers, saws- all of that in orthopedics- I absolutely loved it, so very strong connection with where I am now. I guess, way back then my other interests were drawing three dimensional drawing and life-drawing- so I’ve always had a brain that’s worked in 3D shall I say? And also teaching and teaching practice. And along that pathway, post nursing, I did a lot of community arts work because my other passion was to help people find their inner creative voice through creative arts. So those threads are pretty common. I was never really good at sports, although I did learn to ski really early and loved it and was really good at finding my centre on a good slope. I like looking at sport, but not actually doing it. So that was pretty much my career pathway. When I finished nursing I then travelled overseas- a lot of my generation did- spent three years living in different places around the world, Africa, the Middle East, Europe skiing in Chamonix, skiing in Austria, partying a lot, dancing a lot. Basically really enjoying life. Then I came back to Melbourne ended up getting married followed the nursing career pathway in community health nursing had two children developed a love of yoga because I was flexible and could do yoga extremely well. And you often follow what you can do well, don’t you. And community arts teaching. The other thing I did learn was synchronized swimming, I took that love of finding my centre of gravity from the slopes to the water, because I was a lousy swimmer- I’d sink like stone- so my way of overcoming my fear of the water was synchronized swimming- just the freedom and the way I could control my body- that was probably my first experience of body control as such, rather than being out of control with yoga. The Pilates Method wasn’t even on my horizon.
Bruce Hildebrand: What an incredible rich background there to contribute to finding what it was eventually with Pilates- that’s now long-term history for you- there was some interesting discoveries there with your body along the way, like you’re talking about finding your centre on the slopes, finding your centre in the water that was an inherent or an intuitive sense for you?
Allison Brown: Very much an intuitive sense. I liked the feel of that sort of exploration and I can remember, you know, way back in the days when we had the CD case and the headphones- well, Chamonix I’d find it hillside and I’d play music while I was skiing- it was like, wow, that freedom to find my centre of gravity and work with rhythm and timing was amazing.
Bruce Hildebrand: Do you feel like that was a learned skill- was it something you picked up from your parents or some early teachers?
Allison Brown: My mum was a music teacher, and a classical musician. So I had a really strong upbringing of rhythm, and I learned music for years and did musical exams and I was never going to be a concert pianist, but certainly, movement and rhythm and music has always been part of my world.
Bruce Hildebrand: I’m excited to open a few early pages of the diary- I can see this being a rich exploration as we continue Allison. Can you tell me the story Allison of when you first arrived at Pilates?
Allison Brown: Along the journey of my married life, my husband and I decided that we wanted to have career changes. Nursing was good, but it was really long hours and with two young children, those hours are pretty tough at times so we wanted some more regularity when the kids were in primary school. David had always been interested in science even though it was quite tough to think about doing something as long as Chiropractic or even Physiotherapy. We decided that remedial massage therapy would be a really good area professionally to work in. So we both went and did study at the time at the Melbourne School of Tactile Therapy, as it was then, and then ended up with Diplomas in Health Science and worked as remedial massage therapists in Ivanhoe and gained quite a reputation with local GPs who I knew because I had done community health nursing in this area. So I’ve always had really good medical relationships with mainstream medicine. So that journey was great, but in amongst that journey we discovered there are a lot of people with low back pain who were often rehabbed by putting them in a pool and working with hydrotherapy. That worked really well for some people, but it didn’t work for others. Suddenly I thought about my own experience in a water environment as a synchronized swimmer. And it really occurred to me that how could you gain stability in an unstable environment without your central nervous system having a sense of what stability was in the first place. So there had to be another way! Both of us started exploring and researching other methodology or other ways of working with people and we happened upon this magical word called Pilates, which was really such a tiny industry, was really only involved in the dance world, ballet world in Australia. Looking at those concepts they were really interesting. It was growing in the U.S. at the time, and as Remedial Massage Therapists we worked with HCF, and Telstra, and with Hewlett Packard with their program designs. In amongst that journey of working with individual people and taking their histories I had two folk who had major injuries due to motorbike accidents and had been rehabbed in the U.S. where they were living and working at the time with the Pilates Method. Amazing! And it came at a time when that word Pilates we had discovered it. And then there’s two people with their stories of recovery from their massive injuries were incredible. So that continued the thread of ‘What is Pilates and how can we experience it for ourselves?"
Bruce Hildebrand: Exciting- and what year are we talking at this point Allison?
Allison Brown: We’re talking about late eighties- early nineties. I started looking around and there were a few studios in Melbourne where an ordinary person could actually go- they are very ballet orientated and basically didn’t want to know an ordinary citizen. I found out that the Green Mill Dance Project was happening at the time and that would have been around 1993. They had early morning mat classes as part of that project. because it was mainly dance and theater people who were actually taking part in that conference project.
My first contact with doing Pilates- experiencing Pilates the most horrendous experience, it was just so tough. I went along and I did the early morning classes in fact both of us did, and it was hilarious. I thought I was going to die five days in a row, but interestingly after five days, I could actually start to feel that my body was taking on board what I’d learnt after five mornings of a whole hour working with people who obviously knew what they were doing. So that was the first real life introduction to the Pilates Method.
Bruce Hildebrand: How interesting Allison, what fascinating stories and so early in Australia as well I think in the current climate and the exposure of Pilates, it’ll be news to many listeners that it was hard to come by- you actually had to go hunting rather than being on every corner these days.
Allison Brown: That’s right- in fact there were only about three or four studios in Melbourne. When we started our studio, it was only the fifth or sixth studio in Melbourne- so really early days- sunrise industry and mainly for the dance world.
Bruce Hildebrand: Fascinating! Can you share with us Allison some of your first impressions of Pilates and of your teacher, of the other people in the class and also the perceptions of other people in your life when you told them that you’d begun Pilates?
