Episode Show Notes
Welcome to the Pilates Diaries Podcast.
Our guest on this episode is Sandra Lauffenburger. Sandra is a somatic therapist with a long movement history and runs a psychodynamic and somatic psychotherapy practice in Canberra. Sandra was a founding council of the APMA- the Australian Pilates Method Association, and co-authored the curriculum used at the University of Technology Sydney for training Pilates method instructors along with Dr. Penny Latey. Sandra has recently finished her term as president of the Dance Movement Therapy Association of Australia.
The mission of this podcast is to share the stories of the impact of Pilates to help you live and move with more joy, physical vitality, and renewed vigor.
Pilates was a somewhat unknown word until it started creeping into conversation somewhere around the 2000s- maybe even before then depending on who you asked and amongst which circles, and has largely remained and enigma for many reasons- one of which perhaps is that Pilates really has to be experienced to be understood.
There are now a wide range of Pilates styles available when you attend a Pilates class, perhaps borne from the variation of interpretations of how Pilates was originally taught by its founder, Joseph Pilates.
With The Pilates Diaries Podcast we’re inviting Pilates enthusiasts around the globe to share with us what they’ve noted down in their Pilates Diary. Our hope is that the Pilates Diaries Podcast goes some way to answering the question ” What is it that makes Pilates so special?”
We’ll take a privileged peek into the Pilates Diaries of our guests to gain a greater insight into the impact Pilates can have in all of our lives and contribute to the health and wellbeing of the community at large.
I welcome you along for the journey and welcome your comments and discussions through the links found on your favorite podcast platform. Enjoy.
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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 on this episode is Sandra Lauffenburger. Sandra is a somatic therapist with a long movement history and runs a psychotherapy practice in Canberra. Sandra was a founding council of the APMA- the Australian Pilates Method Association, and co-authored the curriculum used at the University of Technology Sydney for training Pilates method instructors along with Dr. Penny Latey. Sandra has recently finished her term as president of the Dance Movement Therapy Association of Australia. Sandra, welcome to the show.
Sandra Lauffenburger: Thank you, Bruce.
Bruce Hildebrand: Sandra, 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 were some little threads that might’ve led you to discover Pilates?
Sandra Lauffenburger: I first discovered Pilates around 1982 before that I was a research geophysicist for Exxon and a part-time dancer, taking classes in every dance form I possibly could. After working eight or 10 years as a geophysicist, I was really not happy with the oil industry and I just wanted to get out but by that time, I was also far too old to be a dancer, but I realized I did want to work with bodies. I was caught in a totally different world, which I look back on now and tell people I studied movement of rocks rather than movement bodies, but that’s where I was.
My previous husband and I got transferred to the UK and I was getting more and more unhappy with the whole oil industry and it’s pollution. And finally I just quit and I had all this free time! There I was in London and I’ve just started taking as many dance classes as I could mostly at the London Contemporary School of Dance and somehow in all of those labyrinths and dance world, that’s where I discovered Pilates.
There were two Pilates studios that I was really interested in- one was Gordon Thompson’s studio- it was in the basement of some ballet company building, and I also discovered Alan Herdman’s studio- and I would alternate one day I would go to classes with Gordon the next day with Alan and dance classes in between. And I got excited because they were very different styles of Pilates even in those days- but it gave me an idea that may be at age 29 or 30 I could be involved with the dance and the body. So that’s how I started.
Bruce Hildebrand: A fascinating insight into the movement itch that had you stick at it and keep circling back to, find something that you loved
Sandra Lauffenburger: As I’m a psychoanalyst and psychotherapist now, I think Pilates introduced me to my internal world and gave me a way into that more non-verbal place in my psyche but certainly in those days, it was the first movement activity that I experienced that took me to a deep place in my body rather than the more superficial and surficial places of sports and dance, where there was an emphasis on achievements or accomplishments or looks or form and this introduced me to a deeper place. And I can see now it was an introduction to the somatic world that I also now hang out in. It was a revelation- it was a total revelation instead of doing these big and exciting performance it was internal and it was precise and it was sensing deeply. I think now yes, it took me into that body, mind, psyche place. So I think Pilates for that was my introduction into what we all call now, body mind. But I hadn’t realized what it was doing, except that it was so interesting and new.
Bruce Hildebrand: I’m curious to rewind a little- was there something in your geophysicist time, or even before that, now that you’re in the direction of the psychotherapy and the somatic world more so- do you feel like there was any little inklings prior to that, that might’ve led you to continue looking into the dance world and then discovering Pilates?
