Olivia: [00:00:00] Welcome to Pilates Teachers' Manual, your guide to becoming a great Pilates teacher. I'm Olivia, and I'll be your host. Join the conversation on Instagram @pilatesteachersmanual. Today's chapter starts now.
Hello, hello everybody. Welcome back. I have a super amazing treat for you today. I'm on the line with Marimba Gold-Watts, who is a phenomenal Pilatess instructor. I had the pleasure of taking her workshop at Momentum Fest this year. Just a little bit about her. She was professional [00:01:00] dancer, began studying Pilates in 1999 and then became a teacher in 2007.
In 2012, she and her husband opened Articulating Body, which is a wellness and Pilates studio in New York City. And then in 2018, she won the Next Pilates Anytime Instructor contest. And she's taught modern dance internationally and around the country, and her workshop at Momentum Fest was amazing. And also she was on the cover of Pilates Style magazine. It was just such a treat for me to get to take class with her. So I'm really glad to be able to talk with her today. Thanks so much for being on the show, Marimba.
Marimba: [00:01:34] Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be on. Thank you.
Olivia: [00:01:38] First thing I always like to ask is what was your first experience with Pilates? Like how did you get your start in Pilates?
Marimba: [00:01:45] Well, I grew up training in ballet, classical ballet, and Pilates was always something that you've heard about to help keep you strong and, you know, help with your lines and all that stuff. But I didn't really have the opportunity to study until I was [00:02:00] 16. And I went to the Alvin Ailey summer intensive in New York City.
And I was exposed to a class there that was called body conditioning. And this was the nineties, it was the mid nineties. And of course at that time I was completely unaware of this, but there was the big lawsuit going on over the Pilates name. The teacher who was teaching the class was basically teaching Pilates, but calling it body conditioning and she turned out to be her name is Wendy Amos.
And she turned out to be the very first teacher that Kathy Grant certified. So I studied with Wendy the entire summer. It was a nine weeks our program. And then I went back to San Francisco and I really liked her exercises and how she had sort of put them together, but I didn't still know that they were Pilates.
So I kept doing them and doing them. And I thought, okay, this really helps my body, especially my dancing. And I'm very, very hyper mobile. And so it really helped sort of put me together.
Eventually, about maybe two or three years later, I wandered [00:03:00] into why the studio in San Francisco, after recovering from an ankle surgery. And I realized that I already knew most of the exercises that we were doing, mat exercises, that is. And I was like, Oh my gosh. I think what I learned before was Pilates. Of course, still didn't know anything about the lawsuit and the name and all of that. I figured that out later, but that was my first introduction into it.
Olivia: [00:03:20] To find Pilates and not have that connection right to begin with. That, you're like, Oh, I love Pilates. You're just like, Oh, this is cool body conditioning.
Marimba: [00:03:29] Oh, the hundred exercise, you know, series of five, of course. But I didn't know, because at that time, I think there is very little literature out there. It wasn't like you could look on the internet and see things. I didn't really know what exactly it was.
Olivia: [00:03:44] What inspired you to become a teacher?
Marimba: [00:03:46] Well, initially I was dancing and like I said before, I'm very hyper mobile and I had had a few injuries and then I had a back injury that was quite debilitating. And I went [00:04:00] through my physical therapy and my physical therapist had been a Romana-trained Pilates teacher.
And so she gave me a lot of, sort of pre-Pilates exercises. And eventually I realized that the only thing that really made me feel better was going to Pilates. I started studying it pretty in depth with a teacher who actually turned out to be the same teacher who I had studied with in San Francisco. At that point, she had closed her studio and moved back to New York where she's originally from.
And so I started studying again with her and really, really liked it. I asked Stacy, my teacher at the time, what program she would go to. And she said, Oh, I would definitely go to the Kane school. And so I decided that I would go in and get certified, not actually to teach, but mostly because it helped me.
And I thought if I have more knowledge and tools and information, then I can use this throughout my dance career to keep my body healthy. Then as luck would have it, about two years later, I had another major injury and had to retire. And when I [00:05:00] retired, I realized that the thing I wanted to do most at that point was teach Pilates.
