Taylor Made | Documentary Film

Today, we're in Boulder, Colorado. I'm here at the Pilates Center. Since 1990, they have been power you to transform your health and get back to life. I'm here with Rachel Taylor Siegel. Thanks so much for joining us here today.

Let's start off a little bit about yourself. You, sister, family business, show with me how it is you got involved in this type of industry. What a legacy? They have been leaders every step of the way in building it up for everybody else. The keeper of the keys. They both come from that place of just wanting people to be healthy. Happy. They'd communicate between themselves so well talking to both of them. It's like talking to the same person.

My name is Lynn Siegel, and I'm Rachel's husband. I feel a little bit like an imposter, because I'll say that I don't do Pilates, but I feel the energy of it. And I have been involved with it because I've been the designer of all their spaces that they've had their, studios in. We're on the Boulder Pedestrian Mall, and then this green marble big Pilates building. So this was where the studio was. So you walked in through the front, very first.

This is where we opened 11/05/1990. And it was downstairs in this space here. And so we had, like, marketing stuff here so people could see it, you know, and then here we had the Cadillac because there was a little bit of space. I haven't been in here in thirty years, probably. We were only here about a year and a half. Well, it's all been renovated, so interesting.

I remember the first location on the Pearl Street Mall, and it was subterranean. What we tried to do was make the most of the fact that you had these really rugged stone foundation walls then the colors of the flooring and upholstery on the reformers and cadillacs were meant to be more like colors of the sky. And so that was really important in that particular location. Do you wanna go first or second? You go first. You're older.

I was born in Chicago, Illinois. And my dad and mom had moved there from Cleveland. My dad was a doctor, and my mom had been a med tech in the lab, and then he was offered the position in Yungstown as the head of lab in this one big hospital. Our brother came four years after me, and then Amy came about six years, five and a half years. Our brother's name is Russ.

My father was very smart. He graduated college when he was like 15 or something, really smart guy. And he intended that we would be very educated and knowledgeable and could carry on our parts of discussions. Our mother was an artist, really. She was a drawer.

And also a musician. Her mother was a professional pianist. She brought us to ballet first. You know, it's my dad was he would have been much happier if we were opera singers. I think my mom probably influenced is my manner of being in the world, things I like, the way I dress, family, that kind of stuff.

And I think my dad completely influences my thought processes. I feel held accountable to his extremely high standards. Rachel was my big sister, and she was cool. She was totally cool. I liked everything she listened to, like, the moody boots, the beauties, the beauties, the birds. Like, I just assumed that her choices were always the right ones.

I think I was not aware of being a big sister, except when it was annoying. We shared a room our entire life together in different configurations. It was totally fine. I don't think I ever really knew or thought to know what Amy's opinion of me was. I just assumed that everybody loved me So much of our experience of life has been very similar.

I mean, there was a period in high school and college, which where I was wildly different. I mean, I was very rebellious in high school and caused a lot of trouble, which may be part of the reason poor Amy, became such a precise and careful person. Mhmm. Oh, yeah. A %. Yeah. A %. I didn't have like a wild teenage don't know. Or wild twenties.

I met Rich when I was 21, and we got married when I was 23. And yeah. So it wasn't till I was about 40 where I thought, like, whoa. I think I missed some things. I have to say I can only imagine I loved dancing from the very first class. And I did that for a couple years, and then my mother formed the organization called the ballet guilt. So we were doing nutcrackers every winter, Peter and the Wolf and little lecture demos throughout the area. I loved being on stage.

I loved the energy of dancing in a group with others. It was everything I did all the way up through about tenth grade. The reason I stopped in tenth grade was because I didn't get the part I wanted in sleeping beauty and I realized it was in my face. That I wasn't good enough. And it hit me. And so I just thought I'm not gonna do it anymore.

Looking back, I feel like I struggled a lot. I had not a good belly, body, not good feet for one thing. So for me, it was all How could I be better? How could I be better? How could I be like her? That's okay, though. That, undoubtedly built my personality. Dance was my whole life. Everything else was second to it.

I started when I was two or three and we and stole the show. Was in a little performance back then. I danced, you know, from whatever, two, three, to 10. And I probably started teaching ballet when I was about 16. I can't say that I ever looked far enough into the few to think about a career as a dancer. And then when I came out to Colorado in '73, for like four years into college, I got to dance again. And I got not only to take class, and but I started teaching.

And then we formed a little company, and we did performances. And so here I was, 28 year old who hadn't danced in a decade. Mhmm. Not quite. It was actually, but You know, and I was getting a second chance. And it was out here in Colorado. I taught more and more.

I became the director of a dance school in a fine arts community locally for eleven years. So I got this whole second chance to do things on a lesser level, but that was really, really fun. I was able to get into Juliet, and my dad was, like, fine with that. Relatively fine with that. Willing to pay support me and pay for Julieard because it was Julieard. Right? And so that that fit right into his, if you're not gonna be the best in the world, then don't do I moved to New York and I went to Juliet for a year, and it wasn't the right school for me because it was a conservatory.

I'll dance all the time and actually wanted an education. Also, everything just hurt. Everything hurt. All the time, but I left Juliet and danced with the Garden State Valley for a season. And I got my undergraduate. Like, I left Juliet and then I went back to college, but I went to NYU and dead, and I just continued on and got my master's degree in dance, but essentially in dance history.

