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Hey everybody, welcome back to the Further Forward Podcast.
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I'm your host, Ashley Mitchell.
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Thank you for tuning in to another episode.
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It's nice to be with you.
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I'm sitting on the couch in my favorite spot next to my cat.
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He's in his favorite spot.
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So we're just like having a cozy little afternoon over here while I can hear my neighbor's children screaming bloody murder.
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Like it almost I'm almost afraid for what is going on because they are screaming.
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They must be chasing each other or something.
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But also, one is like one and a half and the other is like nine.
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So I am both calm and peaceful and living my life, and my peace is totally disrupted by these people, and I'm trying to just like keep it together.
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Okay.
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How was your experience of Beth's episode last week?
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Can we talk about that for a moment?
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I am so happy that you got to hear her, experience her in that way, especially if that was your first time.
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I knew that when we were gonna have this conversation, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that it would be a completely unedited episode.
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That we were gonna hit record and that whatever we said, knowing that the recording was going, we were going to say it and stand behind it because that's what we do.
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And I was just so um, just so happy about the level of intimacy that we were able to achieve in that episode, in that interview.
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And as I was reflecting over the week, I was like, it's gotta be this now or nothing.
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The guest episodes have to have a level of intimacy.
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That doesn't mean that everybody's gonna be a close friend.
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Doesn't mean that they're gonna be a friend at all, but there has to be a level of intimacy, honesty, openness.
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There has to be some kind of willingness to go there.
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Do you know what I'm saying?
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And I think that as I cultivate more love and respect and openness in myself, and obviously more certainty around my becoming, not in a way that like I am certain that like I'm becoming this person, but I am certain that I am comfortable with what comes and who I am becoming and what happens as a result of that becoming.
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As I cultivate all of that in myself, I want that reflected back to me in as many areas of my life as possible.
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And since this is my podcast, I mean, obviously I have direct control over that to some extent.
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So that's what I'm reflecting on.
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And I just have this feeling.
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I want this for her, but I also just have this feeling that her work is going to become more public-facing as time goes on.
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I think that she's if I can trust like my what both what I see from her and just kind of energetically what I feel, it it feels like with the death of both of her parents and becoming an athlete and a runner, and it just feels like she's completing like this cycle, that she's gonna walk into this new portal, this new place in life, and that we're all going to be able to witness it and ultimately benefit from who she is.
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Okay.
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So, what are we talking about today?
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I just mentioned sort of self-trust.
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And I think that in its purest form today is about self-trust, but the journey to get there, because this is not like I'm not gonna call this episode self-trust, right?
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But that's kind of what we're talking about.
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We're talking about trusting yourself, we're talking about carving your own journey, we're talking about potentially nonlinear paths, but the way I'm gonna do it is to talk about Pilates, girl.
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Don't hang up the phone name.
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Hold on.
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I'm gonna talk about Pilates and I'm gonna talk about not letting the haters win.
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So, in order to help me paint this picture, I have to give you a little bit of background on Pilates if you don't know it already.
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So, Joseph Pilates, he's this German dude.
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He grows up, he's kind of a sick kid.
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He has asthma, he has rickets, he has rheumatoid fever.
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And word on the street is that he uses fitness, movement to help heal himself to get stronger, and then it eventually becomes his method.
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Okay, so he uses diving, he uses boxing, he uses gymnastics, bodybuilding, he also pulls from the Greeks and the Romans.
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This is really important to note because the idea of taking from different methodologies, from different sort of proven methods and pulling them together, connecting dots that previously weren't connected or that weren't connected in the way that you see them, that's a thread that's important in this conversation.
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So now, fast forward to World War I, Joseph Pilates is in an internment camp in England.
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He is still working on his method.
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He's now creating his own equipment based on whatever is around him.
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And he starts creating the things that we know of now as all these like Pilates apparati, right?
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The reformer, the arc barrel, et cetera, et cetera.
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And he's also starting to use influences of yoga and even sort of watching animals like cats, how they move and stuff like that, like their instincts.
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So he helps the sick and the injured around him using his method and using the apparatus that he creates.
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Now he goes back to Germany and he is asked to train the German army.
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He says no.
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He goes to America, he meets his wife Clara on the ship.
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They go to New York and they open his studio.
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This is in 1926, okay?
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And what was said was that all kinds of people flocked to him ballet dancers, circus performers, etc.
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But it was really the dancers that raved about him because they noticed improved technique, they were able to rehab their injuries.
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And so all obviously all of this informed their performances.
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It made their performances better.
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This is point number two that's really interesting to me because as a black woman in uh a muscular body who's always engaged in high-intensity activities, the narrative has always been that Pilates is not for you, girl.
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That Pilates is for people who look like ballerinas or who could look like ballerinas if they just did enough Pilates, right?
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It's too expensive for you, you're not going to see yourself reflected.
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There's no black people there, there's no black instructors, et cetera, et cetera.
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And what it looks like, just from the very little that I know, is that that was not Joseph Pilates' intention.
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His intention was that this was a method for everybody.
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There are so many apparati for a reason.
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You could literally tailor Pilates based on the body that you have in front of you, and that you could use all these different pieces of equipment to achieve whatever results that person is looking for, or whatever you're trying to solve for in their bodies.
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So because he had this movement method, it obviously had a bigger umbrella.
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So he had this philosophy around it called contrology.
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Now I'm gonna read quick, quick, quick from his book, Return to Life Through Contrology.
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This was written in 1945 because you might be like, well, what the fuck is contrology?
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Okay.
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Contrology is complete coordination of body, mind, and spirit.
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Contrology develops the body uniformly, corrects wrong postures, restores physical vitality, invigorates the mind, and elevates the spirit.
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There's much more to be said, but I think that's plenty.
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I also just want to note you could hear in this the influences of other methodologies.
