Episode Show Notes
Our guest in this episode is Miriam Jones from Motion and Repose in Melbourne. Miriam is a passionate mentor and teacher trainer of the next generation of Pilates instructors and runs a small home studio in Melbourne’s northern suburbs.
[01:23] Miriam elaborates on her background as a dancer who graduated, left Melbourne to see the world and got hooked on yoga and Pilates in Scotland. She decided to return to Australia, get a Pilates qualification and enter the fitness industry.
[04:05] Miriam’s early Pilates experience and she remembers the heated floor, and her body feeling like it had been “put back together”. She stayed with Mat Pilates and didn’t get on the equipment until she came back to Australia.
[06:04] Miriam recalls that in 1998 people in the UK only seemed to go to Pilates for rehabilitation, so she was sharing classes with a mix of generally older people. Most people were not familiar with Pilates, which they confused with yoga.
[08:31] Miriam explains that despite never having any goal to be a movement teacher, she moved into teaching quite quickly, keen to share the benefits of Pilates. Despite 20 years of teaching, she still feels like she is only at the beginning of exploring her relationship to the body.
[11:41] Miriam’s mentor Zosha Piotrowski, seeing magic in Miriam and helping her deliver it, and Claire Norgate, also a member of the Australian Fitness Network, who was a role model as a teacher and mentor.
[15:09] Miriam describes the Pilates available in Brisbane in 2001 was taught by physiotherapists and, although enjoyable, it was also restrictive, and that was the incentive for her to launch her group Pilates classes in church halls and community centres.
[19:58] Miriam acknowledges that her way of teaching Pilates wasn’t going to appeal to everybody and that was okay with her, but if something feels right, she knows to grab it and not let go.
[21:14] Miriam discusses working in a team rather than running a studio, and that gave her the time to develop as a workshop presenter, mentor, and teacher trainer.
[27:42] Miriam’s path in Brisbane, setting up classes in fitness environments, then doing more training and meeting Zosha and Claire in Sydney which led to her joining the Australian Fitness Network Pilates team, became a Stott Pilates teacher trainer, started delivering anatomy courses. Eventually, she opened her own studio.
[30:33] Miriam reveals that what Pilates has taught her is the importance of her relationship to her body, and that the way it moves affects the way she thinks and feels and vice versa.
[32:52] Miriam’s plans for the future, and she talks about re-launching her six-month mentoring program, delivering more teacher training, building her studio, and organising more retreats and workshops.
[34:24] Miriam’s advice to someone starting out in Pilates is not to try and make it perfect, just commit to doing it.
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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.
Our guest for this episode is the wonderful Miriam Jones, based in Melbourne, Australia. Miriam comes with a vast array of experiences and knowledge. Miriam, welcome to the episode.
Miriam Jones: Thanks so much for having me Bruce- excited to be here.
Bruce Hildebrand: Miriam we’ll begin by taking a look back. Can you tell me about life before Pilates? What were your pursuits? Where did you see yourself heading at the time? and in hindsight what do you now see with some of the little threads that might’ve led you discover Pilates?
Miriam Jones: My background comes from dance in particular contemporary dance. I went to Victorian College of the Arts, graduated from there, got offered jobs, but said no to them because I felt like I wanted to go see what the world was about because I wanted to go make art that mattered! As a youngster, I felt like I had to have a purpose for engaging with people. If I was going to make something it had to speak to people beyond a small little community of artistic people in Melbourne. So I went overseas and was having fun getting to know a whole bunch of people outside of the microcosm of the dance world. That really exposed me to understanding that most people didn’t have a great relationship to their body- their bodies were just ways to carry their brain around as opposed to something that they really appreciated and responded to in any intuitive way or responsive way- I was really fascinated by that.
Time went by. I decided along the way that I didn’t want to be a performer anymore, the opportunity had been there but I realized that I was falling in love with the process of connecting to people more than I was in love with the process of making art for people. When I was in Scotland, I started doing yoga and Pilates and just got hooked on it. When everyone else was going to the pub, I would go off to Pilates and then of course go and meet them at the pub afterwards! But it was just this way of moving my body that didn’t have like a performance outcome that sometimes dance can have, but it had a precision to it that was similar to dance. You needed to be really present in your body for it to feel fantastic. That is what led me to coming back to Australia, entering the fitness industry, doing a Pilates qualification and that led me to integrating the love of movement and people in being a Pilates teacher.
