Who is that girl I see?

I am larger and better than I thought. I did not think I held so much goodness. – Walt Whitman

I’ve been teaching Pilates for 7 years now. I no longer feel like a newbie. I am more confident in my teaching than I was just 2 years ago.

At the time, I felt like I had an inflated number of years because I was posted to a quieter studio, and then it felt more inflated because Covid happened and the classes I taught declined for a while.

But as one of my mentors once said.. “If you want to teach for a long time, don’t stop teaching.” 100%. Thanks Jerry.

I have helped so many people learn and understand their own bodies and gain awareness, competence and improve their performance in movement.

This year, I also let go of a student that I felt was not someone who I could help. I learnt to create some boundaries to protect my own time and self worth.

“Experience teaches slowly and at the cost of mistakes.” – English Historian James A. Grouse

And though I cringe at some of the things I may have done in the past with my limited knowledge…It is because of the sheer number of people I have seen move, given cues to, touched (to correct or to feel muscular engagement), and created movement programmes for that I am now more confident as a movement teacher.

Different bodies require different cues and this year, one incident clearly reflected this. I have always cued for students to press their toes down in the “shortfoot” exercise.

But I found out that one student had been pressing his toes down so much without lifting his arch that the cue gave him the opposite effect. He responded better to “lifting the arch”.

I was stunned. Getting that arch lift was something I had assumed he was just having trouble doing – my usual cue was to “press toes and lift arch” so I didn’t expect my choice of cues to be the problem here.

So I kept learning, and I will continue to keep learning. Better ways to teach movement, to motivate and to create enduring change.

In the coming years, I will work on improving my knowledge in anatomy and biomechanics, improving my verbal, visual and tactile cues to better understand the body in front of me.

Perhaps even find a specialization, if that is something I can figure out?