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I certainly hear yoga in that, right?
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The connection of mind, body, spirit, uh potentially a little bit of the yamas and niyamas, right?
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You got like breath work in there, you got um a little bit of even what I've learned through boxing for the last couple of years, this idea of pairing breath with movement and being able to settle the nervous system, even while the nervous system is in this intense place of activation, being able to sort of like focus the mind and use that to direct the body to exert the kind of force that you're trying to exert.
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I can't even tell you how much I love movement.
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I know that I sound like a nerd, but anyway, so contrology, right?
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Obviously, teachers come to work with him, for him, study under him.
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And these first generations of teachers called the elders, they would go and they would teach and they would open their own studios and et cetera.
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And over time, they added exercises, they evolved exercises, they created their own methods, they pioneered contemporary Pilates.
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This is point number three.
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So Joseph Pilates pulled from other methods to create his own.
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And then the teachers that he trained took what he created and also expanded the idea of what it could be and what bodies could do, and et cetera, et cetera.
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So now we're in 2026 where Pilates has exploded, right?
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It's like blowing everything else out of the water, and rightfully so, um, or not even rightfully so.
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And and as a result of that, it's like a copy, kind of an obvious extension, not a rightfully so.
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There's now a battle, right?
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Or there are several battles.
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Should you do Pilates or should you do this, or should you do Pilates or should you do that?
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But even more in the Pilates world, it's like the battle between contemporary Pilates, classical Pilates, and then Pilates-inspired movements like sculpt, like fusion, like solid core, like stuff on a Legris machine and things like that.
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I've watched this stuff happen online with sort of terror and curiosity.
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And the more training I do, the more I understand why people are pissed.
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And that and this is true in every method.
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Or I think if you are an expert in something, if you've been studying something for a long time, if you go to college for something, if you've trained your whole life in something, and then people come in and do some version of it that makes it watered down and it makes it lose its essence, I you would be pissed too.
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I get it.
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And as someone who has already invested thousands of dollars and hours that she does not have, I also feel this like knee-jerk reaction to want to be like, no, no, no, like I'm trained.
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I'm trained in an internationally recognized method.
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I'm very focused on this and very serious, and I'm committed to my learning, and it's my class is not just like 50 minutes of pulsing to the beat.
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Like I get it.
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But this gets me to the point of the podcast.
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These disagreements over what Pilates is and isn't, what the elders intended or didn't intend or whatever has created this vacuum for the Pilates police.
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This is like this colloquial term that we use online now, right?
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And it's it's mainly a bunch of able-bodied, thin, white women, Pilates instructors who have the time and energy to go on the internet and essentially bully.
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I'm sure that they don't think that they're bullying, but they're essentially bullying other instructors whom they deem as kind of traveling so far from classical Pilates, right?
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So you see a lot of things online like that's not what Joseph Pilates built.
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That's not what Joseph Pilates intended.
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That's not real Pilates.
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You're not doing it right.
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I'm so sad about where this method is going.
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And I would think that, you know, we can borrow a little bit from Dr.
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Becky here, the great Dr.
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Becky, of two things can be true.
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I think you have to be able to hold space for the both and, right?
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So you have to be able to hold the boom of the method and the dilution of the method.
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You have to hold the trends that will inevitably pop up.
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You have to be holding space for misrepresentation of the method, for the lack of education, for instructors who have no idea about anatomy and physiology and breathing mechanics.
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You have to hold space for clients who will inevitably get hurt, get pissed, get disenchanted because they might be in a class with someone who is undereducated or they're just pulling exercises off of Instagram.
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I really get it.
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I really, really do.
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And the cream always rises to the top, baby.
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Always does.
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You can hold space for being pissed, but you can also hold space for your own excellence and your own integrity and your own evolution and your own education.
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Because the savvy client, they want someone who's had some longevity.
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They want someone who's educated.
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They want someone who makes them feel good in their bodies.
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They want someone who can help them heal injuries.
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They want someone who can help them come back from pregnancy and learn how to move in a different body again.
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Don't get caught up in being whiny and mean.
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Get caught going deep when everyone else is going wide.
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Don't get caught being caught up in drama because it's always going to be there.
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Wanting to be all up in that conversation and just like creating more discord that comes from ego.
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It comes from the lower self.
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It comes at a price, it comes at your piece.
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It's a lower frequency.
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It does not get you where you want to go.
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It's the more evolved self, which we're all trying to get to ideally.
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It's the more evolved self that's like, you know what?
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There's a lot that's out of my control, right?
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What do I do with these feelings that I have?
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What do I want to create from these feelings that I have?
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What conversations need to be had?
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What could come of this?
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How do I stay in my own lane?
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Do I need to expand my lane?
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Where am I being too rigid?
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It comes back to, you know, wanting to be right versus wanting connection.
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Sometimes we just want to be right because it feels good.
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But it always sort of collapses us.
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Wanting connection is what opens everything up, right?
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Because if this, if we're really talking about original intentions, then this method is expansive.
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And so it's just like, how do we get it there?
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So I want to kind of speak to two tracks.
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One, if you're a person like me who has felt triggered or insecure, or maybe you've even been bullied.
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To be clear, no one's ever said anything to me directly.
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It's just the barrage of what I see has made me feel like, oh my God, wait, am I doing something wrong?
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Did I do this wrong?
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Because my other certifications, becoming a trainer and a group fitness instructor, et cetera, et cetera, were very linear and very uh, I would say, like traditional, what you would expect.
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But coming into Pilates, I did it a little bit differently.
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I didn't even uh have a desire to do Pilates because of the reasons that I mentioned to you earlier in the pod, until I was postpartum and my PT was trying to teach me diaphragmatic breathing.
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We were doing like very basic, basic, basic Pilates stuff, learning how to bring my ribs to my hips and breathe there and create stability through my pelvis and through my rib cage.
