My son loves to meet and greet my clients.  Sometimes he likes to do some exercise along with them.  Sometimes he likes to do the instructing.  Lucky for me, my clients respond to my toddler with kindness and what I hope is sincere pleasure.

Today my client, son and nanny were in the studio a couple minutes before me and my son was talking about what they were going to do.  His plan was that they’d do the exercises together.  He got up on the reformer, waited for all but one spring to be removed, and started with his footwork.  Once he was done with that he bustled purposefully on to the next exercise.  All the while he explained what he was doing and the benefits that would follow.  He summed it up by saying it was “good for the body.”

At that turn of phrase I couldn’t help but remember how many times I heard Romana’s stories about Uncle Joe’s frequent answer to the all too common question, “what’s this exercise good for?”  According to her, his response was always the same, “it’s good for the body.”

These days as I’m enhancing my Pilates practice with studies of other methods and continually learning in my teaching practice, I’m seeing the method in a broader way.  Each and every intricacy makes up such a perfectly complete whole, that Joe’s answer becomes so much more significant than it once seemed to me.

These kids, they know some worthwhile stuff.  Maybe it won’t be too long before my kid is teaching the Pilates lessons.  For now, at least, he reminded me of something very important and for that I am grateful.