Q: Joseph Pilates described his method as the complete coordination of body, mind, and spirit. But we don’t hear very much about spirit. Could you expand a little bit about how you see the role of spirit in Pilates?

A: That is a really interesting question and a difficult one. When speaking of the body, that’s an easy level to address because it’s the most tangible. That is the exercise part of Pilates, but in a way, the least potent. As we go deeper we get to the mind. To me, what the mind is about is the principles – awareness, breath, balance, control, center, concentration, efficiency, flow, precision, and harmony. You cannot do this work mindlessly. It’s mind/body all the time.

The spirit is the quality that we breathe into the principles. If we concentrate and perform the movements with precision it doesn’t mean that it has a spirit to it. It is naturally quite mechanical – you are concentrating and going from point A to point B. The spirit is where we inject the quality, the personality, the dynamic, the color – and really, the heart. It’s individual and it’s certainly not a religion. When I speak of spiritual it is more the depth that I go into, and giving each movement a very distinct quality and character. That is the spirit of the work.