Bruce Hildebrand: What a beautiful pathway to begin with. It’s a pretty profound thing to know when you’re relatively young, straight out of graduating to know that you wanted to use your time and have an impact with what you created.
Miriam Jones: Looking back it didn’t feel so profound- it just turned up! I think cause I’d always had quite a natural relationship to seeing bodies move when you’re dancing, you’re seeing bodies move all the time but I think I just had quite an intuitive eye for watching when something needed a little bit of support somewhere else. So moving into Pilates just felt natural.
Bruce Hildebrand: Fantastic. Miriam, can you tell me your story of when you first arrived at Pilates? You mentioned that was in Scotland. What were some of the experiences the first time you arrived- tell us more about the setting.
Miriam Jones: This is not profound but the floor was heated and that was awesome to be in Scotland on a heated floor because growing up in Australia, you’ve done dance in many a cold hall in the middle of winter! There’s nothing movement profound from that. I don’t remember any of the exercises. I literally don’t have a memory of the sequence of feeling like I had to walk out and record what it was that had happened. I just knew that every single time I walked out that my body felt amazing. It gave me that " put back together" feeling.
I only did Mat Pilates, but the teacher had studio stuff in there and I felt like I was a little kid at the lolly store, looking at the equipment and wanting to touch it I think rather than asking her about the classes she was delivering, I was asking her a lot about what the equipment did. I didn’t get on the equipment until I came back to Australia. I just stuck with Mat in Scotland because I felt like it was doing what I wanted it to do. I didn’t feel like I needed to step away from that, and to this day, I think that’s pretty awesome foundation to not feel like you always need to jump away from the Mat to get better at Pilates or get to know your body.
Bruce Hildebrand: Recounting some of my time in the UK- it was pretty darn cold generally, except for one or two weeks in a year – the attraction of either a warm pub or a heated floor to do some exercise on was a flip of a coin I’m sure?!
Miriam Jones: And if you could combine both which I did- not at the same time, but consecutively. Worked brilliantly!
Bruce Hildebrand: Can you tell me about some of the other people in the class, in those early classes or the perceptions of other people in your life when you told them you’d begun Pilates- what were some of their responses around this relatively new thing and can you give us a sense of the timeline at this point?
Miriam Jones: This was 1998- 99. People in the class mixed bag- I was probably the youngest person in the class. At that stage in the UK people only seemed to go to Pilates for rehabilitation. Looking back on it, I don’t feel like I explored full range of motion in the way that I would have the facility to, but the foundations were really strong with it and that was probably relevant to the people that were in the class. It was men, women it was maxed out at eight people not because there wasn’t space for more, but the teacher was definitely more towards small groups. When I spoke to other people about doing Pilates they wouldn’t even have had any idea of Pilates or yoga- it was like, what is it? Oh, it’s really amazing and I did some big description about what it felt like in your body and that you felt connected and how detailed it felt and they just glazed over- and they’re like, so is it like yoga? And I was like: Yes but No! Back in pre- 2000, probably even pre 2010 Pilates and yoga got swept into the same basket a lot, even though they don’t necessarily have a lot in common. Most people didn’t have any idea of what Pilates was about, even when I came back to Australia and started my career, most people didn’t have any idea.
Bruce Hildebrand: That’s what we’re hoping with The Pilates Diaries that we’re able to articulate a little more expanding that conversation about the detail of Pilates. I can certainly relate to the couple of key things you said about the setting- I also originally learned my Pilates on the Mat. My experience was there was plenty enough going on without the springs and without the apparatus. Also, I experienced first classes with 8 or 10 people in them- it was such a rich time! I remember laying down some fantastic foundations of movement that gave me space and gave me time to focus in on what was the critical things going on on the inside, I think sometimes that these days can be easily leap-frogged for the pursuit of making it quick and making it fast and getting on the flashy equipment.
