Celebrating Cristina Rubio!

Dear community-

It is such a privilege for me to share this month's newsletter with you as we turn our attention towards celebrating our beloved colleague, collaborator, entrepreneur and dear friend, Cristina Rubio. Before even realizing the approaching 10-year anniversary of Cristina's time with us here at Progressive Pilates Williamsburg, I knew intuitively that I wanted to honor and highlight Cristina's monumental contributions to my studio and our community. Cristina, in all her wholeness, brings an authentic, inspired, and joyous energy to the studio that is palpable whether you are receiving a session from her or simply in the same room as her. Recently I overheard her instructing a client, by simply saying, "listen to my hands" while she gently lead her client's attention towards their feet.

In our decade of working alongside one another, I have witnessed her incredible talent and generous spirit. Inevitably we've also both grown up a bit and advanced as both practitioners and humans, and it's been truly inspiring to experience Cristina's evolution.

I hope to capture some of Cristina's remarkable journey with the intention of offering you a glimpse into what makes her offerings so rich and impactful. Cristina and I sat down together in the studio recently and had a beautiful conversation about movement, spirituality, language, community, and of course, Pilates. Below you will find our conversation transcribed and lightly edited. I hope you will enjoy discovering what inspires Cristina and how she conceptualizes the body, movement, awareness, and nature and forms that into her unique teaching method.

Cristina will be heading to Ecuador soon for a few weeks to continue her personal, spiritual journey. There she hopes to gain a clearer understanding of human nature in relationship to Nature and Mother Earth through the lens of movement and consciousness. Stay tuned for the return of our annual holiday party in early December where we will celebrate Cristina's 10 years with us and all of you.

In gratitude to community,
Brynne Billingsley

Brynne Billingsley: I was wondering if you could talk about how you discovered Pilates?

Cristina Rubio: I started taking Pilates classes because I was performing with a Belly Dance company and it was really hard for me to turn as I had no ballet training. So the director recommended I take some pilates classes to develop my core strength so I could get better at my turns. 

BB: Did it help? 

CR: Definitely. 

BB: How long did you perform as a Belly Dancer? 

CR: I performed professionally in NYC for at least 6 years, but the first two years were not on big stages. And then we did a small tour through the States and that was really cool. 

BB: Tell me about your current movement and meditation practices. 

CR: So right now I’m studying and integrating the MovNat technique which is basically the ability to move the femur bone well in the hip socket in different combinations from the floor up and back down. I’ve been focusing on the floorwork elements but there are also a lot of Parkour influences as well as assimilating animal movement into the discipline. And also I’m studying the Garuda method from a studio based in London, which integrates concepts of yoga, Pilates and Garuda’s original movement that emphasizes engagement from the ground up. It’s really intelligent movement and whereas Pilates emphasizes movement from the center out, Garuda does this too but also utilizes the extremities for initiating movement and moves from the outside in. It’s very similar to Pilates so I can easily integrate these ideas into the Pilates method, especially the matwork.  

BB: I’m curious if there are any other influences that have helped you evolve over the years as an instructor. Like when you think back to when you first began teaching Pilates over a decade ago, to now, and how you are with your clients today, what’s changed for you? 

CR: When I first began learning Pilates I really fell in love with it because it made me much stronger and leaner, taller basically. And I was coming from a belly dance world where everything is very fluid, so Pilates was much more structured with the anatomy and the apparatus and I just loved that structure within the discipline. The more I teach, I feel like I keep peeling back an onion, I start to see deeper levels of the body and experience more engagement and more body awareness. I feel like it gets more precise and more refined over the years. 

And obviously it’s not my first language so mistakes are going to be made and I really felt that in the beginning, I was super nervous, especially working with private clients because there was no hiding. Now I’m super comfortable with teaching and I’ve learned how to really embrace how I teach, meaning I don’t give cues in a typical American way. I will give the same exercises but in my own way, the cues are my cues. Structurally the English tells you to say things in a certain order, but I find my own way grammatically with how to say things, and that becomes my own way. 

BB: Speaking of language, I hear you teaching in Spanish at times with our Spanish-speaking clients, and I remember back to when we first met you told me that you would have a difficult time teaching in Spanish even though it’s your native tongue because you learned the Pilates method and had done all your trainings in English. That seems to have changed now. 

CR: Yes, that’s fine now and I switch back to English for some cues but I enjoy teaching in Spanish too. 

BB: I’m curious about your own meditation and movement practice and the special classes that you’ve been creating that incorporate sounds from nature. Growing up in Colombia and now living in NYC, how does environment affect the way that you are teaching and structuring your movement classes? Do you think your Colombian roots have any influence on your classes and curiosities around nature and movement?

CR: Yes, I think so, although I was born and spent most of my life in a big city in Colombia as well. I think something is coming forward for me now, it’s coming from the inside out, and it’s flourishing now. Through my own meditation practice, I’ve been able to tune into the deeper states, and I feel like I have the chance to introduce people to a deeper awareness through their practices and through our sessions. 

And even with the Pilates springs I find it beautiful, how to control the spring, the specificity of both contractions and expansions, and we keep unraveling these things. And in terms of nature, I feel my need to keep going there, but also to how connected we are to everything. So with the sounds, I think we can expand and connect in a much broader way during the body meditation. And it’s not just the animal movements like we mentioned before but it’s the plants and the wind and how we can just be malleable and flexible without being so strict and limited in terms of breath and movement. 

BB: Would you consider this a spiritual practice? 

