Aline Studios

My business was here before the internet.

Before email.

Before websites.

When cell phones were the size of real land line phones.

I cold called gyms selling myself and I selling a Pilates mat class when no one knew what it was and it was illegal to say the word.

I collected articles, seven of them.

Printed them out and mailed them to people after I called them to introduce myself and educate them about Pilates.

I worked out of my apartment. My living room was the studio.

I added one small piece of equipment at a time. Not what people needed, just what fit.

I taught classes at gyms to market to private students. I wasn’t taking anyone away. The gyms didn’t offer Pilates equipment training.

There were no classes to take.

No mentors to study from.

No algorithm.

No likes.

No followers.

Just me and my clients.

Just results I could see with my own eyes.

Pretty soon someone would come to me in pain and I helped them.

Then they sent people.

Then their chiropractors and masseuses started referring.

It just grew organically.

I built my business on integrity.

On results.

On faith and perseverance…
and a second job, sometimes a third.

I had no shame even though my presentation was always humble.

I knew the work worked.

Many clients never wanted to leave training in my living room, but back then you couldn’t really do that.

I always believed.

Everything I added into the training, I believed in.

Now they’d call it guerrilla marketing.

Back then it was just person to person communication.

And here’s what I know after 40 years:

You can buy Google ads.

You can pay your way to the top of a search page.

But you can’t buy the moment when you ask a client if they believe they can ever be pain free

they say no

and then months later you remind them they never believed it.

But always you did.

And now they’re out of pain.

That kind of trust travels mouth to mouth.

It always has.

Algorithms change.

Rankings shift.

Someone who got their life back will never stop talking about it.

That’s not social proof.

That’s just proof.

What I wish I knew when I was a young dancer

I trusted teachers who meant well, but they taught what worked for them.

Not me.

I didn’t know I could throw away the things that didn’t work for me.

Maturity in dance is education but it’s also self knowledge. Knowing your body and what it needs.

When you’re young and hungry for knowledge, you don’t always trust that inner knowing yet.

So you take everything your teachers give you and you try to make it all fit.

Some of it doesn’t.

I pushed through things I shouldn’t have.

Not because they were wrong.

They just weren’t mine.

My knees would swell, I had pain all over my body that I now know was not normal.

I kept negotiating with the pain until I finally stopped doing everyone else’s work and started creating my own.

I wanted to get somewhere.

We all do.

I learned with maturity: you can get there from the inside first.

Before you execute, before you push, before you override, listen to what your body is telling you.

You’re allowed to keep what serves you and let go of what doesn’t.

That’s not disrespect.

That’s intelligence.

If you’re in a class right now and something doesn’t feel right in your body, examine your inner knowledge. Do you have to do it or can you negotiate with either yourself or the teacher.

I wish I knew back then I didn’t have to do it just because someone told me to.

Real maturity and self knowledge as a young dancer or even as a Pilates client is the messy, ongoing work of listening to your body while learning.

Of catching yourself mid-push and asking: wait. Is this even mine?

Your body has been telling you the whole time.

Trust that.

Take what you need.

Throw away what doesn’t belong.

Why ‘More Exercises’ Isn’t always the Answer for Advanced Clients

Is it about giving more exercises…or constantly adding more advanced exercises?

After years of practice, something shifts.

You stop chasing choreography and you start inhabiting the exercises.

My advanced clients have put in the years. They know the work.

Of course they still learn new things. But what changes is what they’re after.

Their goals are about how the work feels.

As a beginner you “do” Pilates.

After months or years you start to feel the work initiated from the inside out, instead of the outside in.

Of course you need exercises, that’s the pathway. You just have to make sure the path leads you inward instead of getting more performative which is outward.

That’s when students stop being transactional or judgmental. Moving to please the teacher, or qualifying or disqualifying work based on their opinion of what they think is hard or advanced, or what they are good at.

When a client gets out of transactional doing, you have a whole new world.

That’s where the real depth lives.

