Pure Pilates: A protégée shares her expertise

At first, Romana Kryzanowska thought the man was insane. Surely he could not heal her chipped ankle bone, when four doctors already had recommended surgery. And surely he could not do it with these ugly pieces of equipment, stretching her body this way and that.

But the 17-year-old prima ballerina did what she was told. She followed Joseph Pilates' instructions in the studio, and at home, working her muscles on a 2-by-4 piece of wood. And after three sessions were up, she was back on stage, dancing better than before.

"I jumped higher, I ran faster," said Kryzanowska, who danced for the New York City Ballet. "I thought: 'This is pretty good stuff, this Joseph Pilates nonsense.' "

That day marked the start of a lifelong dedication to Joseph Pilates, a man whose message of "stretch, strength and control" she has taken into the mainstream. As his chosen protégée, Kryzanowska is still traveling the world at 83 years old, training instructors in the discipline of the Pilates method. Her recent visit drew dozens of teachers into workshops at the downtown studio Pilates Seattle International.

She walked among them that weekend in cowboy boots, a small, poised woman, her long brown hair parted in the middle. She praised the teachers and pushed them, joking at one point that she liked to see them suffer. Then she showed her most famous move, The Inversion: pulling herself up onto a set of bars, hanging upside down and moving her legs like scissors in the air.

"I'm iron," Kryzanowska said, challenging a 32-year-old to a tug of war with her hand, and winning. "I'm not bad for an 83-year-old."

Kryzanowska traces her grit and grace back to Pilates, a system of exercise that draws strength from "the powerhouse" — that span of the body from the top of the stomach to the middle of the thigh. The goal of Pilates is to align the body and strengthen it through targeted exercises, both on the mat and through the use of equipment.

The equipment comes with springs and straps, handles and buckles, all of it designed to stretch and strengthen the body in different ways, and to allow for different levels of tension. One is called the Universal Reformer. Another is called the Cadillac.

Pilates' path

Joseph Pilates began playing with exercise as a child in Germany, trying to heal his own asthma. As he grew older, he developed equipment that would help his fellow circus performers strengthen and recover from injuries. When he was later interned in England during World War I, Pilates created exercises for bed-ridden internees, and later for some guards. He finally came to America to help the famous pugilist Max Schmeling train boxers.

When Kryzanowska met them, Pilates and his wife, Clara, were running a cramped studio in Manhattan. Their clients ranged from prima ballerinas to the Rockefellers themselves. Lessons came at a cost of $3. And Joseph Pilates would waive the fee for people who could not pay.

These days, Pilates costs more than many people can afford. Group mat classes can be comparable in cost to yoga sessions, at about $15 a piece. But the quickest, most effective way to get results with Pilates is through one-on-one instruction on the equipment. Those sessions tend to run about $50-$75.

Progress depends very much on motivation, said Kryzanowska, and to a certain extent on athletic ability. But to truly see a change in the shape of the body, Kryzanowska recommends private sessions of Pilates three times a week, for at least 30 sessions.

A lifetime instructor

Along with her daughter and granddaughter, Kryzanowska trains teachers from her studios in Texas and New York. The program is strict: about 700 hours of supervised work. Lauren Stephen set up her studio, Pilates Seattle International, on the strength of that training.

She came to Kryzanowska first as a client, nearly two decades ago. She had tried Pilates before in dance studios and college workshops, with teachers she said did not have the proper training.

When Stephen went straight to the source, Kryzanowska helped heal her lower back problems in three sessions.

"I had a lot of fear, because I was in a lot of pain," said Stephen, now 44. "She was very tender and loving."

Patience is a powerful teacher's tool, said Kryzanowska. And caring is crucial. But there is much in the method itself that makes the healing easier. The goal is to start slow, with small, basic movements, and build strength over time. As the client moves forward, there is the thrill of variation — hundreds of new ways to move the body on that equipment, to stretch and strengthen in a different way.

"People do get very bored doing exercise," said Kryzanowska. "But if you have a new one to take out of the cookie box — oh, they love that."

A teacher most of her life, Kryzanowska was raised mostly in Manhattan by a family of artists. She was home-schooled for several years, then moved on to a Catholic school, where she suggested the students put on folk dances for the orphans who lived nearby. The nuns agreed, and from that point on, Kryzanowska spent most of her time at school rehearsing the students, and even the nuns, in their weekly performances.

Before she turned 12, she was a dancer in the New York City Ballet. It was George Balanchine, the famous choreographer, who sent her to meet Joseph Pilates, in the hope of healing her injury. She divided her time between ballet and Pilates for several years, then left the country for Peru at age 21 with her new husband, and raised two children there.

She returned as a single mother and supported her family by teaching ballet along with Pilates on the side. She was closer than ever to "Uncle Joe," spending weekends with his family in the countryside, kayaking down the Hudson River. When Joseph Pilates died, she worked alongside his wife to keep the studio up and running.

In those days, she said, exercise had limited appeal to Americans. There was a fear of showing too much skin. Fitness was not so much an issue. But as the decades passed, and exercise came into vogue, Pilates started to gain a wider audience among Americans.

A wide appeal

Now it is the favorite exercise of so many celebrities, featured in high-gloss magazines. But because there is no national certification program, Kryzanowska warns, any instructor can call what he does Pilates.

Some people take a weekend's worth of training with her, then go on to set up their own studios, claiming they have been certified by Joseph Pilates' protégée. Others attach the name Pilates to equipment that was never used, or approved, by Joseph Pilates.

"Makes me shiver," said Kryzanowska. "It gets me so upset."

So much in Pilates depends on the one-on-one attention of the instructor. The instructor locates the weak spots in each person's body, then designs a regimen to strengthen those spots — and the body as a whole. The instructor shows how to use the mind to control the body.

Kryzanowska still teaches clients ages 18 to 90. Some heal their injuries in a few sessions. Others are in frail health, or lacking in confidence, and will take much longer to move forward.

"We work very patiently with those people," said Kryzanowska. "And before you know it, they blossom out like everyone else."

Cara Solomon: 206-464-2024 or csolomon@seattletimes.com