John Howard Steel Shares Memories of Working with Joe Pilates

So what is Pilates? [laughs]

[laughs]

How do you...

If you were to meet somebody, like, at a restaurant or if somebody came to your house and they saw your reformer and like, "Whoa, what is this torture device?" Like, what would you tell them? [laughs]

[laughs] That's right.

Right? That's what they always say.

They...

What would you tell them Pilates even is?

Well, it's a very, uh, a very structured system of movement and exercise that requires you to concentrate fully on doing it and, uh, it's a very non-competitive, uh, non, uh, goal-oriented, uh, system.

It's, it's, uh, uh, it's very, very hard to really define what the essence of it is, I think.

Uh, but what it really does, and that's what you can talk about, it takes you away from everything in your life but doing it and in that sense it's, uh, it's almost like a sport.

Mm.

Uh, you, you have to focus on it.

You don't have any goal.

You don't have anybody telling you you did something right or wrong.

It's not like a tennis lesson when someone's saying, "Oh, do this with your stroke," or, "Do this." Uh, and it leaves you with a feeling that, A, you want more of it.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, and B, you feel different.

You feel not only physically different, you feel emotionally different.

You feel like you have cleansed yourself somehow.

It, there's a meditative, uh, result from it.

It works on so many different systems in your body, your muscles, your hormones, your mind, your emotions.

Uh, and the only thing I tell people that is don't trust any definition.

Go try it.

That's exactly what I tell people.