Keeping Our Elders On Their Feet: Safe, Connected, Independent & Joyful

Tonya Amos has loved working with elders since 2006, first through her award-winning Pilates studio Aspire Pilates Center, and now intensively via her nonprofit project, Grown Women Dance Collective.

Aging seniors are a population that society actively chooses to forget. But our seniors are our bridge between the ancestors, our histories, ourselves, and the next generations. They are our griots (living libraries, storytellers, culture keepers), our often forgotten trailblazers, and in the San Francisco Bay Area, our freedom fighters and former Black Panthers.

Elders have such important history to be passed down to anyone that will slow down enough to listen, strategies to share, and tactics that they’ve successfully employed to bring about change, often before many of us were even born. We as the rising generations don’t need to re-invent the wheel trying to understand how to shift societal problems or waste energy reinventing solutions towards social change; we need to sit at the feet of our elders and absorb their wisdom so their knowledge is not lost.

And importantly, our living heroes should be able to contribute their deep expertise and experience, and not languish in loneliness, isolation, and physical pain in their final years on the planet.

Why This Work Matters

Black elders are cornerstones of family, culture, and intergenerational stability. However, lifetime systemic racism, healthcare discrimination, and economic disinvestment cause premature aging and high rates of chronic illness like hypertension, heart disease, and stroke (Geronimus, 2005; Ochieng et al., 2021; King, 2021). We also know that keeping seniors on their feet and away from the devastating effects of gravity literally saves lives by avoiding life-ending injuries such as fractured hips and traumatic brain injury.

Severe health disparities are compounded by a critical shortage of well-trained, culturally competent health care providers and movement instructors equipped to address elders’ unique physical, cultural, and social needs. Traditional wellness spaces often exclude low-income, BIPOC seniors through high costs and cultural insensitivity, and lack specialized, post-rehabilitative care, dignified, safe modifications, and culturally relevant, joyous programming.

Without certified movement instructors trained in fall prevention, Osteoporosis, and balance protocols, seniors face preventable injury, functional decline, and isolation. This lack of qualified, culturally supportive wellness leaders directly threatens Black elders’ physical independence and the intergenerational families and communities that depend on their guidance, caregiving, cultural grounding, and resilience.

Pilates, Wellness, and Social Justice

Grown Women Dance Collective uses the power of arts and wellness for social justice, building resilience, resistance, empowerment, and joy. Our work reinvests creativity, wellness, and wealth into disinvested communities, amplifies overlooked voices, and strengthens our community’s ability to mobilize and challenge systemic injustices.

Keeping our seniors strong on their feet is central to our social justice work. Our free culturally grounded senior programs nurture belonging, celebrate culture, address health disparities, and reclaim spaces of healing too often denied to BIPOC communities. Our elders remain active and connected, serving as a stabilizing influence in their families and communities and sharing critical intergenerational wisdom that educates and inspires our social justice leaders of tomorrow.

Our Elder Wellness Programs

Through Grown Women Dance Collective’s free Fall Prevention & Pain Reduction for Elders Programs, we help under-resourced seniors reduce falls, maintain independence, combat isolation, and foster intergenerational connection.

Our Pilates for Elders program builds deep strength through Reformer work and impacts long-standing postural habits and injuries. Choreocore®: Fall Prevention & Pain Reduction for Elders blends biomechanically safe, elder-informed Pilates with the joy of culturally rooted dance. Together, these programs improve elders’ strength, flexibility, balance, self-confidence, independence, and social connection. Our seniors say they feel more balanced, with less pain, more energy, improved memory, a stronger sense of community, and more opportunity to age in place.

“This program is the reason why I can still get around, why I still have my independence. And I’m having the time of my life.” – 91-year-old student.

Physical & Emotional Impact

We help empower elders aged 65 – 91; some of our students use canes, walkers, and oxygen machines. Our oldest student was 103 years old, and we’ve had the great privilege of working with two students through hospice.

