Forever Fit Pilates, LLC
Joseph Pilates' History and Rare Photos
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Joesph Hubertus Pilates 1880 - 1967 History and Rare Photos x x x
How Pilates Began Joe went to England in 1912, where he worked as a self-defense instructor for detectives at Scotland Yard. At the outbreak of World War I, Joe was interned as an "enemy alien" with other German nationals. During his internment, Joe refined his ideas and trained other internees in his system of exercise. He rigged springs to hospital beds, enabling bedridden patients to exercise against resistance, an innovation that led to his later equipment designs. An influenza epidemic struck England in 1918, killing thousands of people, but not a single one of Joe's trainees died. This, he claimed, testified to the effectiveness of his system. After his release, Joe returned to Germany. His exercise method gained favor in the dance community, primarily through Rudolf von Laban, who created the form of dance notation most widely used today. Hanya Holm adopted many of Joe's exercises for her modern dance curriculum, and they are still part of the "Holm Technique." When German officials asked Joe to teach his fitness system to the army, he decided to leave Germany for good. The Pilates movement gains in popularity – from Europe to the U.S. In 1926, Joe immigrated to the United States. During the voyage he met Clara, whom he later married. Joe and Clara opened a fitness studio in New York, sharing an address with the New York City Ballet. By the early 1960s, Joe and Clara could count among their clients many New York dancers. George Balanchine studied "at Joe's," as he called it, and also invited Pilates to instruct his young ballerinas at the New York City Ballet. "Pilates" was becoming popular outside of New York as well. As the New York Herald Tribune noted in 1964, "in dance classes around the United States, hundreds of young students limber up daily with an exercise they know as a pilates, without knowing that the word has a capital P, and a living, right-breathing namesake." His students begin to teach While Joe was still alive, only two of his students, Carola Trier and Bob Seed, are known to have opened their own studios. Trier, who had an extensive dance background, found her way to the United States by becoming a performing contortionist, after fleeing a Nazi holding camp in France. She found Joe Pilates in 1940, when a non-stage injury pre-empted her performing career. Joe Pilates assisted Trier in opening her own studio in the late 1950s. Joe and Clara remained close friends with Trier until their deaths. Bob Seed was another story. A former hockey player turned "Pilates" enthusiast, Seed opened a studio across town from Joe and tried to take away some of Joe's clients by opening very early in the morning. According to John Steel, one day Joe visited Seed with a gun and warned Seed to get out of town. Seed went. The second generation of Pilates teachers When Joe passed away in 1967, he left no will and had designated no line of succession for the "Pilates" work to carry on. Nevertheless, his work would remain. Clara continued to operate what was known as the "Pilates" Studio on Eighth Avenue in New York, where Romana Kryzanowska became the director around 1970. Kryzanowska had studied with Joe and Clara in the early 1940s and then, after a 15-year hiatus spent in Peru, returned to renew her studies. Several students of Joe and Clara went on to open their own studios. Ron Fletcher was a Martha Graham dancer who studied and consulted with Joe from the 1940s on, in connection with a chronic knee ailment. Fletcher opened his studio in Los Angeles in 1970 and attracted many Hollywood stars. Clara was particularly enamored with Ron and she gave her blessing to him to carry on the "Pilates" work and name. Like Carola Trier, Fletcher brought some innovations and advancements to the "Pilates" work. His evolving variations on "Pilates" were inspired both by his years as a Martha Graham dancer and by another mentor, Yeichi Imura. Kathy Grant and Lolita San Miguel were also students of Joe and Clara who became teachers. Grant took over the direction at the Bendel's studio in 1972, while San Miguel went on to teach Pilates at Ballet Concierto de Puerto Rico in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 1967, just before Joe's death, both Grant and San Miguel were awarded degrees by the State University of New York to teach "Pilates." These two are believed to be the only "Pilates" practitioners ever certified officially by Joe. Other students of Joe and Clara who opened their own studios include Eve Gentry, Bruce King, Mary Bowen and Robert Fitzgerald. Eve Gentry, a dancer who taught at the Pilates Studio in New York from 1938 through 1968, also taught "Pilates" in the early 1960s at New York University's Theater Department. After leaving New York, she opened her own studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A charter faculty member of the High School for the Performing Arts, Gentry was also a co-founder of the Dance Notation Bureau. In 1979, she was given the "Pioneer of Modern Dance Award" by Bennington College. Bruce King trained for many years with Joseph and Clara Pilates and was a member of the Merce Cunningham Company, Alwyn Nikolais Company, and his own Bruce King Dance Company. In the mid-1970s King opened his own studio at 160 W. 73rd Street in New York City. Mary Bowen, a Jungian analyst who studied with Joe in the mid-1960s, began teaching Pilates in 1975 and founded "Your Own Gym" in Northampton, Massachusetts. Robert Fitzgerald opened his studio on West 56th Street in the 1960s, where he had a large clientele from the dance community. Joe continued to train clients at his studio until his death in 1967, at the age of 87. In the 1970s, Hollywood celebrities discovered Pilates via Ron Fletcher's studio in Beverly Hills. Where the stars go, the media follows. In the late 1980s, the media began to cover Pilates extensively. The public took note, and the Pilates business boomed. "I'm fifty years ahead of my time," Joe once claimed. He was right. No longer the workout of the elite, Pilates has entered the fitness mainstream. Today, over 10 million Americans practice Pilates, and the numbers continue to grow. Joseph Pilates
Quotesxo xo The Pilates Method: "my work is 50 years ahead of
its time". Joseph's definition of physical fitness: "the attainment and maintenance of a uniformly developed body
with a sound mind fully capable of naturally, easily and satisfactorily performing our many and varied daily tasks with spontaneous
zest and pleasure - Everything should be smooth, like a cat. [The exercises are done lying, sitting, kneeling, etc]... to
avoid excess strain on the heart and lungs... natural movements ... with the emphasis on doing and being". xo "A few well-designed movements,
properly performed in a balanced sequence, are worth hours of doing sloppy callisthenics or forced contortion." xo "Patience and persistence are
vital qualities in the ultimate successful accomplishment of any worthwhile endeavor." xo The goal of Controlology (Pilates Method) ..... "the attainment and maintenance
of a uniformly developed body with a sound mind and the ability to perform life's daily activities with zest and ease."
