Pilates Thoughtful Tuesday: Authenticity, Identity, and the Labels We Keep

Balance between tradition and evolution in Pilates and yoga teaching.

Yesterday I read a post on a classical Pilates social media thread that stopped me for a moment. The writer claimed that in the method you needed 25 personal training sessions before you were allowed into the open studio to practise. According to them, if you had not done those 25 sessions, you were not considered classical.

This was new information for me. New, but not surprising. Even inside the classical world, people seem to build fences to decide who belongs and who does not. It sits in the same pattern you see in yoga, where teachers argue about who is doing it “correctly” while new styles appear every year.

The blog also described the idea that classical Pilates is linked to Romana’s method and that they fought hard to protect the name authentic Pilates. They use the word archival for Joseph’s own work. They avoid the word classical for him. That small detail shows how layered the identity debate has become.

What struck me was how familiar this all felt. When methods grow, people create labels. Then they defend those labels with rules that shift depending on who tells the story. Pilates is not immune to this. Yoga is not either. The need to divide and define seems stronger than the need to understand.

For teachers, the useful part is simple. Stay committed to the method you teach. Know its roots. Share its principles with clarity. Keep your focus on the work you deliver in the room, not the hierarchy outside of it.

Clients feel authenticity through consistent teaching, not through how many labels a teacher collects.