Helen Zhang, founder of My Body My Pilates is certified by Balance Body USA in Master Pilates training. Helen will be leading the Pilates Instructor training program.
My Body My Pilates is committed to bringing world-class Pilates programs to our clients. We serve an international community that lives in or travels to Tokyo, and help them build a healthy lifestyle and reach their fitness goals so that they can have a healthy, happy life.
Now we are ready to train world-class Pilates Instructors.
what curriculum do we use at my body my pilates?
At My Body My Pilates, we use the Balanced Body Pilates curriculum for our Pilates Instructor Training.
Helen trained with Nora St. John, MS NCPT, Education Program Director of Balanced Body Inc. Nora was trained in Pilates with all of the first generation Pilates instructors. As such, she has a very rich, full range experience of Pilates, making her Balanced Body education system one that is easy to learn and which helps one to speed up one´s teaching skills.
Nora started more than 30 years ago with Pilates Elders such as Romana Kryzanowska, Carola Trier, Eve Gentry, Ron Fletcher, Kathleen Stanford Grant, and Lolita San Miguel. It helped her to understand the fundamental repertoire of Pilates, as well as seeing through the different lenses of each of the teachers who all bring in their own ´flavour´ to how they teach.
Helen learnt a lot from Nora's approach i.e. to start from a strong base of basic skills, and then taking them up a notch in the next level, and then leading up to a whole body movement after that. With that in mind, Helen has created families of exercises so there is coherence and a rational logic to how each exercise is connected to the next.
Why take our Pilates Instructor training course?
We can find so many reasons to do so, and that's why we are here, doing what we do, and loving every minute of it!
1. You love Pilates and want to learn more!
Pilates is for everybody! From 9 to 93, anyone can benefit from Pilates because of the flexibility of the method and environment. Pilates is a basic foundational health exercise for everyone. When you understand your body and gain body awareness, you gain confidence and experience to do what you want to do more of in life. Pilates is for people who want to be healthier and happier!
And if you are passionate about Pilates, it becomes your natural way of life. You probably do it every single day and even when you can't get to a class you'd be doing it on your own at home. You're probably saving up money to squeeze in a Reformer and a Cadillac or two into your house.
(One of our newest clients, Eri has only been doing Pilates for 3 months and she is already so hooked she wants to do it every day!)
You've been doing Pilates for quite some time now and are perhaps looking to advance further in your training. Just doing a normal class is no longer enough and you want something more. That's when a Pilates Educator training course is a great way to move up to another level.
It's when you actually teach that you understand a movement even more, because you have to find a way to explain it to someone else. It's not just your own body's consciousness now. How do you communicate that to another human body? And every body and mind is different. That's where the fun challenge comes in for an instructor, learning to adapt and respond to every body!
2. Sharing is a way of giving back to the community
Helen started My Body My Pilates because Pilates liberated her from her chronic pain and she knew she simply had to share it with others. It wasn't possible to keep this ´secret´ to herself and go on living a healthy, happy life when so many others are frustrated navigating years of pain. There is a solution, and Pilates is it.
She went from doing Pilates to getting trained as an instructor and for her, the natural next step is to train others to become instructors themselves.
Ultimately, sharing her skills is a way Helen is giving back to the community, and if more people benefit from this, then everything that she has done is absolutely worth it.
If you are passionate about Pilates and have personally experienced how Pilates has changed your life, you'd want to bring this to other people too. Physical pain, especially when it is chronic and seeing 101 doctors has not helped can really take a toll on one's mental health. Imagine how good it can feel when a client comes to you with misalignment, a lack of awareness of how their bodies move, and trying to avoid pain all the time, and then to feel the change after just one session of Pilates. The light in their faces is worth it.
3. A job can be healthy, pay the bills and allow you to organise your schedule!
Yes, teaching Pilates pays the bills etc. but we have yet to meet someone who is doing it because they don't know what else they can do. This is a job that is pretty much like a vocation. If you're not convinced of it, you wouldn't be doing it.
All our instructors have personally experienced the change Pilates has brought to their lives and that is why they continue to do what they do here. They never stop learning and training. Just because we become Pilates instructors does not mean we stop practising Pilates altogether and just stand around ordering people to do their Hundreds! As Pilates instructors, it is vital that we remain both learner and instructor always through the rest of our lives.
Since I started my journey with Pilates, I never get bored, it always challenges me and shows new ways of how my body can respond. It’s a deep ocean of knowledge! It takes you to a higher level in a mental and physical way! You rise to higher and higher levels of capability as your self-awareness and experience deepen. - Agata, instructor My Body My Pilates
I was first introduced to Pilates while I was pregnant as a safe way to stay active during pregnancy and I immediately fell in love! The combination of strengthening and stretching left me feeling taller and stronger after every class. - Kiri, instructor My Body My Pilates
4. You want to make a difference
This is a job where you will make a difference to a person's health - not just physical but also mental. Pilates is also for everyone, at any stage of their lives.
Even children and teens can benefit from Pilates and you'd get to meet people from all walks of life. You'd have your sports people who want a complementary training regime, you have your corporate staff who are sick of being stuck at their desks for so many hours, and you have mothers-to-be and mothers who have just given birth and want to get their strength back.
As a Pilates Instructor, you get the privilege of being on this health journey with your clients, watching them progress and get stronger, more toned and flexible. And most importantly, you´ll see them coming back for more, and with a bigger and brighter smile on their faces. Even the way they walk changes after a few sessions! It really does make a difference in even their self confidence.
These are definitely the perks of the job.
5. Quality training with the support of an amazing community
That's us. As one of our clients Audrey says, it's the people that make the difference, and that's what she likes most about training at My Body My Pilates. We have an international community of clients and instructors here, and we all came together for the same reason. We simply love Pilates. And friends bring their friends, family bring family and we have been growing steadily since 2017 when we first started.
We have a wide range of Pilates apparatus to allow instructors to create an incredible variety of exercises to suit every need and every body. We love all the different apparatus and we go beyond only providing the Reformer. We also have the Tower and the Chair and we were the first in Japan to bring in the OOV apparatus! Imagine that! That´s how enthusiastic we are about Pilates and we are always up-to-date with the latest developments in Pilates training.
At My Body My Pilates, we want to do things well, professionally and right. We take pride in what we do, and we want our clients to be doing Pilates for a long time to come! Whether it is our clients, our instructors, or those who are going to be joining us in our Pilates Instructor training course, we care about the progress of everyone.
So there you go, five reasons to become a Pilates Instructor with My Body My Pilates! Are you raring to go yet? We can't wait to start and meet all of you! We are going to have an amazing Pilates journey together!
TOKYO PILATES Studio
Our Pilates studio is at 3 丁目5ー11元麻布 1/F Pilates Studio, Block C Majes Motoazabu Gardens, 港区 Tokyo 106-0046.
Contact My Body My Pilates to discuss your Pilates exercises.