Miriam Jones: Couldn’t have said it more beautifully myself.
Bruce Hildebrand: Miriam, can you share with us some of your earliest progress in Pilates? What was your experience when you first noticed that the Pilates was starting to have an impact on your life and even some things that you didn’t like about Pilates or challenged you in certain ways in your pursuit of wanting to get better at it?
Miriam Jones: In the simplest terms it offers you wellbeing. It feels amazing in your body. I went into teaching quite quickly. I never had any goal to be a movement teacher but as soon as I started doing it, I knew I had to share with other people how awesome it was! It’s that enrichment thing of how good it feels to be in the body that you’re in irrespective of the shape, the size, the condition that it’s in, be it from lifestyle factors, injuries, pregnancies, stress factors, emotional things, physiological things- whatever it might be. There’s always some way that Pilates offers you an inroad into your body.
When you come from a movement/ dance background you have a sense that your relationship to your body is sophisticated. And what you learn along the way is to be humble that your body can actually learn to communicate in different ways and the way that you need to listen to it also changes the deeper that you go with Pilates. As much as it doesn’t feel like it for you as a being, when you dance, it can oftentimes be very much like an external to internal experience- you’re always very aware of what it looks like for the person in the audience or where you need to be so that someone can catch you for a lift. You’re always very aware from the outside in. Pilates shifts that to being more like an inside out relationship. Intuitively I’ve always been like that in how I’ve liked movement, but I actually didn’t have a skillset that was sophisticated with it, so there was a bit of a process of you need to step back from what you think you know how to do to actually learn what the modality of Pilates as a style of movement or as a set of principles of approaching movement can offer you as opposed to just making the shape of what you think it is.
That was a challenge, and 20 something years into it that’s still the same challenge. I don’t think I’ve got any further along that food chain! Maybe what I’m capable of- the sophistication with which I can do it has shifted but being a permanent exploration of the relationship to the body that you’re in is the never ending piece of fruit to squeeze. For me, that progress like being humbled by being in the body that you’re in that progress is a consistent thing that keeps rolling along as I go through it- it doesn’t stop. So when you asked me my progression I don’t ever feel like I’ve got there- I feel like I’m only ever at the beginning, I don’t ever feel like I’m in a hurry to get to the end.
Bruce Hildebrand: There’s a clean slate each time you attend class?
Miriam Jones: Yeah. How cool is that? I don’t think you get the opportunity for that many times in your life! Every time you step into a Pilates practice, which is ultimately the biggest progress for me that keeps bringing itself back up in my life is that you need to have a Pilates practice, not a Pilates class. The people who have a Pilates practice get a much richer experience from it, more than that you just go and do once a week.
Bruce Hildebrand: I love your description. Miriam can you share with us some of the people who you met along the way at this point in perhaps transitioning from your time in the UK back to Australia that have helped shape your Pilates experience at that point?
Miriam Jones: The people that shaped my Pilates experience also shaped my teaching experience- I don’t differentiate between the two specifically. Right at the beginning one of those people was Zosha Piotrowski who was connected through Australian Fitness Network for the longest time. She was one of those people who saw a little bit of magic in me and who with no force, no domination in any way, helped me really deliver that magic and that wasn’t just in the way that I moved, because I’d come from a dance background- there was a certain grace and elegance in the way that you move when you come from that background- but there was a way that she enriched me as a person and as a teacher and as a presenter, from early in my career. I went into presenting doing teacher trainings pretty early. So she was one- the other was Claire Norgate who I met again through Australian Fitness Network. Claire is the all arounder! She’s the package of everything. She’s the perfect science head, this beautiful heart and this incredible teacher and mentor- so she, by proxy of just being the complete package offered me that reflection of you too could be all of those things.
