Lolita San Miguel:“I'm taking the legacy of Pilates on tour”

Lolita San Miguel:“I'm taking the legacy of Pilates on tour” The mission of the last student of the inventor of the training method that has become synonymous with muscle tone, flexibility and correct posture DANIELA LANNI May 11, 2015 at 10:49 am2 minute read https://www.lastampa.it/cultura/2015/05/11/news/lolita-san-miguel-porto-in-tour-l-eredita-di-pilates-1.35260015/

What do Madonna and Pippa Middleton, Sting and Tiger Woods have in common? A seven-letter word that has become synonymous with muscle tone, flexibility and correct posture not only among celebrities, but also among the many followers around the world. We're talking about pilates, a training method whose history is originally linked to the world of dance and which today is easy to find almost everywhere. Even in Italy there is no magazine that doesn't suggest exercises or a gym that doesn't offer courses, increasingly hybridized with other disciplines, from yogilates to cardio pilates, following the latest fitness trends. But is there an original method? Of course yes. It was conceived by Joseph Hubertus Pilates, father of the technique that bears his name and founder of a school in New York that also had first-rate dancers among its students. The goal was to make people aware of their own body, of their mind, to unite them in a single, functional entity. The appointment For industry professionals and enthusiasts, the opportunity to get closer to these roots is in Turin, on 8 and 9 May, in a workshop organized by Simone Tiozzo of the Move Te Ipsum studio, the penultimate leg of a European tour that has touched Scotland, Germany, has just landed in Piacenza and will end in Madrid. The protagonist of the two days will be Lolita San Miguel, 80 years old, the only student still active to have obtained from Joseph Pilates the certification to teach the method, which she has been practicing for 57 years. Born in New York to Puerto Rican parents, Lolita met the maestro while she was a dancer at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet in New York: following an accident, she began to frequent Joe's studio as a client, allowing herself to be conquered by the new possibilities of his technique to the point of undertaking a severe internship to obtain the qualification of teacher and change his profession. Of those years, the last of Pilates' life, she recalls «an impatient, energetic man, at the same time fickle, with ups and downs, and moments of depression. He dreamed of changing society through his work, but he felt frustrated not seeing it recognized. He believed the planet would be better off so he named one of the machines he invented Universal Reformer.' "The only important thing is not what you are doing, but how you are doing what you do," he used to say. https://www.lastampa.it/cultura/2015/05/11/news/lolita-san-miguel-porto-in-tour-l-eredita-di-pilates-1.35260015/ The mission In addition to learning from him, Lolita took on this mission, starting to travel around the world to promote movement education and transmit the basics of true pilates, also faithful to the principle of the evolution of the method to meet to the new needs of people, as it was in the wishes of the creator. «Consistency and continuous learning are essential. It is important that the adaptation of the technique also takes advantage of the knowledge deriving from motor sciences, which are advanced compared to the past – Lolita underlines -. I had never heard of osteoporosis in the 1960s, but today it's a common term. People's posture and habits have also changed. I know, because I was there, that Joseph has never lacked this drive for improvement, right up to the end». In honor of her, a few years ago, Lolita had a memorial stone placed in Mönchengladbach, her hometown in Germany, where Pilates had remained unknown. And the next goal of this indefatigable octogenarian is to also make the New York studio at 939 8th Avenue, where Pilates worked from 1927 to his death in 1967, a historic site. 5 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT PILATES

https://www.lastampa.it/cultura/2015/05/11/news/lolita-san-miguel-porto-in-tour-l-eredita-di-pilates-1.35260015/