I had been teaching doing the, ballet at the Arvada center, and I had, been putting on the end of the year recitals, which was not my forte. I got to this point in my life where I thought I need something different. I'm ready to move on. So I called Amy and our brother was also living in New York. And I called Amy and said, what if? I came to New York.

She was all for it. Yeah. Yeah. She even invited she and her husband invited me to stay at their apartment for six months and, got me a job at the dance collection. Because this would have been late eighty six, early '80 '7, and I got married in '81, '19 '80 '1. The what really freed me up though to come to New York was because I separated from my first husband. And so, you know, I didn't have I don't know, just cat what's the word like catalyst for moving on? And knowing I was coming to New York, I knew I wanted to check out Pilates. I met Rachel when she was married to a friend of mine who I was working with.

In an architecture firm in Denver. That was in 1982. And the next year I was living in New York City. I got a call from that friend saying Rachel, and he had split up, and she had moved to New York City, and would I have coffee with her, because she didn't know anybody there except her brother and sister. And so I said, sure.

And I had, relationship with somebody else at the time, but it was just like a nice friendly, you know, old pals from Colorado, and that's how we met. But I just found her really right for me. She loved architecture, and I'm an architect. She loved art and going to art museums, which I enjoyed doing, and then their relationship went sour, and, we started to date. And that was about 1987.

And two years later, we were married and we were married in Central Park in New York City. So this is a 40 baseline at the Meadows Shopping Center, and it was that top. Wow. Yeah. We had like two doors up there, but we kept one closed. So it was like two suites. Right. So this was that lovely big window.

I haven't been up here in years. Hi, there. We I used to own the Pilates Center and we used to be in this space for, like, eighteen years. I think I dropped off mail over each other's place. The next one was on a Second Floor. Huge big windows, but it was in a shopping center. What we wanted to create was more of a sense of arrival when you come in and something kind of dynamics.

The front desk was a circular cylindrical form with corrugated metal, and it separated out a little sitting area from the main hub of activity. And then behind that were also some therapy rooms. Yeah. So this wasn't here, but the bathroom, there was a a shower back here. We were here in '92 to about 02/2008. I'm just shocked that you had this big of a space Yeah.

Then. My first experience with Pilates was actually in 1975. I had some friends who were in the dance theater of Harlem, and they would, come back to where we were living and talk a little bit this crazy woman who was giving them these odd exercises to do. And I, I really didn't know what that was. But years later, I learned that that was Kathy Grant. I got up the nerve one day because I was having terrible problems with Schinsplans, and I just didn't know what to do.

So I had gotten her number, and I called her up. But she was scary on the phone. She I could tell, and now in retrospect, I know she was probably in that little tiny room working with people and answering the phone and not loving doing both of those at the same time, and she just sounded a little too much for me. So I was like, okay. Thank you, and I hung up.

And and then I just didn't really think, you know, about what I would do. But then Rachel decided to move to New York City and she had, read these articles on Corolla Triair that were in the Dance Magazine series for a number of over several months, I guess it wasn't. Yeah. Years before, the men Dance Magazine put out another section of articles by Romana. It was just enough to send me to to send me over to the idea that I could go and study with Ramana. I could go and learn Pilates finally. And so I left everything in Colorado because I had lived here since '73. I left everything.

And I went to New York. I lived with Amy, and we studied Pilates with Ramona together. Another thing that I think started to bring us back together, again, where the illnesses and deaths of our parents. Right? So, like, I was 26 when my mom died in '30 when my dad died. Their passing was painful, but definitely brought us back together again from having had really kind of disparate lives up until that point. The years in between our mom's death and our dad's death is when Rachel came to the cities.

We have a very small family. Mhmm. We really appreciated each other. Maybe not when we were youngsters, but yeah. Definitely, when my parents died, it was it became so evident that it was just the three of us, and we better stick together. For me, Romano was, a kind of a familiar character. You knew her. It turns out that she was exactly the same age as our mother. So I think I also resonated with her age, like she felt like mom.

And Romana was like a queen. She wafted about, you know, and she didn't necessarily ever zero in on me. I didn't feel. I do actually remember thinking, oh my god, this is such unusual movement with hard. It was very hard. It was extremely confronting. I couldn't just naturally be good at it because I really didn't understand.

It was very almost magical. Like, she just imbued you with what to do. And and you just stared at her like she was everything. There was a way that she had of inspiring people through joking and paking on you, but always with a joke. I never found her ever mean. I know she could be, but she really wasn't.

She was always a character, she was always teasing. Like, she didn't think of herself as a star was and and I was gonna say when I first met her, she was just another ballet teacher, another movement teacher. You didn't have a sense like, oh my gosh, we have to go like this, and she never demanded that. She kinda just owned it naturally because she did walk around like Queen and you automatically revered her, but she loved Pilates with her heart and her soul and every cell. And she wanted you to love Pilates, and that's how she taught. She felt that she was the one to carry it on. That was her god given her some kind of given, heavenly given gift and responsibility.

In fact, the Pilates technique goes back to 1923. Pilates gives you long, strong muscles. It gives you a powerhouse, which is the belt that runs around your middle, and it gives you grace and beauty and good health. So what motivated us to become Pilates teachers was a very odd situation. We were just students.

We were just doing Pilates for our own health. We loved it. We really, really were not thinking of becoming teachers at all. We both were teachers of movement. We've been teachers, but this was more for us. But we went to the studio one day, and I always remembered as April Full's Day nineteen eighty nine.

