Amy Taylor Alpers is no stranger to traveling far and wide to teach both foundational and graduate-level Pilates teacher education to studios and students worldwide!
Earlier this year, Amy traveled to Bengaluru, India to teach an introductory workshop to the world of classical Pilates. During this inspiring trip, Amy shared that Pilates is for everybody, and she “hoped to establish a foundation for the original Pilates form and get a bunch of teachers trained.” Learn more about her experience teaching in India here.
In June, Amy headed to Australia to help Pilates instructors develop their teaching skills through a series of sessions and workshops, also along with the theme of Pilates is for everybody. Amy says that when she is teaching Pilates, “the goal is to uniformly develop the body in front of me—to not only make the body strong and flexible, but to help bring it back into its ideal alignment, balance, and organization; the way nature designed it well before civilization took its toll on it.”
One of her sessions called “Finding Your Center through Your Feet and Hands,” was designed to show what happens when we incorporate all of us more functionally. “Of the 206 bones in our bodies, 106 of them are in the hands and feet, and 75% of our motor cortex is used just to move them. Making sure the hands and feet are used correctly during the Pilates movements ensures that the information coming to and from our brains is fully activated and reaches through to the ends of our bodies.”
Another session Amy taught was called “Timing is Everything,” and it was about how to know if movement timing is right or not. As Amy says, “Human movement is made up of an inexplicable series of neurological communications. If one muscle fires out of sequence, the movement will be uncoordinated or ineffective at the very least, dangerous at worst. If you watch nature moving enough, you will see what natural and normal should look like.”
Amy wrapped up her time in Australia by teaching about spinal extension and how we should feel confident as teachers when working with the spine. “Our modern lifestyle is not good for the human spine—especially all of the sitting. Spines today are filled with tightness, weakness, injury and pain, as well as scary beliefs from the media and other factors. Pilates teachers are not immune to this fear. We must realize that as movement teachers, we hopefully believe it is always better to move something than not to move it. It’s essential every part of the spine move exactly as it’s designed, to the best of its ability, for optimal health.”
You can read more about Amy’s time and teachings in Australia in The Pilates Journal, Issue #6, June 2023, under “Level Up Your Teaching with Amy Taylor Alpers” here.
And to learn more about The Pilates Center’s teacher training programs, visit iTPC (the online Pilates teacher training platform) here. Or you can read more about each teacher training program here or here, or contact kelli@thepilatescenter.com with questions.
About The Pilates Center
The Pilates Center was founded in Boulder in 1990 by sisters Amy Taylor Alpers and Rachel Taylor Segel. The sisters trained under Romana Kryzanowska, Joseph Pilates’ protégé, and inheritor of his NYC studio. Amy and Rachel have worked to foster the legacy and tradition of the original, classical method of Pilates while also incorporating a humanistic approach to meet every individual’s needs. For over 30 years, they have made it their mission to heal the world by empowering people to transform their health and Return to Life through Pilates.