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But I had no prior language to it.
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I didn't know what she was doing, nor could I recreate it without her.
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I was just following instructions because I just needed to get better.
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And then fast forward, my husband was training with this woman named Lizzie.
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Shout out to Lizzie.
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And she's super smart and she's really sharp.
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And so I hired her for one session.
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I was like, I have these nagging injuries.
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And y'all, I was married to a PT in my first, my first marriage, and I still had things that were kind of unsolvable in my body in terms of like just like injury flare-ups and things that always hurt.
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And so I did this session with Lizzie, and yeah, we did some strength training, but she mostly showed me Pilates.
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And she gave me exercises to work on that were Pilates-based, and they fucking worked.
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And I was like, wait, what?
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Hold on.
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Like I could use these exercises, and all the pain that I'd been feeling for years would go away from this core work that she's giving me.
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It just didn't feel real.
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And so then I started to really listen and get curious.
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And so when a fitness conference came into town and they had a Matt Pilates certification, I did it.
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And this is the first kind of point of where I kind of like split off.
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Because in the industry, especially amongst instructors who did take more traditional paths, who are a little more seasoned, who have accumulated lots of education, we kind of scoff at these weekend certs, not weekend continuing education, but weekend certifications.
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As in, you really can't teach someone Matt Pilates in eight hours.
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Like the mental gymnastics that this program does to make you believe that you are certified to then go teach Pilates after being in a conference room for eight hours is just, I think it was like over two days.
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It's it's it's it's not a thing.
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Okay.
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Because you're so undertrained, you're so under-educated.
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You have the most bare minimum, bare minimum, bare minimum to be in a room.
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Okay.
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And I already had almost a decade of experience by the time I did this certification.
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So even I knew that this was incredibly incomplete, but it was scratching an itch.
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I was getting this certification because this was the best way for me to think about like, okay, is this something that I really want to teach, or is this just something that I want to learn from me?
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And once I knew that this was something that I really wanted to do, then I went and invested more time, more money, et cetera.
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But I think about often as I'm watching these women bully other, mostly women on the internet, I think about all the times when I felt weird about the journey that I took, that I didn't just jump right into a comprehensive certification, that I took my time, that I kind of went around the bend a little bit, that I, you know, did a certification that wasn't really great the first time.
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And I just think, what if I listened to what they were saying?
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What if I stopped what I was doing?
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What if I didn't go after what I ultimately wanted?
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Because some random people that I don't know and have no investment in are saying that there is a right way and a wrong way.
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Can you imagine why this is so universal?
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Why this matters is how much does this happen to all of us?
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There are definitely times when I'm in my own way because of previous experiences or whatever that make me a little bit fearful.
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But most of the time, nine times out of ten, and if you've been listening to this podcast or whatever, you know that this is true because I've talked about this before.
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Most of the time, what makes me second guess myself is someone else's voice.
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It could be my mother's, it could be another relative, it can be an ex, it could be someone random on the internet that I think is more qualified or more educated than me.
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And they will stop me in my fucking tracks and make me second guess.
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Think about all of the work that doesn't get made.
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Think about all All of the connections that never happen, the love, the friendship, the nonprofits that never get formed, the anything, any think of all the things that don't happen, all the light and the passion that people have to give that don't get to happen because of people like these women getting into people's heads and making them too insecure to try.
00:22:23.279 --> 00:22:24.799
It's actually like sad.
00:22:25.279 --> 00:22:38.960
Because when you're being vulnerable, when you're putting yourself out there, when you're trying something new, you want the visibility because you want the support, but you don't want the visibility that comes with the critique because the vision is still fragile.
00:22:39.039 --> 00:22:40.079
It's still forming.
00:22:40.240 --> 00:22:45.599
And so I want to remind you that like people don't have to get you.
00:22:45.759 --> 00:22:48.079
They don't have to like your shit.
00:22:48.240 --> 00:22:50.640
They don't have to understand why you're making it.
00:22:50.880 --> 00:22:52.640
They don't have to understand the journey.
00:22:52.799 --> 00:22:53.920
Let them talk.
00:22:54.160 --> 00:22:55.920
Let them say what they have to say.
00:22:56.160 --> 00:22:56.880
You do you.
00:22:57.119 --> 00:22:59.440
You work on healing your shit.
00:22:59.680 --> 00:23:03.359
You work on standing in your own integrity and your own sovereignty.
00:23:03.599 --> 00:23:10.000
You work on doing less harm in the process of your own evolution.
00:23:10.240 --> 00:23:13.680
You recognize that the more you know, the less you know.
00:23:13.839 --> 00:23:15.519
So you gotta keep going.
00:23:16.079 --> 00:23:22.160
You know how to be an active participant in your own success.
00:23:22.400 --> 00:23:24.160
So just do that.
00:23:24.400 --> 00:23:25.680
Let them talk shit.
00:23:25.839 --> 00:23:27.599
You don't have to take it.
00:23:27.839 --> 00:23:39.920
And I say this never as a person who has it figured out, but always as a person who has nothing figured out, but and always in the process of figuring it out and can think on this level with you.
00:23:40.079 --> 00:23:45.680
And I also, you know, for the people who are doing the bullying, I get it.
00:23:45.920 --> 00:23:49.279
The compassionate part of me totally gets it.
00:23:49.440 --> 00:23:52.960
You've spent your time, your money, your life.
00:23:53.200 --> 00:23:55.200
You pour everything into this.
00:23:55.440 --> 00:23:57.200
It does not pay well.
00:23:57.599 --> 00:23:59.599
It looks like it pays well.
00:23:59.839 --> 00:24:03.920
The clients are paying well, but it does not pay well.
00:24:04.160 --> 00:24:07.440
You go from job to job to job to client to client to client.
00:24:07.519 --> 00:24:09.200
You're working your ass off.