And this is that same studio on in the East Fifties, and wasn't there. Closed overnight. Yeah. So I went back down to the doorman. I said, my what's going on? They said, oh, they moved out. Okay. Over the weekend, I was like, what?

So I I get down onto the street and I found a pay phone and I called Rachel. Oh my god. They they they've closed. They're gone. You know? And we're because we were addicted by point, we were like, no, that can't happen. But it it was such a small little world that you didn't realize, oh, maybe there was some other place you could go. It was just that you went to Romana or or there was nothing else.

But then we went back to the dance collection. We looked up Ramona's name and how you would spell it. We found her in the phone book, and we called her. And she said, oh, honey, we're gonna reopen. And that was when they reopened in Dragos.

But that was the moment. We were like, oh, my god. Could disappear. Yeah. This thing looks a little fly by night. We better when and how to teach it.

And we came to Ramona, and we said, we want more, we want to teach or train, or we want to at least get as much from you as we possibly can before we leave New York City. Right. New York was down and dirty and loud. It wasn't sex in the city at all. The dance world is not on that level at all, and the studio was also not high end. It was pretty down and low and grubby.

Those were really not good years in New York. New York was very dangerous. Dragy. Dragboy. Drugs, the crack epidemic was huge. You would never have worn revealing clothing. They're beautiful parts of the for sure, but I knew at one point when I had stepped over one too many bodies that I I gotta get out of this city now because it was it was bad. You realized you were getting immune to this fact that there were people lying in the streets and in the doorways, they could have been dead and you didn't know. Well, you'd been there a long time by now.

Yeah. I'd already been there for, you know, yeah, ten years. My name's Rich Alpers, and I've been married to Amy Alpers for forty three years. We were both living in New York. We were, both working at an emergency answering service for the health insurance plan of Greater New York. The whole idea was to keep people out of the hospital.

And I came into work one night. And all the elderly ladies who worked there said, wait. Do you meet this girl who started last night? She's just your type. And, when we met, I thought, I don't think she's my type at all. But, they kept prodding me to ask her out. So I did. And I guess the rest is history.

We we hit it off. And it's it's certainly you haven't worked out. I feel very lucky. I do practice Pilates, and I am fully convinced that some years ago, I would have had to have a new hip by now if I wasn't regularly doing Pilates It's funny. I believe I'm the only husband or boyfriend who's regularly there at the studio.

I talked to some of the other guys. Oh, you guys gotta ought to do this. Still even my husband as our body to look at hand placement on the chair. Right? So you take your right arm up. Your other right arm. I love to listen to her teach. She's so strong and powerful and outgoing and explains things with, joy and with passion. We hadn't yet decided to teach Pilates, but we were making the judgments that I would do it this way or I wouldn't do it this way. We didn't really like the way it was taught in New York because they could be so not pleasant.

They were New Yorkers. There weren't that nice all the time. They offered you a lot when you were there and you were working out, but they weren't gonna give you anything else. Information was not easily, given provided. Yes. Yes. The man who owned the studio at the time, his name was We Thai Home.

So we we spoke with him and asked if we could have a teacher training program. So they literally kind of threw together a two week long program, which basically consisted of us having access to Romana and being able to just kinda sit next to her and observe her really close And as far as we know, that was kinda like the first formal teacher training program that that existed up till then, pretty much anybody who had taught Pilates really just apprenticed until they fell into being a teacher at that studio. We did our two week long teacher training program Yeah. Passed. We did get certificates with Ramona's signature on them, which in the next several years really turned out to be quite handy. At the same time as we talked to WeTai about, T taking a teacher training program.

I had also asked him how to get equipment. And could I buy a reformer? And so I had actually paid him $3,000 for a reformer. We knew we were gonna be moving to Boulder shortly. So I figured, you know, that would be what we would use when we left New York. He was never really quite able to produce that reformer. When we were back, here. Amy was at university teaching, and I was being a assistant teacher of a monis at a montessori grade school. Amy and I were sitting on her front porch in the swing.

And it was kind of like, What do you wanna do with your life? I don't know. What do you wanna do? And Amy said? We were really very much at a crossroads, kind of freed up. I said, well, I don't know. I think I wanna open a pilates studio. And Rachel was like, oh, well, okay. I'll, I'll help you. And so I, I started reaching out to We Thai. He just could never get that reformer.

But then he found out that there was a guy in Boulder, Barry Butler, for you. It was. Building reformers. And he told me he could get me two for one because they were half the price. I was like, fine. You know, I I had no idea that reformers could vary.

Right. I I just thought a reformer was a reformer because that's how they were in New York. With that tape and uneven straps. Barry was able to get me one reformer, but not the other. And by this time Rachel and I had started talking about like, whoa, what would we call it if we were gonna have a studio? And we were like, the Pilates center, the center. And so I wrote We Thai, and I said, look, for the $1,500, you still owe me. I would like to open a studio in Boulder, and I would like to call it the Pilates Center.

And he wrote back and said, Okay. It's When that perpetuity pretty quickly disappeared. Well, then shortly thereafter. Right? But we tie, certainly was the primary owner of the corporation known as the Pilates Studio, which included That's trademarks. And all the trademarks that came with that and the photos and the films and the statues and the pictures on the wall. Nobody thought any of it mattered because it was just this weird little studio that dancers went to. And then I went back to just go back to New York and to take some lessons with Ramona, and then she introduced me to Steve.