After that the inspiration wasn’t specifically a person, but it was a collective of people that I worked with that we decided somewhere along the way, that it would be really great to marry the intuitive side of teaching movement and knowing that you could teach movement really well with the science. So I shifted into wanting to know the science to support what it was that I was teaching movement wise. And that was really supported by a group of people, rather than it being one specific person. From there, the numerous people that you could say that have influenced your Pilates career- there’s been so many by workshops, by conversations I’d be hard pressed to name one specific person. After I was up and running for a while, I was open to being a student of anyone’s expertise. I think I was like that from the beginning but because I had a fuller cup I was able to hear things in a fuller away so that really accelerated a lot of those relationships of mentoring. I’m permanently inspired by different people and workshops- always hungry to see a different expression of it.
Bruce Hildebrand: Gorgeous to hear. Miriam can you reflect on the time when you knew you were starting to get hooked on Pilates and the hidden gem in your participation in Pilates you couldn’t ignore anymore and it had crept onto your skin like an itch that you couldn’t resist to scratch?
Miriam Jones: I think that was instant for me- first class that was it. I was bitten by the bug! I was like, this is amazing- this is it! And then I just knew it was a process of how that would unfold after that.
Bruce Hildebrand: Can you tell us about the challenges that you had at this stage in your Pilates progress- I’m curious about this time, it was early 2000s when you came back and some of the factors that perhaps had you full more deeply in love with Pilates at that point, or some of the elements of Pilates that you were finding were perhaps even rubbing you up the wrong way?
Miriam Jones: So 2001, living in Brisbane in Queensland there was no Pilates in the group context- there was Pilates that Physiotherapists were doing, and I’d done some Pilates with Physios up in Brisbane at that time and I very much enjoyed it, but I also struggled a little bit with how much it was based on a " No, that’s not right. That’s not right. You can’t" I did six sessions and I wasn’t allowed to progress past the hip roll because my pelvis was rocking a little bit. I remember being really deflated by that because I was like if I’m not bad at it, can’t I just try something else that will at least make me feel like I’m learning something as opposed to feeling like I wasn’t learning anything about my own body other than to view it as this thing that couldn’t do a hip roll without shaking.
That experience was the thing that rubbed me up the wrong way but sometimes it becomes the leverage to inform how you want to be. therefore as much as you could say it’s a negative thing, it actually ended up being the best thing, because it really allowed me to going into businesses that didn’t have any kind of group Pilates experience and standing there and telling them what I thought Pilates was about and what it was going to offer to clients. So it was a time in Brisbane where no fitness spaces had Pilates in the group setting. I ended up setting up Pilates in church halls, community centers, and because people hadn’t ever tried it, there was a curiosity to it, people would ask oh, what’s it all about? I said "You can’t explain what it’s all about as easily as you can feel what it’s all about in your body- you just should come and try it!"
In that early stage I didn’t meet a lot of resistance from businesses because I was so sure that it was going to be amazing that there was going to be benefit to their business and their clients by letting me teach classes. It was great – everywhere that I went in and did that, it was a success. I was earning heaps of it money, it was probably the most financially fruitful part of my career I’ve ever had because at that stage it was such a premium thing that you were able to financially enjoy the fruits of your labor without there being direct competition, it allowed for a certain financial freedom at that point.
The biggest thing that I learnt from that was to stay really true to what Pilates offers people. I knew is a really amazing way to have a relationship to your body and most of the people that came along to do sessions they were 35 plus so weren’t young fit, toned up people. They were quite the opposite- they were people who didn’t want to go into gyms and a lot of them had heard that Pilates was to be used for rehabilitation. That process of educating people that it could support you with your body, wherever you were up to was probably a point of resistance, but I found that process a beautiful part of it because you’re ultimately teaching them to have a relationship to their body. So not every bad experience is a positive experience because I definitely came up against resistance, but the resistance never took me off track for what was amazing about teaching Pilates- it was more just a process of educating people on what Pilates is.
Part of what supported me with getting more confident in what Pilates is was having an experience where I felt like I was being told that I wasn’t able to be in my body in a way that felt good to me, that somebody on the outside was meant to be telling me what was good for my body. So that experience was grounding in knowing that it could reach a lot of people in a lot of different ways, but you just had to know what you were offering and stay true to what you were offering. It built a resilience in there really early.
Bruce Hildebrand: It sounds like you had such an unshakeable confidence and certainty in feeling your own body, that it’s not like someone could ever take that away from you.