Allison Brown: Basically unless you had some primary rehab reason for doing Pilates or your dance injury, most studios didn’t want to know you- and there were so few. So after contacting two- run by Physiotherapists, I just gave up on that idea. As it turned out at that stage in time we were taking care of Christine Walsh who had a ballet school and her ballet students as remedial massage therapists and Christine told us about a wonderful Pilates teacher who was looking at expanding her horizons and moving into the area of working with regular people rather than ballet and dance people. And she put us in contact with Robyn Fynmore. Rob was interested in setting up a studio, but didn’t really want to run a studio for herself at the time. So we decided that we would set up the studio and Robyn would be our first teacher and she would mentor me- which is how it all started.
So we imported equipment directly from the U.S.- there was no supplier in Australia- Balanced Body equipment- and Rob suggested that Balanced Body was the best on the market. So that’s what we did because we really wanted to have equipment that would last the journey, knowing that a lot of our clients would be regular people and we needed that equipment to be- from an engineering perspective- good quality. So we imported equipment. Rob taught me, and then Robyn suggested that we go to Queensland where Rael Isacowitz was running his first educational course. It was a week long course- I must’ve been doing Pilates for about six to 12 months with Rob at the time when we rolled up to Queensland where he ran this course with about 15 teachers.
It was really scary- it was intimidating, it was difficult, he was such a task master and I didn’t enjoy the experience. My academic brain enjoyed the challenge, but certainly my emotional brain didn’t like it at all. But I suffered the week, I was nearly going to come home and Robyn persuaded me that I should stay and finish what I’d started and quite rightly so- and interestingly enough, I use so much of that repertoire today. We were not even given notes- we had to remember it all or record it- so fortunately for me I draw really well so I had every exercise that we we’re presented with drawn down in stick figures and mathematical equations. And really, I still use all that repertoire- so thank you Rael Isacowitz for my wonderful, but really tough learning experience. It was there that I met Paul Cini. Paul Cini was doing that course too and we got to stay in touch and it was not long after that, that Paul ran his first teacher training course being involved with the APMA- eventually it was ratified by the APMA. So that’s how I started my journey. Then we moved into a commercial space, a bigger space, and then started inviting other teachers to come and work with us , some who we trained along the journey and mentored who did Paul’s courses and others who had already been trained elsewhere. So interesting journey,
Bruce Hildebrand: Some fascinating insights there along the way!
Allison Brown: Certainly! So back to the other part of your question about what were my insights about other people in the studio? One of my most amazing experiences in the studio was seeing how Rob worked with other people. She had this amazing ability to work with really ordinary bodies in a really wonderful way of breaking down exercises into small parts. I think her own injury history probably gave her that incredible skill. And yet at the same time, working with unbelievable clients like David McAllister, who was a client of Robyns for a long time and seeing where Pilates movement could also take you on equipment with a high-end athlete- he and Vicki Attard were clients in our studio for a long time in those early years. That was such a wonderful experience. So I had that ability to just observe regular bodies, and then I had that ability to observe the extreme athletic body. I’ve been very fortunate in my journey with Pilates and what I’ve learned.
Bruce Hildebrand: Absolutely. And for those who may not be aware- David McAllister- ex- Principal artist to the Australian Ballet and very long-term recently retired Artistic Director of the Australian Ballet as well, and Vicki Attard you mentioned also a Principal artist.
Allison Brown: I’ve got a funny story that I must share because it’s so worthy of sharing. One of my remedial massage therapy clients who was really broken down body not into movement, an academic hardly moved, ever sat in a chair, for most of her working life and who needed to exercise came in and had a look at the studio and decided that " Argh, it wasn’t bad, but she should do Pilates, but maybe it’s not for her right now. But in amongst that conversation dropped the fact that she loved ballet and ballet was amazing to watch. And the epitome of her whole ballet experience was watching David McAllister dance. David was in the studio at that time and overheard that conversation, and I chatted to him later and said, David do you think if you signed a photograph for Sue saying, love and kisses from David McAllister. And then if I drew the outline of your body on a floor mat, and she could actually have her first experience laying in your shape, on the floor mat with your picture would you be prepared to be a part of that bit of fun? Oh sure. David was totally up for it. And to this day, this lady who is now in her seventies still practices the Pilates Method and still goes to class many years later.
Bruce Hildebrand: What an incredible story!
Allison Brown: Wonderful.
Bruce Hildebrand: It’s fascinating to hear!
Allison Brown: I’ve got lots of stories, Bruce.
Bruce Hildebrand: Really that’s one of the intentions of The Pilates Diaries Podcast. Allison to share these stories and divulge how interesting and what the different motives can be to, what has Pilates come together and make it part of someone’s life. Allison, can you share with us some of your earliest progress in Pilates also the experience of when you first started to notice that Pilates was having an impact on your life?
Allison Brown: Coming from nursing, I came into the Pilates Method with a lousy back, lifting patients and having back pain on and off enough to go to the physio or go to the chiropractor every now and again. So that early experience with Pilates, I really noticed after a few months of learning and then a good 12 months later, I was finding that I really didn’t have any pain at all. And if it did come then. all of a sudden I was on top of it again. So it, was never an outstanding problem pretty much from six months into my Pilates experience and onwards. And even today I’ve had some pretty radical surgery along the journey, but, don’t suffer painful experiences, my body’s not broken down even with all my surgery. So for me, it was " God- sent" it was such an outstanding experience of how I can move forwards in that way and not have to suffer back pain. So that made me a better teacher in a way, because I had the experience of not having an extraordinarily athletic body nor following that pathway particularly for all of my life. Therefore being able to share Pilates in perhaps a more down-to-earth way, rather than being an extraordinary athlete I was much more, credible to my clients and their experience- of maybe it can vary for an ordinary person like me, not just the athletic type.
Bruce Hildebrand: The empathy part, I can hear loud and clear that your ability to relate to your clients to the degree where it’s so authentic, that you essentially we all are able to see ourselves in our clients’ bodies and to be able to empathize with helping them through and helping them have breakthroughs with how to function well and how to have a pain-free life with the methodologies of Pilates.
