What a pleasure I have had today to have a lovely conversation with the charming and outspoken Lolita San Miguel. And I hope it will be a pleasure for you when I relate to you a little about our conversation. Lolita is of course well known so no in depth bio is required here, but those of you new to class, I can fill you in a little about who Lolita is. Lolita holds the distinction of being one of the only two known practitioners to have been officially certified by Joseph and Clara Pilates. She first received certification from Carola Trier, Joseph Pilates’ first disciple to open a studio and then studied with Pilates himself from the years 1965 right up to his death of October, 1967.
Lolita and I have one fun thing in common in our background, that being that we both worked for Ballet Hispanico. She as a ballet mistress in the 70s, and I as a dancer in the early 90’s. So we got off to a good start.
Lolita’s accomplishments are numerous within the field that she clearly loves. For example she the Pilates Mentor Mentors Program in response to her frequent travels around the globe, planting seeds, but not getting to the see the seeds sprout. This PMMP is designed to take experienced, fully trained Pilates professionals a step further by being an apprentice to a Master. It is similar to her own experience, as she first apprenticed with Carola Trier and was certified after several years. She then apprenticed with the ultimate Masters Joseph and Clara Pilates, who certified her again after an intensive 520 hour program, 20 hours a week for six months. Her entire education was a 9 year process.
Those who participate in the Pilates Master Mentor Program are known as Lolita’s Disciples. It is a comprehensive program with participants from all over the globe (Spain, Germany, Czech Republic, Portugal and more). They spend a full 160 hours with Lolita personally, and are educated on all pieces of equipment (even such things I have never heard of, such as the bean bag and foot corrector).
At the behest of Lolita’s Disciples, she has just this very year started a teacher training program, Lolita’s Legacy. It is a 500 hour comprehensive program and taught only by her Disciples. Lolita participation includes the creation of detailed manuals and videos as course material.
While in Germany in 2009, Lolita learned while visiting Monchengladbach, the birthplace of Joseph Pilates, that no one there was even aware of him. She made it her mission to erect a Memorial Plaque honoring her teacher in his home town. On May 7, 2011, after two years of dealing with German authorities and a successful fund raising campaign, a Memorial Plaque was placed under a linden tree where the house of Joseph Pilates’ birth on December 9, 1883 stood. This year will be the sixth Pilates Day Memorial in Monchengladbach.
Lolita also started a ballet company, Ballet Concierto det Puerto Rico, back in the 1970’s, and and she is still active with the company today as director of the school, Conservatorio de Ballet Concierto. Lolita however, is finished with teaching ballet, having stopped that in 2004. “I no longer want to spend Sundays planning my class for the next day. In ballet you had to vary all the time, and dealing with dancers is very difficult, they can be very self-involved. I mean, it is understandable, I was the same, it happens when you are working with yourself as much as a dancer must.”
But her dance background strongly colors her approach to Pilates. “Many people say to me that I am different, well I am different, I am a dancer. I treat Pilates as a dance, I sequence things, never teach the same thing twice. I feel that my students must keep their mind working, Pilates integrates body, mind and spirit. As he said, it is the mind that guides the body, so I change things so that there is no routine”
We remarked that there are many ex dancers in the Pilates field, I myself going so far as to say 50% of the practitioners are ex dancers, Lolita finds it to be more like 40%. “There is a greater ease in working with dancers, they have already inbred in them persistence and discipline, practicing moves often and repeatedly is a second nature to them, they have a different approach.”
Lolita stresses to me that she finds continuous learning, adapting and evolution are of great importance when involved in Pilates. She herself certified again in the Polestar Pilates program in 2004 to glean any new knowledge that she could. “The reason I went to Polestar, is because nowadays Pilates has more stress on rehabilitation than it used to, and less about fitness, many are coming to get something fixed rather than to get fit. Way back in the 60’s, I had never heard of osteoporosis, for example. Now that term is commonplace, if you had asked ‘what is this exercise good for’, the answer would have been ‘it is good for the body’. But nowadays we need to be more specific.”
“You need to keep learning, keep growing, knowledge from science and kinesiology has advanced, and peoples’ posture and habits are different now than in the 1967. In general, the population is more kyphotic now. It is very important that, Pilates evolves to meet these changes.
I laugh and say that Michael King said the very same thing in the article that we wrote about him, and it awoke some ire in some individuals (and we will present articles about this in upcoming issues)
She chuckles and says, “Yes, they call themselves classicists, I laugh, I was there in the 60s when he died, he was constantly creating and evolving right to the end. When I was working out on my own in the studio he would observe and sometimes suggest to me ‘why don’t you try it this way, or why don’t you try that way, making is of course more challenging’.” Clearly she has come into contact with this kind of attitude before, for she is not unkind, but clear with her point of view. “If you call yourself a classicist, and want to stay in the 60s and don’t want to change, then go ahead, but I choose to do differently.”
And with that, our time is up. We had a great time, both of us, so much so that we agree to continue to have these nice phone conversations. And that is great for all of us at Pilates Intel, for then we get a chance to hear from Lolita again right here.
Teaser photo courtesy of PilatesAnytime.