Method Joseph Pilates

Joseph Hubertus Pilates (1883–1967) was the creator of the method which he himself named Contrology. Born in Mönchengladbach, Germany, a fragile child with asthma and rickets, he developed an early interest in anatomy and physical disciplines. Throughout his training, he drew on German gymnastics, yoga, boxing and the martial arts to build a system that unites body and mind.

Interned in England during the First World War as a German national, he developed his first exercises with other prisoners and designed the prototypes of the Reformer and Cadillac by diverting the springs of hospital beds. These devices, initially designed for the rehabilitation of the wounded and sick, became the core of his method.

In 1926, he emigrated to the United States and opened a studio with his wife Clara at 939 8th Avenue in New York, in the same building as George Balanchine's New York City Ballet. For more than forty years, he trained dancers, actors, athletes and convalescent patients there, and codified the six founding principles of the method: concentration, control, centring, fluidity, precision and breathing. He designed each machine himself (Reformer, Cadillac, Wunda Chair, Barrels, Ped-O-Pul, Spine Corrector) in collaboration with manufacturer Donald Gratz, whose workshops continue to produce the machines in their original dimensions.

When he died in 1967, Joseph Pilates left behind a complete but not yet standardised method. It was his direct pupil Romana Kryzanowska which took over from the studio, codified the classic sequence and founded the certification system that today transmits the method in its original form. This is the lineage followed by Sophie Margolis at Studio 45, trained and qualified by Romana's granddaughter, Sari Mejia Santo.