Sandra Lauffenburger: I think nowadays we would say I was probably a kinesthetic thinker and a kinesthetic learner when I was in school. It’s very clear to me now that I have to move and feel something I read, or it doesn’t make sense, but I couldn’t have said that to you then. But I do remember I was on a field trip as one does when you’re a geologist, and I would say that is why I ended up in geology because it had this movement component. I had gone through math, physics, chemistry and biology- did all of those subjects at uni- did really well, but hated every one of them and then I got to geology and I was in love, but I can see now it was the fact that we got to move around and draw and be creative. I clearly remember one field trip late in my geology career, I was with Exxon we were out in West Texas, we were looking at this outcrop and talking about what would it be like as an underground reservoir, And all I wanted to do was dance on the rocks. I didn’t give a fig for what they were talking about. I was having fun climbing and moving in it and that was when I realized, oh my God, that’s why I’m in geology because you get to dance on rocks.
When I did leave the oil industry, I was quite high up because I was one of the early women that Exxon hired and so I was promoted quite regularly and people would say to me ” How can you leave this lucrative business and go and be a ballerina?” And I said that’s not what I’m doing. I said, I’m going to observe and work with people’s movement, which is actually what rocks do over time- they move- it’s just an awful lot more slowly! But nobody quite understood my thinking. So yes, there was an inkling there and if I look back further I was always in dance squads in the dance and performing activities in high school. Obviously I wanted to go that way, I just was told when I went off to university by my parents, that I had better get a real degree not something like dance so I suspect I just put it on hold for awhile.
Bruce Hildebrand: A funny story Sandra one of my best friends at university She was also a geologist and did that line of training- however it wasn’t by selection for her. It was because she ticked the box called physical science when she was looking to enroll and she arrived to the first lecture and didn’t realize that the physical science was actually referring to geology rather than physical activity.
Sandra Lauffenburger: I can understand that- for me, it was just, oh my gosh movement! We don’t have to sit in this classroom the entire time.
Bruce Hildebrand: Sandra I’ve got a huge amount to thank you for, because you were the very first point of contact with me in the Pilates world it’s a really special conversation to be having with you today because the last time we conversed was on a phone call in the summer of 96 when I rang you up courtesy of an article in a triathlon magazine, and you’d I understand been working at the AIS with the triathlon team and I happened upon that article in the magazine and reached out to you. That was the fork in the road for me to discover this incredible thing that you’d articulated so beautifully of Pilates that completely captivated me with the way that you’d explained that. Can you talk about the time you spent at the AIS?
Sandra Lauffenburger: When I got to Canberra in 1992, I set out trying to find how to get clients I worked at a ballet school and I had a medical professional doctor who wanted to refer clients to me so that was all good. But one of my friends kept saying, you better go knock on the door at the AIS- surely they need Pilates. So I did- I knocked on the door, I went out there and they said, we don’t want you to do Pilates, we want you to train one of our guys to do it. So that was quite good- I trained a man named Ari Tackernin, who worked for years with a number of teams, but especially the swimmers. But of course other squads wanted to know a bit more and Ari was really very involved with the swimming squad, so they didn’t want to give him up. So the triathlon team and also little later on the netball people invited me out, but the triathlon squad- it was a weekend workshop and it was up in Mount Kosciuszko where they were doing some altitude training and trying to introduce some of these more subtle body mechanics ideas to them. Not everybody was very keen. I have to admit- there were some that said “oh yeah” and others that said, no, thank you. And I think that was the way it was even, I think over time, Ari was able to get the swimming squad really hooked on Pilates, there wasn’t, immediate take-up in the way that you would think.
Bruce Hildebrand: So many questions spring to mind- the first one, Sandra is the uptake of Pilates based on your years and years of experience, what’s your take on what it is that draws people in with Pilates. You say athletes, some are drawn to it like a moth to a flame or others put up a bit of a roadblock to wanting to participate. Do you find that those athletes already have a sense of their own body inherently, that they want to improve their athletic performance and others had just about the goal?
Sandra Lauffenburger: I think that’s very well articulated Bruce, because I remember this one little incident of that training weekend. There was this young man who was really one of a hot shots of the squad and as I watched him move and articulate various body parts I became appalled because you could just see injury. It just kept screaming- that joint is going to give out that joint’s going to wear out, and in the nicest sort of way, I invited him to consider that, I can’t remember if it was hip articulation or pelvic mobility I can’t remember exactly what it was- anyhow, we were playing with it and I invited him that, what if you tried this on your bike and he about bit my head off and said, you would ruin my performance. I will not do this. And I said It’s your choice, your choice. But what was interesting is you know, I sort of peeked over the years to see if he ever made it into the super elite- nah, I think he fell off the planet because he actually got more injured than he thought. Whereas those who were willing to say, oh my gosh, I’m going to have to change my technique and this is going to take a couple months but I can feel that it would create more ease in my movement and it would create more something of what I want- they’re the ones who took it on. So yes, I think you articulated quite well- it depended on whether you could see the longer term value or whether you were just trying to get to an immediate goal and that wasn’t going to work.
Bruce Hildebrand: And my experience over my years of teaching, which is not near what yours is Sandra, I see that pattern just repeating itself. It’s really the person who arrives to Pilates- it depends on their approach to, it depends on their attitude as to whether it becomes something that they really take up.
