Faithful Readers

Hello to all of Erica's faithful readers!

My name is Amie Avi. I mostly teach Pilates these days, but have done about every job one can do in a health club or a restaurant, and would have preferred to play those roles on TV.

In the following few posts, I'll be introducing you to Pilates. Posts unrelated to Pilates may follow. I'm looking forward to getting to know you, and to sharing with you all about something I really enjoy. Please leave questions or comments below, and Erica and I will do our best to respond.

All that said, let's crack on, shall we?

Though Pilates has become a bit more ubiquitous since I first started teaching, thirteen years ago, it is still synonymous with circus acts, knife-throwing, and oddly-named cocktails. It is an odd-sounding word, and most people have no idea what Pilates is.

I will never forget the evening I overheard a hapless, yet blindingly attractive, membership sales representative at a gym where I taught, explaining to a prospective member that Pilates is the American form of yoga. (With his model-esque smile, even I might have believed it, but that’s beside the point.)

Pilates is not the American form of yoga. It also does not involve jumping through hoops of fire, (though working with certain Pilates apparatus called the “Magic Circle” conjures up such images), and is not an obscure liquor native to a Baltic State.

In the next few posts, I’ll introduce a bit of the history of Pilates, why it rocks so incredibly much, and why everyone from competitors in the octagon to octogenarians should be doing Pilates.

Cheers and peace,

A.