Allison Brown: Yeah, that’s right. and it does come down to those two things. What disturbs me sometimes out there in the general public arena is the perception of a Pilates teacher being on stage and being it’s all about the Pilates teacher and how they perform. Whereas what I would say is real Pilates is about stepping inside, as you just expressed, somebody else’s body and really understanding, or at least trying to understand how it is for them and getting them to learn through their own experiences of movement. What feels good? What doesn’t feel so good. And if you don’t have that ability as a Pilates teacher to work with a client so individually that way, then it just becomes another exercise regime. And not as Joseph Pilates intended, which was more a mind body connection. And if you like almost a soul based connection of a complete ability to feel into one’s self and the other person you are working with. That’s what I think the essence of what allows Pilates to stand different to other exercise methodologies.
Bruce Hildebrand: Do you interpret Joseph Pilates’ original work and his extensive commitment to it through his lifetime, Allison, as having that unique ability to tap into that for his clients and have them experience with this empathy.
Allison Brown: I think so because, in studying Joseph Pilates history. And even in the dancers who he worked with they all had injuries. In fact, one of them even had a radical mastectomy and unless he could really step into that process. Yeah, certainly. But I think his methodology doesn’t stop with Joseph and his concept of working with the whole body. I don’t think it stops there- I think Traditional Pilates and what we know as being " The Method" and what we’ve learned, we don’t necessarily understand how he progressed. We know more about how his method eventuated at the end of his journey, but we don’t necessarily understand in detail about how he came to those conclusions. Those steps are really quite important- so when I say that the Pilates Method is not finite and it’s not the end of our journey as Pilates teachers, I mean that we can progress onwards with the Pilates Method being our foundation base and progress into our futures, by what we’ve experienced through our journey with The Method and also inclusion of human movement and understanding of neuroscience, which has just opened up that possibility to expand our horizons in all sorts of ways.
Bruce Hildebrand: Incredible richness of which is speak of the Pilates Method Allison. It’s clear that it’s such a huge part of your life and how you go about your day to day activities.
Allison Brown: Well it’s a way of life, it’s not even just a thing I practice as a profession. It’s a way of thinking, it’s a way of being, it’s a way of living. That word that you used before functional this to me is the epitome of what I do. I take the Pilates Method as The Method, and I break it down into small parts in order to use it to expand on the functional horizons of those people I work with. But the end point or at least the journey of trajectory for those people that I work with has got to be their improved function. So even though I practice The Method and I use the concepts of The Method, you might not see me teaching traditional Pilates exercises precisely at that high end level that we were all taught to work with. You don’t often see me working with them in that extreme way because I’ve metamorphosed them into functional activities, often standing but using all the concepts that we’ve learned as supine, prone, sidelining exercises, but with the same concept in the background, staying true to The Method in that way.
Bruce Hildebrand: I think I was fortunate in my journey Allison to see that relatively early that we all live in a vehicle called our human body and the common denominator is that regardless of what pursuit, what vocation, what athletic or non-athletic activities you take up throughout the entirety of your lifetime, it really distills down to how does this wonderful machine work and how it can be optimized. And for me the approach of Pilates hit it between the eyes with how effective it can be in getting the most out of our body.
Allison Brown: Exactly. I would say that on top of that, it’s got to be about feeling and the way you and I feel it within our own bodies- and then the way we interpret it and I feel that the greatest gift that we can give our clients is to draw out of them the feeling of what the exercise, what the movement type that they’re doing right now, how that feels to them. My academic interest was always the science of it, how the body moves as a mechanical piece of equipment in a way as an engineering sphere in space And yet you and I both know. how important it is that feeling state- that’s where the art and the science come together. I think you can have too much of the art so it all becomes about emotional feeling. But the biomechanics of it- it’s got to be a combination of both so that a person can function in life well with optimal efficiency and effectiveness, whatever that is for them. And that’s partly our responsibility to be able to pass a value judgment on where they think we can help them head with their own body, whatever that holds.
Bruce Hildebrand: I think it serves as a perfect combination of your interest in the workings of the human body, with your science approach and your nursing and your orthopedic approach to the mechanics, and then coming from this sensory place of getting to know your own body, both on the ski slopes and in the water, and to be able to find a real workability and blend with the Pilates Method between those two.
Allison Brown: Yeah. really important. I’m so fortunate to have had all of those early experiences.
Bruce Hildebrand: Allison, was there a part of the experience at this point in the journey that you didn’t like, or you didn’t want to accept the parts of Pilates that you found most challenging perhaps in the pursuit of wanting to improve.
Allison Brown: I’ve always been one to be challenged. I seem to draw challenge to me, But you can’t learn unless you are challenged and it’s not just a matter of academic challenge. It’s challenge at all levels when we’re talking about this sort of methodology. What I didn’t like about it early in the journey was the very balletic way of teaching it. I’m not talking about how Robyn taught me. That’s completely different story. I am meaning the way that some of those early teachers that I experienced were very old school ballet. Certainly Ron Fletcher was a fine example of this, he came across to a conference here in Melbourne and I can remember Ron was walking around the room slapping people on body parts that weren’t quite in the right place. And one very lovely older woman already in her sixties, rose off the reformer and confronted Ron about the fact that you do not touch people in that way in this country and how offensive that was. That particular little story was all about the way Pilates was taught earlier on and it was not a pleasant experience and I hated that regimentation of it because I can see order as being a necessary vehicle to learn a particular sort of methodology, but where it is so regimented and taught in a way that puts a person down rather than elevates a person up- in my view that might’ve been the old fashioned way of teaching, but it wasn’t ever a way that sat well with me. So if that’s what Pilates teaching and I have to teach that way is all about, then I can’t teach it. That was probably the toughest, being confronted by that way of teaching. Later on down the track I did a Certificate IV in Workplace Education and Training so I learnt the skill of really good teaching practice. So that was hard in the beginning. I didn’t find the method and the exercises- sure they were challenging but I rise to the occasion with challenge.