Sandra Lauffenburger: And really benefit from. I’m sure you had people who would show up and say, ah, give me great buns, or I want to lose 10 kilos. You’re kind of like, nah- go somewhere else. I was like that- no, that’s probably not going to happen here!
Bruce Hildebrand: I’m curious to dive back to London for a moment- you spent some time with Gordon Thompson who fortuitously I also had some crossover time with in the time that I was in London- a very rich influencer on my early time. You spent some time with Alan Herdman you said. Tell us more about that next step along the way. And I’m curious, Sandra, when you first arrived at Pilates, can you share a story of what it was like to step in the door for the first time?
Sandra Lauffenburger: That is quite awhile ago, Bruce- that’s 40 years! I remember from Gordon who was probably a bit more exercise approach than Alan was- but not in this way we’ve just been talking about, I remember he had a lot of slant boards in his studio- I’d never seen one of those in my life and to suddenly be doing various dance things even just leg circles in different positions in this board and trying to maintain stability. I mean talk about disorienting- it was disorienting in that sort of delightful. Oh my God, this is so different, what’s going to happen next sort of way. And Alan’s studio at the time was- there was a place called Pineapple Studios it’s a dance studio. at that time Alan’s was somewhere near there and it was totally different- it was big, it was bright, it was open and he was so precise- it was almost frightening! The adjustments and precision- I’m not saying Gordon didn’t demand precision, but there was something different about Alan’s precision. So that was really interesting to feel two styles that were compatible, but two different people teaching it. I don’t know if I’ve thought about it consciously, but it helped me realize you can bring your own self to this work because it’s your style, it’s not a set of rules that you just follow and by having both of those and men being different and yet the same that was very useful.
I have to say that at Alan’s studio. the interesting thing is Michael King? He wasn’t at Alan’s studio at that time, but my husband and I were only, or ex-husband, we were only in the UK for about a year and then he was transferred back to Houston and Allen Herdman also had a studio in Houston, Texas at the Houston ballet. And so “voila!”- I got to do my apprenticeship at the Houston ballet in the Alan Herdman style but with Michael King- so that just seemed like a real appropriate continuity, There were two other women doing an apprenticeship with Michael King at the Houston ballet- a woman named Elizabeth Jones Boswell and another woman Mary Corrado the three of us were the little apprentices under Michael King- so that was a really nice transition because there I was in London and suddenly I could be back in exactly the same thing but in Houston, Texas. Then for a number of years I worked for Elizabeth and I was also teaching Laban’s movement analysis and teaching aerobic choreography and other things, but that’s really my ancient connection to Pilates that London to Houston connection.
Bruce Hildebrand: And we’re talking early eighties at this point, Sandra?
Sandra Lauffenburger: Yes, then in 1984 to 1987 my husband got transferred to China so I took my brand of Pilates over to China- and that’s another chapter!
Bruce Hildebrand: I’m interested Sandra in the initial recognition by you about how the approach of Pilates is very unique, depending on how you experience it. Your initial two teachers in London being Alan Herdman and Gordon Thompson already, you’re identifying- and we’re talking early 80’s at this point already- you could see a difference in the way that Pilates was being interpreted, was being experienced by you, was being conveyed, was being communicated. Tell us about how that happens more and more through your time in Pilates of that expansion like you said earlier “bringing yourself to it.” How you see that in the present day with Pilates and the way that it’s evolved or transpired from what we understand to be Joseph Pilates’ original teachings.
Sandra Lauffenburger: Okay, so here’s the problem. As I said, I ended up over in China for three years and during that time I would commute back to Seattle and study the Laban Movement Analysis system, but I was isolated in China- nobody else had ever heard of Pilates, I would teach group classes to expatriates as well as some Chinese and I had a few opportunities to teach dance to the Chinese. I realised that because I was also concurrently studying this Laban Movement Analysis system, another somatic system, and then trying to teach and communicate in a language that I didn’t speak, like I would teach a whole group of Japanese women and I don’t speak Japanese. So to communicate it non-verbally I had to bring myself to it! All I could teach them was what I could embody and express and convey but meanwhile, all the movement patterning and movement quality and movement energy ideas from the Laban system were creeping into my work.
By the time I emerged back into the real world, I didn’t know where I fit and I went back to see Elizabeth- by that time she was really coming into her own- and we could communicate in my new understanding and hers. But I could see that each of us were on our own journey. I mean, she got to study more with people who came through America- I got to study with no one. I guess from about 1984 through, until I landed in Australia in 1992, I was out of touch with the mainstream Pilates, because during that time I had lived in China, I’d lived in Indonesia, and I was doing Pilates and sharing Pilates and I even brought equipment with me- interesting when you try to get it through customs- but I was continually just working and so it really became my style and I was not ” main stream”.
