At Pilates at The Pillow I had an incredible opportunity to teach two unique workshops. Most amazingly, I was able to teach my workshop, The Lost Art of The Resister, inside Joseph Pilates’ original studio space in the Berkshires. To teach where Joe taught, worked, designed, and created his method and apparatus was truly a career high for me. But not only that, but the workshop I taught was on an apparatus that he invented and that no one has used since he was alive- The Resister.
The Resister is a wall-mounted apparatus that Joseph Pilates marketed in the 1940’s, along with a chart of exercises that were in a particular order, with number of repetitions, breathing instructions, details, and images of the exercises being performed. My workshop used a replicated copy of this chart- instead of the original line drawings that were on the original chart we used drawings of Joe himself- and the apparatus we used was replicated from the original Resister photos by Pilates Lineage. We were able to put 5 inside the studio space for the workshop to take place. It was awesome and enlightening to follow Joe’s original instructions and order, and most exciting was to feel the difference his original dimensions and original spring tension really makes. The difference is huge, undeniable, and addictive! Sharing this information and apparatus with everyone at the workshop and witnessing their reactions was a career highlight for me.