00:24:09.279 --> 00:24:25.119
And these people just come in and totally bastardize something that means a lot to you, something that has potentially changed your life, something that maybe you hold sacred, something that you have so much respect for because you know the power of what it can do for people.
00:24:25.279 --> 00:24:26.720
I 100% get that.
00:24:26.880 --> 00:24:36.640
It's just that what is your intention behind what you do, what you say to people, because you always have a choice.
00:24:36.880 --> 00:24:38.400
So, what are you gonna do?
00:24:38.559 --> 00:24:57.039
You can be little people, you can complain, you can intimidate new instructors, you can make people feel bad for their choices, you can leave no room for people's evolution, you can leave no space for people to learn and figure it out and make mistakes.
00:24:58.000 --> 00:25:04.160
Or you could say, huh, there's a lot of people coming into this right now.
00:25:04.240 --> 00:25:09.519
And I feel like there's not a ton of education, there's not a ton of consistency.
00:25:09.759 --> 00:25:12.000
Damn, could I be a mentor?
00:25:12.160 --> 00:25:13.759
Damn, could I create a program?
00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:18.480
Could I like what could I do to be a part of the solution?
00:25:19.279 --> 00:25:21.920
Because again, this goes beyond Pilates.
00:25:22.400 --> 00:25:25.680
This goes to so much of what we see online.
00:25:25.920 --> 00:25:31.920
There's just so many complaints and so little doing.
00:25:32.079 --> 00:25:32.960
On and on and on.
00:25:33.039 --> 00:25:34.000
It's so endless.
00:25:34.160 --> 00:25:35.519
So be a part of the solution.
00:25:35.599 --> 00:25:39.039
You don't like it, so go fucking change it.
00:25:40.240 --> 00:25:40.880
Hello.
00:25:42.240 --> 00:25:43.599
There are pathways.
00:25:43.759 --> 00:25:45.920
There are pathways for creating change.
00:25:46.079 --> 00:25:54.960
If at the end of the day, what you really care about is the preservation of what you hold sacred.
00:25:56.240 --> 00:25:58.640
Think about the barriers to entry.
00:25:59.039 --> 00:26:07.519
Think about why someone would go do a weekend search over something that's more credentialed.
00:26:07.680 --> 00:26:13.519
Think about who doesn't see themselves in this role and what you can do about that.
00:26:13.839 --> 00:26:22.559
Think about as a leader in this space, what you can do to create space for more people to be a part of it.
00:26:22.799 --> 00:26:31.519
Because we know, because it's been proven that shame and guilt yelling at people, especially online, it's not how you create change.
00:26:31.680 --> 00:26:32.400
Because guess what?
00:26:32.559 --> 00:26:36.079
So many things would be different if it were that simple, right?
00:26:36.400 --> 00:26:36.720
Right?
00:26:36.880 --> 00:26:37.359
We know that.
00:26:37.440 --> 00:26:46.480
So we're gonna stop resorting to these low-level, low frequency methods of trying to get people to do what we want them to do.
00:26:46.799 --> 00:26:51.599
And we're just gonna create better pathways for people to make better choices, right?
00:26:51.759 --> 00:26:52.000
Right.
00:26:52.240 --> 00:27:08.000
I just had to get that off of my chest because I don't want other women leaving themselves behind in the ways that I've left myself behind, because I've let people make me feel insecure.
00:27:08.240 --> 00:27:09.359
Because I've let it happen.
00:27:09.519 --> 00:27:10.559
And I don't want that for you.
00:27:10.720 --> 00:27:12.720
And I don't want it for me anymore either.
00:27:13.039 --> 00:27:15.279
So that's all I got.
00:27:15.440 --> 00:27:17.119
We'll talk next week.
00:27:17.440 --> 00:27:19.039
Have a great one.
00:27:19.200 --> 00:27:22.480
If this episode resonates with you, send it to someone.
00:27:22.640 --> 00:27:26.240
If you have the Pilates police in your life, go ahead and send it to them.
00:27:26.400 --> 00:27:30.960
But also, if you have the Pilates police in your life, like why are you hanging out with people who are mean?
00:27:31.200 --> 00:27:32.240
Make better choices.
00:27:32.400 --> 00:27:32.720
Okay.
00:27:33.200 --> 00:27:33.839
Bye.
00:00:05.040 --> 00:00:08.000
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Further Forward Podcast.
00:00:08.080 --> 00:00:09.839
I'm your host, Ashley Mitchell.
00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:11.919
Thank you for tuning in to another episode.
00:00:12.080 --> 00:00:13.359
It's nice to be with you.
00:00:13.599 --> 00:00:18.000
I'm sitting on the couch in my favorite spot next to my cat.
00:00:18.079 --> 00:00:19.120
He's in his favorite spot.
00:00:19.199 --> 00:00:27.440
So we're just like having a cozy little afternoon over here while I can hear my neighbor's children screaming bloody murder.
00:00:27.679 --> 00:00:34.320
Like it almost I'm almost afraid for what is going on because they are screaming.
00:00:34.399 --> 00:00:36.320
They must be chasing each other or something.
00:00:36.560 --> 00:00:41.280
But also, one is like one and a half and the other is like nine.
00:00:41.600 --> 00:00:51.679
So I am both calm and peaceful and living my life, and my peace is totally disrupted by these people, and I'm trying to just like keep it together.
00:00:51.840 --> 00:00:52.159
Okay.
00:00:52.719 --> 00:00:57.039
How was your experience of Beth's episode last week?
00:00:57.200 --> 00:00:58.719
Can we talk about that for a moment?
00:00:58.960 --> 00:01:08.000
I am so happy that you got to hear her, experience her in that way, especially if that was your first time.
00:01:08.319 --> 00:01:17.840
I knew that when we were gonna have this conversation, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that it would be a completely unedited episode.