He came in. He was carrying a spine corrector, and he was talking to Ramona, and I said, Ramona, does he build equipment? Because you couldn't get equipment. Sky was supposed to have gotten this reformer from Anytime that never happened. And so I was not sure how you would ever, like, launch something, right? And Monica was, oh, yeah, you haven't. Let's Steve, he was like, yeah, I can build equipment for you. And he just decided like, okay, I'll move out to Boulder.

And then this goes up to this, this mountain here, Flagstaff, and at the top of one of the big turns here is a beautiful restaurant called the flagstaff House, and when we left, I think this the whoever was all over the building kinda took our space to. Okay. We've done them in order, right? So the first one was the Pearl Street on the mall. Uh-huh. 1426 Pearl. Hi. Welcome to the Pilates Center here in Gorges Boulder, Colorado. I'm Amy Taylor Alpers, and I'm Rachel Taylor Siegel. Come on in.

This is our front desk. So this is what happened is happening now all day long at the studio, all the different teachers, all the different hours. And it's good for the teachers to be able to kind of scan across and be able to see where things are happening so they know where they can take a client. Some dressing rooms, a chair area. We've got our high chair over here and a little cadillacs. And then we have offices over tip of right, things in my office.

And our student lounge over here. Lots of trainees observing the class down here. Start our waiting area, and our water, and our retail space. Start lounge. Nice comfy space for a little peace and quiet between sessions.

Our admin is date of offices. Let's take a peek. Oh, Paula's here. Ricka, say, hi, Paula. I had been teaching Pilates for a few years.

I had a home studio during that time is when I ended up meeting Eve Gentry and out of that, it moved to Santa Fe briefly to apprentice with her. And when I came back from Santa Fe, I got invited to teach at a place called Rocky Mountain Human Performance Center. I moved into that space and did the Pilates work and the Movement work, and that lasted for about a year. And I was in a position trying to figure out where what my next move was. My phone rang one day, and one of my clients said, Deborah.

I was just at an open house, and the woman has a reformer in her back bedroom, and you need to meet her. I met Amy first because she was the woman with the reformer. We became friends, and we began talking. At a certain point, I found out she was pregnant, and I thought, oh, maybe she'll wanna take maternity leave. Out of that conversation, we together made the decision that I would take my existing clientele and move it in the summer of nineteen ninety into their new little studio in Downtown Boulder. When Amy and I opened our studio.

We were coming straight from Romana and New York City, and we had this idea. We were the New York representatives of Pilates in Colorado. Because that wasn't still in you in New York. It was. Yeah. It was the is this is Pilates. Nothing else is Pilates.

Pilates had been growing in Boulders since 1985, and there were several people in town teaching. We were proud of what we had accomplished. We haven't certain, you know, write your snobbery around it because we were the only ones, you know. And they came saying we teach the only real Pilates thing. And so there was a little bit of upset. When we started understanding, that there were other Pilates out there that had a rootedness in their dirts, and we hadn't known that before.

Some of us were kinda like, really? Well, what about all this stuff we've been doing? However, we quickly changed our tune in our minds because it irritated other people. We were still very classical and we were still associated with Romana, but we weren't gonna shut doors to anybody who came to us with any kind of Pilates background, and we didn't want to get into any position where we didn't know the answer. As soon as we came to Boulder, we were up against these PTs and like West Coast Pilates people who were talking about SI joints. Mhmm. Rachel and they're like, what is it? What is an SI joint?

Oh, I was a cylinder in here. We just knew what Romona said, and she didn't talk about joints. That's something that changed dramatically from the way we had learned from Romana, was we suddenly realized, like, we're gonna actually have to speak about muscles and joints and issues. We studied and whatever Each of us studied, we shared, and we shared with our teachers. And we were always sharing.

We had in services all the time. The work didn't change the way we might present it, the way we might pull it apart for somebody. That changed as we our knowledge base grew and grew and grew. I was thinking kind of really clearly two things. I think there's the form, the method itself, that we know can get very blurry at times.

There was a thing that Joe actually created from this organic source within himself to fulfill his mission, which is then the second thing for me that there is a form and there is a mission behind the form. So I always ask every Pilates teacher, what do you think Pilates is? Do you have a definition for yourself? And then what is your mission in the process of getting really clear on that, you then become very present with your clients. And I think that's something that all of the elders had this incredible presentness. And even if they were teaching a group and even being a little theatrical about it as they could get when they were on stage a little bit.

They didn't really miss a beat, and it was because they were so clear what their intention was with this work. One of the most profound experiences that enabled me to go forth and conquer was that I had taken a self improvement courses, a personal skills course. So when Rachel came to Boulder, she took the same course. In one of the class, classes. And this might have been when the mission really started to surface for me was dream big, create a huge project, dive in, and then see who you are in the face of it.

That's when I really got clear that my mission was saved peace on earth. You can't save everybody. You gotta save one person at a time. That's what we do. We actually teach peace.

We actually heal. It became so powerful. It is what has kept us going through absolutely everything. The world needs this. So we said right away, well, we've gotta have teachers. When I met Amy at that personal growth seminar, we were all introducing ourselves, and she stood up and said, my name is Amy Alpers, and my sister and I are open a Pilates or in Boulder. And I went bingo.