Bruce Hildebrand: Allison, who was some of the people that you met along the way at this point that really helped shape your Pilates experience? I’m curious to hear more about where Robyn first learned her pilates, being one of the earliest in Melbourne. Also you mentioned Rael and Paul Cini- can you tell us more about those and others along the journey?
Allison Brown: Rob was a fabulous teacher and a great mentor for me. Paul was great. And he was really interested in learning and understanding more of the academic side of human movement. So when I did his course that’s where he and I really resonated because we used to have really long discussions about human movement principles and the way those principles worked with the Pilates Method. Those conversations in those early days were quite fantastic because it was so new and he was a great mentor as well. Then I got to know various other people along the journey because the method was so small at that time. There weren’t that many of us, but we started to be involved with the APMA as being the platform for registering teachers. I got to know Donna Oliver and Narelle Forbes- we were out there to promote the method. Narelle is still a lifelong friend. Tracey Nicholson- we shared some wonderful times on the APMA education committee. Liz Hewitt came to work with us as a teacher- I think she was with us seven or eight years before she went on to the Australian Ballet School. She’s still a close friend. And in those early discussions, because she’d studied human movement- a lot of our own internal education in our studio was based around more the medical model and bringing the art of the Pilates Method and aligning that with the medical modeling- there are a few of us who came from those sort of backgrounds. That was extraordinary sharing at that time. Maya Aubrey – a few of us went to Barcelona to the World Back Pain Congress some 14 years ago. The very first time I met Maya and she’s since been here for a conference in Victoria and she’s now a friend of mine. Those early years we went to other medical conferences looking at other academic research work that was out there was really an important part of our learning experience as teachers for some of us lucky enough to be able to attend those sort of conferences.
A lot of those experiences that we’ve had, as people who started out in the industry earlier were really experiences of comradery, exploration and community, so a lot of our learning has come about because of the way we’ve had discussion between ourselves, whether it’s been designing workshops, delivering workshops, talking about in the context of the APMA committees, that we all belonged to. How we felt the Pilates Method should progress along the journey and looking at its history and how it’s progressed in the U.S. for example. Those times have been rich along our journey. So we haven’t come into it with a vast knowledge of the background that teachers now have we came in the early days, creating an industry and being part of that creation as people like Penny Latey and the others had been slightly before us.
Bruce Hildebrand: Fascinating. And you speak about the richness and about the community and that creation of the early stages of the industry, particularly in Melbourne, but also as a bigger part of Australia Allison. If we step outside of your personal Pilates Diary for a moment and step into the APMA Pilates Diary- can you give us some insights about how the Australian Pilates Method Association was formed in the early stages and what that looked like? I think that’ll be really interesting for listeners on the podcast.
Allison Brown: Yeah, of course, It’s early journey started with folk involved in ballet world. So along that journey, a group of early teachers, mostly from Sydney felt that they needed a locus for the industry and should formulate an association to be both a conduit for information and promotion. But to really gather the few teachers who had learned overseas The Method together to try and formulate what it meant within the context of Australia. They’d all had their parties journey either in the U.S. or in the U.K. like Penny Latey . And it was new, it was different, but they wanted to consolidate and at least formulate a process by which to progress forwards. So as with all grassroots organizations, there’s always a bit of a jostle, particularly when it’s new, how to define The Method, how to progress it forwards, how to verbalize it, how to communicate it. There were teething problems in the early days as there was in the Massage Therapy industry. Really in a way, we are still a sunrise industry in certain respects. There are lots of Pilates teachers out there. There are a lot of Pilates teachers who don’t feel that belonging to an organization and promoting their industry or needing to be part of a registered body is for them. And yet, in my experience, in Medicine, in Nursing to be part of an industry and to learn about what that professional body means and how it can be transformed and transposed in the bigger picture of the ongoing journey in Australia, so that the Nursing industry, and then the Massage industry has professional standing and professional credibility and so that the public understand what it is that they are moving forwards with. So what the public needs to understand what it’s getting from it’s nurses in the Nursing industry and how that plays out. As far as Massage Therapists are concerned, what their expectations of Massage Therapists should be and what their boundaries are to be in that relationship between the Massage Therapist, a very intimate process, and really likewise in the Pilates industry, we are gifted with a very intimate process of working with people at a very personal level.
Therefore we need to have boundaries of promotion within our industry that are safe. Safe for us as teachers, safe for the people who we work with and really that is what good professional identity is all about. Now, as with the early days of Massage Therapy, there were a few different organizations that were formed in the early days, but ultimately those organizations had to come together in order to be recognized and self-regulated. So the APMA journey has been one journey. The PAA journey has been another journey. And then there’s also other exercise disciplines that have taken on parts of the Pilates Method as their journey. But if we are to remain as a professional body in the future, being granted with those very important and quite serious responsibilities of taking care of members of the public, we need to be able to stand up and be one voice with a cohesive umbrella and come together as one whole industry. The Massage Therapy industry has managed to do it and this is where I see that the Pilates industry needs to hit in the future. All those smaller, early historic journeys, like the APMA, we all had to start somewhere and we all had to try and grow and work with what we thought our industry was all about. But now it’s time to come together and be one voice for the wellbeing of everybody- for our professional career as well as for the public’s interest in who we are and what we do.
Bruce Hildebrand: Fantastic to hear your viewpoint on that Allison and I think the very rich place that you come from to see the perspective of that, really forges the way for how things hopefully evolve within the Pilates industry sooner rather than later. What springs to mind for me is the analogy of the four stages of any organization or group coming together is the forming and the storming, and then the norming, and then finally the performing happening. My take on that little sequence is that it’s time for the Pilates industry to perform and come together and move forward in a progressive way.