When I got to Australia, by that time there were several key streams. Some people had been trained by Ramana the really traditional, rigid, ” do it this way” style compared to what some others were trying to do? But I was lucky in that I somehow ran into Penny Latey. Penny was also really trying to think about it- she had a psychological side to her and her ex-husband was an Osteopath, but there were clear divisions in thinking starting to happen simply because it was a good 40 years since the original Pilates was ever done or created at least since the 1950s. So many of us had gone off. Actually I went back to America to study with Eve Gentry and at that point she was coming up with the idea of imprinting, which you know, it’s part and parcel of the vocabulary, but it was new then. She was assisted by a person who knew something about Laban’s work- I don’t think she was a Laban graduate, but you could see, there were so many body working influences coming in and everybody’s Pilates started to look slightly different because it was their own. So it was exciting, but it was also hard because you don’t know where you fit and also it could make a little friction when you were trying to form associations or organizations.
Bruce Hildebrand: Sandra, could you give us a summary of Laban Movement Analysis
Sandra Lauffenburger: Sure! Laban movement analysis is a really beautiful overarching framework to understand, observe, create, define, analyze movement and it is quite unique because it looks at movement in ways that we don’t normally think about let alone categorize. Most of us in Pilates would have learned anatomy and biomechanics and think about movement and the body in those systems. Laban goes beyond that- it looks at four main areas. One is called the body, but it is really about body patterning and sequences of movement and how they work rather than individual movements like flexion and extension- it’s actually movement sequences. Second area is called shape, which is how all of our internal organs and breath rearrange themselves so that we can move or twist or whatever. So that’s a very interesting system, which now actually covers fascia. The third area is space, which is how one accesses the external world around you- that’s again far more complex than we think, but it can help you recognize maybe where you’re really getting stuck or rigid or worn out. And the fourth area is the most psychological it’s called effort, but it’s really about your use of energy in some very clearly defined ways and they really connect with a lot of our psychology. In other words, effort is like, how do you use your force? Do you use it firmly? Do you use it tentatively? Do you use a delicately? So it’s this very big system of movement and movement dynamics that in my mind, sits over any other movement system and it just helps you see what you’re doing.
Bruce Hildebrand: Would it be fair to say that effort is also aligned with intention of your movement?
Sandra Lauffenburger: No space would be a bit more about intention- effort would be more about your motivational systems and your energy on the inside. Can you actually use force or connect the force from head to tail or from pelvis to heel- it’s something about the psychology behind those.
Bruce Hildebrand: I often share with people the story that I recount from the article that you wrote in that triathlon magazine Sandra, and what immediately jumped out to me was the act of swimming for a triathlete. The ability to take the force that they’re reaching and catching water and translating it to their central column, if you like, of their spine to pull themselves through the water, they may be as strong as they like with their arms, but unless it’s a connected, coordinated action, that it’s useless strength in many ways. So that was a very pivotal key concept that jumped out at me from that article.
Sandra Lauffenburger: That actually is me applying Laban to Pilates in that that is space is your reach connected to your core, and then the effort can use the force to bring it into your core. But the interesting thing about the Laban is it’s not there to train the body at the nuanced level that Pilates can. So they marry up quite well, but it allows you to see, oh my gosh, that’s why I need this core connection or why I need this scapula connection or whatever.
Bruce Hildebrand: My early introduction to somatic work in the early two thousands, Sandra I was described it by one of my early mentors in the UK Helge Fisher, who said somatics is wonderful, however the framework of Pilates really gives you something tangible to put those concepts and ideas into place. That for me is what kept me well and truly on track with my Pilates involvement, but very much applying so many somatic ideas to communicate that to my clients so they, like you say, marry that together in a great practice. I was very much drawn to Helge- she worked alongside Gordon Thompson along with Lynne Robinson to make Body Control Pilates in the UK. Helge was a great body worker manual therapist, dancer, Alexander technique teacher, along with her Pilates.
Sandra Lauffenburger: Yep. So there she goes- she was incorporating her style and herself into her Pilates work. I think that’s what you have to do. It’s interesting because that was part of what set up a little bit of a split, if you will, in some of Australia’s practitioners was those who really felt that you had to bring your self to the work and those who felt you just plastered the work on to yourself. I have to admit, I hung out with the ones who thought you had to bring it from the inside out.
Bruce Hildebrand: It’s a beautiful distinction you just make there about how many different ways there are potentially to apply Pilates.
Sandra Lauffenburger: It’s interesting because when Penny and I and another woman Pauline Johnson were training Pilates instructors, it was always clear there were two key groups of students. Those who were drawn to the work because they kept discovering more and more things about themselves and they wanted to do Pilates that way and learn it- it wasn’t like they were just going to improvise or whatever, but they were drawn to this. And then there are those who would get quite mad at us because they just wanted us to teach them the 10 exercises that they needed to do and give them the rules for what fixes low back problem. Two different thinkings- and I never got along with that second group- I was just like ” find a different teacher, please!”
Bruce Hildebrand: Fascinating difference! The conversation with Michael King Sandra – you said you spent some apprenticeship time with Michael at the Houston. He has done a lot in Pilates ever since- still heavily involved, and a wonderful teacher. I’ve had little contact with him, but many people have said a really strong influence on their direction. Very much more fitness involvement now understand the Michael’s direction. Can you talk about that experience or that influence for you in the early days?
