“The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
-Marcel Proust
Introduction to the New Balanced Body Education
2024 was a time to connect, collaborate, and explore new horizons. As the Pilates market continues to grow and expand, Balanced Body Education is designing and implementing new systems – from a reshaped Movement Principles course (out mid-2025) to a shiny new student portal – CLARA (due out first quarter 2025), to serve your needs for your entire Pilates journey.
The New & Improved Movement Principles and the unveiling of the student portal: CLARA!
Leading the way for skill development, self-awareness, and curiosity for teaching Pilates, we’ve been working on reshaping the Movement Principles course into a felt experience, one to build the skills necessary to develop a strong personal practice based on self-awareness and a strong pre-Pilates movement base that will lead right into the rest of the curriculum. This new course, as well as all our Pilates and non-Pilates curriculum, will be available on our new student portal: CLARA.
We will move into 2025 with a ‘staged’ reveal for CLARA. The first part will be unveiled in Quarter 1 and will include access to exercise (audio & non-audio) of every exercise in the curriculum as well as the peripheral assets (i.e., manuals, module tests, etc.).
Q1 will be the first stage of many and will include the Movement Principles and Mat curriculum, with the remainder of the year unveiling and revealing the remaining curriculum as it is ready.
Pilates is a language of movement…in motion and full of passion❤️
Advanced Movement Principles – new 2025 schedule coming soon!
Advanced Movement Principles continues to be brought to the World through the brilliance and passion of Nora St John – be on the lookout for the 2025 schedule coming to your emails soon.
Pilates on Tour & Movement Tour Events!
In 2024, we put on six Pilates on Tour events and one Movement Tour. We were thrilled to finally return to the much-anticipated POT Phoenix event, post-pandemic, focusing on rehab and wellness. Aside from POT Phoenix, which was always a staple on our events calendar, 2024 was a year of bringing our events to new locations and attracting many new attendees as a result. New event locations for this year were Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Manchester, UK; Busan, South Korean; Minneapolis, Minnesota (Movement Tour); Atlanta, Georgia; and Delhi, India. Approximately 50% of the attendees at the new locations were brand new, allowing us to bring so many new instructors into our Pilates community. Furthermore, 2024 was also a year of bringing not only new attendees to our events but also several new presenters, all of whom brought a new and different perspective to their workshops.
2025 is already shaping up to be a great year, and we are most definitely not done planning! We will start the year off with a Pilates on Tour event in Denver, bringing the past, present, and future of Pilates into one inclusive event. This event is almost sold out, so sign up soon if you have not done so! Following Denver, we will return to Italy (the first time since the pandemic) and then to Seoul. The summer will bring a Movement Tour in Montreal, Canada. In the fall, we will bring back our beloved “Chicagoland” event, focusing on Pilates and fitness. And finally, we will end the year with a Movement Tour in Charleston, South Carolina.
What’s more, 2026 will be Balanced Body’s 50th year in business, and we are already planning some amazing events to celebrate!
FitPro: Bringing Pilates to the Fitness Professional!
Seeing the growth of the Pilates Reformer this last year has been so exciting! With our Pilates Group Reformer Program, we have been able to see the curiosity of teachers in the fitness world turn into an embrace of the Pilates educational journey. From bigger box-clubs to independent gyms and hundreds of students, this rapid growth of the Pilates Reformer is getting the support it needs from our educational community, and we are so proud to be a part of that! One organization close to our hearts that we are extra excited about is the YMCA. Supporting the programs within the YMCAs all over the world has been an effort of BB for quite some time, and now we can show it even more with this Pilates Group Reformer Program. Being able to get high-quality equipment and education into these community-driven spaces is bringing the ‘magic’ of Pilates to so many more. Here’s to continuing to share the ‘why’ behind the Reformer into 2025 and beyond! Christine Crooks, the Education Program Coordinator at the helm overseeing the Fitness Professional team, has seen huge growth in this sector.
Thank you for your continued support and curiosity for Pilates!
With the Pilates market STILL growing at an incredible pace, we’ve needed to do the same inside the Education department. To better service the needs of our students (YOU!), we’ve added several incredible humans to the team. From supporting the incoming calls, emails, and inquiries with customer service to ensure you have access to course resources, understanding the journey from the beginning, middle (e.g., Bridging), end (e.g., testing out), and continuing education (e.g., maintaining your 16 credits every 2 years) to developing your current training and skill level to learning new ones and adding onto to your knowledge base – we are here for your entire Pilates journey. Please let us know how we can support, guide, and develop your skills. Moreover, we’re staffing up, refining, and streamlining processes to ensure the student and educator journey is as favorable as possible.
Joy Puleo is Balanced Body's Director of Education. In July of 2013, Joy moved, with her family, from New York to Sacramento, California to join Nora St. John and the rest of the Balanced Body team to work on developing curriculum and educational programming. Joy has been teaching Pilates teachers since 2002 and in the health and wellness industry since 1996. Joy earned her MA from Columbia University in Applied Physiology. As a lecturer she presents at conferences and studios across the country and abroad and with Balanced Body, she is a regular at most Pilates on Tours. In addition to her degree Joy is A.C.S.M. certified and is able to provide ACE credits for students who take her classes. She is a fully qualified Balanced Body Pilates Instructor and teacher trainer, CoreAlign and Bodhi Suspension System master trainer and a graduate of the PhysicalMind Institute. Joy was also trained on the GYROTONIC,® Level I and the Ladder. In 2011 Joy founded Body Wise Connection, a not-for-profit which works with women newly diagnosed with breast cancer. Body Wise Connections sole purpose is to remind women that even in the throes of a diagnosis and treatment for cancer the body can heal and strengthen. Body Wise Connection works to restore physical self-awareness and empowerment through gently, rhythmic Pilates based movements. Though Joy is no longer in New York, Joys work has expanded to include all cancer patients regardless of the primary cancer diagnosis. Joy believes that movement changes lives and that education is the key to unlocking potential. Joy is thrilled to be working with Balanced Body on the shared mission of elevating mindful movement as a component to long term health and wellbeing.