I wasn't ready to go back to school to do something else. I had thought about arts administration, but that wasn't really a match at the moment. And I thought, well, you know, I really liked Pilates. I've been doing it seriously. I had a mat class going at one point on the side. I thought, let me just teach for a little while and see how it goes. And if I really like it, then I'll maybe go to PT school and become a physical therapist and Pilates teacher together. And so that was sort of how I fell into teaching. I would say.
Olivia: [00:05:33] That that combination of physical therapy and Pilates is really powerful. And I don't know if that's still something that you're looking at doing down the road, but I've had so many people come into the studios where I teach, who learned about Pilates from physical therapy, that their physical therapists had a reformer, and that's how they were strengthening and, you know, getting range of movement back. Also, I think like a really natural, not necessarily progression, but they just work really well [00:06:00] together those two fields.
Marimba: [00:06:01] Oh, definitely. I think that one of the downfalls of physical therapy is that, and it's not an intentional downfall. It's just that when you're learning so much about the body, you don't always have time to learn about corrective exercise. And so sometimes the vocabulary can be very limited and Pilates has such a huge vocabulary for corrective exercise.
I think that there's so much crossover and there's so much to be gained by the physical therapy community- kind of takes over the plates community in a lot of ways because they realize that they can use this vocabulary to help their patients.
Olivia: [00:06:34] And that's definitely the most important thing, whether you're working in physical therapy or through corrective exercise and Pilates, is that giving your clients, your students tools to live better and not be in pain.
What have you learned through teaching? So you fall into teaching and I would say that you fell very well into teaching because you won the Pilates Anytime Next Instructor contest, which is insane. Like that is so [00:07:00] incredible.
Marimba: [00:07:00] Thank you. My parents are actually both school teachers. So I have always been surrounded by teachers in my life.
So teaching Pilates didn't necessarily feel different from teaching dance or teaching school or anything like that. It just was a different language, different vocabulary. And I had already been teaching dance for, I guess, maybe about five years by the time I became a Pilates teacher. And so it just, to me, felt like it was another language and another way to teach movement in general. I guess I wouldn't necessarily say that I have learned anything specific by teaching, except that it's helped me become a much better communicator.
It's not that I've learned how to do the hundred better or learned how to see a body better. I think that the more exposure you have to bodies in general, the better you become at seeing them, or at analyzing them, or figuring out what they need. I think that the more you have to use your language and [00:08:00] speak, the better communicator you become as a teacher.
I think that the more tricky bodies or tricky cases you have in front of you, the better you become at problem solving. But I don't think that that's necessarily unique to Pilates. I think that's unique to teaching in general.
Olivia: [00:08:15] Sure. I actually started teaching teaching kindergarten in South Korea. I lived there for a couple of years and the parallels between teaching kindergartners English and teaching movement to people who maybe don't have a relationship or connection to their body yet. It's very, very similar.
Marimba: [00:08:34] And I think sometimes what happens is that people come into this field thinking, "Okay, well I'm teaching Pilates," but not seeing it as necessarily teaching in general. They see it as almost as delivering exercises to their clients. And I think that any experience that anybody has teaching anything is completely applicable to what you're teaching in Pilates. I don't think it's exclusive to Pilates.
Olivia: [00:08:59] I love what you [00:09:00] said, that you're using the language of Pilates. That it's another language, but it's still teaching. And in a lot of ways, it's very fun because we get to play on the equipment and we get to feel good and do fun things. But it's almost like every time you're teaching, you're trying to prepare your clients to not need you anymore, to just be in their bodies and be healthy.
And maybe they'll still do Pilates for fun, but if they're coming at you from rehabilitative, that ideally they won't need it anymore because they'll internalize it or they'll make it their own.
Marimba: [00:09:30] Absolutely. I mean, in a perfect world, whether you're teaching kindergarten or teaching Pilates, you're teaching building blocks that people can take and make into words or make into movement or improve their vocabulary or improve their movement. It's all really the same thing, right? You're just teasing out a specific language, teaching your client those letters, then teaching your client the words. Then increasing the vocabulary and then ideally they can go and write or speak or something like [00:10:00] that.
