About UsAfter spending most of her career in New York as ballet a dancer, model and fashion entrepreneur, it was a hip replacement that brought Cassandra Thompson back to Pilates. The immediate and amazing rehab results compelled her to spend the next three years working to become a Stott Advanced Level II certified Pilates instructor with ISP (rehab) training. Then, following her unrequited passion for horses all the way to Texas, she opened Cassandra’s ABSolute Pilates in Fort Worth. With her horse, Sir Murphy, a truck and a trailer, she is now fully immersed in the Texas horse culture and dedicates herself to improving horse-rider partnerships, one happy duet at a time. Interested in learning more?
How it Works & Pricing Who invented Pilates?Joseph Pilates
Inventor of the Pilates method of exercise Joseph H. Pilates was born in 1883 in Mönchengladbach, Germany. His father was a prize-winning gymnast of Greek ancestry, and his mother worked as a naturopath. His father's family originally spelled its surname in the Greek manner as "Pilatu" but changed to "Pilates" upon immigration to Germany. Pilates was a sickly child and suffered from asthma, rickets, and rheumatic fever, and he dedicated his entire life to improving his physical strength. Besides skiing frequently, he began studying body-building, yoga, "cong fu" (probably what we now call qigong), and gymnastics. By the age of 14, he was fit enough to pose for anatomical charts. Pilates came to believe that the "modern" life-style, bad posture, and inefficient breathing lay at the roots of poor health. He ultimately devised a series of exercises and training-techniques and engineered all the equipment, specifications, and tuning required to teach his methods properly. Pilates was originally a gymnast, diver, and bodybuilder, but when he moved to England in 1912, he earned a living as a professional boxer, circus-performer, and self-defense trainer at police schools and Scotland Yard. Nevertheless, the British authorities interned him during World War I along with other German citizens in aninternment camp on the Isle of Man. During this involuntary break, he began to intensively develop his concept of an integrated, comprehensive system of physical exercise, which he himself called "Contrology." He studied yoga and the movements of animals and trained his fellow inmates in fitness and exercises. It is told that these inmates survived the great pandemic of 1918 due to their good physical shape. After the war (WWI), he returned to Germany and collaborated with important experts in dance and physical exercise such as Rudolf Laban. In Hamburg, he also trained police officers. When he was pressured to train members of the German army, he left his native country, disappointed with its political and social conditions, and emigrated to the United States. Joseph and Clara Pilates soon established a devout following in the local dance and the performing-arts community of New York. Well-known dancers such as George Balanchine, who arrived in the United States in 1933, and Martha Graham, who had come to New York in 1923, became devotees and regularly sent their students to the Pilates for training and rehabilitation. Joseph Pilates wrote several books, including Return to Life through Contrology and Your Health, and he was also a prolific inventor, with over 26 patents cited. |