Jasmine’s journey to be a Pilates Matwork teacher (week 3)

As mentioned in my previous post, it was a nightmare when I was faced with different types of bodies, different levels of skills, and varying degrees of body awareness, ALL AT ONE TIME. Also, I had difficulties in introducing breathing to my students.

To ensure these problems will not surface in my next class, I paid more attention to the classes I attended at Pilates BodyTree - I paid attention to the verbal and physical cues my teachers gave when they were faced with the same issues. My Matwork teacher training program classmate, Gary, also pointed me to one of the videos for observation where the Pilates BodyTree teacher did a great job in explaining Breath and posterior pelvic tilts.

On the day of my class, I focused a lot on Breath initially, having the students feel the movement of their ribs while breathing. This time, they are more comfortable with inhaling and exhaling deeply.

I have to say that I was extremely lucky when Ping taught about anterior, neutral and posterior pelvic tilts during the Matwork class I attended earlier on the day itself. With that understanding, I also made my practice clients lie on folded mats with their sitz bones hanging off it so that they have no choice but to posteriorly tilt their pelvis in order to keep their sitz bones off the ground - they finally understood that they MUST engage their abs! And I can finally teach with a peace of mind knowing that they will not injure their backs during the classes.

Knowing that they will be with me for the next few months, I slowed down the pace of the class so that to make sure they understood the correct way of doing the Matwork exercises instead of just making the “patterns” blindly. Despite demonstrating first, I still did some of the exercises together with them so that they can observe my movements whenever they lost the momentum or got confused. Now, I feel more confident to step up the pace as well as progressing to more challenging pieces in my subsequent classes

I surprised myself when I was not the least bit jittery at the start. I stopped stuttering and didn’t forget what I was going to teach. Everything seemed to flow smoothly. One of my students, Melissa said I have improved so much from my first class that I can pass off as a Pilates teacher now! Well, that’s a huge confidence booster and again, I can’t wait for my next class!

Written by Jasmine Lee