Olivia: [00:10:00] That's a beautiful analogy. I really love that. And I am going to use that because especially when, like you're saying, coming back from surgeries, that you're starting with these pre Pilates exercises, and then we have Pilates exercises as taught by Joe. And then in a lot of ways we've gone beyond that or we've incorporated, you know, more props or more ways we can take it even further
Marimba: [00:10:20] Yeah, and figuring out more creative ways to come to the same conclusion, which is beautiful movement, right? It's just everybody has a slightly different path. Not everybody learns to read exactly the same way. For example, some people learn to read much more by looking at the alphabet. Some people teach themselves. There's a lot of different ways to get to that same end goal. And I think that in Pilates, it's the same thing.
Olivia: [00:10:43] What advice do you have for teachers who are just getting started?
Marimba: [00:10:48] My advice for teachers who have just started is, well, twofold. The first thing I think is extremely important and I think it gets overlooked is that you have to always [00:11:00] maintain a consistent practice. And that doesn't mean necessarily that you have to do Pilates, you know, one hour a day, every single day. That means that you have to work on the movement yourself, to some extent, however much time you have available to you to work on your practice.
But it also means that you have to take sessions from lots of different teachers from one main teacher. You have to take classes, you have to get on the equipment more so that you know what the movement feels like in your own body because I think that having that firsthand experience of the movement and how to execute it and how to build up to it helps you figure out how you're going to impart that information to your students. That's the first thing.
For whatever reason I noticed that a lot of teachers start teaching and then their practice really falls off. I think it's really vital and almost necessary to being inspired as a teacher to have some kind of practice to go back to, to figure out your own body, to be able to [00:12:00] work towards the goals that you maybe could never accomplish without having a teacher in your life.
And then the other part of, I think, super, super important for being a new teacher is always taking continuing education. I often see teachers and a lot of teachers, um, study with me who have completely stopped continuing education or who say, Oh, how you know, I haven't taken a workshop for five years.
To me, I draw the most inspiration from learning, especially from other teachers who I consider masters in the field. And I think that it's really important to continue to expand your own lens. And that doesn't necessarily mean Pilates. That could be anatomy. It could be gyrotonics. it could be yoga, it could be any other related movement field, but I think that it's vital that we continue to learn throughout our practices because it makes you a better teacher.
Olivia: [00:12:51] Definitely. I really like what you said about keeping it fresh for yourself, because even if you are like a classical teacher and you're [00:13:00] teaching the same, you know, movements and you're teaching the same way, by having your own practice, things are going to hit differently. Your focus is going to change.
Like something's going to make it new. Even if it's a movement you've done a thousand times. Then that sense of newness, you can really share that with your students who may also be doing that same thing. And even if it's not classical, you know, if you're coming even to a contemporary class and you're doing footwork at the beginning of every class, you know, how do you make that engaging? How do you keep building connections instead of falling asleep? You have to keep making it new for yourself.
Marimba: [00:13:34] Yeah, I completely agree with you. I think it's also interesting, like there are things that I'm still discovering. I've been doing Pilates now for, I guess, about 23 years or something like that.
And there are still things that I'm discovering in every exercise that I didn't necessarily feel before. Mostly because I've really tried to have a consistent practice. And I really think that the more you do it, the more you understand also the brilliance of the [00:14:00] method and why it works. Because you start to feel how the connections come, not just in the order or if you're a classical teacher in the order, if you're a contemporary teacher, not necessarily order, but you start to see how he was creating the same movement dynamic on lots of different pieces of equipment, which could then be either assistive or more challenging.
And so you're constantly recreating movement dynamics and shapes. And for example, first you're working eccentrically, then you're working concentrically, but guess what? It's the exact same movement, and you start to see how all of the pieces of equipment come together and how that works with your body and how maybe Swan on the chair may be more beneficial for someone than Swan on the barrel, depending on what their capabilities are at that moment. And that just makes you a better teacher. I think.
Olivia: [00:14:49] And the same thing goes with taking those continuing education classes that when you're taking these workshops with people who are top of their field, who are really passionate about [00:15:00] one thing, and that could be like very small.
I've done workshops, like the one that I took with you, that is just on footwork and how do we incorporate our feet as our foundation for all of these exercises. That makes you see things in a new light. And that's, again, something that you can share and maybe a light bulb moment that you have, thanks to that teacher in that workshop will light light bulbs for your students as well.