Sandra Lauffenburger: I realise- one caveat I have to actually say about Gordon Thompson and Michael is they were just babies in the Pilates world. It was always a surprise to realize by sometime in the nineties that these people had books out, I was like, oh my God, I know them! So they were in the process of developing their ideas and their approaches during the time I was with them. I do remember Michael as being incredibly fit, very muscular and strong, and because it was the Houston ballet- like all ballet dancers- they have to be very physical and very fit- there was that kind of emphasis on the Pilates we offered. It wasn’t the kind of rehab Pilates that I had learned from Alan- come to think of it, I definitely had three different styles that I got to see in action, and probably in the end, I gravitated mostly to the Alan Herdman style as did Elizabeth, and then she went on to work with Ron Fletcher, but Michael was quite good because he taught us this much more physical approach to Pilates, but again, not in a pure muscular way or anything, but just more physical. But I don’t, think he had identified his style at that point. I encountered all of these people before they realized what their style was.
Bruce Hildebrand: Would it be fair to say in summarizing this Sandra, that it’s horses for courses and we all live in an individual body.
Sandra Lauffenburger: And we live in an individual body mind because it is the mind you bring to it too, I think.
Bruce Hildebrand: Absolutely! that creates these different interpretations and perceptions of Pilates that has it be the diverse practice that it is these days, and to try and capture that and commercialize it seems a bit of a juxtaposition for what the intention of Pilates is in many ways, perhaps?
Sandra Lauffenburger: It does make you wonder doesn’t it? I don’t know. I mean there are, there’s some very good systems out there now.
Bruce Hildebrand: I was going to ask Sandra, do you feel like in many ways Joseph Pilates was a movement analyst in his own right. if we talk about Rudolph Laban who created the Laban Movement Analysis
Sandra Lauffenburger: I’m sure he had to have been. The interesting thing is all of these people that I found myself gravitating to even the brand of psychoanalysis that I work in. There were people who were very active in the early 1900’s- they were really thinking they came often out of Europe and Germany in particular, and I think there was just an incredible environment for creativity and cross-fertilization and I think there’s even, some urban myth that Joseph Pilates and Rudolf Laban’s actually crossed paths at some point- I don’t know if that’s true, but I think everybody was thinking about how do the body and mind actually work and work together. You have to just be able to sit down and analyze and observe, I think is what you really are really good observer of human movement. And I would say both of these men probably were that- they could just observe and pick things up that a lot of us have to learn to pick up.
Bruce Hildebrand: The original writings from Joseph Pilates- I recall him as a child fascinated by visiting the forest and watching animals move that no doubt informed and trained his eye on the observation skills to see graceful movement and easeful movement. And then when he arrived to the industrial age and seeing that not happening, he obviously went to work with doing something about it.
Sandra Lauffenburger: And it’s interesting because Laban has a different, but a somewhat similar evolution in his process of realizing that movement had to be brought back to humans. I think that was really possibly what that sort of early /mid 1900’s was about about how we reclaim our humanness.
Bruce Hildebrand: A fascinating time.
Sandra Lauffenburger: Yeah , it really would have been
Bruce Hildebrand: Sandra curious on some of your earliest progress with Pilates- can you share with us when you first began to notice for yourself when Pilates was starting to impact your body and your mind and your movement?
Sandra Lauffenburger: I would say almost immediately. As I said I encountered Pilates in London, and I was taking lots of dance classes, jazz and ballet and contemporary, but as I started to take more Pilates daily and then go to these classes I cannot articulate for you what I noticed or what I felt, but I knew I was a different type of dancer- so I would say almost immediately.
Bruce Hildebrand: And was the difference in the experience of the dance or was the difference in the outcome of your movement quality?
Sandra Lauffenburger: I’m just thinking as a dancer before that time and after that time, then I would say both! It was an inner understanding, or at least a beginning it’s been years of work to really understand the inside. But it was that the inside was starting to change and it was affecting the outside- the results, the performance. And yet it was subtle- I don’t know if anybody around me could see it, but yeah, it’s so hard to articulate, but something was changing on the inside and it made the world and the processes on the outside different.
Bruce Hildebrand: That’s one of the intentions of The Pilates Diaries Podcast, Sandra is to chat through this thing that is, I think, difficult to articulate. So I think by sharing a wide range of stories that we’re chipping away at describing that in our own unique way. And to hear you with your vast years of experience, even now say that it’s hard to put words on, I think it’s probably very comforting to many listeners.
Sandra Lauffenburger: I think it must sneak up on us, but yeah, it’s interesting. It’s certainly still an absolute integral part of my self-care!
Bruce Hildebrand: Sandra, can you talk us through the journey as you arrived in Australia as your Pilates involvement started to take shape.