00:01:18.159 --> 00:01:31.359
That we were gonna hit record and that whatever we said, knowing that the recording was going, we were going to say it and stand behind it because that's what we do.
00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:42.799
And I was just so um, just so happy about the level of intimacy that we were able to achieve in that episode, in that interview.
00:01:42.879 --> 00:01:49.519
And as I was reflecting over the week, I was like, it's gotta be this now or nothing.
00:01:50.560 --> 00:01:54.719
The guest episodes have to have a level of intimacy.
00:01:54.799 --> 00:01:57.280
That doesn't mean that everybody's gonna be a close friend.
00:01:57.680 --> 00:02:03.519
Doesn't mean that they're gonna be a friend at all, but there has to be a level of intimacy, honesty, openness.
00:02:03.680 --> 00:02:07.439
There has to be some kind of willingness to go there.
00:02:07.680 --> 00:02:09.199
Do you know what I'm saying?
00:02:09.840 --> 00:02:37.919
And I think that as I cultivate more love and respect and openness in myself, and obviously more certainty around my becoming, not in a way that like I am certain that like I'm becoming this person, but I am certain that I am comfortable with what comes and who I am becoming and what happens as a result of that becoming.
00:02:38.479 --> 00:02:45.919
As I cultivate all of that in myself, I want that reflected back to me in as many areas of my life as possible.
00:02:46.080 --> 00:02:52.719
And since this is my podcast, I mean, obviously I have direct control over that to some extent.
00:02:52.960 --> 00:02:55.360
So that's what I'm reflecting on.
00:02:55.599 --> 00:02:57.520
And I just have this feeling.
00:02:57.680 --> 00:03:07.039
I want this for her, but I also just have this feeling that her work is going to become more public-facing as time goes on.
00:03:07.280 --> 00:03:45.599
I think that she's if I can trust like my what both what I see from her and just kind of energetically what I feel, it it feels like with the death of both of her parents and becoming an athlete and a runner, and it just feels like she's completing like this cycle, that she's gonna walk into this new portal, this new place in life, and that we're all going to be able to witness it and ultimately benefit from who she is.
00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:46.319
Okay.
00:03:47.439 --> 00:03:49.120
So, what are we talking about today?
00:03:49.280 --> 00:03:51.280
I just mentioned sort of self-trust.
00:03:51.599 --> 00:04:02.159
And I think that in its purest form today is about self-trust, but the journey to get there, because this is not like I'm not gonna call this episode self-trust, right?
00:04:02.319 --> 00:04:03.919
But that's kind of what we're talking about.
00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:15.360
We're talking about trusting yourself, we're talking about carving your own journey, we're talking about potentially nonlinear paths, but the way I'm gonna do it is to talk about Pilates, girl.
00:04:15.439 --> 00:04:16.480
Don't hang up the phone name.
00:04:16.800 --> 00:04:17.279
Hold on.
00:04:17.439 --> 00:04:22.399
I'm gonna talk about Pilates and I'm gonna talk about not letting the haters win.
00:04:22.560 --> 00:04:28.480
So, in order to help me paint this picture, I have to give you a little bit of background on Pilates if you don't know it already.
00:04:28.639 --> 00:04:32.000
So, Joseph Pilates, he's this German dude.
00:04:32.160 --> 00:04:34.079
He grows up, he's kind of a sick kid.
00:04:34.240 --> 00:04:38.079
He has asthma, he has rickets, he has rheumatoid fever.
00:04:38.240 --> 00:04:49.759
And word on the street is that he uses fitness, movement to help heal himself to get stronger, and then it eventually becomes his method.
00:04:49.920 --> 00:04:58.720
Okay, so he uses diving, he uses boxing, he uses gymnastics, bodybuilding, he also pulls from the Greeks and the Romans.
00:04:58.879 --> 00:05:24.160
This is really important to note because the idea of taking from different methodologies, from different sort of proven methods and pulling them together, connecting dots that previously weren't connected or that weren't connected in the way that you see them, that's a thread that's important in this conversation.
00:05:24.399 --> 00:05:30.959
So now, fast forward to World War I, Joseph Pilates is in an internment camp in England.
00:05:31.279 --> 00:05:34.399
He is still working on his method.
00:05:34.639 --> 00:05:39.279
He's now creating his own equipment based on whatever is around him.
00:05:39.439 --> 00:05:45.120
And he starts creating the things that we know of now as all these like Pilates apparati, right?
00:05:45.199 --> 00:05:48.399
The reformer, the arc barrel, et cetera, et cetera.
00:05:48.720 --> 00:06:00.160
And he's also starting to use influences of yoga and even sort of watching animals like cats, how they move and stuff like that, like their instincts.
00:06:01.040 --> 00:06:08.720
So he helps the sick and the injured around him using his method and using the apparatus that he creates.
00:06:08.879 --> 00:06:13.600
Now he goes back to Germany and he is asked to train the German army.
00:06:13.759 --> 00:06:14.560
He says no.
00:06:14.720 --> 00:06:18.560
He goes to America, he meets his wife Clara on the ship.
00:06:18.879 --> 00:06:23.680
They go to New York and they open his studio.
00:06:23.839 --> 00:06:26.399
This is in 1926, okay?
00:06:26.800 --> 00:06:32.879
And what was said was that all kinds of people flocked to him ballet dancers, circus performers, etc.
00:06:33.120 --> 00:06:42.560
But it was really the dancers that raved about him because they noticed improved technique, they were able to rehab their injuries.
00:06:42.639 --> 00:06:46.639
And so all obviously all of this informed their performances.
00:06:46.800 --> 00:06:48.639
It made their performances better.
00:06:48.959 --> 00:07:06.879
This is point number two that's really interesting to me because as a black woman in uh a muscular body who's always engaged in high-intensity activities, the narrative has always been that Pilates is not for you, girl.