We do this as dancers our whole careers.

One of my clients just got an MRI report. The findings scared her. She wondered if she’d lose what she’s gained.

I told her no.

Her program has been sound all this time. We don’t have to change much because I was already training her as if she might have issues.

That’s what years of integrated work looks like.

The road inward is always built on and with integrity.

The MRI doesn’t lie.

But here’s what your doctor probably didn’t tell you.

That image?

It’s a snapshot, not a life sentence.

Look, I’m not just saying this. I’ve spent 40 years teaching movement and living in my own scoliotic body.

I’ve seen what’s possible.

I’ve had clients walk in with scans that looked like a total disaster.

Months later?

Biking ten miles a day. Smiling the whole way.

The structure didn’t change.

But the way their body responded to it? Completely different story.

You don’t have to fix the scan. You just have to find what you CAN do and build from there.

That’s the work.

And honestly?

It’s so cool for me to go through this process with someone.

I already know they are going to get better, they don’t know it yet.

It’s fun to watch them transform.

From Severe Pain to Living Her Life Again

She came to me in a great deal of pain.

Spondylolisthesis. One of the bones in her lower back had slipped forward. Years of yoga had created hypermobility that made everything worse.

Surgery was on the table. She didn’t want it.

Now she’s stabilized her condition mechanically and her pain is much better.

Here’s what we did.

First, I had to throw out neutral spine. With her condition, there is no reliable neutral. That bone shifts depending on the day.

So we started with breath.

Intra-abdominal pressure through controlled exhales. Pelvic floor engagement. Kegel work. Not the stuff you rush through. The stuff you feel.

Then we added integration.

When she first came to me she couldn’t hold her legs up at all. The weight would divert straight to her lower back.

We worked on shortening and tightening her abdominals so as her legs extended, the load transferred to her core instead of her spine.

That pressure shift is everything.

She doesn’t accomplish this in one session. It takes time. I won’t progress anyone until they get it.

But she got it.

Now she has the strength she can rely on in daily life. She has the tools to manage her situation without surgery.

The MRI doesn’t lie. We can’t change the structure.

What we can change is how the body responds to it.

She’s now on a walking program on her off days. This keeps the nervous system responding to weight bearing load and helps her hold her wins in the studio.

Slow and steady. That’s the work.

Love this quote.

Proper Book Review

Raw, Honest, and Impossible to Forget


This memoir is a slow, steady, and painful account of Sarma Melngailis’s experience with manipulation and betrayal that nearly destroyed both her personally and professionally.

Sarma’s bravery in writing this book cannot be overstated. To expose herself with such honesty, to open old wounds and let the world see the truth behind the headlines, is an act of incredible courage.

Her voice is steady and unflinching, and you feel her trying to make sense of something senseless — one page at a time.

From the first page, I couldn’t put it down. Even at nearly 650 pages (condensed from an original 1,200-page manuscript), it’s a page-turner — beautifully written, vulnerable to the point of discomfort, and impossible to walk away from unchanged. When you close the book, it lingers — in the realization of how manipulation and trauma can touch even the most intelligent, accomplished people.


This book should be required reading for every young woman in her twenties — a guide on recognizing red flags and protecting your sense of self. Sarma’s story is both a warning and a testament to resilience.

I first learned of her through the Netflix documentary Bad Vegan, but this memoir tells the fuller, more human story. It’s not just about what happened — it’s about how someone finds the strength to rebuild after losing everything.

Her story is not only about loss — it’s about survival, truth, and reclaiming one’s power.

She put the work in and she made it.

From where we were 2 years ago, this is amazing.

Like I always say, the MRI doesn’t lie.

We can’t change the structure of the diagnosis,

What we can do is change how the body responds to it.

I taught her movement with directed attention. We focused on technique and feeling the exercises in the way that’s best for her body.

Boom

Another one for the books.

Congratulations you did it.

You have all the tools you need to manage your situation.

So happy for you.