Ep09: Miriam Jones - Motion and Repose, Melbourne

The Pilates Diaries Podcast

Our guest in this episode is Miriam Jones from Motion and Repose in Melbourne. Miriam is a passionate mentor and teacher trainer of the next generation of Pilates instructors and runs a small home studio in Melbourne's northern suburbs.

[01:23] Miriam elaborates on her background as a dancer who graduated, left Melbourne to see the world and got hooked on yoga and Pilates in Scotland. She decided to return to Australia, get a Pilates qualification and enter the fitness industry.

[04:05] Miriam’s early Pilates experience and she remembers the heated floor, and her body feeling like it had been “put back together”. She stayed with Mat Pilates and didn't get on the equipment until she came back to Australia.

[06:04] Miriam recalls that in 1998 people in the UK only seemed to go to Pilates for rehabilitation, so she was sharing classes with a mix of generally older people. Most people were not familiar with Pilates, which they confused with yoga.

[08:31] Miriam explains that despite never having any goal to be a movement teacher, she moved into teaching quite quickly, keen to share the benefits of Pilates. Despite 20 years of teaching, she still feels like she is only at the beginning of exploring her relationship to the body.

[11:41] Miriam’s mentor Zosha Piotrowski, seeing magic in Miriam and helping her deliver it, and Claire Norgate, also a member of the Australian Fitness Network, who was a role model as a teacher and mentor.

[15:09] Miriam describes the Pilates available in Brisbane in 2001 was taught by physiotherapists and, although enjoyable, it was also restrictive, and that was the incentive for her to launch her group Pilates classes in church halls and community centres.

[19:58] Miriam acknowledges that her way of teaching Pilates wasn't going to appeal to everybody and that was okay with her, but if something feels right, she knows to grab it and not let go.

[21:14] Miriam discusses working in a team rather than running a studio, and that gave her the time to develop as a workshop presenter, mentor, and teacher trainer.

[27:42] Miriam's path in Brisbane, setting up classes in fitness environments, then doing more training and meeting Zosha and Claire in Sydney which led to her joining the Australian Fitness Network Pilates team, became a Stott Pilates teacher trainer, started delivering anatomy courses. Eventually, she opened her own studio.

[30:33] Miriam reveals that what Pilates has taught her is the importance of her relationship to her body, and that the way it moves affects the way she thinks and feels and vice versa.

[32:52] Miriam’s plans for the future, and she talks about re-launching her six-month mentoring program, delivering more teacher training, building her studio, and organising more retreats and workshops.

[34:24] Miriam’s advice to someone starting out in Pilates is not to try and make it perfect, just commit to doing it.

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