Twenty Three Years Later...

The story of how my clients unknowingly shaped Organic Performance – and me.

I’ve never been particularly good at staying inside the lines. Or inside labels, for that matter.

Give me a profession, a method or a framework, and before long I’ll start asking awkward questions that lead me somewhere completely different.

Apparently, becoming a Pilates instructor was no exception.

Twenty-three years later, I can finally admit something that would probably horrify a few of my wonderful instructors. I don’t think I ever really taught Pilates by the book.

My teaching has had very little to do with mastering a method and everything to do with learning how to read life through the body.

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I still remember my very first client.

Freshly qualified, I couldn’t have felt less experienced. She was living with a degenerative muscular disease and could barely move. Looking back, I sometimes wonder whether either of us realised just how much we were about to learn.

Week after week, we explored movement together.

There was no protocol for what she needed. No certainty. Just careful observation, curiosity and a growing trust in what her body seemed ready to reveal.

At the time, neither of us could have known that those early sessions were planting the first seeds of something much bigger for both of us.

Years later, she qualified as a Pilates instructor. I was delighted, of course.

But what has stayed with me far more than her qualification were the words she shared with me one day.

“You’re the one who made me believe anything was possible.”

At the time, I thought I was only just helping her move a little better. Looking back, I realise movement was only ever part of the story.

Long before I understood my own work, I had already begun helping people rediscover possibility and hope.

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The years that followed never unfolded according to a grand plan.

One client became a few. A few became dozens. Dozens became much less than a hundred because I didn’t want my work to live under any pressure.

Different ages. Different stories. Different bodies. Different reasons walked through my door. Some came because they wanted to move better. Others because they were in pain. Some were athletes chasing performance. Others simply wanted to be able to climb the stairs without discomfort.

On the surface, every story seemed different. Yet, little by little, I began noticing something curious. The body didn’t seem nearly as interested in my plans for it as I was. It had a rhythm of its own. A pace of its own. A remarkable way of revealing what it needed, provided someone was willing to pay attention.

Interested in going with the flow, I gradually became less interested in teaching movement than in observing what helped life naturally reorganise itself.

Just as a proof, I continued observing, every summer, the same curious pattern.

Clients would disappear for two or three weeks and would always return apologising for not having exercised.

“I hardly did any Pilates...”

“I was so lazy...”

“I’ve probably lost everything.”

Then we’d begin moving.

And, to everyone’s surprise... Their bodies moved better than before they had left!

That puzzled me for a long time. Surely the opposite should have happened. Less training. Less practice. Less discipline. And yet, time after time, I witnessed the same phenomenon.

Rather than dismissing those moments as exceptions, I began treating them as teachers.

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Over time though, every observation seemed to lead to another question.

The more I immersed myself in my clients’ issues, the less interested I became in ready-made answers. Ideas I had once accepted without hesitation, no longer had a reason for being in my teaching. The real questions revolved around life itself.

Why did some people make remarkable progress with very little effort, while others worked incredibly hard with almost nothing to show for it?

Why did bodies often return from holidays moving more freely than before, despite weeks without structured exercise?

Why did closed eyes sometimes achieve what determination couldn’t?

The more I looked, the less these moments felt like mere coincidences. They were pointing towards something very simple:

That it was best to choose curiosity over certainty.

Little by little, I stopped asking,

“How can I make this body perform better?”

and began asking,

“What conditions could allow this person to naturally thrive?”

That subtle shift changed everything.

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At some point, something unexpected began to happen.

The questions I was asking inside my studio started following me everywhere. I found myself recognising the same patterns far beyond the body. It was as though the world stood in front of me as one enormous classroom.

The more I paid attention, the more I realised that the principles allowing a body and a person to flourish weren’t unique to this context at all. They belonged to life itself.

Being a nature lover, it is within Mother Nature I found one of my first and favourite working analogies: the Tree. I used every element to represent parts of the body. It was a natural way of explaining how the body functions best.

Years on, the tree keeps reflecting back everything my clients and I have been working on about roots, growth, power from within before expanding outward.

Nothing in a healthy ecosystem appears to force its own growth. It creates the right conditions and life responds. The deeper I got into my work, the more I realized I had simply spent years building the same conditions as in nature, under which life naturally flourishes.

Yet, I was very much doubting the value of my work, until someone gave it a name.

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About five years ago, my instinct asked me to let go of my Pilates Studio, thus also of part of my identity.

To most people, especially my clients, it came as a shock. It seemed irrational. In many ways it certainly felt that way. Having to part was tough. But looking back, I realise it was a necessary step in order to begin a new book.

But this new path didn’t come without further challenge.

For more than twenty years, I had worked almost invisibly. My studios, even when they changed location were tucked away from the world, and truthfully, so was I. My attention had always been directed towards the people in front of me. They found me. I never looked for them.

Therefore, when the time came to become visible, doubts about the validity of my work came rushing in. Very unexpectedly, someone reconciled me with my biggest doubts. A visual media coach I worked with for a few months brought my first identity to the surface.

Bill Miles had been watching me work for only a short while on video when he said,

“You’re like a horse whisperer.”

I laughed. Mostly because it was so unexpected. But something about those words landed deeply in me. It was the very first time, a name was given to something I had never quite been able to describe myself. I felt relief.

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Today, I realise something else.

Bill may have been the first person to give my work a name, but he certainly wasn’t the first to recognise it. My clients had been recognising it for years. They came back. They trusted me with their stories, their fears, their hopes. They brought partners, friends and family.

Occasionally, they would leave me with a sentence that stayed long after the session had ended.

“You always make me see things differently.”

“I don’t know why, but I feel lighter.”

“You helped me realise why I couldn’t do this move with ease.”

Back then, I accepted those words with gratitude. Today, I hear them differently, because beyond describing an experience, they referred to the work itself.

As such, Organic Performance doesn’t belong to me alone.

It’s a heritage shaped by every person who ever walked through my door with a question, a doubt, or a concern. By those who experienced a breakthrough or a simple unexpected observation.

And last but not least, by every moment that challenged what I thought I knew.

If Organic Performance exists today, it is because some people trusted me enough to let me observe, question, learn and grow alongside them.

For that, I will always be profoundly grateful.

So, in the end, while I thought I was teaching movement or helping people reconnect with their bodies, it turns out we were simply learning how life naturally flourishes.