Miriam Jones: That’s what Pilates is. It’s allowing somebody the opportunity to see what’s possible in their body.
Bruce Hildebrand: And you knew that from an early stage by the sound of it?
Miriam Jones: Yeah. First session for sure.
Bruce Hildebrand: To dig a little further Miriam were there some issues or some hidden conversations in the various studios or the fitness centers that you were attending or in the industry at large that you felt you didn’t like, or that you weren’t aligned with at that point in time- that you could see Pilates could perhaps go off the rails at some point, or you didn’t like the trajectory it was heading? Was there any inklings in the background?
Miriam Jones: No, I feel like I was in like a tech startup, that was just expanding and going really well and was about to become like a public business. I just knew that there was something there for people, and I knew that it was a worthwhile choice to be involved with it. I also knew that the way that I was doing it wasn’t going to be for everybody. And I also knew that some of the people who’d come from a more rehabilitation one-on-one Physio experience, were probably not going to gravitate to what I was offering at that point. That was okay with me from the get-go.
Bruce Hildebrand: Again, the confidence that you held at that point is really admirable I’m going to assert that it’s held you in good stead for the rest of your career to have such a strong foundation.
Miriam Jones: I think when, you know, you know! For every person at any point in their career, particularly as movement people, if inside yourself you know that something’s a bit off- keep searching and keep inquiring ’til you find the thing that helps you land that it’s not off. Equally on the other side, if you just know that something feels right, grab it and don’t let go!
Bruce Hildebrand: Miriam it’s often at this stage that you’ve been in the game long enough to be getting a really good feel for what Pilates entails and you get a picture of Pilates from the perspective of actually being in the game- on the playing field. Were you’re beginning to sense a little at this time that you were having to turn a bit more inwardly to consider all the range of factors that would shape your future involvement in Pilates. The process of determining which direction you might head with it and how you might move forward. I’m assuming of course that you moving forward with Pilates with your long-term involvement in it. Can you share with us some of those factors that helped determine and shape where you went with things from this early stage in the Brisbane phase?
Miriam Jones: A couple of things that determined where I’ve gone- I always wanted to work in a team of people and I knew that from quite early on that I didn’t personally want to run a studio that was just me. I knew that I was quite happy to work in other people’s studios. Because I moved into teacher training quite early in my career that didn’t happen by accident. I was really quiet and I listened and learned, I observed, I sucked up as much information as I could. So in where that’s taken me in my career, I always knew whoever I worked with or around there just needed to always be a level of inspiration and that didn’t even necessarily have to mean that the person was the best Pilates teacher, they might just be a really amazing mentor of people and those qualities of what shaped my career like that have just been around being willing to always be a student, always be humble, always be on the ground with everyone from entry level to 20 plus years in the industry. Always just keeping it real.
Bruce Hildebrand: I’m hearing such a groundedness in how you’ve always been able to keep that line with thoroughly enjoying your career and doing a great job at the same time! Can you reflect on some of the key factors that got you to this point. Was it always part of you and part of how you approach things? Was there any pivotal moment or triumphant moment that had you come to that conclusion- the fact that you could identify that the very exercise of having your own studio would create a certain inwardness versus an outwardness and contribution and generosity in what you saw yourself working into. At that point, when you discovered this direction was so clear for you, was there a sense of calm or relief, excitement or maybe even overwhelm of what you knew that you were destined to contribute to the industry.
Miriam Jones: I think the kind of career that I’ve had isn’t for everybody, I feel like I’ve definitely chosen to make sure that I’m solid in a one-on-one environment, in a small group environment, in a large group environment, capable as a workshop presenter, as a mentor, as a teacher trainer. I don’t believe that everybody needs to do all of those things, but that has been facilitated because I didn’t choose to open a studio or manage other studios. It meant that I had time to go deep into all of those things, because I wasn’t being asked to go into other aspects of developing a business or other aspects of developing my own client base, so my career afforded me the time to become proficient in all of those areas.