Sandra Lauffenburger: Okay. I’ll back up a little! When I was transferred back to Houston for a short period of time. Mary Corrado and I started giving workshops for fitness instructors where we would bring in Pilates, a lot of the core control and some Laban- and try to bring it into the fitness industry, particularly aerobics teachers who at that time would always do a little mat component. So we did that and then we got transferred to Indonesia and that was interesting because when I was in China, I was invited to Hong Kong to teach some Pilates and Laban and fitness things. And I started working for a fitness consortium in Hong Kong and they had branches in Jakarta. So I got to go to Jakarta and do some of this also, and it would be a combination of Pilates mat work, Laban as applied to aerobic choreography and some anatomy and biomechanics, which all came out of the original Pilates and then the Laban training. So it was always really grounded in my Pilates work.
Then we got fully transferred to Jakarta and there was a young woman who wanted to train in Pilates. So I trained her and then sent her back to Elizabeth Jones who got her trained up and she was going to start Indonesia’s first Pilates studio. So that was quite interesting. She hit a lot of roadblocks because she was Chinese Indonesian and if you know anything about the politics of being a Chinese, not in China, they are discriminated against even in Indonesia or other places. That was an interesting time, and I even brought Mary Corrado over to Indonesia to train, this young Indonesian woman and myself more in Pilates, so it just kept weaving and growing. Then I moved to Australia in 1992 and that’s when I met Penny Latey, Megan Williams, Shawna Hall- there was a group of us that were the first that got together to ultimately form the first association, the APMA. We got together and would meet in Megan Williams’ studio and plot what this organization should look like.
Bruce Hildebrand: Can you talk us through the early stages of those conversations? What was that initial planning? What did that look like? What was your objectives with the association and what were you trying to achieve in the formation of creating that early body recognition?
Sandra Lauffenburger: At that point in Australia, all of us who formed to meet- Allan Menezes was there at the very beginning talks and Andrew Baxter who at the time was working at the VCA. There was a lot of us at an initial meeting and the problem was that we all individual practitioners in our little pockets, but that the Physiotherapy Association of Australia had gotten it into their mind that they should become the sole purveyors of Pilates, that they should be the only ones to do Pilates. And they were supposedly trying to get legislation passed that you had to be a Physiotherapist in order to do Pilates- and this is back in 1993. I mean, I think it’s still ongoing! So that was what united us all, because we were horrified or terrified that suddenly our passion and the thing we love to do was going to be illegal. And there was a real threat- because they had done it about a decade earlier with massage where only Physiotherapists could do massage. So we could see that, it was possible that they would have enough lobby strength. And also there was a fellow in the U.S. who was taking people to court and in fact, he took Mary Corrado to court, ultimately because she dared to say she was doing Pilates and he felt he had to trademark. It was all that really ugly time of turf wars, so to speak. But we came together and said, look, we do different styles- we all do our own type of Pilates, but we want to keep working, and that’s what really united us. And then it was the process of, okay, how do we get enough members? How do we build up enough cash that we could lobby that we could keep watch? I remember Penny was really good at this- she had the lawyers having a watching brief to make sure that if legislation came in, we would know about it, and so that was always bubbling in the background. And then we tried to get on with the business of, okay, what could it organization do? How do we accredit? How do we train? How do we promote? What are all the things that an organization really should do in addition to fighting this constant threat. So that’s how we all came together and it’s terrible to think that we had to start in a kind of negative space, but that was just what was going on.
Bruce Hildebrand: The cliche jumps to mind of necessity is the mother of all invention.
Sandra Lauffenburger: Yeah- something like that. But it was good because we built that organization and we welcomed all approaches to Pilates at least in that day, if you were Romana trained or if you were Herdman trained or Thompson trained , you know, we welcomed it. It was just like, please come and join, please come and help us promote this fantastic profession.
Bruce Hildebrand: You may have some insight Sandra into what is a common question these days- what is the reason for there being two different Pilates organizations in Australia?
Sandra Lauffenburger: Probably in the later stage of before I really got more into the psychotherapy, this started to happen. I cannot tell you exactly why or how. I think the only thing that really concerns me because I see it happening in psychotherapy, dance therapy is when overseas experts primarily Americans and I’m one- so I’ll speak against them! But when overseas experts starts seeing Australia as a lucrative market- and the new frontier in which they can conquer. I think that’s what engenders a lot of these splits is people come over and say “My brand’s better! My brand’s the best!” Because as I said, when we first started, we didn’t really care what style you did. I will say, yes, Allan Menezes went off and started his own association, which never went anywhere- but that’s his psychology! But when Rael Isacowitz came over and gave workshops I got in trouble- I got kicked out of it actually because I would dare to integrate other ideas. I remember being on, I think we were on a barrel and we were doing some exercise and my partner. I was working with knew me from my Laban work, as well as from my Pilates work. And she asked me a question. She said, oh, isn’t this similar to blah, blah, blah in the Laban system? And I started to give a Laban answer because that’s what she asked me. And Rael, I didn’t know, was hovering and he heard me talking Laban and he screamed at me and told me to get out this was not the workshop, and if I was going to do all that other stuff, then I was obviously not interested in his work and get out now! There was no arguing. Anyhow, that’s my guess is it’s when people come in and really feel like they have to impose their system rather than saying, here’s the way I package the idea, see what you think, take into your body, let it integrate, let it come out And you can still be a Pilates instructor, and we can still all talk to each other. But that certainly wasn’t what he wanted in that workshop. I was persona non grata after that! So I think that’s the problem- I’m not someone who says go in and do dribs and drabs- go in and study a system- if you don’t make it your own, and if you don’t integrate it, and especially if you are already somewhat expert in your field, you don’t need to be treated like a beginner- you can start to try to integrate and discuss and collaborate. And that’s how you really build it but I don’t know- I think that’s what causes some splintering.