Marimba: [00:15:22] Absolutely. Absolutely.
Olivia: [00:15:29] Hi there. I hope you're enjoying today's chapter so far. There's lots of awesome stuff coming up after three as well. Please share this episode with your friends and followers and share the Pilates love. Now back to the show.
[00:16:00] What advice do you have for teachers who have been teaching for a decade or more, who are very experienced teachers?
Marimba: [00:16:18] Actually, I would still say the exact same thing. I think that as we continue to teach for longer and longer, it's even more important to have your own practice and it's even more important to continue to take continuing education.
Just because you've been a teacher for more than 10 years, doesn't necessarily mean, well, it shouldn't mean that when you know everything and also it shouldn't mean that you've maxed out in terms of your knowledge of that practice. I think that now, for me, I'm finding that it's even more interesting for me to dive into really extreme biomechanical work or to study things that are closer to osteopathy because now I'm starting to see how the bones [00:17:00] work better.
And so I think that as more senior teachers, really in order to stay energized in the field, but also to just improve your own practice around teaching, it becomes really important to continue your practice in some way through education, but also through movement.
Olivia: [00:17:16] That's very true. The same sort of thing happened to me where I really wanted to jump into teaching and, I didn't let continuing education go by the wayside, but like teaching became more of a priority than learning about movement. Suddenly this shift that it's like, Oh, well, now I can teach. I'm going to teach like 20 hours a week or something. And yeah, I realized very quickly that yeah, as teachers, we're not robots and that's not the goal, we're not supposed to just dispassionately name exercises and have our acrobat clients like jump through hoops to accomplish them.
That it's really about that human connection. And then not everyone learns the same, which you had mentioned as well. That maybe a cue makes total sense to someone and maybe [00:18:00] it doesn't. So you need lots of ways to explain it.
Or as you're practicing in your own practice and really appreciating the method and those repetitive movements, but in different ways, in different pieces of equipment, that those are tools, just like the equipment, that what we've learned becomes a tool that we can share and learning is as important as teaching.
Marimba: [00:18:22] Oh, absolutely. And I also think the other part of that is learning, like taking classes. I mean, learning by having a self practice is really important as well. I started taking a weekly session probably about maybe two years into my training, and then I found my current mentor about six years ago, Christine Wright. And what's been really fantastic in studying with her is that she's allowed me to really dive more deeply into my own practice. And I can take that directly to my clients.
And I think that it's so easy to get caught up in teaching so many hours, or my schedule is so full this week, I [00:19:00] don't have time, I've got to do this, I've got to commute, that we sort of lose the importance of having somebody else's eye on our own bodies. And I think that while having self practices, so, so, so vital, it's also really important to have somebody else look and see what you're doing so that you can really understand how you move.
And that's going to also help you figure out how to analyze and work with your clients.
Olivia: [00:19:22] I know that, coronavirus across the country, across the globe, has totally changed the way that Pilates is happening in studios and not in studios. I know that Articulating Body has really shifted its focus. Can you talk more about ways that you've pivoted in the past few months?
Marimba: [00:19:40] Yes, my husband and I co-owned a studio in Manhattan, and now we've decided because of coronavirus that we were going to close our physical location and we've really started to transition a lot online. I had already started teaching virtual classes through Core to Coeur, which is an online [00:20:00] platform that has live stream classes. They launched in February. So I've been doing that.
Most recently I've started recording some of the classes that I've taught, and those are going to be available through my website, articulatingbody.com. My other new goal for the fall, and this was actually in the works before coronavirus hit, this was always the plan. I'm going to be launching some workshops that will be going live starting in the fall.
I'm going to have four workshops to start with. One is going to be on hip mechanics and hip care. One is going to be on foot mechanics and foot care. I have a long history as a dancer, but also I've had five ankle surgeries and so I know quite a lot about rehab and recovery.
And then one of the workshops is going to be on hypermobility, which is something that I think a lot of us see in our practices, but don't necessarily know how to address and unless you've dealt with it, it can be a little bit elusive because there are many different presentations of hypermobility.
