One of our most recent PTC graduates came to us from San Francisco.  She moved to Los Angeles to enroll in our program and follow her passion.  Here is Chaele Cooper's road to Pilates:

I have been passionate about the mind-body-spirit connection since my teens and for over a decade I have wanted to make health and well-being the focus of my professional life.  The affects of exercise, nutrition and meditation on the mental and emotional state have always fascinated me. I've studied everything from Shiatsu massage, yoga, Ayurveda and Eastern religions to nutrition, amino acid therapies and recently EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, a therapy similar to acupuncture but without needles).  In my twenties, while toiling away at an advertising agency, I envisioned going back to school and becoming a psychotherapist who uses physical activity, diet and meditation to augment therapy. 

About a decade ago, my mother became seriously ill and I put my plans to return to school on hold to support her through a stem cell transplant.  I also took over running her business, a retail yarn store in San Francisco. I found that I enjoyed running a business, I loved the creative energy and surroundings, the wonderful customers, and teaching people was incredibly rewarding. Still, knitting had always been my mother's passion and when her health improved she gradually returned to the store and I exited. 

My situation had changed quite a bit as well.  I had bought a house and with a mortgage, going back to school wasn't an option. I had had such a good time learning about and following the San Francisco real estate market while buying my house; and I had enjoyed the independence of running a small business and working with people that i decided to go into real estate. I found that I absolutely loved working with people and I loved that every day was different. It required me to call on different aspects of my personality constantly and I loved that. The only thing I strongly disliked about it was the self-promotion -- it was never something with which I felt comfortable. When the economy began to tank and I realized that the self-promotion was about to become necessary to succeed as a realtor, I reassessed my priorities and my true self.  I asked myself how I really wanted to spend my time. 

I had been practicing Pilates at a local studio and taking mat classes at my gym for years and had fallen in love with the method. In college I had noticed that physical activity, the release of endorphins, getting outside with nature, working up a sweat, meeting physical challenges, etc. helped me balance my emotions and sense of well-being.  Throughout my adult life I would sometimes skip my self-designed exercise therapy and whenever I didn't make exercise a priority for a period of time, I had a tendency to get the blues which would inevitably lead to deeper issues with food and body image. I realized that what I really wanted to do was what I had always wanted to do, which was help people heal themselves and their relationship with their body--to find peace of mind. Of all the activities I practiced, nothing had ever fed my soul or shaped my body or felt as intrinsically and intuitively 'right' as Pilates. I spent about a year researching and preparing to make this shift in my life.  I found PTC and it seemed like the most rigorous and thorough, well thought-out and classical approach in California.  From the first day of training I knew that I had found the best certification program and now mid-way through I couldn't be happier with the decision I made. I've simultaneously taken anatomy classes at SMC and am completing certification as a personal trainer.  I love the variety of clients with whom I work as an apprentice teacher now and have found that my past study in massage, nutrition, philosophy and psychology are contributing to what I have to offer as a teacher.