head over heels.

You know that feeling when you’re first in love? You wake up thinking about them and when you talk about them you get a little sparkle in your eye. You get excited about when you can see them again and when you’re with them it’s the best feeling in the world.

This is how I feel about pilates. Seriously. My boyfriend often talks to me about the “surfing bug”. Well I have the pilates bug.

At the beginning of the year I was pondering a new hobby to enrich my life a bit more. Yoga felt too slow and I’ve never really been a team sports person. Then Suzanne McCarty dropped in to the shop with a stack of brochures for her new pilates and gyrokinetics studio in Sawtell so I thought I’d give it a try. To be honest I was expecting a bit of an abdominal workout. What I was not expecting was to fall head over heels for this new passion. As I write this I’m even rolling my eyes at myself at how ridiculous this must sound, but it's honestly how I feel!

If I could give somebody a massive high five, it would be Joseph Pilates, the pioneer of pilates, who dedicated his life to improving the health and vitality of others. This dude was born in the 1880s to his professional gymnast father and naturopathic mother and was obsessed with anatomy as a child, constantly studying physiology books and animals stretching in the forest of Germany. By the age of fourteen, Pilates had such a rig that he became a model for anatomical charts.

As a young man Pilates moved to England where he began teaching self defence and boxing at police schools and performed acts in the circus. After becoming imprisoned during World War I, Pilates began acting as a physiotherapist by disassembling the camp bunk beds and using the springs to create resistance to rehabilitate the injured and bed-ridden prisoners. This concept then went on to become the basis of the equipment used today in pilates studios. As the flu epidemic swept through populations of the world in 1918, it was reported that not one of the prisoners who followed Pilates’ routine fell ill.

Once released Pilates returned to Germany where he worked with dance and movement experts then immigrated to New York where he met his wife Clara, a nurse who he then went on to develop holistic ‘Contrology’ methods that incorporated deep breathing, proper posture and the correction of various physical ailments.

The studio they opened was situated below a ballet studio which attracted the dancers to quickly recover from their injuries while maintaining their flexibility. One professional ballet dancer was Romana Kyrzanowska, who went to Pilates in 1941 for help with an ankle injury. She then went on to become Pilates’ protégé and taught my teacher Suzanne, a ballerina from The Vienna Volksoper Ballet.

I could ramble on forever about the benefits of pilates that I've noticed in my own life on not just a physical but mental and spiritual level. But how about you go try it for yourself.


"After 10 sessions you will feel better. After 20 sessions you will look better. After 30 sessions you will have a completely new body.” ~ Joseph H. Pilates



Check out Suzanne's pilates studio on the link below and get inspired.

http://beyondmovementstudio.com.au/