Bruce Hildebrand: I think to a degree, Sandra, there’s a juxtaposition in a humanitarian approach to Pilates of let’s connect with our bodies, let’s connect with our minds, let’s move well. And then in the same conversation, threaded in somewhere is this commercialization of Pilates and how do you capture and capitalize on your position of strength or your point of difference or whatever that might be that gets you ahead commercially. That’s my understanding of reading the his torical accounts of Joseph Pilates the pieces that I have read there’s an intention by Joseph Pilates for it to be well adopted all around the world but the commercial ramifications of that is it’s a balance to try and find, I think.
Sandra Lauffenburger: It’s so interesting because again, this is true in Pilates, I think psychotherapy or whatever- You can never sell your practice. If you decided you retiring people have been with you because yes, they love Pilates, but also they love you and your style of Pilates. So again, it comes back for me is what you bring of yourself to the work that’s who people want to work with as much as yes, the system is fabulous, but it’s really how the relationship that the instructor has to the system, as well as the relationship, the instructor has to the client that then in genders, the client’s relationship to the system and they have to all really have integrity. So marketing- in my psychotherapy practice I do have a website, but I have never marketed- and interestingly enough, my early psychotherapy clients were my Pilates clients- they liked so much what we did with the body stuff. they were happy to just transition more to talking. That’s why you have to bring yourself to the work- you don’t just let the work be this thing you zip on every morning.
Bruce Hildebrand: Fascinating insights. Sandra, can you talk us through that transition from that initial Pilates training migrating into the somatic focus and then into the psychotherapy and wrap together for us how that now looks and how you find a balance in amongst all those things that you now offer.
Sandra Lauffenburger: I had my clinic in Canberra from 1992 till 1999 but I wanted to specialize in rehab, and my business partner wanted to be more fitness, which is, fine, nice combination. but I sold it to my business partner and went solo- and it was during the process of working with referrals from doctors, which in those days, most of the presentations where RSI, fibromyalgia, chronic pain reflex sympathetic dystrophy, all of these chronic inflammation pain conditions. A lot of people found relief with Pilates but there was two things that I kept seeing some people, it was like a pain chase. You’d really get the shoulders moving and “ah! that frozen shoulder was opening”, but now it was the hips- or my knee, the pain would just keep jumping, which, I can see systems are connected. So that was a possibility, but it felt like something else. And then there were those people who actually got quite agitated by having to go inside and find muscles and because that had been so delightful for me, it was like ” Wow, this is cool!” I didn’t quite understand why it would be so disruptive for these clients. But then I started to realize, wait a second. Emotions, psychology- it just started to realize that there was this component called the mind that was connected to the body and maybe I needed to learn a few principles about how the mind worked.
I was incredibly lucky in that my clinic had this cohort of psychologists- they were all clinical psychologists and they were all friends but one came and they would just tell each other about how great they found Pilates. And we ended up with about, six or seven of them all from this same cohort. They were a very interesting cohort of psychologists because they didn’t want to do CBT, but anyhow. they brought in a psycho analyst speaker and I remember them saying, you know what? You should come to this workshop. it’ll be right up your alley. And I’m going I’m not a psych. They go “No, no You’ll get it.” You really will- come! They just carried me along and I did end up going to this weekend workshop and I was blown away because a theory that was being introduced was psychodynamic self psychology. And it was so compatible with the body mind thinking and feeling and the Laban that I’d had to that point, I couldn’t believe it because I had studied psychology, but it was just all too heady. And this, somehow, even though it was heady it made sense of some of the problems I was having with these chronic pain clients.
I started studying it- did that training and slowly shifted into the work I do now, which is the body is never out of the room. We may not be doing Pilates exercises, but they maybe sitting in a chair or sitting on a stool and exploring their hip joints. But it’s all in the context of what it is about themselves they’re trying to understand or get in touch with. And I will say that over the years, what I’ve realized, and it is very interesting feeling, but when a person talks to me, there’s a part of me that is always continually seeing it as a movement experience. I don’t know how to say that. Like they may talk about, oh, I just feel so powerless with my children. And I’m always going, Aw, spine feet, pelvis, you know, and I may not get to offer them an exercise, but what I really think my mind now sees the body mind connection as two sides of the same coin- you may use body words, or you may use psychological words- but to me, they’re absolutely interchangeable. And if the client needs me to speak back to them in the mind side of things, I can do that, but I’m still holding the body. They are two sides of the same coin, and that’s how I work now even if a person thinks they just want to talk to me, that’s fine- the body is there and I’m always observing, analyzing, feeling, sensing- I’m working with my body and theirs’!
