Pilates with Mela

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Pilates with Mela

Online and On the Road Pilates Classes

07/26/2026

The Hundred isn’t just something to get through and it’s definitely not something you should skip. It’s where your breath and movement start learning to coordinate.

In Classical Pilates, this is your first real opportunity to build rhythm, control, and endurance through your breath. When that clicks, your center works more efficiently, you improve blood circulation and oxygen delivery… and everything else starts to work better too.

If you start your practice out right, it will carry through your whole practice (and honestly, your day).

I’m Mela, a 2nd generation Classical Pilates teacher and an functional breathwork instructor, and this is the first video of series discussing the breathing exercises embedded in the matwork.

Are you using your breath to support your movement?

🔗You’ll find my latest video in the link in my bio and today’s story.

07/21/2026

On route to Los Angeles, we stopped at GrandCanyonNPS for one last adventure during this wandering life before settling into a more rooted rhythm in LA.

Balanced in teaser at the edge of the rim, I’m reminded that life itself is a constant negotiation of balance. The possibilities stretch wide and endless, just like the canyon. Expansive, humbling, full of depth we can’t always see.

And while this first photo captures a moment of stillness, the teaser is never truly still. In your workout it is continuous movement, strength meeting control, effort meeting ease.

Life is the same. Never static. Always in motion.

Our challenge is not to find perfect balance, but to stay present within the shifts… to move with them, adapt to them, and trust ourselves in the in-between.

07/12/2026

The Pilates apparatus is not all about making you work harder… It’s about helping you find the connection that’s been missing in your matwork.

Using the spine corrector for Shoulder Bridge can help you feel the support of the barrel to teach your body how to find the necessary connections in your back body and center for this exercise.

Once you feel that connection, try taking it back to your mat without the support. Notice what carries over.

Wanna learn more about this exercise? Check out the full video on YouTube.

🔗You’ll find my latest video in the link in my bio and today’s story.

What’s your favorite Spine Corrector exercise and what mat exercise does it help?

06/30/2026

We finally got to visit Garden of the Gods and it did not disappoint! ❤️‍🔥

We have passed through Colorado Springs many times in our buslife travels, and this time I just had to go visit. The photos just don’t do it justice. The size of these red rocks jutting out at an angle is just something the photos don’t quite capture. The contrast of the red rocks against the lush greenery gave me BIG Sedona vibes. I can see and feel why these would have been sacred grounds for the Native Americans.

Being a popular attraction it was hard to find any quiet space to capture my pic. People had to stop walking along the path for us to snap the one photo and so I ended up with a little crowd watching. I got an applause for my strong abs holding the pose while Don snapped away from different angles.

😂 not my intention to draw attention, but I do forget sometimes that not everyone can hold a teaser.

It made me think of that story that floats around the Pilates world that Joe Pilates did an interview once and he held the teaser position for the whole interview to show how strong he was.

Does anyone know if that story is true? We do know he was a show off!

06/25/2026

Joseph Pilates really did create such an intelligent system. This week’s YouTube video is a look at rocking on the Spine Corrector - an exercise that looks very familiar to the matwork version, but feels completely different once you’re on the barrel. The shift in support on a round surface changes everything, and that’s where the learning happens. It’s a great reminder that Pilates is about so much more than choreography - it’s about understanding your body more deeply.

Have you ever felt an exercise change completely when you do it on a different piece of apparatus?

🔗You’ll find my latest video in the link in my bio and today’s story.

06/20/2026

In an Instagram world full of trendy Pilates reels, people making up their own exercises on Pilates equipment, dangerous moves that look impressive (to an untrained eye) and therefore a bunch of Pilates falls and fails…..I’d like to talk about safety.

Real Pilates is not unsafe if you know what you are doing. Real Pilates should be guided by a knowledgeable teacher. Real Pilates will give you results. Trendy Pilates will fall away in a few years, because that’s all it is, a trend. Classical Pilates has been around for years and will prevail because it works.

