"The readiness is all"

I'm reading this article:http://www.anatomytrains.com/explore/kq

The author quotes Hamlet. It makes me happy.

I love when all of my worlds collide. I've been thinking about my history a lot lately.

For my first couple of years as a Pilates Instructor, I found myself apologizing a lot for not "being a dancer." My first Pilates mentor was a dancer, the beautiful instructors in the studio where I trained and my classmates were dancers. I understand the connection. Dancers, especially those that persue it as a profession, are very good at Pilates work, and they were amazing instructors.

I was an actress. Sure, I've danced, but my creative work  involved acting on motivations and trying to get something out of another person who was trying to get something out of me, in a sometimes barebones, sometimes extremely elaborate, pretend environment. What I didn't realize at the time was that acting WAS preparing me to be a Pilates teacher. Acting made me perceptive about how people reason and what they will do, and not do, to acheive a goal. Play enough roles and analyze enough of other actors and you become an amateur psychologist. Understanding why people do and don't do certain things is a great asset when your job is to develop their understanding of themselves and how they move.


My time spent in theatre has given me other skills that I use to teach. I'm comfortable in front of an audience. Now, it's just called a class. I think quickly on my feet. My career as an actress involved lots of artistic success and fulfillment, but not very much money. So, dayjobs of waitressing and office work have also prepared me for my life now. Thank God that SPSS made me take a class in Excel. As a studio director, I can make payroll reports and fill out expense reports. Both jobs put me in the body of a waitress and and office worker so now I have similar physical experiences to most of my clients. I don't have to empathize or speculate, I've been hunched in a chair with my phone under my ear while typing and maneuvering a mouse. It almost ruined my body by the time I was 28.

I couldn't always be IN the show, so I cultivated other ways to be near the show. I liked to sew as a teenager, so costume design was something I did for a while. Working with a theatre company with big ideas and tiny budgets, I learned to "make it work" before Tim Gunn ever met Heidi Clum. Combine an eagerness to please with an insurmountable task and it was either innovate, or fail. One learns a lot about engineering when trying to make 17th century costumes for thirteen characters on a $400 budget. As I study anatomy, the mental connections I made out of sheer desparation as a designer, are like skelton keys to unlocking the way our bodies are put together.


My point is this, the path to where you want to go is rarely straight and narrow. Keep your eyes on the prize, but embrace and involve yourself where you are right now. The skills you learn in any moment could serve you amazingly well when get where you want to go.