Bruce Hildebrand: I’m curious about the thinking behind being able to make that choice, were you able to contrast yourself and look at those around you and see the different situations that they were in that you either could see yourself in that situation, or couldn’t see yourself like, no, that’s not for me. And therefore it helped to shape the direction that you chose to go, because it’s a really unique approach. To ground yourself and have a studio and bed down is a common angle to go in Pilates, developing early competency as a teacher and then saying, oh, I really enjoy this so much that I want to open a little studio. But it’s not been like that for you at all. It’s been contributing to lots of different schools and contributing to lots of different teaching programs contributing lots of mentoring programs and creating a certain amount of freedom that is hard to put your finger on so to speak, but it’s very much hits the mark for loads and loads of teachers who cross paths with you and you work with
Miriam Jones: The reason why I didn’t want to do it probably goes right back to that moment when I first did my first class, I knew I wanted to be with the people more than I wanted to. Be drawn into an administration with a business. I don’t think anybody sets up a studio thinking, oh my gosh, I love administration. I can’t wait to spend hours on bookkeeping and administration. I’ve got friends actually, who are like that, but they don’t work in this industry. I just knew that it didn’t feel like the richest way to share what felt like my talent. It felt like being with the people front facing was a better way to share what my talents were.
Bruce Hildebrand: And if we pull it back to one of your earliest comments wanting to have an impact with everything you did and being able to identify what’s going to have the most impact. Being able to curate that for yourself as you’ve done it’s a really interesting angle the way that you’ve approached it.
Miriam Jones: None of it has been orchestrated. I haven’t looked ahead and thought that’s a step that I want to take. It’s not been a mapped out decision- it’s very much been inspired by a conversation with somebody, doing a workshop, meeting somebody, literally by the process of remaining a student and remaining open to always learning doors opened and things happened not because I was clawing my way to get there. They literally just presented themselves in front of me and I just said, yes, that’s it. But every time I said "Yes", it was always "Yes" from the humbleness of learning from whoever it was that was giving me the opportunity.
Bruce Hildebrand: Some amazing opportunities no doubt?! Can you share with us the path since this point in time in the early days up in Brisbane where has the organic nature of your career thus far taken you on that pathway?
Miriam Jones: In Brisbane, setting up classes in fitness environments, church halls. Then that led to doing more trainings and meeting Zosha and Claire down in Sydney them asking me to be part of the Pilates team with Australian Fitness Network. What evolved from that led into doing more comprehensive training that led to being a Stott Pilates teacher trainer, being involved with delivering anatomy courses teaching anatomy education Then from there that turned into a direction of a different company seeing that I had a talent with managing people, which I hadn’t ever done before. So I ended up being a mentoring and training manager for a national company mentoring their 60 staff delivering their trainings and workshops Emma who owns that business has been a beautiful friend, as well as a kind mentor who literally turned around and said to me " Hey, Mim, it’s time you go do your own thing." I think that’s pretty incredible, for me to receive that level of care from different people along the way.
I’m always incredibly humbled by that I’ve been mentored and led by great people. Therefore that’s led to me, hopefully, being able to lead and mentor other people from that place. Then now I’ve finally got my own studio amusingly this far into my career. I don’t have the space or the inclination to do large groups I just stick with doing one-on-ones or two-on-ones. I’m so specific on how I want that studio to be, totally shaped by all of the other experiences that have got me to this point. From all of those other people, who’ve mentored me beautifully, allowed me to feel like I could mentor other teachers the gift of teaching teachers the craft of teaching, as opposed to just the exercises of teaching. That’s something that I feel that’s been delivered to me time and time again, over my career by lots of different people on that spaghetti highway of experiences. Always taken that on board and it’s my privilege to keep passing it on to other people in the way that it was passed on to me. It has done a bit of a spaghetti highway for sure- it’s worked for me!
Bruce Hildebrand: I’d love to ask Miriam some of the changes both in your body and in your mind, and even as Joseph Pilates liked to put it in your spirit that and now second nature to you and the way that you do Pilates, and you’ve even managed to carry over into your day-to-day life that you couldn’t have imagined were possible before you even started Pilates, or couldn’t have imagined were even possible when you were perhaps wrestling with where do I go with all this? And what is this information that I can now access. Can you share some of those changes and the way that you carry yourself day to day, these days?