Allison Brown: That’s true- and there’s no room for egos. When you come to that stage, there’s no room for power struggles or egos, trying to be the best person on the stage, which can happen. After all the Pilates industry has grown out of an onstage performance historic journey, but when we come to that final level where you have to be one voice. We have to put the onstage aside, we have to put the power struggles aside, we have to put the individual personalities aside and really become one voice. And that can only be done with a group of people- that can’t be done by one person. So the group is really important, the community is really important.
Bruce Hildebrand: And if we use David McAllister as an example, I think perhaps his challenge and focus and sacrifice to become the top of his game in a performance sense and then put much of that aside, no doubt, to uphold for 20 odd years as the Artistic Director of the Australian Ballet, what a leadership and what an example of what can be achieved when focus is really brought to the situation.
Allison Brown: Totally because he’s such a great example of that leadership, a very humble person, not an ego. He never was in the studio- when clients would say, oh, David McAllister, I’ve seen you in this. I’ve seen you in that, how wonderful you are. He was genuinely humble. " Really? You saw me in that, and that was a favourite of yours well. Oh, thank you!" What a leader, he’s always brought out the best in those he has worked with. From going down and working with the ladies in the costume department, ironing the costumes and hearing their stories- to working with a set designers, working with the musicians, working with everybody at every level in a humble way, but learning from them what is required and then pulling the strings together to journey onwards, and bring that organization to the wonderful place it’s been today. He’s a great example- that’s where we need to be heading somehow.
Bruce Hildebrand: Allison, can you reflect on the time when you knew you were beginning to get hooked on Pilates? What was the hidden gem that were you beginning to find in your participation in Pilates that you couldn’t ignore, that had crept under your skin and was in itch that you couldn’t resist to scratch?
Allison Brown: Well, I guess movement! I love what it did for me intellectually, emotionally. I am a mover and even though I didn’t get brought up in a family where movement was all that important I am a natural mover and I loved it. So to put me in an environment where I could work with movement, not only teach it but feel it, express it, understand it more to me was like, oh my God, where have I been for the last umpteen years? And that’s the way I still feel about it. In fact, apart from the Pilates Method and doing bushwalking and all the usual stuff as we head towards retirement age. I decided 10 years ago after I had breast cancer that I wanted to learn Argentine Tango. At the age of 64, I started tango lessons. And at the age of 69 I can very successfully stand on a pair of high heels, move in all sorts of planes of movement I never thought I’d be able to do and have balance and coordination and timing that I had never experienced before. And love it and train about six hours a week with my partner. What more can I say, movement? The lights went on and I just ran with it.
Bruce Hildebrand: What an expression even to this day. And that’s what grabbed you in the early days? Fantastic. And can you tell us about some challenges at this stage of your Pilates progress? Was there some factors that had you either fall more deeply in love with Pilates at this point? Or were there some elements that you were finding were rubbing you up the wrong way, some issues or hidden challenges in the studio that you’re attending or the industry at large, that you didn’t feel aligned with, or you felt turned you off?
Allison Brown: I guess we all find areas that are uncomfortable and we explore that and then move on as we become more confident with those challenges. Talking personally in my own practice, the journey of my recovery from breast cancer and all the surgery that went along with that- radical mastectomy, chemotherapy, then a total hip replacement four years ago after I’d started tango, . So medical issues along the journey have been hiccups, but in many respects The Method because I would go back to basics and The Method could be broken down into small parts of progression that really helped me to move forward quite quickly because I had a fairly high level of athletic ability before those health issues came to the fore I really shoo-ed it in as far as my, particularly my breast cancer journey and my chemo was concerned. as we now know, these days, you have a better uptake of chemotherapy drugs if you have a good metabolic rate and you have some exercise post chemo, which is a huge year of research as we speak. Not that I knew that at the time, but I would come home and I would get on a Reformer and just move slowly and gradually. There were difficulties along the journey, but I actually overcame them very well with the Pilates Method.
If we’re talking about studio issues, it’s tough running a studio when people are sick, you have to step into the void even though you’re being the business manager, you’re being the remedial massage therapist, I’m a Pilates teacher to my own clients. I’m trying to be a mother, I’m trying to be a partner in life, I’m trying to be a confidant and a teacher to my kids. It’s a tough gig, juggling all those balls- they were really tough years. When somebody was sick or somebody was away for a set period of time or things were going on in their lives, and I would step into the void- it was really hard going. I certainly don’t miss those days of juggling all those balls. Had wonderful teachers I worked with and even along that journey, there are different personality types and there are different folk who have a different moral and ethical perspective on their business career. So you end up at times, if you’re not careful suffering the financial outfall of having somebody disappear with a percentage of your client base, when you’ve given those folk opportunities to grow and you’ve taken the risk in business to provide those opportunities. But what you can’t count on is that everybody has the same professional ethics that you do- you learn that the hard way. The business life of The Method or any business where you’re working so personally with people it can be really hard. Those aspects were tough and yet I got to work in the studio with a team who were generally awesome and I learned as much from the team as I did from any outside teacher. It was wonderful- they were really good years as well as being tough years.
Bruce Hildebrand: I couldn’t agree more- it’s very much a privileged position to be a studio owner in my opinion- I think you’d align with that. In the same breath- there’s lots of challenges that come with it and like you mentioned earlier, learning is challenging and challenging is learning- the two probably co-exist universally. If nothing else from this whole conversation, Allison of which obviously there’s many things to take from it, if that message comes across loud and clear that the operations of running a Pilates Studio in the current model, in my opinion really need to shake up and really need to find a more sustainable way for the greatness of many teachers, to be able to continue doing their thing. It’s very inspiring having you share your passion for Pilates as you had later into your sixties the ongoing commitment and delivery of your passion to many clients.