xo "I invented all these
machines. Began back in Germany, was there until 1925 used to exercise rheumatic patients. I thought, why use My strength?
So I made a machine to do it for me. Look, you see it resists your movements in just the right way so those inner muscles
really have to work against it. That way you can concentrate on movement. You must always do it slowly and smoothly. Then
your whole body is in it." xo In explaining Controlology's
guiding principle, Pilates liked to quote Schiller: 'lt is the mind itself which builds the body'. xo "I must be right. Never an aspirin. Never injured a day
in my life. The whole country, the whole world, should be doing my exercises. They'd be happier."xo "Physical fitness is the first requisite
of happiness. Our interpretation of physical fitness is the attainment and maintenance of a uniformly developed body with
a sound mind fully capable of naturally, easily, and satisfactorily performing our many and varied daily tasks with spontaneous
zest and pleasure."xo "Contrology
is complete coordination of body, mind, and spirit. Through Contrology you first purposefully acquire complete control of
your own body and then through proper repetition of its exercises you gradually and progressively acquire that natural rhythm
and coordination associated with all your subconscious activities." "Contrology is not a system of haphazard exercises designed
to produce only bulging muscles. ... Nor does Contrology err either by over-developed a few muscles at the expense of all
others with resulting loss of grace and suppleness, or a sacrifice of the heart or lungs. Rather, it was conceived to limber
and stretch muscles and ligaments so that your body will be as supple as that of a cat and not muscular like that of the body
of a brewery-truck horse, or the muscle-bound body of the professional weight lifter you so much admire at the circus." "Contrology
develops the body uniformly, corrects wrong postures, restores physical vitality, invigorates the mind, and elevates the spirit." "Contrology is not a fatiguing system
of dull, boring, abhorred exercises repeated daily "ad-nausem"."xo "The art of contrology proves that
the only real guide to your true age lies not in years or how you THINK you feel but as you ACTUALLY are as infallibly indicated
by the degree of natural and normal flexibility enjoyed by your spine throughout life." "This
is the
equivalent of an "internal shower". As the spring freshets (freshet - the occurrence of a water flow resulting from sudden rain or melting snow )born of the heavy rains and vast masses of
melting snows on mountains in the hinterlands cause rivers to swell and rush turbulently onward to the sea, so too will your blood flow with renewed vigor as the direct
result of your faithfully performing the Contrology exercises.xoMoreover, such a body freed from nervous tension and over-fatigue is the ideal shelter
provided by nature for housing a well-balanced mind that is always fully capable of successfully meeting all of the complex
problems of modern living. "
Link to:
Trademark Lawsuit Link to: Joseph
Pilates authored and Published Works A Pilates Primer: The Millennium Edition (Two
combined books) Pilates' Return to Life Through Contrology/Your Health x x
"Sports
Illustrated arranged for me to meet with Joe Pilates in his second floor studio. I was 24 and weighed 145 pounds. He was thirty
pounds heavier, several inches shorter and 56 years older. I can still recall his handshake - I sensed he could bend me like
a pretzel if he cared to. Within a few minutes I was photographing Joe bending himself into one. His gymnasium attracted beautiful
people: ballerinas, modern dancers and actors who would subject themselves to his authoritarian control. Though he personally
demonstrated and explained the mechanical contraptions designed to strengthen and stretch the body, the clouds of forty years
dimmed his voice. Yet, I can remember him telling stories about Germany and how he outwitted the Brown Shirts on several occasions.
Before we parted he encouraged me, for everlasting youth, to practice Contrology. It took me 39 years to follow his advice."
- I.C. Rapoport
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