A Pilates practice built around the person

A confident relationship with your body does not mean believing it can do everything, or that it will never change. Bodies do change. Confidence grows when you understand what your body can do today, learn how to help it adapt, and trust that you have ways to respond when its needs change.

For many years, my work grew quietly through private teaching, long-term relationships, and word of mouth. People came with different bodies, different histories, and very different reasons for wanting to move: pain, sport, a demanding career, or simply the wish to feel stronger and more at home in their bodies.

What they had in common was that none of them needed exactly the same lesson.

When I founded Pilates Incorporated in Amsterdam West, I wanted to create a permanent home for that way of teaching: thoughtful, individual, and able to evolve over time. The studio brought together everything that had gradually become important to me - ongoing study, close observation, continuity, and the belief that a body should never have to fit a programme designed without it in mind.

My education did not end when I became a teacher

I completed my first comprehensive Pilates teacher training at Smartbody Amsterdam in 2014. Like many teachers at the beginning, I thought training would give me answers. It did, but it also taught me how many more questions there were.

The Pilates method is rich enough to be studied through many traditions. I continued through Pilates Heritage Training, dedicated to the work of first-generation teacher Kathy Grant under the mentorship of Cara Reeser, and later through BASI Pilates and its Mentor Programme. Each approach gave me a different way of looking at the same body. An exercise is never only one thing; its value depends on who is doing it, why we have chosen it, and what they are ready to learn from it.

My education gradually expanded beyond the Pilates repertoire itself. I began studying biomechanics, functional anatomy, motor learning, hypermobility, foot mechanics, and contemporary pain science, including the Advanced Movement Studies Program with Movement Science Made Simple. I continue to take lessons, work with mentors, attend workshops, and return to my own movement practice.

I do this because I believe good teaching begins with remaining a student.

That is not a philosophical extra to the work. It changes the decisions I make every day. A person recovering from pain asks different questions than someone preparing for a golf competition. Pregnancy, long-haul travel, hours at a desk, and the demands of performance all ask for different forms of support and challenge. The more deeply I understand movement, learning, and adaptation, the more precisely I can guide the person who has trusted me with theirs.

The person comes before the programme

I rarely begin a lesson by asking only, "How is your body?" I ask, "How are you?"

We talk about the week that has passed and the one ahead. Perhaps you have travelled, slept badly, spent several days in meetings, increased your cycling distance, or noticed that a familiar pain has changed. These details help me understand what your body has been adapting to and what it may need next.

Then I watch you move.

I am interested in where movement begins, how you organise effort, what you avoid without realising it, and what becomes possible when one small part of the task changes. Sometimes the most useful lesson is physically demanding. Sometimes it is quieter and more precise. Often it is both.

Individual teaching does not mean improvising without structure. Every lesson has a direction and builds on the one before it, but that structure must be able to respond. If your time is limited, the practice should use it thoughtfully. If generic exercise programmes have not brought meaningful progress, repeating another standard sequence is unlikely to be the answer. And if you are unsure whether you belong in a Pilates studio, you should not have to arrive already knowing the language or performing the movements correctly.

You arrive as you are. We begin there.

Movement is built, not performed

I do not ask people simply to copy the shape of an exercise. A movement may look simple from the outside while asking for a complex relationship between attention, timing, strength, coordination, and confidence.

My role is to make that complexity learnable.

We may break a movement into meaningful parts, explore it on the Reformer, Cadillac, Wunda Chair, Mat, or another piece of apparatus, and gradually connect those parts again. The equipment can offer support, resistance, feedback, or a different way of understanding the task. It changes with the lesson; the person does not have to adapt to the machine.

Sometimes I know where the lesson is heading long before the client does. We may spend most of the hour preparing the skills a demanding movement will require. By the time we arrive there, what seemed unrealistic has become possible.

I once told a client, "Don't worry. I've set you up for success."

That sentence has stayed with me because it describes much of what good teaching means to me. It does not mean removing difficulty. It means organising difficulty so that someone can meet it with enough support, understanding, and preparation. Challenge should not be careless, but neither should care make the work small.

Confidence is something we practise

People often come to Pilates wanting a stronger body, less pain, better posture, or support for a sport. These are meaningful goals. But over time, I have become equally interested in what happens underneath them.

A confident relationship with your body does not mean believing it can do everything, or that it will never change. Bodies do change. Pain, injury, ageing, work, sport, pregnancy, stress, and time all influence the way we move and the way we think about movement.

Confidence grows when you understand what your body can do today, learn how to help it adapt, and trust that you have ways to respond when its needs change.

This is why understanding matters as much as performing. I want clients to notice where force travels, recognise when they are using more effort than they need, and discover that there is often more than one way to organise a movement. Over time, a cue, an image, or a sensation develops into a shared movement language. Eventually, the understanding no longer depends entirely on my words. It belongs to the person doing the work.

That learning can travel beyond the studio - into a golf swing, a bicycle, a rehearsal, a long working day, a flight, a staircase, or the simple act of getting up and feeling ready for what comes next.

A studio designed around attention

The space where we practise movement becomes part of the practice itself.

Pilates Incorporated in Amsterdam West was designed to feel calm, focused, and adaptable. The light, the layout, the space between the apparatus, and the possibility of reorganising the room all support the way I teach. Historical photographs, anatomy, and the original architectural details give the studio a sense of continuity, while the room remains open enough to change with each lesson.

I do not think of it as a room that simply contains Pilates equipment. I think of it as part of the teaching.

There is space to pay attention without feeling watched, rushed, or out of place, and enough equipment to choose what serves the lesson. Nothing needs to be dramatic. The environment simply needs to make focused work possible.

What still keeps me curious

After more than a decade of teaching, I am still fascinated by the same moment: when someone discovers that they are capable of more than they thought.

Sometimes that discovery is visible in a demanding exercise. Sometimes it is quieter: sleeping more comfortably, returning to skiing, feeling steadier on the stairs, recovering better after a long ride, or realising that a diagnosis no longer defines every movement decision.

The exercises and apparatus are important, but they are not the destination. They are tools for exploring how we move, how we learn, and how adaptable our bodies can be.

My work is to keep studying, keep observing, and keep refining the guidance I offer. The client's work is not to become perfect at Pilates. It is to become more capable, more curious, and more confident in their own body.

That is what I wanted Pilates Incorporated to make room for. And it is what continues to bring me back to the work, lesson after lesson.

If you are new to Pilates Incorporated we recommend experiencing the method by starting with our Trio intro series. You can buy the package and book your 3 classes with Ana Nikitovic in Amsterdam West.