Refine & Connect: A Prop-Focused Mat Workshop
Friday November 21 from 3 pm to 7 pm 2025
Photo credit: Pilates Anytime
Registration: Send mail to: pilatesintel@gmail.com
Discover how thoughtfully integrated props can deepen your understanding and execution of the Pilates Mat repertoire. In this workshop, Amy will explore how tools such as the Magic Circle, hand weights, Therabands, and small balls can support the development of key movement skills and refine technique.
Props are not only fun and challenging—they serve a meaningful purpose in helping you clarify alignment, improve precision, and heighten sensory awareness. Through guided exploration, you’ll learn how these tools can illuminate connections within the body, allowing you to perform exercises with greater clarity, ease, and intention.
Together, we’ll explore essential concepts such as:
Midline connection
Peripheral range of motion
Axial elongation
Sequential articulation
Breath as the central organizer of movement
The aim is to cultivate strength, flexibility, efficiency, and grace—qualities that lie at the heart of the Pilates method.
The workshop concludes with a one-hour Mat class integrating the concepts explored.
Amy Havens holds a BA in Dance from Colorado State University. She is a mover, a thinker and passionate about movement and education. She was a dancer and chose to focus on her Pilates career after experiencing a hip injury while performing in San Francisco. She has been teaching for 29 years with certificates of completion from many programs –
The PhysicalMind/Madeline Black, Pilates Conservatory/Pat Guyton, The Heritage Program/Cara Reeser, Master-Mentor Programs/Rael Isacowitz and TheStretch To Win Institute/Frederick Stretch Therapy and Therapeutic Yoga/Cheri Clampett and Arturo Peal, to name a few.
With a rich and diverse background, Amy’s skillset is deep, detailed and nuanced. She prides herself on providing programming for clients and teachers that is functional, safe and relevant to what they’re needing from the Pilates Method. She has a keen eye, impeccable creative cuing and a compassionate teaching style. Amy deeply believes in the fundamentals of The Pilates Method and empowers teachers of all levels and backgrounds to embrace being a forever student. As our bodies change through time so does our delivery in teaching. Consistency and patience are pinnacles in Amy’s approach.
Amy is one of the original teachers for Pilates Anytime, the industry’s leading resource for online Pilates education. In addition to teaching for the site, Amy hosted and directed visiting teachers and was pivotal in content creation up until fall of 2020. Amy owned CenterPoint Pilates, one of Santa Barbara’s premier studios, for 20 years, and in the fall of 2020 downsized and now teaches in a small private space devoted to private and semi private clients. Amy is a mentor and enjoys teaching whether its online, in studios or traveling internationally. When not teaching, she loves cooking, hiking, dancing, restoring with yin yoga, spending time with friends and playing with her dog Luna.