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So the last few months for me have been a veritable Rocky Mountain range of emotions and situations. You know what I mean: up so high you can’t really breathe and down so low you can’t really breathe. During all of this I had to keep showing up in life and definitely going in to the studio to work. I kept sessions simple and safe, to ensure that my wandering mind stayed directly on the clients. Then it occurred to me: use this time not to stay in the same rut, but to explore movement, get creative and think outside the box that was housing my crazy mind.

Even if you’re not riding the crazy wave, there are times when you will find yourself bored, repeating the same patterns in the same cues and with the same vocal intonations. What do you do to escape falling into complacency in your work? Here are a few things I’ve been doing lately to rediscover a sense of joy and purpose at work:

Watch things that inspire you. Clients, movies, animals, dancers, anything. I found a video of a portion of the Pilates dance that Valentin and Elizabeth Larkham did at Inner Idea a few years ago. href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTPEzBf-mpM”> It’s a totally different approach to movement in the Pilates studio. Maybe it will inspire you.

Focus on a theme for the session or the week. For a few days, I had all my sessions revisit the breath and how to move with the breath. We played with breath during footwork, rotations and always during the warm up. I also had a Back To Basics week and a Butt/Gut Day. The themes gave everyone, including me, something to focus on.

Music. I normally don’t play music in my studio. Having been a dancer a long time ago, I still find the beat in anything – grocery cart wheels, fans, windshield wipers. Having music in the background can be distracting to me. However, I played music for a few days and allowed myself to teach to the beat. It added a different element to the exercises and was fun for a little while. I’m back to a quiet space now, though. @JenniferPilates changes the music in her studio seasonally. How do you use music if at all?

Travel to the Dark Side. In case you hadn’t heard, there are, at times, slight disagreements between Classically trained and Contemporary instructors. This is a discussion reserved for another blog, but worth thinking about for our purposes now. If you always do Classical Pilates and find yourself in a rut, it would be interesting to try a Contemporary teacher and vice versa. You aren’t going to catch any cooties. You might, however, enjoy working outside your normal box of thought. Pun intended. And Contemporary or West Coast instructors might find something interesting in revisiting the Classical Repertoire. The point is, try a “new Pilates” that might invite your body to move in a slightly different way.

Actions like these get me through times when I either don’t want to go to work for some reason or have a lot on my mind. I would really love to know what you do to break through teaching plateaus or conquer what is my nemesis: an overactive mind. Please share!

Kerrie Ann