Hi. My name is Sarah Picot and this is a blog about anything Pilates. I teach classes, give private lessons, and develop videos and DVDs for beginning and advanced students. I love working with a wide range of people; I coach professional dancers and homemakers, teenagers and retirees, mostly women but men, too. As Joseph Pilates said, you will feel better in 10 sessions, look better in 20 sessions, and have a completely new body in 30 sessions .

If you’re reading this blog, I’m assuming that you have some familiarity with the Method. You’ve at least thought about starting Pilates and you may even be fairly advanced. I don’t want to spend too much time talking about Joseph Pilates himself. There are many good resources about him and his philosophy. I think the key thing to remember about Joseph is that he saw the exercises as training and therapy, and he constantly evolved the regimen as he learned more. So when you listen to your body and modify the exercise within his principles, you’re behaving just like Joseph. Each week, we’ll look at a fundamental or an exercise and then at safe modifications, which you can continue to refine as you progress.

Stay tuned. Next week, we’ll start with the most basic and most important fundamental: breathing.