00:07:07.040 --> 00:07:15.439
That Pilates is for people who look like ballerinas or who could look like ballerinas if they just did enough Pilates, right?
00:07:15.759 --> 00:07:18.720
It's too expensive for you, you're not going to see yourself reflected.
00:07:18.879 --> 00:07:22.000
There's no black people there, there's no black instructors, et cetera, et cetera.
00:07:22.160 --> 00:07:30.879
And what it looks like, just from the very little that I know, is that that was not Joseph Pilates' intention.
00:07:31.120 --> 00:07:35.680
His intention was that this was a method for everybody.
00:07:36.079 --> 00:07:38.879
There are so many apparati for a reason.
00:07:39.120 --> 00:07:58.319
You could literally tailor Pilates based on the body that you have in front of you, and that you could use all these different pieces of equipment to achieve whatever results that person is looking for, or whatever you're trying to solve for in their bodies.
00:07:58.639 --> 00:08:04.879
So because he had this movement method, it obviously had a bigger umbrella.
00:08:05.040 --> 00:08:09.519
So he had this philosophy around it called contrology.
00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:16.480
Now I'm gonna read quick, quick, quick from his book, Return to Life Through Contrology.
00:08:16.560 --> 00:08:21.120
This was written in 1945 because you might be like, well, what the fuck is contrology?
00:08:21.279 --> 00:08:21.600
Okay.
00:08:22.079 --> 00:08:28.800
Contrology is complete coordination of body, mind, and spirit.
00:08:29.439 --> 00:08:41.840
Contrology develops the body uniformly, corrects wrong postures, restores physical vitality, invigorates the mind, and elevates the spirit.
00:08:42.080 --> 00:08:45.600
There's much more to be said, but I think that's plenty.
00:08:45.679 --> 00:08:51.840
I also just want to note you could hear in this the influences of other methodologies.
00:08:52.000 --> 00:08:54.399
I certainly hear yoga in that, right?
00:08:54.480 --> 00:09:00.799
The connection of mind, body, spirit, uh potentially a little bit of the yamas and niyamas, right?
00:09:00.879 --> 00:09:30.480
You got like breath work in there, you got um a little bit of even what I've learned through boxing for the last couple of years, this idea of pairing breath with movement and being able to settle the nervous system, even while the nervous system is in this intense place of activation, being able to sort of like focus the mind and use that to direct the body to exert the kind of force that you're trying to exert.
00:09:30.639 --> 00:09:32.639
I can't even tell you how much I love movement.
00:09:32.799 --> 00:09:38.480
I know that I sound like a nerd, but anyway, so contrology, right?
00:09:38.720 --> 00:09:43.759
Obviously, teachers come to work with him, for him, study under him.
00:09:44.399 --> 00:09:52.960
And these first generations of teachers called the elders, they would go and they would teach and they would open their own studios and et cetera.
00:09:53.120 --> 00:10:01.120
And over time, they added exercises, they evolved exercises, they created their own methods, they pioneered contemporary Pilates.
00:10:01.360 --> 00:10:02.720
This is point number three.
00:10:02.960 --> 00:10:08.080
So Joseph Pilates pulled from other methods to create his own.
00:10:08.320 --> 00:10:18.320
And then the teachers that he trained took what he created and also expanded the idea of what it could be and what bodies could do, and et cetera, et cetera.
00:10:18.639 --> 00:10:23.440
So now we're in 2026 where Pilates has exploded, right?
00:10:23.600 --> 00:10:31.200
It's like blowing everything else out of the water, and rightfully so, um, or not even rightfully so.
00:10:31.360 --> 00:10:36.960
And and as a result of that, it's like a copy, kind of an obvious extension, not a rightfully so.
00:10:37.279 --> 00:10:39.200
There's now a battle, right?
00:10:39.360 --> 00:10:40.559
Or there are several battles.
00:10:40.879 --> 00:10:44.480
Should you do Pilates or should you do this, or should you do Pilates or should you do that?
00:10:44.720 --> 00:11:00.639
But even more in the Pilates world, it's like the battle between contemporary Pilates, classical Pilates, and then Pilates-inspired movements like sculpt, like fusion, like solid core, like stuff on a Legris machine and things like that.
00:11:00.879 --> 00:11:10.240
I've watched this stuff happen online with sort of terror and curiosity.
00:11:10.480 --> 00:11:17.759
And the more training I do, the more I understand why people are pissed.
00:11:18.320 --> 00:11:21.600
And that and this is true in every method.
00:11:21.759 --> 00:11:42.639
Or I think if you are an expert in something, if you've been studying something for a long time, if you go to college for something, if you've trained your whole life in something, and then people come in and do some version of it that makes it watered down and it makes it lose its essence, I you would be pissed too.
00:11:42.960 --> 00:11:43.919
I get it.
00:11:44.720 --> 00:11:59.279
And as someone who has already invested thousands of dollars and hours that she does not have, I also feel this like knee-jerk reaction to want to be like, no, no, no, like I'm trained.
00:11:59.840 --> 00:12:03.120
I'm trained in an internationally recognized method.
00:12:03.279 --> 00:12:10.639
I'm very focused on this and very serious, and I'm committed to my learning, and it's my class is not just like 50 minutes of pulsing to the beat.
00:12:10.799 --> 00:12:11.679
Like I get it.
00:12:12.000 --> 00:12:15.120
But this gets me to the point of the podcast.
00:12:15.360 --> 00:12:27.120
These disagreements over what Pilates is and isn't, what the elders intended or didn't intend or whatever has created this vacuum for the Pilates police.
00:12:27.360 --> 00:12:31.120
This is like this colloquial term that we use online now, right?