Allison Brown: Yeah, thank you Bruce. It has been a privilege along the journey, and I totally agree with you. There needs to be a shake up in our industry at many levels and for a different modeling because those of us who run big studios, as much as anything else, we do it for the love and for the humanity of what we do. It’s a bit like medicine- if I ever went into medicine to earn a huge amount of money and be financially extremely successful, then forget it because that’s not what medicine is about. And that’s not what nursing is about. And if I ever went into the Pilates Method to be hugely financially successful, then I’m there for all the wrong reasons. It’s a journey where you put a lot of yourself into it in working with teachers and working with your clients. So they’re some of the really tough calls when you run a business- you’ve got to become a business head and in the current climate with rentals the way they are and the expectation of building owners, it’s really hard and with the shutdowns and the openings. Our old way of working as far as big studios go, is going to become obsolete in a way it has to, unless we look at another way of working. Once I divorced and once I divorced myself from the bigger business what I did was put my money into buying a commercial space so I now work in my building here and fortunately I own it outright so that I could not have that sort of financial stress and pressure in the background.
I work with Ingrid Lamb in this space- we both have run big studios. We have both wanted to have another life outside Pilates and our family environments have become very important to us. And yet we still love The Method. Both of us have not wanted big financial pressures and the uncertainty of some ethical issues that can arise to be part of our ongoing journey. So we work together in my building. Ingrid runs her business, I run my business, we even have different business names, we have different days that we work in the studio environment. We communicate about everything- so we’re not one business, we’re two very distinct businesses we have no professional jealousy and if I don’t have space for a client, then I’ll hand them onto Ingrid. We work extremely well within that model, but we have very precise moral, and ethical perspectives on how we function as individual people, as well as our belief in ongoing education in The Method. Ingrid’s an educator as well and so her journey is a slightly different trajectory, but we’re both interested in education. So that is a common bond for both of us. We’ve been working this way for quite a few years now. My friend Narelle Forbes got us together to think about whether we could work that way, and it does work a treat. We just talk things through – life is really good for both of us. And even in lockdown, we work at very different times, we work on zoom, running our own businesses together. We share financial responsibilities equally for this building- works extremely well. I think we can all come up with new and creative ways of working in our industry and still being successful.
Bruce Hildebrand: The way you just described that it’s got sustainability, it’s got ecology written all over it and real enjoyment and love and continuity.
Allison Brown: Exactly. And also we can have another life apart from the Pilates world, which we love it- don’t get me wrong, but we all need balance in various ways. So it enables both of us to have a balanced life rather than having to think about where we’re heading when people are sick or people are on holidays, and always having to give more, we’re giving them enough already give more than we feel we can.
Bruce Hildebrand: Well said! When we first met Allison, you were in a residential area in the back blocks of Ivanhoe, I think it was 2001, I was fresh back from the UK for a quick visit and was excited to see what was happening in the Pilates scene in Melbourne. I popped my head in and was curious to meet these wonderful people doing Pilates in Ivanhoe. I think it was the back of your house a separate part of your house. It brings back great memories. it was such a beautiful experience of this tranquil place- remember walking through the gorgeous garden and being very nervous to meet you and David for the first time, because I was very early in my Pilates.
I’m curious for you to take us on a journey of when you first opened your original studio, and you talked about importing that equipment and so forth- where has the practicalities and the operational nature of Pilates taken you? Through that time across different studios- what sort of size did you go to and where did you journey to?
Allison Brown: We had that home studio for about five years before we sought a commercial premises. We had a house on a corner with a private entrance at the back. We started off with one Balanced Body Reformer wasn’t Balanced Body, it was Current Concepts- this is how long ago that was the equipment was Current Concepts equipment. We imported directly from The States, our first Reformer, and Wunda Chair. I still have that little Wunda Chair. It’s an original Joseph Pilates design- no handles on it, just simple springs. It can be tipped upside down and made into a chair. Bauhaus school design- amazing. I still have it. It’s a real favorite. And a Trapeze Table and floor mats. So that was our beginning. Apart from that equipment we only had enough space to be able to fit two mats on the floor. It worked perfectly until we realized that we had to move forwards.
Bruce Hildebrand: And then you progressed to a commercial premises?
Allison Brown: Yeah. Commercial premises, which was a big risk. The original studio size was big enough so that three teachers could work in the studio space at any one time- so it was large. We had 190 square meters of floor space as well as two clinical rooms, a reception, waiting area, and a staff room. When we first went in there we had a three by three year lease. We negotiated an amount that we could manage to grow our studio in, so that was a real advantage, but of course three years down the track they slapped greater rental on- that’s when the financial pressure really started to build. We had to make sure that we had people in the door consistently and that we had enough staff to cover for those financial pressures. Two clinical rooms working, three massage therapists- at our height we had 10 staff members.
Bruce Hildebrand: It’s a lot of pressure to create such a big operation.
Allison Brown: Yeah, it was, it was huge.
Bruce Hildebrand: At that stage your hats really changed from being a movement therapist a practitioner to being a business person and getting dragged into the administrative office much more.
Allison Brown: Yeah, much much more. In fact, behind the scenes when I went home, that’s all I ever did. When you’ve got children, it’s really hard to juggle all those balls- it wasn’t easy. And yet I am one to rise to a challenge- as you do if you’re that sort.
Bruce Hildebrand: I can hear that coming through loud and clear. There was a progression to a country destination Daylesford you took up a studio up there Allison?
Allison Brown: I started Daylesford Pilates, that was really my retirement interest it wasn’t quite where I wanted to be a heading right then- it was for the future. My studio was the first in Daylesford, the foremost studio, biggest studio with quite a few clients coming through. More recently you’ve handed that on to a successor,
Bruce Hildebrand: and you’re now located in Ivanhoe- you’re running a small operation, as you mentioned earlier.
Allison Brown: Yeah. That’s exactly it. I think what concerned me the most was, when you work with clients for a period of time, you’ve taken them on their personal journeys- it is such a personal aspect of our teaching practice? I had to feel really assured that I was passing my studio on to somebody who had those same heartfelt aspirations and who would work with people in that way. I could withdraw from that business feeling happy and comfortable about how that business was going to progress.