And my [00:21:00] last workshop is going to be on learning styles and how that can help us as teachers teach our clients better. I think that oftentimes we don't consider ourselves teachers. Like we were talking about earlier, in the sense of school teachers or anything like that. And so, most of the time, people who have zero teaching experience in any other way, make the transition into becoming Pilates teachers, but it can really benefit us to know what's going on in the world of education and learning and how people learn.
I think that we can really use that and transition that to work better with our clients. So those are my four upcoming workshops and I'm pretty excited about them, I must say. I'm really excited to be able to offer more virtual learning because I think that despite coronavirus, I think that a lot of us don't necessarily have the time or money to travel from place to place and take workshops, even if we want to. So this is a way that I can work with more people and also take sessions from more people.
Olivia: [00:21:55] I love everything about it, and I'm definitely going to be taking your workshops because I think you have a [00:22:00] really incredible way of relating to your students and really a great way of sharing the movement. You can really tell how passionate you are and just that your experience is so fantastic. So I'm really glad that you're going to be offering those things online. I'm in Chicago and, you know, I probably won't be able to get out to New York City, even if we were able to travel.
So just making that accessible to people all over the country, all over the world is really fantastic.
Marimba: [00:22:24] Exactly. Well, I got the idea because I have been studying with my teacher. My teacher used to live in New York and then she moved to Toronto about four years ago and we transitioned to digital.
First, I was really apprehensive about how it was going to work and then I thought it really works surprisingly well. And so this year I got pregnant and I had a baby in March and I thought, okay, well, this is a way for me to start to reach more people and not necessarily have to travel. Little did I know that coronavirus would completely change everything for all of us in many ways.
So I think it will be really kind of nice to expand this access that [00:23:00] everybody has to the overall greater Pilates community.
Olivia: [00:23:02] That's wonderful. Being comfortable with online, this is definitely a good time to get there.
Is there anything else that you would like to share? Anything that you're passionate about or working on or any last thoughts?
Marimba: [00:23:14] Well, I think that this whole coronavirus has been really- I mean, I know that the industry is struggling greatly. I know that a lot of us are really in a position where we don't know what the future of the industry is going to hold. But at the same time, I think that it's going to give us an opportunity to be more creative in how we teach and also how we learn from other people.
And I think that what's kind of unique about right now is that it's also really giving us a lot more creativity around accessibility because suddenly we're able to reach communities who may not have been able to go to Pilates to go into a studio. And now, because it's coming into our homes, a lot more people have access to this work.
And I think that all of us as [00:24:00] teachers can really use this time to reimagine what the industry can look like if it's more accessible to a bigger community, a greater community.
Olivia: [00:24:08] It is definitely a struggle. It's been difficult as a teacher, as someone who works in a studio. I can only imagine like as a studio owner that that's only compounded, but you're right.
We are in a unique place that we can really create what, what future Pilates can be. And that's kind of like on the edge of something new, something incredible, possibly, hopefully.
Marimba: [00:24:32] Hopefully, yeah. And I mean, don't get me wrong. I miss being in the studio so much. I mean, I miss interacting with my clients face to face. I miss being able to touch bodies, as crazy as that sounds, but I really feel like it is a good opportunity for us to pivot. And hopefully in the future, all of that will come back and then our community is going to be just that much richer and more diverse as a result. And there will be more opportunity for people to have access to this work.
But, do I [00:25:00] miss actually being in a room with people? Of course, nothing will substitute for that, but there's so much we can do in addition to that.
Olivia: [00:25:06] Thank you much for taking some time for being on the show today, Marimba, I really appreciate it. I've included Marimba's bio and links to all of her social, to her studio.
Definitely sign up for her mailing list and keep an eye on her space for those workshops and those classes that'll be coming up soon. Thanks so much.
Marimba: [00:25:25] Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure.
Olivia: [00:25:36] Thank you so much for joining me for today's chapter of Pilates Teachers' Manual, your guide to becoming a great Pilates teacher. If you loved today's episode, subscribe and leave a review. You can reach out to me on Instagram @pilatesteachersmanual or send me an email to pilatesteachersmanual@oliviabioni.com.
The adventure continues. [00:26:00] Until next time.