I love the opportunity to help my clients solve their own challenges like “the mat work always hurts my neck” and “why does my hip pop?”. And as a teacher I love it when my students say, “wow, that was easier” or “that makes so much sense.” Why is it that some teachers get amazing results and some don’t?

The way that I think about and relate to movement can affect how I  and my clients progress. Everyone see the world through our own experiences. If you come from a movement background such as classical ballet or pre/professional sports, you might make different demands on your students about ‘perfection’ and ‘working hard’ than someone from a recreational dance or sports background. If you had a teacher or coach who used your performance to measure their effectiveness as a teacher (and they weren’t very good teachers), you might have been yelled at for not doing ‘it’ right without any real instruction. And, it’s just natural that unless we were taught to teach differently, most of us have gone on teach the way we were taught.

I was lucky to have teachers who cared more about me than themselves – they cared that I learned something rather than how people would see them if I didn’t. I’ve adopted that attitude in my own teaching. If one of my students isn’t able to do something to the best of their ability, I look to myself, not them. I take pride in teaching my students the components that are going to make not only their movement, but their understanding of the movement, better than it was when they started. This quality is what makes me, an educator instead of  a robot.

I challenge new instructor to reflect on his/her skills as a teacher. Is he/she educating himself/herself so that he/she can work more effectively or with a different population of students or does he/she just do the minimum to get by? Is he/she repeating the same year over and over or is he/she growing in his/her personal practice and teaching skills? Is he/she making things easy for his/her students to do and to understand so that they flourish?

In the words of Joseph Pilates, “Both [the mind and the body] must be coordinated, in order not only to accomplish the maximum results with the minimum expenditure of mental and physical energy, but also to live as long as possible in normal health and enjoy the benefits of a useful and happy life.” Your Health, p41