Bruce Hildebrand: And you’re now located in Ivanhoe- you’re running a small operation, as you mentioned earlier- looking back at interesting twists and turns that has been your Pilates journey Allison. Was there a point in time where you looked inwardly and considered whether Pilates was going to continue to be a major part of your life as you move forward? I’m curious to see what that point in time was for you that allowed you to go "Yes, I do want Pilates to continue to be part of what I do". And I’m curious about the influences on that.
Allison Brown: Well I guess the financial pressures were too great and losing a proportion of our client base in a manner that was quite soul-destroying was really tough. And having personal as well as business pressures at that stage in time and eventually ending in closing up of the studio completely and divorcing, that was crunch time. That was the time when I thought ‘ Is this really what I want to be doing? Should I just go and work for somebody else and leave it at that?" And yet having my own studio, working my own hours working with my clients in a very particular way I really enjoyed that. And working in a team is also important, but coming from medicine, I’ve always worked in the wider sense of the team. So I’ve always worked with other physios, other podiatrists, other human movement graduates. For years I’ve worked with Andrew Garnham at Alphington Sports Medical Centre. I had that sort of relationship with Andrew where he’d say to me " Hey, listen, if you’re unsure about something or having problems with something, please just email me and we’ll have a phone conversation. It doesn’t matter that I’m not taking care of that person. If you’ve got any queries at all". And we still have that working relationship so working with a team of teachers one could say I miss that. On the other hand, I’ve always worked within a team environment within medicine, and I still do. So that was crunch time where I went, you know what? I can just work on my own. I’m working at Daylesford. And there are days when I’m not going to be here and the studio lay empty- I didn’t want to employ anybody else or even consider subcontracting- I’ve had enough of that. So I bought a building, I worked at Daylesford, had time to reflect going on long bush walks on my own as to what I really wanted. This studio here, I’m really glad I still have this small space and I’m really happy with the way that has played out- it’s been a wonderful journey.
Bruce Hildebrand: If you’re ever in the Ivanhoe area, I strongly recommend you pop your head in and say G’day to Allison- it’s a cute little space and it’s on a gorgeous little back street in a nice little pocket of Ivanhoe that nearly backs down onto the creek- it’s gorgeous! Allison, what was the experience at that time when after many long bush walks and you’d made that decision about how you were planning to move forward with Pilates- a sense of relief, calm, peace, excitement, or even overwhelm of how you’d come to that point where you knew what was still to come and you’re excited to move forward with that.
Allison Brown: Those years taught me a lot and The Method had set me up, in very clear ways of emotional resilience and ways of self support. I don’t just mean business wise- emotionally and physically. Working with the method had already set me up resilience, strength, understanding what my passions were, understanding what my strengths were how to work and how to be a more balanced person- that was huge! Feeling into my centre and understanding more about how I could create a life that was about being that person who I really am and very much the Pilates Method has been part of that. It’s not just a matter of what I’ve achieved in the Pilates Method, but it has taught me so much about my own personal journey and how to work with myself and how to be! And how I want to project myself on, into the future as me as I really am- no masks, no hidden agendas. I am as I am and if people don’t like me, I don’t really care. That’s partly aging, as you get older you learn that other people’s opinions don’t actually matter- what you feel about yourself and who you are is all that really matters and I’m really comfortable in that place. So being a teacher sharing with others is a very important part of who I really am. And so I’ll continue onwards into the future.
Bruce Hildebrand: You mentioned the hip replacement, you mentioned the incredible journey through breast cancer as well. Beyond this, you’ve set up the space in Ivanhoe. What’s been the changes for you, Allison in your body, your mind- and even in your spirit as Joseph Pilates liked to put it- that are now second nature to you in the way that you do Pilates- you’ve come through that maturity. What are some of the things that you couldn’t have even imagined would have been possible without Pilates in your life- particularly when you’re going through some of those challenging times?
Allison Brown: I’ve always been a self-reflector, so that’s nothing new, but having the ability to trust myself, to trust the right message, the gut instinct, the gut feelings, feeling them and listening to them and trusting them because you’re going to have them, but still not trust. So throughout that journey it’s been really loud and clear to me that I am on a trajectory. Everything that I’ve done in my whole life is related in one way or another. So it’s a bit like the kinetic chain, that there are all these individual paths that have had some relationship and I’ve learnt to connect them all. So I’m very assured that where I’m at right now, working with The Method and the way that I’m working with it still individually with clients, perhaps I’ll expand more fully into other teaching practices now that I’m getting older. My partner, who is a filmmaker is really encouraging me in that way to write a book, to think about some podcasts or a documentary about The Method about that journey and how it’s affected me on all of those different levels to come to the place where I’m really comfortable with who I am, what I am, where I’m heading. Being in the present is all that matters right now. Running the studio, you have to have a plan to run a business and there’s no two ways about that but the most important part of any journey onwards is being present and The Method has helped me to understand that by focusing inwards so precisely and learning about my various feelings when I do so. And that’s what’s given me that ability to be present completely in various ways in every facet of my life. It’s a no brainer! Do I have plans for the future? Hell yeah- but tomorrow it might change!
Bruce Hildebrand: I love and am a hundred percent aligned with what you just said. Having spoken to many cancer survivors as well probably one of the key things that one can take away is really appreciating what you’ve got here and now!
Allison Brown: And it gives us a certain insight into how ordinary people feel and how people with serious pain management issues and serious ongoing pathologies, how we need to relate to them in a particular way and help them in their own journey.
Bruce Hildebrand: So beautifully put. What do you wish you knew Allison at the start of the journey that would make the biggest difference to someone who might be considering either starting Pilates or is facing some of the struggles that you did in your Pilates progress?
