Aline Studios

10/25/2026

AI finally made me female

Woot Woot

10/25/2026

With all that forceful cueing at 4:00 on a Friday Velma is quietly supportive.

She pulled her bed up to the tower to support my client who is partially paralyzed.

I don’t know if my client is the dog whisperer or if Velma is the client whisperer. Either way we all ended the day on a positive note.

10/19/2026

Velma live Graham work

09/14/2026

Teaching my highly hyper, overly energetic dog this weekend to ring a bell and now to hold her toy on her head.

Of course I relate to this as a teacher.

My dog is teaching me to remind my clients to stay the course.

Time is going by anyway, so put the effort into ‘the amount,’ and ‘the location’.

How hard do I push, or when do I soften to get my results?

Where does this effort go?

What needs to hold and what releases?

What does both… maybe?

Acknowledge the small wins.

Patience above all things.

Repeat over and over again without judgement.

Time will do the rest.

09/06/2026

07/16/2026

From a Walker to a Cane to Biking 10 Miles a Day

About 2 years ago this client couldn’t walk without a walker.

Her life before training was based on just getting through it. She resolved herself to believe that was it for her.

We started working together slowly
just trying to survive the exercises.

She never believed. She just checked the box and moved on to the next goal.

As her body got stronger, I taught her movement with directed attention.

Technique.

Feeling the exercises in the way she understood something was happening beyond just check the box.

She had to learn to not only to strengthen in movement but in stabilization as well.

We didn’t rush it.

One session at a time.

She did have to correct a botched surgery, she did retire as well.

Now…

she’s training twice a week and riding her bike 10 miles a day.

This is beyond rehab. She’s not just getting through exercises anymore. She’s exploring movement on a whole other level.

The MRI doesn’t lie. We can’t change the structure of the diagnosis.

What we can change is how the body responds to it.

That’s the work.

And she put the work in.

07/14/2026

My business was here before the internet.

Before email.

Before websites.

When cell phones were the size of real land line phones.

I cold called gyms selling myself and I selling a Pilates mat class when no one knew what it was and it was illegal to say the word.

I collected articles, seven of them.

Printed them out and mailed them to people after I called them to introduce myself and educate them about Pilates.

I worked out of my apartment. My living room was the studio.

I added one small piece of equipment at a time. Not what people needed, just what fit.

I taught classes at gyms to market to private students. I wasn’t taking anyone away. The gyms didn’t offer Pilates equipment training.

There were no classes to take.

No mentors to study from.

No algorithm.

No likes.

No followers.

Just me and my clients.

Just results I could see with my own eyes.

Pretty soon someone would come to me in pain and I helped them.

Then they sent people.

Then their chiropractors and masseuses started referring.

It just grew organically.

I built my business on integrity.

On results.

On faith and perseverance…
and a second job, sometimes a third.

I had no shame even though my presentation was always humble.

I knew the work worked.

Many clients never wanted to leave training in my living room, but back then you couldn’t really do that.

I always believed.

Everything I added into the training, I believed in.

Now they’d call it guerrilla marketing.

Back then it was just person to person communication.

And here’s what I know after 40 years:

You can buy Google ads.

You can pay your way to the top of a search page.

But you can’t buy the moment when you ask a client if they believe they can ever be pain free

they say no

and then months later you remind them they never believed it.

But always you did.

And now they’re out of pain.

That kind of trust travels mouth to mouth.

It always has.

Algorithms change.

Rankings shift.

Someone who got their life back will never stop talking about it.

That’s not social proof.

That’s just proof.

07/09/2026

What I wish I knew when I was a young dancer

I trusted teachers who meant well, but they taught what worked for them.

Not me.

I didn’t know I could throw away the things that didn’t work for me.

Maturity in dance is education but it’s also self knowledge. Knowing your body and what it needs.

When you’re young and hungry for knowledge, you don’t always trust that inner knowing yet.

So you take everything your teachers give you and you try to make it all fit.

Some of it doesn’t.

I pushed through things I shouldn’t have.

Not because they were wrong.

They just weren’t mine.

My knees would swell, I had pain all over my body that I now know was not normal.

I kept negotiating with the pain until I finally stopped doing everyone else’s work and started creating my own.

I wanted to get somewhere.

We all do.

I learned with maturity: you can get there from the inside first.

Before you execute, before you push, before you override, listen to what your body is telling you.

You’re allowed to keep what serves you and let go of what doesn’t.

That’s not disrespect.

That’s intelligence.

If you’re in a class right now and something doesn’t feel right in your body, examine your inner knowledge. Do you have to do it or can you negotiate with either yourself or the teacher.

I wish I knew back then I didn’t have to do it just because someone told me to.

Real maturity and self knowledge as a young dancer or even as a Pilates client is the messy, ongoing work of listening to your body while learning.

Of catching yourself mid-push and asking: wait. Is this even mine?

Your body has been telling you the whole time.

Trust that.

Take what you need.

Throw away what doesn’t belong.

07/07/2026

Why ‘More Exercises’ Isn’t always the Answer for Advanced Clients

Is it about giving more exercises…or constantly adding more advanced exercises?

After years of practice, something shifts.

You stop chasing choreography and you start inhabiting the exercises.

My advanced clients have put in the years. They know the work.

Of course they still learn new things. But what changes is what they’re after.

Their goals are about how the work feels.

As a beginner you “do” Pilates.

After months or years you start to feel the work initiated from the inside out, instead of the outside in.

Of course you need exercises, that’s the pathway. You just have to make sure the path leads you inward instead of getting more performative which is outward.

That’s when students stop being transactional or judgmental. Moving to please the teacher, or qualifying or disqualifying work based on their opinion of what they think is hard or advanced, or what they are good at.

When a client gets out of transactional doing, you have a whole new world.

That’s where the real depth lives.

We do this as dancers our whole careers.

One of my clients just got an MRI report. The findings scared her. She wondered if she’d lose what she’s gained.

I told her no.

Her program has been sound all this time. We don’t have to change much because I was already training her as if she might have issues.

That’s what years of integrated work looks like.

The road inward is always built on and with integrity.