As a Pilates Educator, teacher, and mover, Mat Pilates is where it all began for me, including my Polestar training. I’m deeply passionate about Mat work because of its incredible versatility. You can teach and practice Mat Pilates anywhere, making it perfect for clients who need to do Pilates homework between sessions. When clients continue their practice independently at home, I see remarkable progress in their movement, which can positively impact their lives.

Teaching clients online or when they’re travelling is another benefit of Mat Pilates. During my dance career, I could maintain my conditioning while on tour—all I needed was floor space! During the COVID lockdown, Mat Pilates became essential. Without equipment, clients dramatically improved their mobility, strength, and stability using just their body, gravity, and small props. It was a lifesaver for both their bodies and our livelihood as instructors. It also empowered clients to truly understand their home program.

Recently, I’ve rediscovered my love for Mat Pilates through my postpartum journey. After giving birth to my twin boys nine months ago, I’ve been doing Mat exercises daily. With limited time and access to studio equipment, I’ve returned to advanced exercises, even achieving movements I thought I might never do again. Thanks to the knowledge from my training, I was able to rehabilitate and challenge myself back to my pre-pregnancy Pilates ability. I’m incredibly grateful for Mat Pilates!

I chose Polestar after going through the Rehab process in my own body after a severe injury. I really found the Polestar methodology really lifechanging, I found a passion, and it’s been the best thing and best experience ever.

I’ve had the support of Mentors; it’s an environment where they really care about you and not just that you know what the coursework is but that you succeed in the real world in a workplace environment.

Polestar has a big scientific background and ongoing research to support their teachings and that was really a big appeal for me.

The depth of knowledge that is shared in the course is beyond anything I’ve experienced before and it supported my previous training but to a level that I was able to use to explain further to clients and just have more confidence with my own teaching of Pilates.

It’s really given me all the confidence that I can have now as a teacher – I can’t recommend it enough. The professional development that’s given by the whole Polestar community and also the mentors here are just outstanding.

I’ve been around a few other courses with other people who’ve done other courses as well and Polestar is different!

I got into Pilates as an extension of the physiotherapy degree I did in the UK, and I first came across Polestar as I’d heard of it as this kind of “the icing on the cake type experience”.

I thought you know what, I think I’ve got enough of a foundation myself, but I really want to learn about “the icing on the cake” so I got into Polestar Pilates and never looked back.

And from that experience, and that sort of thirst for knowledge that makes sense, learning about the wisdom of the body, I then went into Polestar Mentoring and Educating as well, which has extended my understanding of Polestar and what Polestar moves through the world.

Polestar has influenced my life: it’s taken me away from just the science behind the physiotherapy and it has opened thousands of doorways. It’s opened my eyes into the art of the human body, it’s opened my eyes into the whole world of Energy Medicine, which is now what I love and what I live.

So it’s a real door opener and I’d recommend Polestar to anyone that has a human body. After completing the comprehensive Polestar Pilates Rehabilitation Course and Exam, my effectiveness as a practitioner has dramatically increased.

Clients now enjoy the dynamic mixture of integrating theory, hands on treatment and unique movement experiences within the Pilates studio. This ensures that as well as facilitating structural change within our clients bodies’ we can also teach the movement strategies and neuromuscular patterning specific to that client needs, work & leisure pursuits.

Outcome measures are significantly improved and client enthusiasm and compliance is tremendous. As a business owner, Polestar Pilates has enabled me to offer clients an array of Private Physiotherapeutic options which allows them to feel part of their healing process with Pilates being a holistic and affordable lifestyle choices.

I was initially going to two different Pilates classes, one was Mat the other was Reformer, with two different instructors. When I mentioned that maybe I’d like to do Pilates Teacher Training, they both said “You have to do Polestar, in terms just the amount of detail that goes into it the training!”.

My highlight of the course was actually the people that I’ve met. In fact it was a massive highlight and I’ve made some really, really good friends.

I’ve got a long history of back problems and I had sort of reached a point where I thought I was going to be quite debilitated by my back problems later in life and so just realising actually Pilates for me has been single most benefit thing I have done for my low back pain. Just learning that actually this body even in its 40s could still learn to move better and find a little bit more freedom with my movement.

I had a very, very good Educator who really knows her stuff, she was always on the end of an email or on the end of a phone. They are a really supportive bunch of people to go through the course with, and I didn’t feel silly asking questions.

I signed up with Polestar because I was working with physios that were doing a lot of rehab-based Pilates, and their training had been with Polestar.

They just said that they had really enjoyed the experience, had been in a very supportive environment, and that it was really evidence-based. So that really appealed to me.

The Polestar Pilates community is really embraces you and it supports you and you just feel really confident as a consequence of that.

That was a real highlight, as well as the people that we were on the course, as we’ve now got some really amazing friendships.

The people who were part of our mentoring, just the relationships that we developed were really lovely.

It’s an amazing community to be a part of, and having been working in that professional environment as a physio it was really nice to feel very supported: with Maree, she would always you know like she was there for a chat, and would be really just enabling you to develop a little bit further. Emily was there if we needed to have the communication with what we were doing through the course, and then of course we had Abbey and Mel who were both there just how us along the way the whole time so it’s fantastic.

I really embrace Pilates as a profession now, because I’ve really enjoyed the movement-based rehabilitation. It is like you think you’ve reached a level where you feel you’ve really explored how much your body can do, but then you get into Pilates and the amount of stability and the movement that you can do in reality is so much more.

I’m in my 50s and I do my stretches with my 13 year old daughter who really wants to improve her mobility. My daughter is like “Mommy you can do it better than I can!” and I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do that, so it’s been amazing.