You're on. So I had just gotten off the road with ice capades, and, my aunt said, Hey, do you wanna go to this Pilates mat class? With me, and I said, sure. We were open for a year, and then we started a teacher train Steve and Romana's teacher training program, which was not yet even written down. And so here I am sitting in a coffee shop wondering what the am I gonna do with my life? I was looking at this, nexus newspaper, and I saw this word Pilates, and they were advertising a, teacher training program. I would tell people. Oh, I'm doing this exercise class. No one even knew the term Pilates. That first year and year and a half or whatever, they were coming to more and more.

Their own vision of what the Platt Henry Boulder And then we had Steve so interested in the science of Audi Mechanical. Steve Giordano built all the equipment that allowed Amy to open the studio. Steve came and taught us that he brought Romana was like part of a package deal to assist. Into our lives, drop Steve in this much deeper connection with Romana to actually say, okay. Let's do it. We didn't know what that meant.

It was so new. None of the things that we know now weren't even happening. So they were gonna make their mark. With this training program. And I was gonna become an employee. I went to the training program, and they kindly offered me a job.

Amy was pregnant with her son. So we always know how long we've known each other because it's about the same age as Nathaniel is. Lamar was coming. She was coming for in six. She taught the repertoire along with Steve Giordano.

I had no idea how fortunate I was to get to work with what we call now first generation master teachers. I just thought she was this really cool lady. And we are privy two. One of Joseph Pilates living protege. I remember how much how important it was at those times to have socks on.

I hated those socks. Why these socks? These socks are not working? Somebody did something in the workshop, etcetera. And she went on at least a half hour performance, showing you every goofy thing that people have ever done in Pilates, banging the equipment, straddling the equipment, like I mentioned. It so showed her personality.

It was exciting. Amy was having a baby. I was getting there lead. Life was good. And we were all teaching Pilates. I knew nothing about Pilates.

It just felt like that's okay. Pilates gonna they're gonna help me be a great client because at that point, I was just a client, and because I was trying to fix this frozen shoulder that I had made I'd done making Christmas because that's one thing that I do. We moved here in January of twenty nineteen a year before COVID, which was wonderful because not wonderful, but we moved here because we needed we wanted to downsize. It was great because when COVID happen, the studio obviously shut down, but we had also started doing zooming classes two years before. So luckily for us, it was pretty seamless that we were able to just do all zoom classes instead. They have always called this the poll system.

When we tell people we have pole classes, and then they think, oh, Pilates and pole classes, that doesn't really work. It has great access. It's on the main drag in town. There's a lot of walk by traffic, so people just look in the windows and say, oh, that's cool. What's going on here? One of the great things about this place is the huge office that Amy and I share. It's great.

This is sort of it. And then just the lockers for our teachers. Right now, Olivia is my teacher. And she's also my niece, which works out pretty well. Being Rachel's daughter growing up, I just, for lack of a better term, I kind of avoided it.

It was my mom's thing. It was my aunt's thing. I just thought, you know, that's her world and everyone would tell me, you know your mom's famous. Right? And I definitely did my own thing. I went to college for something completely different. I was kind of caught in the restaurant industry, hospitality industry for a long time, before I realized that it wasn't making me happy and that my body hurt.

My mom is absolutely 100% my best friend, and I tell her everything. And so I brought this to her and I said, you know what? I I know I went to college for this, and I I know I've been working really hard towards this goal, but I'm not it's not giving me that spark anymore. And I think that's when maybe the wheel started turning in her head, like, you would love Pilates. Training my daughter for Pilates was delight. We're a family owned business.

So we have that for us. Having Olivia here, it's very cute because sometimes people will say, oh, I, you know, I heard it was a seagull. And And then I think they think it's Rachel. And then they come in and they see Olivia who I think is in her twenties. Maybe 30 I can't remember. Sorry. Sorry, Olivia. And they're kind of looking like, well, how does she have all this experience.

So it's kinda cute sometimes where I have to sort of say, and that's her daughter. You know, I have to make sure you know it's her daughter. My kids and the studio are exactly the same age. So we opened November 5. My son was born August 5. Yeah.

I had a terrible birth and delivery. It was bad. And then knowing, oh, no, Rachel's gotta be handling the whole business now because I'd already been on bed rest for a couple months. But I was, like, doing the account sideways. I had a lot on my left side. Both of my kids did come to Plotties in their, like junior high years, their middle school years, but she always was going in a different direction. She was pretty clear.

But now that she's, you know, in New York with a regular job, she takes pilates she goes to Brades now. And she's like, mom, I took from this person, and they knew who you were. We have always filled each other's faces a little bit, but we actually weirdly have the same skills. So it's not like, I was You know, Ray chose the bookkeeper Anytime the manager or something. Like, neither one of us is the person who does those things. But over the course of time, this needed to happen, and Rachel would be like, I can I'll do that. You know, and I'd be like, oh, I don't really wanna that, do you wanna do it?

She'll like you. I'll do that. But we also were extremely clear that we are not bookkeepers. We are not accountants or marketing people. We are Pilates teachers. That's what we do, but we figured Like, nope.

You have to do your passion and what you're good at, and you gotta hire people to do that other stuff. I did do a little bit of research upon deciding that I wanted to do a teacher training program and Amy and Rachel's website was the only one that had a mission statement. From that time, just knowing their commitment level to humanity, I knew that I was going to have to do whatever I could to stay at the Pilates Center for the rest of my life. With them that's so inspiring is that they are forever learners. And I remember I got my first class on the schedule, which was, reformer class on Thursday mornings that I still teach. And Amy said, great.

