How to Keep Your Clients Coming Back For More and More

Pilates Style

by Risa Sheppard

I hear and read a lot from Pilates instructors about how to move the body in an anatomically correct way. What “cues” to use while they are explaining to their clients how to “properly engage the transverse abdominus with the multifidus, while we are engaging the glutes,” etc. etc.

That is great. We must all know anatomy and how it functions. However, be careful not to show your “cueing slip” to show “how much you know.” A lot of teachers just love to impress their clients with their knowledge of every aspect of anatomy. Usually you are met with the eyes of a deer in the headlights. The client doesn’t really care how many fancy words you know. They just want to feel safe, taken care of, and given a lot of tender loving care. A client named Allen once told me, “Everyone just wants to be adopted.” I agree. (more…)

The De-Clumping Factor

Here at The Sheppard Method we use only very technical and sophisticated medical terms in our practice: Hence my primary discipline is called “de-clumping”.  What is de-clumping? Watch yourself in the mirror. Notice the distance between the bottom of your rib cage and your pelvis. Is it clumping together? Do you look like a collapsed telescope? Are you getting shorter by the year, month,or week? Does stress and tension “weigh” you down, so you feel like a ton of bricks is on your shoulders? (more…)

PMA Vail Summit Blog

by Risa Sheppard

Baby Boomers and Pilates

I am a baby boomer, and I am proud of it.   I was born in July, 1953 in Los Angeles, Calif. And will be 58 this year.  How did that happen? We have NO control over when we are born, and unless you have a secret the rest of the world does not know about no one is exempt from getting older.  In fact, it is a privledge to age.  Consider the alternative: When someone passes on at an “early age”, we cry about how sad it is they left us so young.  And yet, the day before we may have been critisizing the lines on his forehead, or the muffin top above her waist.   We complain about it, obsess about it, hate it, fight it, get depressed about it, but at the end of the day it is going to happen whether we like it or not.  It’s not like Jane Smith will stay her age forever, or Joe Blow grows younger each year, and you are singled out by the Universe to be one of the few to grow old and die. All that being said, what does being a baby boomer have to do with Pilates? (more…)

Mind Over Matter

by Risa Sheppard

“The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.” —The Buddha

“To learn how to think is to learn how to live.” —Ernest Holmes (more…)

“The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.” The Buddha

“The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.”
The Buddha (more…)

The Center

Blog for Pilates style March 15, 2011

Remember the Center

Before the “core” there was the “center”. I don’t believe Joe Pilates  every referred to the core. (more…)