00:12:32.159 --> 00:12:50.080
And it's it's mainly a bunch of able-bodied, thin, white women, Pilates instructors who have the time and energy to go on the internet and essentially bully.
00:12:50.240 --> 00:13:02.080
I'm sure that they don't think that they're bullying, but they're essentially bullying other instructors whom they deem as kind of traveling so far from classical Pilates, right?
00:13:02.159 --> 00:13:06.320
So you see a lot of things online like that's not what Joseph Pilates built.
00:13:06.480 --> 00:13:08.399
That's not what Joseph Pilates intended.
00:13:08.559 --> 00:13:09.759
That's not real Pilates.
00:13:10.000 --> 00:13:11.120
You're not doing it right.
00:13:11.279 --> 00:13:13.600
I'm so sad about where this method is going.
00:13:13.759 --> 00:13:19.039
And I would think that, you know, we can borrow a little bit from Dr.
00:13:19.120 --> 00:13:20.480
Becky here, the great Dr.
00:13:20.559 --> 00:13:22.960
Becky, of two things can be true.
00:13:23.120 --> 00:13:28.480
I think you have to be able to hold space for the both and, right?
00:13:28.720 --> 00:13:36.240
So you have to be able to hold the boom of the method and the dilution of the method.
00:13:36.399 --> 00:13:40.480
You have to hold the trends that will inevitably pop up.
00:13:40.799 --> 00:13:51.840
You have to be holding space for misrepresentation of the method, for the lack of education, for instructors who have no idea about anatomy and physiology and breathing mechanics.
00:13:52.080 --> 00:14:06.559
You have to hold space for clients who will inevitably get hurt, get pissed, get disenchanted because they might be in a class with someone who is undereducated or they're just pulling exercises off of Instagram.
00:14:06.720 --> 00:14:07.279
I really get it.
00:14:07.360 --> 00:14:08.320
I really, really do.
00:14:08.559 --> 00:14:12.559
And the cream always rises to the top, baby.
00:14:13.039 --> 00:14:14.159
Always does.
00:14:14.399 --> 00:14:21.840
You can hold space for being pissed, but you can also hold space for your own excellence and your own integrity and your own evolution and your own education.
00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:25.519
Because the savvy client, they want someone who's had some longevity.
00:14:25.759 --> 00:14:27.120
They want someone who's educated.
00:14:27.279 --> 00:14:29.840
They want someone who makes them feel good in their bodies.
00:14:29.919 --> 00:14:32.639
They want someone who can help them heal injuries.
00:14:32.720 --> 00:14:40.240
They want someone who can help them come back from pregnancy and learn how to move in a different body again.
00:14:40.399 --> 00:14:43.759
Don't get caught up in being whiny and mean.
00:14:44.320 --> 00:14:48.799
Get caught going deep when everyone else is going wide.
00:14:48.960 --> 00:14:54.240
Don't get caught being caught up in drama because it's always going to be there.
00:14:54.480 --> 00:15:00.960
Wanting to be all up in that conversation and just like creating more discord that comes from ego.
00:15:01.120 --> 00:15:02.720
It comes from the lower self.
00:15:02.879 --> 00:15:06.399
It comes at a price, it comes at your piece.
00:15:06.480 --> 00:15:07.840
It's a lower frequency.
00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:10.559
It does not get you where you want to go.
00:15:11.120 --> 00:15:16.240
It's the more evolved self, which we're all trying to get to ideally.
00:15:16.399 --> 00:15:19.039
It's the more evolved self that's like, you know what?
00:15:19.200 --> 00:15:21.840
There's a lot that's out of my control, right?
00:15:22.879 --> 00:15:25.200
What do I do with these feelings that I have?
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What do I want to create from these feelings that I have?
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What conversations need to be had?
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What could come of this?
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How do I stay in my own lane?
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Do I need to expand my lane?
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Where am I being too rigid?
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It comes back to, you know, wanting to be right versus wanting connection.
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Sometimes we just want to be right because it feels good.
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But it always sort of collapses us.
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Wanting connection is what opens everything up, right?
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Because if this, if we're really talking about original intentions, then this method is expansive.
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And so it's just like, how do we get it there?
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So I want to kind of speak to two tracks.
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One, if you're a person like me who has felt triggered or insecure, or maybe you've even been bullied.
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To be clear, no one's ever said anything to me directly.
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It's just the barrage of what I see has made me feel like, oh my God, wait, am I doing something wrong?
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Did I do this wrong?
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Because my other certifications, becoming a trainer and a group fitness instructor, et cetera, et cetera, were very linear and very uh, I would say, like traditional, what you would expect.
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But coming into Pilates, I did it a little bit differently.
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I didn't even uh have a desire to do Pilates because of the reasons that I mentioned to you earlier in the pod, until I was postpartum and my PT was trying to teach me diaphragmatic breathing.
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We were doing like very basic, basic, basic Pilates stuff, learning how to bring my ribs to my hips and breathe there and create stability through my pelvis and through my rib cage.
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But I had no prior language to it.
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I didn't know what she was doing, nor could I recreate it without her.
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I was just following instructions because I just needed to get better.
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And then fast forward, my husband was training with this woman named Lizzie.
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Shout out to Lizzie.
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And she's super smart and she's really sharp.
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And so I hired her for one session.
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I was like, I have these nagging injuries.
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And y'all, I was married to a PT in my first, my first marriage, and I still had things that were kind of unsolvable in my body in terms of like just like injury flare-ups and things that always hurt.
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And so I did this session with Lizzie, and yeah, we did some strength training, but she mostly showed me Pilates.
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And she gave me exercises to work on that were Pilates-based, and they fucking worked.
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And I was like, wait, what?
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Hold on.
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Like I could use these exercises, and all the pain that I'd been feeling for years would go away from this core work that she's giving me.
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It just didn't feel real.
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And so then I started to really listen and get curious.
