Saro and Romana
Vibrant, confident and passionate about her profession, Saro is dedicated to helping her students, and to perpetuating Joseph Pilates’ original method through the classical Pilates she learned from her teacher, world-renowned Romana Kryzanowska, Joseph Pilates’ protégé and chosen successor.
Through Romana, an unbroken legacy links Joseph Pilates’ studio, which he opened in New York City in 1926, to The Pilates Studio, where Saro took her first Pilates lesson in the late 1980’s, and where, in 1995, she began the rigorous teacher’s training program, leading to her certification. The program included intensive seminar training, 600 apprenticeship hours and three sets of exams.
In addition, Saro took over 200 optional private lessons with Romana, over 100 optional private and duet lessons with Romana’s daughter Sari Mejia Santo, and over 200 optional private and duet lessons with Bob Liekens, both true master teachers in their own right. It was Romana who gave the final exams and certified Saro.
Saro continued to take weekly private lessons with her beloved teacher, following her certification in 1998, all the way up to Romana’s retirement to Texas. Saro also taught at the Pilates Studio for several years, even after opening her own studio in 1999. In addition, she has taught at classical Pilates studios in Mt.Kisco, NY, and in Greenwich, CT, as well as the Joffrey Ballet School in NYC.
Saro, In Her Own Words
I strive to help students achieve and maintain their highest possible level of fitness and flexibility.
Saro Vanasup
When students learn to initiate every movement from the “Powerhouse,” the central core of their body, their overstressed back, shoulder and neck muscles begin to relax and heal. The tightness in their hip flexor also releases, and the articulation of their hip joint improves. It is immensely rewarding to teach my students to take an active role in strengthening and healing themselves through correct movement.
One of my first objectives with new students is to help them address any physical issues they may have, not just as a collection of unrelated injured body parts, but as traumas traceable to one correctable bad habit or posture. Treating the body as a whole is the key to correct muscle use and to healing injuries.
I am excited as I observe my students’ progress, because it becomes an opportunity for me to teach them to fine-tune their movements, making them more precise, more fluid and more rhythmic. There is nothing better than to see students walk out of the studio feeling centered, refreshed and in greater control of their bodies.
The emphasis of true Pilates is a very positive one: to celebrate a new sense of awareness of muscle function, thereby attaining increased grace and control. This is achievable, I believe, by learning to engage the mind with the body in every movement. To be aware is to be prepared. I urge my students to think of their Pilates practice not just as a set of choreographed routines to be “performed” for my approval within the studio, but to use the elements of Pilates for themselves outside the studio, throughout their daily activities; and for life.