I'm gonna put myself in there before it fills up. And I was terrified. I thought, why is she doing that to me? So I would stay up every night and write out a lesson plan terrified about teaching Amy Pilates. And finally, I asked her.

I was like, okay. Like, have you taken it enough that you can just give me my feedback and stop taking my class? And she said, What are you talking about? And I said, Amy, aren't you just doing this so that you can evaluate me as a teacher in your studio. She said, no. I'm doing it because you're a great teacher and I wanna take Pilates. I just wanna take your class. And I thought, how is that possible? Like, as my mentor, how what would I have to offer you. And Amy is a very honest open person.

She would come in and inevitably Deborah Colway would be at the front desk too or Rachel would be at the front desk. And they were always talking about something. And so there was also this underlying tension a little bit. Like, I could tell there was something going on. And I found out just by hanging out and Amy being willing to talk to me because I was always kinda sitting there. Which I knew would eventually happen that there was a lawsuit over the trademark name of Pilates. How I learned about the trademark issues?

I was just sitting at our little front desk, get the first studio and the phone ring, and I picked it up. And it was Sean Gallagher, and he said, you can't keep doing what you're doing. And what he meant was using the word Pilates, because people called the Pilates Center because we'd had an agreement with the previous owner We didn't even know that he had sold it. I assume he had literally just bought the trademark and was starting to let people know it wasn't gonna be so easy to use the word Pilates anymore. We knew of him because of his relationship with Steve. We didn't know of him as a player at all.

We just knew that Steve knew him that he was a physical therapist. I think it was for her. She just had to choose at some point between Steve and Sean. Sean got in there before Steve could. Once she be came the head of this teacher training program. It made her a lot more serious responsibility Pilates so great. She she had no idea what she was getting into. Then one day, we were in the shopping center, and it was time for another round of lectures.

And Romana called and said, I can't come girls, and it was because Sean was telling her. You can't. You know? And it was so painful when she wasn't able she would decided she wasn't able to come and work with us anymore. It was just Oh, it was so painful. Sean called that last time and said, Ramon is not coming and you and I had to teach all by ourselves.

Yeah. Like, own it, you know, and we had we had opened it with Steve. And then with Steve's connection to Romana and established our teacher training with Romana and Steve teaching it. And we hadn't really assumed that mantle because we didn't really feel qualified yet, you know. So Steve to step in, Ramona never came back. Steve was the teacher of it. There were some behavioral issues.

We had been dealing with Steve we were starting to struggle a little bit with Steve as apparently with Sean. And they needed to get rid of him. And they were like, now, what the hell are we supposed to do? We had the training program up and running for several years. They pulled up their big girl Anytime and took it on. It felt like they just took hold of all their knowledge of Romana's with great respect stayed on course. I never felt like I was missing the essence of her was always there because of a marriage.

And then the years went by. We continued on. He would contact us periodically, and we even tried to By phone. Wow. How does this What would we have to do? And then we started hearing about the fact that there were various actual litigation was starting to occur. He was suing people now. What they were trying to do is is they were trying to protect the method of exercise through the use of the trademark by preventing people from being able to call what they were doing by what it was known as.

I had gotten a call from Sean that I had to change my name. And if I didn't get recertified and sell all my equipment and buy his equipment. I couldn't use a Pilates name. Oh, well, you can't call yourself a Pilates teacher Anytime? That was a real crisis. Going back to, like, the mid 90s and stuff, when when the lawsuit first happened, The thing that had first had to happen in order to, to defend ourselves in this lawsuit, Dolores had to put together in a storyline, basically, of how things had happened. The deal was, is that, we needed to talk to people that were actually there, and they were really helpful.

And then we actually need we need to get evidence that would help us in a lawsuit. I know we probably got in about 25 or 30 depositions that have been taken. And the way that works is is that each side, you each side agrees to which depositions are gonna go in. We each mark what the judge is gonna read, and that's what gets submitted to the judge. We tried to focus on cities. One of the early cities we did believe it or not was, you know, it was bolder.

We started with Amy, and it was really clear because Rachel was sitting in the room that she kept looking at each other for like an answer. And I was like, okay, can we just take both of theirs together? To me, it was all like an interesting chapter in a book. We thought of it as the industry versus Sean. Just thought we were fighting so that we could keep our use of the word Pilates and other people could too. There was classical and then there was contemporary in some people in the classical world didn't use, like the word classical. Some people in the contemporary world didn't like the world contemporary or classical.

And these guys really didn't talk much. Amy and Rachel were the exception. And Amy and Rachel were identified with the classical community having been trained by Romana. Eventually the classical Pilates would not account for us. I even talked to Daria once right when Sean was starting to keep Ramana to himself. I said, you know, what would it take to get Ramana out here? She said, well, Rachel, you're just not in the tribe.

I don't know how it felt for them. Really did create a fracture in the community. They had to kinda make this decision because if they provided evidence that helped current concepts that was balanced body before before it became balanced body, that helped current concepts, they may be ostracized by by the classical community. I mean, we'd already been cut off from Lemana, so nothing else bad could happen to us. And they had to need to make the decision to just provide the evidence or just stand back and say we're not gonna cooperate. When I went to New York was February.