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And so when a fitness conference came into town and they had a Matt Pilates certification, I did it.
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And this is the first kind of point of where I kind of like split off.
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Because in the industry, especially amongst instructors who did take more traditional paths, who are a little more seasoned, who have accumulated lots of education, we kind of scoff at these weekend certs, not weekend continuing education, but weekend certifications.
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As in, you really can't teach someone Matt Pilates in eight hours.
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Like the mental gymnastics that this program does to make you believe that you are certified to then go teach Pilates after being in a conference room for eight hours is just, I think it was like over two days.
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It's it's it's it's not a thing.
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Okay.
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Because you're so undertrained, you're so under-educated.
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You have the most bare minimum, bare minimum, bare minimum to be in a room.
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Okay.
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And I already had almost a decade of experience by the time I did this certification.
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So even I knew that this was incredibly incomplete, but it was scratching an itch.
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I was getting this certification because this was the best way for me to think about like, okay, is this something that I really want to teach, or is this just something that I want to learn from me?
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And once I knew that this was something that I really wanted to do, then I went and invested more time, more money, et cetera.
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But I think about often as I'm watching these women bully other, mostly women on the internet, I think about all the times when I felt weird about the journey that I took, that I didn't just jump right into a comprehensive certification, that I took my time, that I kind of went around the bend a little bit, that I, you know, did a certification that wasn't really great the first time.
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And I just think, what if I listened to what they were saying?
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What if I stopped what I was doing?
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What if I didn't go after what I ultimately wanted?
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Because some random people that I don't know and have no investment in are saying that there is a right way and a wrong way.
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Can you imagine why this is so universal?
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Why this matters is how much does this happen to all of us?
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There are definitely times when I'm in my own way because of previous experiences or whatever that make me a little bit fearful.
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But most of the time, nine times out of ten, and if you've been listening to this podcast or whatever, you know that this is true because I've talked about this before.
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Most of the time, what makes me second guess myself is someone else's voice.
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It could be my mother's, it could be another relative, it can be an ex, it could be someone random on the internet that I think is more qualified or more educated than me.
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And they will stop me in my fucking tracks and make me second guess.
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Think about all of the work that doesn't get made.
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Think about all All of the connections that never happen, the love, the friendship, the nonprofits that never get formed, the anything, any think of all the things that don't happen, all the light and the passion that people have to give that don't get to happen because of people like these women getting into people's heads and making them too insecure to try.
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It's actually like sad.
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Because when you're being vulnerable, when you're putting yourself out there, when you're trying something new, you want the visibility because you want the support, but you don't want the visibility that comes with the critique because the vision is still fragile.
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It's still forming.
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And so I want to remind you that like people don't have to get you.
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They don't have to like your shit.
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They don't have to understand why you're making it.
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They don't have to understand the journey.
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Let them talk.
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Let them say what they have to say.
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You do you.
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You work on healing your shit.
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You work on standing in your own integrity and your own sovereignty.
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You work on doing less harm in the process of your own evolution.
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You recognize that the more you know, the less you know.
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So you gotta keep going.
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You know how to be an active participant in your own success.
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So just do that.
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Let them talk shit.
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You don't have to take it.
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And I say this never as a person who has it figured out, but always as a person who has nothing figured out, but and always in the process of figuring it out and can think on this level with you.
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And I also, you know, for the people who are doing the bullying, I get it.
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The compassionate part of me totally gets it.
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You've spent your time, your money, your life.
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You pour everything into this.
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It does not pay well.
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It looks like it pays well.
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The clients are paying well, but it does not pay well.
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You go from job to job to job to client to client to client.
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You're working your ass off.
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And these people just come in and totally bastardize something that means a lot to you, something that has potentially changed your life, something that maybe you hold sacred, something that you have so much respect for because you know the power of what it can do for people.
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I 100% get that.
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It's just that what is your intention behind what you do, what you say to people, because you always have a choice.
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So, what are you gonna do?
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You can be little people, you can complain, you can intimidate new instructors, you can make people feel bad for their choices, you can leave no room for people's evolution, you can leave no space for people to learn and figure it out and make mistakes.
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Or you could say, huh, there's a lot of people coming into this right now.
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And I feel like there's not a ton of education, there's not a ton of consistency.
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Damn, could I be a mentor?
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Damn, could I create a program?
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Could I like what could I do to be a part of the solution?
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Because again, this goes beyond Pilates.
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This goes to so much of what we see online.
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There's just so many complaints and so little doing.
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On and on and on.
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It's so endless.
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So be a part of the solution.
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You don't like it, so go fucking change it.
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Hello.
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There are pathways.
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There are pathways for creating change.
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If at the end of the day, what you really care about is the preservation of what you hold sacred.
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Think about the barriers to entry.
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Think about why someone would go do a weekend search over something that's more credentialed.
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Think about who doesn't see themselves in this role and what you can do about that.
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Think about as a leader in this space, what you can do to create space for more people to be a part of it.
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Because we know, because it's been proven that shame and guilt yelling at people, especially online, it's not how you create change.
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Because guess what?
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So many things would be different if it were that simple, right?
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Right?
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We know that.
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So we're gonna stop resorting to these low-level, low frequency methods of trying to get people to do what we want them to do.
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And we're just gonna create better pathways for people to make better choices, right?
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Right.
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I just had to get that off of my chest because I don't want other women leaving themselves behind in the ways that I've left myself behind, because I've let people make me feel insecure.
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Because I've let it happen.
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And I don't want that for you.
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And I don't want it for me anymore either.
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So that's all I got.
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We'll talk next week.
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Have a great one.
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If this episode resonates with you, send it to someone.
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If you have the Pilates police in your life, go ahead and send it to them.
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But also, if you have the Pilates police in your life, like why are you hanging out with people who are mean?
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Make better choices.
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Okay.
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Bye.
