In August 2000, I took my first Pilates lesson because my dance teacher was offering discounted sessions as an apprentice. I loved her and so I signed up. Eventually it occurred to me that Pilates would be a good way to earn money while I completed my education to be a PE teacher, and it would probably make me a better teacher. I enrolled in a local certification program. That’s all to say, that I came to Pilates through a series of back doors and that it took me a couple of years before I realized that I was completely enamored with the method that would eventually be a transformative part of my life. One moment in particular stands out:  I’d completed my first certification, realized that I really must train with Romana Kryzanowska, and was preparing for my apprenticeship in her program. When I was a teenager, I had something of a mild obsession with the notion that I could build my ideal body with nothing more than myself and gravity. Comparing that idea to the many pieces of apparatus that I was (then and now) using daily to create my ideal body, I was suffering something of a crisis of confidence in my choice to work as a Pilates instructor. But then, I remembered:  the apparatus is much more of an aid into the body rather than a departure from the body. In that moment I realized that I’d arrived just where I needed to be, just where I’d envisioned myself before I even knew what Pilates was. My nearly fourteen years of study have presented me with a continual series of questions and subsequent realizations and with each one I’ve fallen more deeply in love with Pilates. But that was one of my first, and therefore one I will never forget.  

Submitted by Eliza Twist, AKA The Body Sleuth.