Stepping Into The New Year

Happy belated New Year. The dust is settling and we are in full swing now January is over and we head into February. Did you set resolutions or create intentions or pick a word for the year? How’s that going? Have you kept to it? I started journaling after an amazing weekend with Jenna Zaffino back in November I realised I like to write and it helps to collate my thoughts. A bit like my blog here really. You get to hear my thoughts. I’ve kept to it and it has prompted me to get talk to you more consistently with my blogs too.

Something else I do each year is a Sparrow family tradition. We each draw round our right foot and write & draw inside it what we are grateful for stepping forward with into the next year or some intentions for new practices, behaviors, activities and whatever else comes up for us all. We talk as we go and some are more enthusiastic than others but we all stop and create something and think about taking our best foot forward into the New Year.

Anyway, little did I know in that movement, as we embarked on our family tradition, that January would open up so many doors and provide me with opportunities to take some giant steps forward in 2020.

Something else I do each year is a Sparrow family tradition. We each draw round our right foot and write & draw inside it what we are grateful for stepping forward with into the next year or some intentions for new practices, behaviors, activities and whatever else comes up for us all. We talk as we go and some are more enthusiastic than others but we all stop and create something and think about taking our best foot forward into the New Year.

It all started with the announcement that I am the new Sweaty Betty Leeds Ambassador. A great honor to bring greater awareness of what we do at Chapel Allerton Pilates to a wider community, support a great brand for women lead by an inspirational woman and of course gain some sneaky early access to sales and extra special events.

This was hotly followed by being accepted by the Pilates Method Alliance to present the work I have been developing for the past ten years, at their annual conference in Tacoma, Washington in November. The restoration of pelvic and core health is not only vital but possible by creating balance in the whole body using Pilates. A little bit of incontinence is not something we need to just accept and get on with. Pelvic pain, separated abdominals, hip pain and so much more can be restored through Pilates. I am pretty much evangelical about it! So on November 7th 2020, I will share a little taster of what a Pilates teacher can do to help. In conjunction with that, I will be running my teacher training in studios across the UK and launching my online course so that women anywhere can access exercises that can help them improve their pelvic are core health. Another part of this was I went live on Instagram and had almost 50 people watching me live to share this news.

After the success of our 2019 Polestar Pilates courses, I will be hosting and teaching Gateway to Mat in June and in January we confirmed that the full Comprehensive training will come back to Leeds starting in October 2020.

In July 2018 we expanded the studio and hit a snag when one of the spaces we had ready to use flooded. It has taken over a year to rectify and take all the measures we needed to be sure it wouldn’t happen again and now thanks to the talented Mr Sparrow we have opened our new SpringWall studio. It is beautiful, calming and inviting. It is warm, dry and perfectly fitted with new Balanced Body Spring Boards imported from America and gorgeous straps form our friends at Good Citizens. I absolutely love it. We still have some way to go to complete the next phase which will be our events space and waiting room and new therapy rooms too. All in good time.

Last weekend James Earls author of Born to Walk lead us through the first part of his Born to Move course and the joy of this was that while I was reveling in learning two of the apprentices Liz and Louise were leading classes, Kate was leading a gym and Catherine was teaching our glorious pregnant women. The studio was calmly buzzing with productivity in all corners.

A final part of the January story is that I have been recognized as an ambassador in a business group I belong to and this is a big honor that I get to support new teachers and studio owners and share my experience with them.

Wow, that’s been a lot! So this week I am taking a pause to reflect and recover from my big January. My reflection so far is that these big steps didn’t just happen in January they are the accumulation of consistent little steps towards my big vision and big dreams.

Joseph Pilates says we are all the architects of our own happiness and that the first requisite of happiness is physical fitness. Maybe that is why people take up exercise in January because inherently we understand that our happiness starts with a fit and healthy body.

At the studio, we don’t see such a huge spike in new clients in January but this doesn’t worry me. I know that those of you who attend our classes understand that consistent attendance at Pilates is a little step on the way to you achieving your big dreams and having a happy and healthy life. All our little steps, our traditions, and our resolutions all accumulate over time and support us making a difference whatever that looks like to you.