Our programming results in more energy to cook and maintain households, along with enhanced hand dexterity, enabling easier tasks such as opening jars and cooking safely.

For seniors who are still working, our programs enable them to perform their jobs with less pain, increased endurance, and greater success, leading to fewer missed workdays. Their ability to work directly impacts their families’ housing stability and food security.

For seniors who live in intergenerational households, our programs enable them to be active participants, contributing as griots and to childcare while maintaining independence. For elders who live alone, our programming helps them form friendships, find motivation from their peers, stay safe and independent, decrease loneliness, and build connection with community.

“For elders, being alone and loneliness is often a significant end-of-life factor as one ages. This class gives me something to look forward to, the ability to interact with others, it gives me purpose.” – 72-year-old student

Elders Feel Better and Find New Collaboration With Their Bodies

As many elders are sedentary before starting our programs, we’ve seen that very little goes a long way. With just 10 sessions, our program impacts are profound:

• 100% of students felt stronger and more balanced, had a better understanding of and collaboration with their body, and reported a decrease in pain in at least one body part, including back, knees, neck, shoulders, and hips.
• 93% reported a reduction in pain in two or more body parts and stronger breathing.
• 86% had more energy.

Students also tell us that they feel more flexible, connected, happier, grateful, and more in control.

“Being together with other like-minded mature women has blessed me. We all want to live our best lives right now.” – 72-year-old student.

Empowered Health and Agency

Students frequently report positive shifts in blood pressure, blood sugar levels, medication regulation, and more self-confidence interacting with medical professionals.

“While I still consult my primary physician/specialist, I now have more information to make thoughtful decisions about my health and wellness and easier communication with my doctors.”

They also report enhanced cognition, memory, and reaction times, which contribute to their confidence in driving and maintaining independence and quality of life, along with less stress and anxiety, and more joy.

“Everything has been a tremendous blessing to me, mind, body, and spirit. I’ve made new friends. I feel less vulnerable and more empowered in fall prevention and other age-related hazards. And having this work available to me has supported my mental health in ways I never imagined.”

Accessible and Revolutionary Wellness

Through a deep, meaningful partnership between Tonya Amos’ Grown Women Dance Collective and Balanced Body, the Pilates industry is shifting. But a profound lack of access and the stigma that Pilates is not for people of color still exist. Our students explicitly state that GWDC’s free community programs provide a path to Pilates that eliminates both the cost and that stigma.

“Without the blessing of this scholarship for eligible seniors, I wouldn’t be able to afford Pilates. In fact, I would have never imagined being exposed to this work. I walk more upright because I am now more conscious of my body posture and how not to fall.”

Through partnerships with self-organized senior groups, community-based organizations, churches, social justice partners, and the far reach of the Community Expansion Scholarship Program and Joyful Movement Whole Life Program, GWDC has expanded its impact nationally and in 12 countries. In 2025, 4,000 elder classes were taught nationally.

Our future wellness leaders are impacting elders in community centers, care facilities, homeless encampments, faith organizations, and public libraries, reinvesting power, wellness, and resilience into places that Pilates traditionally doesn’t go. The ripple means that thousands of families, friends, and networks in BIPOC communities are stabilized, strengthened, and resourced by their beloved elders.

Tonya has always told Ken Endelman, the brilliant mind behind Balanced Body, that Pilates can change the world. She’s on a mission to prove that this life-changing work is more than “just Pilates”—it is a vital key towards empowered, healthy, connected, financially sound communities.

Centering elders’ health is an important component of Grown Women Dance Collective’s arts & wellness for social justice work, as we help create a world where we can all be seen, heard, dance, and thrive.

All ideas and assertions expressed in The CORE are those of the individual contributors, offered to spark conversation, enrich understanding/inspire growth and share diverse perspectives within our community. They may not necessarily reflect the views of Balanced Body®.