Allison Brown: Realizing that I would work with all sorts of egos. I wasn’t used to working in an ego-based environment- I was used to working in medicine- that was a trip! So I would say to anybody, starting out, please find your people, work with your people who are aligned to who you are, where you can feel really comfortable and where you can feel confident within yourself- that is really important. I think that would be the biggest, most important aspect of reflection. Yeah. Decide on how you want to progress forwards so not only find your people, but are you wanting this as a career, in your exploration, deciding your pathway? Is it something that’s casual? Is it something that’s more defined as a career pathway? Are you prepared to go that journey of the art and the science of movement? Or are you just going to be a fitness teacher? And there’s nothing wrong with that. If that’s what you want to be, nothing wrong with that at all, but you’ve got to be defined about who you are so that you can be the best teacher for those who are going to come into your arena. I would say, don’t lose yourself in the journey stick with who you are and don’t be shy about voicing your opinion about things. There are people who’ve been in the Pilates industry for years, who have a certain perspective that is " Oh, you haven’t been in the Pilates industry for long enough- how would you know?! Or how could you formulate a reasonable opinion about this or that? But trust that your opinion matters too and the Pilates Method, even though some might say it has to be taught in a certain way. No, everything in life is a progression. And your opinion, your creative way of viewing what you are learning in The Method matters in order to enrich The Method as it progresses onwards into the future. So please don’t be shy!- that’s what I would say to people. Your opinion matters!- delivered respectfully of course! As with all industries respect is the big one being humble, respecting each other and yet learning to be cohesive, learning, to be flexible and trusting that flexibility and respect can lead this industry into the future in a most exciting way!
Be careful about wanting to own a studio? I would never in a million years have agreed to owning a bigger studio if I’d realized all the balls I was going to have to juggle. It certainly taught me a lot about business generally, and about how to negotiate business, negotiate agreements, all sorts of things, huge learning curve. I’m not sorry for any of that- I now have a skillset, including legal skillset, all sorts of aspects to management that I never had before. Even though I did have hospital management type skills, but they’re different. You are supported by a financial system in medicine- you are not in private enterprise. So think very carefully be assured of what you’re getting yourself into. If you want to own a studio- it’s a huge undertaking and not to be taken too lightly. Follow your passion! If you’ve got a passion for movement and you’ve got a passion for delivering movement and improving the lives, the functional lives of people, this is the career pathway for you.
Bruce Hildebrand: So beautifully put! A couple of key things there Allison- the taking Pilates where it goes for you requires you bringing yourself to Pilates so that you can genuinely engage with it. So then it goes to the places that it’s destined to go when you fully show up and be present, like you mentioned earlier. I think that’s a big part that jumps out for me from what you said. Also from the business side, it’s a really fascinating insight in where you’ve been and where you’ve gone with your Pilates business experience and where you now choose to be. That fundamentally, speaks for itself, that there is a way to deliver excellent quality Pilates if you are the type of person who is committed and focused primarily on the client and on what their journey is through the self discovery for their own Pilates and their own engagement and movement with Pilates, that is a different skillset to business. Having your insight to that- you summed it up beautifully before- choose your aspect of the Pilates industry that you really want to excel in and it may or may not be teaching it’s clearly teaching for you. And I think that’s really interesting given that you’ve got an extremely extensive understanding of the entire landscape given the amount of time and the amount of journeying you have done that you come to this place where fundamentally in what I see is a very aligned way with Joseph Pilates- he taught in a relatively humble space in New York City and did wonderful things with his clients on a daily basis.
Allison Brown: Yes. To all of that Bruce! It’s like the full circle! and you’re teaching from a home space too, so you can understand that and it’s that balance of life and how important that is. Some people will choose to have a trajectory of the larger variety and find that they can’t function without the larger stage.
It’s okay- everybody’s different. And there are people who want to work more individually, more independently, and that’s okay too. There are various ways of being, and none of it is wrong apart from the fact that if you’re in the Pilates Method you’re in there for the client- that’s the big one!
Bruce Hildebrand: That’s your only caveat- is that it’s got to be for the client and I couldn’t agree more
Allison Brown: It’s got to be for the client! And the only other thing I would add would be: It’s no sin to teach functional Pilates! It’s not a sin to not stick to the regime of the traditional exercise, but to teach parts thereof because the theory behind it and the philosophy of The Method is the most important part of all and it’s no sin to teach The Method with the philosophy in a functional way.
Bruce Hildebrand: Thanks for such a beautiful summary. Allison, you’ve been incredibly generous with your time on the call today. Thank you so much for such a rich journey and insight into what Pilates has meant for you. The impact that it’s had in many facets of your life- you’ve been so generous in sharing that so thank you so much! For the listeners on the podcast what’s the best way for people to reach out and touch base with you Allison?
Allison Brown: They can reach me on Facebook. Ivanhoe Pilates is on Facebook my email addresses is ivanhoepilates@live.com. Having a new website build at the moment so it’ll be up and running in the next couple of months. But you can find me on Facebook- no worries at all.
Bruce Hildebrand: As a small endorsement, do spend some time with Allison Brown- an absolutely wonderful contributor to our industry. Thank you once again for your time Allison, it’s been a joy.
Allison Brown: Thanks Bruce, bye for now.
Bruce Hildebrand: We hope you enjoyed this episode of The Pilates Diaries Podcast. Drop us a comment online at the links in the show notes, and be sure to subscribe and rate the podcast to keep updated with episode releases and hear more stories from our guests’ Pilates Diaries. This podcast is made possible by the following sponsors- keep an ear out for exclusive Pilates Diaries Podcast listener discount codes. Thanks for listening. The Pilates Diaries Podcast is a proud partner with TRIMIO. Set to launch at the end of 2021 TRIMIO is a much needed space and time utilization booking system for the Pilates industry. With TRIMIO you can return your focus to delivering the highest value to your customers. No longer be lost to the encumbrances of inefficient interactions and experience a new level of working freedom with the power of technology automation doing what it should. Maximize your profitability by optimizing the utilization of your time and physical space with TRIMIO. Find out more and register for pre-release updates at www.TRIMIO.app.
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