🔗You’ll find my latest video in the link in my bio and today’s story.

06/16/2026

“Be like water, my friend” - Bruce Lee

As we sat by the Poudre River eating our breakfast sandwiches, listening to the water ripple over the rocks, I was reminded of this quote.

Water is powerful yet yielding, adaptable yet unstoppable. It takes the shape of whatever it encounters, flowing effortlessly around obstacles instead of resisting them.

This past weekend I took Sandy’s workshop on the breathing exercises Vintage Pilates / resource . As she cued us to let our movement follow our breath, I felt myself shift from being stiff and overthinking to being soft yet powerful. Long and connected. Moving with flow like water. What a beautiful experience both to feel and to watch others finding this powerful ease in their bodies.

Back at the Poudre River, we followed the water up the canyon and hiked to the Seaman’s reservoir. A river carries its thoughts on the surface. It feels alive and expressive. A reservoir, by contrast, settles into stillness. Its surface becomes quiet enough to hold reflections like a mind that has stopped reacting and started observing. Where the river speaks, the reservoir listens.

In a world where everything keeps moving, remember to take time to be still and just listen.

Thank you Colorado for all your beautiful lessons in nature. Happy

05/26/2026

It’s and we’ve officially arrived in Colorado for the summer! 🏔️
This state never ceases to amaze me and we always seem to find something new to explore.

This is Lily Lake, situated on the edge of the Rocky Mountain National Park near Estes Park up at nearly 9000 ft elevation. As we walked around the lake and reached the ridge trail, the trees opened up to this breathtaking panoramic view of snow capped peaks.

As the view metaphorically “took my breath away” I was inspired to film an impromptu video of a breathing exercise - Breathing Recovery Sitting. This technique uses small, controlled breath holds to safely introduce tolerable air hunger.

Breathwork is deeply embedded into the Pilates system but since I became an Functional Breathwork Instructor it has completely deepened my understanding of how powerful and trainable our breath really is.

What else is this exercise good for?
⭐️Panic disorder
⭐️ Racing mind
⭐️ Asthma
⭐️ Long covid
⭐️ People with high stress
⭐️ Opening your airways
⭐️ Improving circulation and oxygen delivery

I’ll be sharing the full practice on YouTube, so stay tuned.

And honestly, as someone who has experienced anxiety firsthand, this has become one of my most effective tools. How cool is it to learn something as easy as breathing a certain way to rid you of anxiety?!

05/19/2026

I’m bringing back and today we are balancing our tushies on the edge of cave dwellings at Walnut Canyon National Monument, Arizona.

To reach these ancient homes, we went down 300 stairs into the canyon and then climbed 300 stairs back up to the visitor center at an elevation of 6,690 to 7,000 feet.

It’s a beautiful reminder of how much more physically active our ancestors were in their everyday lives (and they didn’t even have these nicely constructed stairs, they scrambled the mountain side) — not by choice, but by necessity.

Imagine climbing in and out of this canyon multiple times a day, carrying water or food, visiting friends or trading goods.

Imagining their reality makes modern exercise feel less like a chore and more like a return — a way of remembering what the body has always known.

Pilates brings that lesson home for me: breath, control, strength, balance, and the kind of movement that supports real life.

05/14/2026

✈️ Travel doesn’t have to mean a break from your Pilates practice.

This week’s video is all about My Top 5 Pilates Props for Travel: the small, lightweight tools I always pack so I can keep my practice alive no matter where I land.

A few clever props can make it possible to reset your posture after hours of plane, trains or cars and stay connected to your body, as Pilates is a practice and that means - consistency.

If you could only pack one Pilates prop for travel, what would you choose?

🔗You’ll find my latest video in the link in my bio and today’s story.

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11570 N Oracle Rd
Tucson, AZ
85737

Website

https://www.pilateswithmela.com/

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