Last week in my Pilates newsletter I promised this weeks edition would include a roundup of news from the recent 2011 Pilates Method Alliance (PMA) conference, which I didn't attend this year. Now I remember why I have a personal rule to never promise a publication date for a blog or article until I've written it! There haven't yet been a lot of in-depth articles inspired by the classes to report on.
Just getting back, people are happy but tired, and not quite ready to synthesize their experience. Big conferences are so all-absorbing, it's hard to put everything into words right away. There's all the prep, and the travel; and then full tilt into panels, and classes, and meetings, and new friends, and old friends, and parties. Then you get home and your regular life is waiting and you're just fried.
There are, however, a couple of good PMA 2011 blogs so far I'd like to mention. Each gives wonderful personal sense of the authors experience. Heart, Meet Sleeve from Marcia Polas is a touching account of Marcia's struggle with the tension she felt (and I think many feel) around being an independent Pilates teacher and not always feeling the kind of support she'd like to from being part of the PMA. In the end, her experience resolved into a new sense of camaraderie that seems to be one of the themes of this years PMA.
I also enjoyed reading Joseph Quinn's What the Hell Was IĀ Thinking? PMA's 2011, where he perfectly expresses what I went through at PMA 2010 thinking I would have plenty of time and energy to write... Not. And, he captures the feel of what it's like to be an attendee -- the non-stop class and social schedule, meeting Pilates "big wigs' and finding out they are nice, real people; and the juiced up feeling you have after.
There were, of course, quite a lot of tweets coming out of the PMA conference. The general vibe was upbeat and maybe a little overwhelmed. Rael Isacowitz' Ultra Marathon Mat class and Ruth Alperts' The Teacher's Eye: Identifying Habit Patterns in Ourselves and our Clients seem to have been big hits with my peeps. On the trade show side of things, I know both Peak Pilates and Balanced Body introduced new reformers. Pics of those are featured in my Where to Buy Pilates Equipment source list. And, judging from all the many Facebook pics of people arm in arm and grinning ear to ear, it was a good party! If you went to PMA 2011 and you would like to share your experience, please feel free to comment below.
For those who are those interested in audio versions of conference classes, the PMA has already made recordings available for order as CDs or MP3s and on flash drives. I highly recommend you take a look. The teachers and class titles are stellar.
Related Reading:
Inside the PMA with Elizabeth Anderson