Miriam Jones: Primarily I think what Pilates has taught me is the relationship to your body is number one. If you have a great relationship to your body, not by how it looks, but every part of what your body is, what it houses, how it experiences the world, all of those things, if you have a great relationship to your body ultimately the way that it moves will affect the way that you think, will affect the way that you feel and that works backwards and forwards, not just in one direction. If you do Pilates every day in some kind of way, be it five minutes, be it 10 minutes, I’m fortunate enough to have a studio at home so I can jump out the back and do 10 minutes on a piece of equipment if I wish. The consistency of doing Pilates as a practice, which is what I said earlier is always maintaining that relationship to your body so that you maintain a relationship to the world around you in a way that works for you. Sometimes you get on the Mat or you get on a piece of equipment and you feel rough, like it feels awful to be moving around sometimes in the body that you’re in for various different reasons, food, stress, emotions, whatever it is I really like that Pilates can get you very present in your body and not running away with your head. You can’t escape your body in a Pilates practice and that to me brings the alignment of body mind and being, or as Mr. Pilates said spirit- when you get that alignment of body mind and being that’s the magic. When you ask how that affects my life every day- In my dream world would be to be a hundred percent consistent with mind, body and being totally aligned all the time. That of course is the nice pipe dream that doesn’t actually occur or exist in the way that we might mentally like it to but the way that Pilates allows me to get them all on board and all on the same page and just have moments of checking back in with your body. As a movement teacher, you realize that you’re familiar with how doing a couple of small little movements can tune something in, in a way that brings precision to the vehicle that you’re moving around in. That’s what Pilates offers me on a day to day level- like a constant tune up!
Bruce Hildebrand: Miriam, where do you now sit with your Pilates? What does the future hold for you with Pilates in your life? You’ve been very generous with sharing your diary up until this point. I’m curious to hear what plans you’ve got in store with your Pilates involvement?
Miriam Jones: Plans in store: re-launching my six month mentoring program. I’ve got two offers that I’m going to be launching for teachers at any point in their career, whether it be at the beginning or more significantly through their career. Continue to deliver teacher trainings thoroughly enjoy that and love what that offers for the next generation of Pilates teachers. Then build my studio Motion and Repose, which is my business name as well. So that becomes a more significant part of my Monday to Friday life. Then when we’re allowed to travel a little bit more again, do some more retreats and workshops in businesses and other locations in and around Australia, Asia and New Zealand, like I was doing before.
Bruce Hildebrand: A few restrictions at the moment, obviously.
Miriam Jones: During lockdown, I’ve done a series of workshops with a company in New Zealand, so that’s been cool.
Bruce Hildebrand: Miriam if we could whittle it down to a handful if you wish you knew something at the very start of your journey, what would make the biggest difference to someone that might be just starting out now in Pilates- what advice or suggestions would you make for them to get really clear on they might be beginning or struggling through various stages of their Pilates progress.
Miriam Jones: Don’t try and make a perfect, just commit to doing it.
Bruce Hildebrand: That’s the practice piece, hey?
Miriam Jones: That’s it! And that translates to teaching, to being a Pilates student to being a business owner, all of it-
Bruce Hildebrand: Miriam, thanks so much for your time on the episode it’s been an absolute pleasure chatting to you as always. Can you share the best way for podcast listeners to get in touch with you in the real world, on social media,
Miriam Jones: Amazing. Thanks so much for having me, it’s been really fun. if people do want to contact me my webpage, is motionandrepose.com.au. There’s also Instagram at motion underscore and underscore repose. A lot of people write response but it’s repose. Shoot me a DM an email I’m really happy to chat to people. If you want any support with direction that you want to go with your Pilates career, reach out really happy. I offer people 30 minute conversations about where they might want to go- it’s just an offer for somebody to listen with what direction might suit you next?
Bruce Hildebrand: Your generosity is wonderful. Thanks for your contribution to the industry, Miriam. As I’ve said, it’s an absolute pleasure chatting to you and thanks for your time on the call.
Miriam Jones: Thanks heaps Bruce- take care.
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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