Bruce Hildebrand: That’s embodiment, that’s somatic practice.
Sandra Lauffenburger: That’s right.
Bruce Hildebrand: That’s the richness that you bring to the experience for everyone you work with- no doubt?
Sandra Lauffenburger: Or that I try to bring- let’s be real! I don’t always succeed!
Bruce Hildebrand: I love that word self psychology. That for me, speaks depths about understanding oneself in the process of giving oneself therapy and being on that exploration
Sandra Lauffenburger: In truth, we use the word self psychology, but actually we conceptualize the self in a much more dynamic way- which is exactly why I love the work- it’s not a self, it is “a self organising”. Which means every experience you have goes into making you, and that is why experiences with Pilates or somatics- all of those things go into making you, and you are constantly in the process of this dynamic reorganization based on your ongoing experiences and that dynamic approach to ones’ psychology as compared to, ” oh, you’re a narcissist!” ” oh, you’ve got bipolar!” That’s what I like about self psychology- and why it spoke to me as a Pilates instructor, it values the dynamic, ongoingness of the developmental progression of this self. And it values the affective or the emotional development of self. Just think if that’s how you define yourself, you’re defining yourself through movement and that is why I like that theory.
Bruce Hildebrand: That’s an incredible marriage of so many different approaches into this place that you find yourself in currently Sandra.
Sandra Lauffenburger: I’ve been very lucky to be able to follow the threads in my life. And personally, I think what really makes a good therapist is someone that is committed and embodies their work and has studied it, but has also brought in their life experience. just like, in Pilates where you got to go and actually get on the machines or on the floor.
Bruce Hildebrand: I think the experience for the client when they come to plot is they can tell within an instant, if that’s what they’re getting from their teacher, if this is a real mastery or a pursuit of mastery of the Pilates practice in this example or whether, you know, something just missing out of that, I didn’t have the best experience necessarily, I didn’t leave with a positive experience .
Sandra Lauffenburger: It’s interesting because when you brought up the idea of commercialization before I know in the early days in the 1990s, Pilates went from, go to whoa. We’d never heard of it, and now it was the trendiest thing, and there’s always this struggle, this competition of, oh my goodness. How do I out-market this person? And they’re taking over my clients. but it is actually what you just said. It’s people saying, wow, I want to work with that person.
And they only know that because somehow when I’m in their presence, it works for me. And that’s what I’m saying about marketing oneself- people will find you. Yeah, I’m saying we don’t have to compete. We have to be ourselves.
Bruce Hildebrand: Sandra, can you share with us if you could sum up for us, perhaps, what are some of the changes in both your body and 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 participate in your Pilates, that you’ve managed to carry over into your day-to-day life that you didn’t think would be even possible before you moved into this body of work
Sandra Lauffenburger: Certainly there are the movement attributes, which can translate into personality kind of attributes- there is that graceful fluidity, the resilience and certainly now as I age that ability to flow with that aging but not be stuck in an old body. I really think that there is something about this graceful resilient, fluid process in which the body stays tuned. When I look back to the pictures that I had seen of Joseph and Clara and Laban and another important Laban person, a woman named Irmgard Bartenieff- all of these people even though they may have been in their seventies or eighties, and one person was even in their nineties in these pictures, you saw a vitality in them that I know I would say to myself, that’s what I want. I want that vitality. I think that somehow this working from the inside out that Pilates allows you to do is a way of keeping that vitality really alive. I think that’s what Pilates introduced me to and has helped me stay in touch with, which is Vitality.
Bruce Hildebrand: So wonderful. Sandra, what do you wish you knew at the start of your journey? If we could ask some advice that would have made the biggest difference to someone who might be considering either starting Pilates or facing some of the challenges and forks in the road that you have along the way with your Pilates progress?
Sandra Lauffenburger: Well, it was always passion, commitment, but there’s something I think it’s about staying true to yourself. Take all of this work in to digest it, chew on it, integrate it, play with it, throw some out and stay really true to yourself. I know everybody wants you to do that, but sometimes maybe you need to say it explicitly.
Bruce Hildebrand: Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time on the call today, Sandra. What’s the best way for podcast listeners to get in touch with you?
Sandra Lauffenburger: My email address.
Bruce Hildebrand: I’ll pop that in the show notes also your website as well.
Sandra Lauffenburger: Yes.
Bruce Hildebrand: It’s been an absolute joy chatting with you, Sandra. Thank you so much!
Sandra Lauffenburger: Thank you for this opportunity to revisit the last 40 or 50 years. 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. 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 at www.TRIMIO.app.
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