CR: Yes, because any spiritual practice is an awareness practice. And that’s it. It’s just about the awareness of this muscle moving this way and the breath and we don’t have to mention it but it’s there. 

BB: So Pilates is a spiritual practice to you? 

CR: To me, yes, definitely. And I like that it’s also square and organized too. There’s a framework. And you can play within the framework. That centering part of Pilates is one of the most important things to me. It’s really profound. 

BB: During the pandemic, when the studios were closed and you shifted to teaching in a virtual format, did that have any affect on your teaching when you came back into the studio with your clients in-person again? 

CR: I just feel mainly that I was able to see a lot through the camera so it opened up another place in my brain for more possibilities. More details and more visions of the body. There’s so much we can see with the eye but there are some things that we can feel too.

BB: So true. I really feel this in my work as well. What are some current issues that your clients are bringing to you and things you see across the board with many people? 

CR: A lot of tight chests and lower back issues as well as core weakness. I see more and more the importance of having glute strength. We really need all parts of the glutes to be engaged and working. A lot of core weakness which is definitely a result of people being more stationary with the pandemic—so much sitting. I see the glutes as playing a major role in clients’ health, really helping with stabilizing and grounding their bodies. Then they feel centered and able to really feel the ground under their feet and integrate that feeling with gravity—the elongation of the spine and spreading of the feet—which helps with feeling more present with everything around you.

BB: Right, the more connection we have to the ground and our environment, the more present we are within our own bodies and our own alignment and the more interconnection we experience with others! That’s so beautiful. What do you want to continue exploring and researching? Is there something you haven’t quite gotten to yet that you want to learn more about? 

CR: So much! I want to keep working on my ideas of connecting nature with movement and other ideas that are really subtle but I’m not quite ready to articulate it. I’m working on more meditations with the sounds of nature and I really want to create a space where we can incorporate this—how we move through this experience and feel a part of everything and this greater wholeness. I also want to continue understanding how there is a natural ability that every single person has and every single person is also different and we can not expect for all the bodies to move the same way. I’m still fighting with that from Pilates because I want perfect movement and straight lines but I want to be more flexible in my mind. 

BB: And how bodies move and what we accept and what we let go of, instead of having an idea of what something should look like, maybe it’s more about allowing the body in front of you to interpret the tasks. Letting go of some ideals around perfection. 

CR: Yes, and that can be difficult for me. And at the same time we need precision for some of the exercises so there has to be a balance. I love what we do. I love it. And the precision is beautiful. But we don’t need to hold too tightly to perfection. So in terms of movement, it’s just going to be more layers–keep going in through the layers so that I feel like I’m going to be able to see more–and I don’t know exactly where that will take me. 

BB: Finally, I just want to talk a little bit about impact and influence. How do you hope to continue having impact in the future with your own personal clients but also in the community. You’ve lived here in Williamsburg for how long?

CR: I’ve lived in Williamsburg for 15 years. I feel like my clients and I have these special relationships—not only with their movements and what they need to be addressing—but also with the ability to be present. I want my clients to feel like they get more than exercise when they come to see me. We have really close relationships with our clients—with the clients we’ve been working with for many years—and also the newer ones I’ve been connecting with really fast. And I feel like one of the things I like the most is helping people to understand their bodies better, that it’s not just working out per se, but it’s about appreciating the attention to detail and the care for their own bodies. It’s not only about getting strong. It’s just very linear to think about it like that. No, it’s I need to breathe better to be able to do this. And asking: What is that bringing to my body? How do I leave the studio? How do I finish the session? There is a wholeness to it versus just feeling your abs the next day. And the more I can achieve that without even thinking consciously about it, but through the work of Pilates and mindful movement, these things just happen. 

BB: Right, and the connection you have with your clients, as that deepens, the connections to themselves deepens. And then their relationships improve, and that blossoms outward. And there are these concentric circles that you’re not even sure you’re connected to but you are in a way. I think about how you’ve worked with so many women throughout their pregnancies and there’s this impact that you’ve had on their babies, before you even meet them, you have this relationship with this baby growing inside of their body. 

CR: Yes, it’s beautiful. And also even before anyone else knows often, they tell us first, their partners and us. That’s pretty magical. And it goes both ways, I get a lot back from my clients, it’s an actual relationship. But the funny thing about my teaching is that I’m not always just sweet, sometimes I’m like uh….(she’s snapping her fingers now in a very direct way) here, no, do it, no here, did I say not to do that….but it’s that very specific way that really comes from me being honest. I’m not just proper all the time. I like to be real, and I’m coming from a good place. 

BB: I think one of your strengths, knowing you all these years in this space, and knowing the way you work not just with your clients but with your fellow instructors and colleagues, one of your strengths is your honesty and that seems to be something that you value really deeply and that comes through in your work with clients. So they get all of you. You’re not going to hold back, you offer your whole self to your clients. And I think there’s an exchange there. 

CR: Exactly. There’s something underneath it.  And sometimes it gets funny too. Even when I make mistakes in English, it’s funny. And we laugh. And they actually understand ‘how do I speak.’ There’s a training for them as well! And I really appreciate all of my clients, I like them all. 

BB: And I see that as a sign of maturity–that adaptability–to be able to adapt your sessions to work with all kinds of people, all kinds of bodies, and not to be afraid of differences. 

CR: Thank you. 

BB: Cristina, thank you for being you, and for bringing such remarkable and refined work to my studio, our clientele, and our community. I appreciate you so much!