I went down to the courthouse, and I I think I I probably was only really there a few hours. When we were in trial, one of our important witnesses was Amy. And and what was happening is is during these lawsuits, you have to be really careful about who you put on the stand, how well they're gonna testify, and will they be able to withstand cross examination? Whatever our witnesses say the other side is gonna try and refute and make us look like we're morons. And we do the same thing to do. We're just as well. Right? So that's just kinda how it works. It's kind of his zoo.

Ken and his attorney and those people here and Sean and his people over there. And then I went up on the I had no I'm never testified. I didn't know, but I just was like, this is like a little interesting theater thing that's happening, and I'm just gonna be part of it. She had the credibility in the Pilates world to be able to talk about this. You know, the credibility in the Pilates world, do you think, well, who's gonna care about what some Pilates person thinks, right? But the judge judge Cedar Cedarbottom was this New Yorker that was familiar with the art And so she understood, you know, having mentors and, you know, and having, you know, teachers and all this stuff.

It was important that we had people that would actually kind of represent the community as it was at the time to talk about what was really going on. I told the exact story that I told you guys, the studio closed, and I went up to We ties as soon as I could, and I asked them for this reformer, and it never came. And I only got a half priced one. And so I wrote them and said, can I use the name? When we tie allowed Amy Rachel to start their studio, he basically said, here's a piece of paper. You can open up a Pilates studio, and that's all it was.

So that's called the naked license. So that document, which was that naked license was really helpful to prove to us that nothing had ever been done to protect the quality of this so called trademark. They had this evidence. They had actually a piece of paper. They hadn't saved this piece of paper.

And I have documentation because I I must Sorry. Don's lawyer kept asking me these, like, circuitous questions. He wouldn't get to the point. He wouldn't ask me straight up question. And finally, the judge said, you just shut up.

The judge said, I'll ask the question. And she's like, well, what do what do you say you do? And I said, I we teach Pilates, you know? And, it was just facts. And that was one chapter, the landmark of the case that we were actually able to close the book and know that we did a good job and move on to the next A lot of Pilates, especially a lot of young Pilates teachers coming now really have no idea what it took to stand up and say we you will not take our voice away. This case went on for five years.

I was gathering I was gathering information from from day one. I I wasn't doing anything away ever, you know, I'm I'm a collector. I I like, I like the history stuff. So case was over in the summer, and it was like, it was, like, October or November, when we got the decision. It might have even been December. And the judge, judge Cedarbaum, knew that they were gonna appeal.

So she wrote the decision to make it as difficult as possible to make sure that everything was clarified so that they had no right to appeal. What went to try while was the use of Pilates both for exercise instruction and for equipment. The ruling was is that they were generic. Plain and simple. It was an unpleasant, chapter in the history of Pilates. Terrible.

There were strong pros and cons, but we also didn't want Pilates to turn into anything that goes. And that is what happened, you know, and it it's a shame, but we still, a % committed to everything, Ramona taught us. And then immediately being business owners, we went. So what's gonna happen now? Yeah. This is the celebration that we had when we won the trademark cancellation.

And it was the meeting that we had before the celebration party. The birth of the PMA occurred at that meeting. But there's so many people. The first thing they wanna do is establish a teacher training program. I've never had one.

One first experience with Pilates, he was mean. Pilates has been around for almost a century. And why is it so popular now? Half the people don't even know that there was a man named Pilates. We did at that points start to take on a bit more of a leading role in the industry, being at every PMA and being on the board immediately. When everything Pilates book came out solidifies your credibility. Pilates took us a year.

We started right after 09:11. And it was it was hell. Oh. I'd be lying on a roller. And Amy's trying to type, but we're talking. So how to pronounce your name, Amy, Taylor, Alpin. Alper.

So I'm right here with Amy, Alper. No. That's alright. How will we be doing in 02/2013? I mean, we're so excited. We finally launched centerline Yeah. Which is our equipment line that we developed with, bounce body. Ken and I had been talking a lot about just where else to grow in the Pilates world and what else we where else we could go. We had been looking at the classical world for a long time, but there we were at a period then, this was like the early two thousands ish, when there really was no communication, I would say, between the contemporary world and the classical world.

They were very much like, we don't talk to them. They don't talk to us. We just move on. As things moved on, as time changed as Pilates became bigger as everybody was doing it. At that point, it's like, oh, maybe maybe there's an opening now. Maybe we should start to think about this.

Based on Ken's relationships, a lot, it was like, well, let's talk to Amy and Rachel. It actually kinda started because I was at the body mind spirit conference. And I happened to walk by their booth and they had their new Exo chair. And I was like, oh, that's a pretty chair. It was too big, but it was pretty. Well, I'd say things really love about the Exo chair is the design.

I like the lightness. I like the curves. Probably that's the most I know about it right now. And how do you feel about bounce body? We, have always had other people's equipment as you well know. So we really don't have that much experience with this. I'm not talking about the equipment.

I'm talking about bounce body. I love Dave. I told Dave. Yes. And he was like, oh my god. I'm gonna send you one, and it opened up this conversation. It just went from there.

And then it was around, I don't know, 02/2007. I'm gonna say, we were moving to the 50 Fifth Street Place, and Ken called me. And he said, would you be willing to help me build a classical line of equipment? And if you do that, I'll I'll build your your new studio out at cost. And I was like, well, it's hard to say no to that. I know. That was a good one.

But I was like, Ken, you have no idea what you were asking Alright. At one point, we we made equipment from Ari Windsor, and she wanted classical equipment. We made kind of what you would say a half ass attempt at doing it. Look at it retrospectively. At that time, it was a big lift. We didn't get as far as she wanted us to go. Like, and she never accepted it.

And that just happens. I said He just thought, plies equipments, plies equipment. I'm just gonna build what they want me to build, instead of what he wanted me to build, or instead of what they wanted to be. So Amy was always the one that did most of the talking, Rachel was the more sensible one, but they were both sensible. There's no question about that, but she was more sensible. Costco people don't want choice.

They want the perfect reformer. Right. You're making a prototype, it could be 10 times the price of just making one. A prototype could be incredibly expensive if that's what you make them. They're just trash. Oh, fuck. He bought times. Yeah.

It was it was just a challenge to get him to understand how it was essential that the specs be exactly right. When we first went to talk to Amy Rachel about the center line, Ken was taking measurements everywhere, and goals, all that stuff, I was trying to talk to them about what's the experience that they're trying to have. When we did the equipment for Ron, he had a reformer that was built off of plants that could actually gave him. That reform was the one that I took the measurements off of in order to build that reformer. Then he showed us the fletcher frame, and I was like, no, it's that frame. It's like the original equipment.

She did have this memory of how it felt to work in Ramona's studio. She wanted to recreate that feeling, that sensation. And then when I got to get on that old reformer, it felt like home. There's the feeling of being on something, but that's not easy to articulate. We never really could get total commitment to on wheels and springs. Yeah. The whole coming home part, like, to get a carriage, the right weight with springs, the right resiliency so that you can jump shy with the draggy or wheel. Uh-huh.

So one of the big things was getting the wheels to do not quite that much stickiness, but just enough stickiness to to give some resistance in both directions. 20 wheels. It was hard for him to get on there. But, you know, we got pretty close. I'm not sure she would ever have been completely happy when you're kind of looking at a pristine ideal from some distant time in your past, I'm not sure anything's ever gonna quite live up to that initial memory, you know, that first sensation on the reformer. I mean, if you remember your first time I do, and it was like, that was pretty remarkable. I was pretty moment.

And I think that's that's a little bit what she's trying to recreate. So I don't know. I think she's pretty happy. We do love centerline, and centerline has been a wonderful thing for us. How's life different for me now that Rachel's retired? Life is more relaxed around the house. Rachel had a certain heightened aspect of, as you can imagine, running a business and having to be on in an acting sense on or performance sense on, but she had many years of migraines.

So the migraines have diminished, which is really joyful for us, of course. She's definitely more available for me to have help for my needs and around the house and planning trips and, you know, seeing the grandkids. And that's been a big change. Myself, I'm looking to try to catch up to her. That's a change, and, those are good changes. All good changes. Yeah. I had this dream. It was right before I retired. I had a dream where I was at the top of the Empire State Building, and I was tossing glitter out over New York over the world.

And when I woke up, I thought that's Pilates. It felt exactly right. You know, it was time for Rachel to retire and she was ready for it. And I feel like it was okay. If this is okay, Kayley and I were there to kind of support Amy. If Amy ever retires, I mean, I hope she's kinda like Romanna, we're, you know, 80 years old and she toggles in here and helps with things.

But I'd probably be 80 years old too because we're the same age. When she is ready, we'll be there. And whatever that looks like, I don't know. They don't want their life's work to go away. And I don't it's my life's work now too. We read the mission statement allowed at every staff meeting. It's a very big mission. What's the legacy of Damien Rachel Taylor Systems? For first of all, what a legacy and has grown. There's so many beautiful teachers who love not only Pilates, but really love to contribute to a better world.

Hello from Istanbul. In Birmingham, Alabama, Florida, Canada. In Louisville, Kentucky. In Louisville, Kentucky. In London, in India. In Hogue's Place, Israel, California.

Amy Rachel make you trust and believe in the method and how it can change the world. Living here in The Middle East with all the geopolitical problems, I can only be happy working with a company that has a world based on their mind. I will keep doing Pilates until I can't do it anymore. Taught me pilates from a healing perspective. What made you feel confident and what you knew at the time that you knew it and to bring me forward to next step? Gave me the tools that I need to be a successful teacher. Just any body as a teacher, but a better place, it's a teacher than I ever expected, find my mission and seek help through a new lens.

With Gong foundation, my main source of education, teaching me to flow of how to teach Pilates. I keep starting to say that I owe my life to Pilates. It's my sense of health immediately just in awe. They can see the whole human. So much intelligence, so much wisdom. We know that human beings like her exist is serving the health of human beings. Steadfast commitment to maintaining the integrity of the original art.

Me and mom also teach my grandmother while she comes to the studio for classes, and I just had my baby girl, Ellerin, and we can't wait to teach her Pilates as well. My hip was refused for over fifty years. Coor muscle was really weakened. That's caused quite a bit about lower back pain. Since during periods, I don't have a lower back pain.

I was there learning how to stretch someone at at the semi circle, and the phone rings. And it was my best friend calling to tell me that my dad had suddenly passed on. I didn't have a car then. Amy got me in the car, drove me. She told me how she and Rachel had lost both their parents and It was so comforting.

They really supported me through that period. So they are, like, sisters to me, and they call me Jay, which is what my family calls I didn't know it was gonna be kleenex. It's for this interview. For the first time in my life, somebody telling me it mattered how it felt and not how it looked. My life is better because of and the world is a better place because of what they have given to all of us.

Time for