CRAB LEGS 🦀 & CHATURANGAS 🧘🏽:
THE PEARL BLOG
A LITTLE EASIER TO NAVIGATE ⚓
We started this place two years ago on City Island with a handful of classes and instructors, and now, with Mott Haven up and running (for a whole year!) and Riverdale otw, we’ve gathered quite a collection of class names, formats, & teaching styles. Each one came from a teacher with something to share, and we love them all. But I’ll admit that, read all together, the names don’t always tell you much about what a class will actually feel like.
PLAN B IS FOR BEAUTIFUL
Our carefully planned hike lasted exactly as long as it took to pull into the Lake Minnewaska parking lot and discover that everyone in the tri-state had the same idea.
So, like Ross and the too-big-for-the-staircase sofa, we pivoted. It was the first of a few detours that weekend, and the detours kept turning out to be the best parts.
WE HAVE PLANS 🎃
It feels like we've spent most of the last few weeks saying "coming soon," "rescheduled," "weather permitting," and "we'll let you know as soon as we know." So it feels really good to finally have things actually happening around here.
DO YOU KNOW LOLITA
Lolita San Miguel's story sits right at the intersection of so many things we care about here: Pilates, dance, New York, Puerto Rico, teaching, and the way knowledge moves from one body and brain to another over time and place.
Slowing Down (except when she's skydiving)
For our second installment of Pearl-sonality, meet Janeen - Brox native, Nuyorican, yoga teacher, Pearl student, and the person behind the beautiful seasonal workshops you may have sen popping up on our schedule. Janeen is trained in both trauma-informed and restorative yoga, and a lot of her work centers around something most of us could use a little more of: slowing down.
LET’S TALK ABOUT BREATH, BABY
If you take enough classes, you're going to get a lot of instruction on something you've already been doing relatively successfully since the moment you were born: breathing.
Lay on a Reformer and you'll be asked to breathe into your back ribs. Lay on a yoga mat and you might be told to let your belly expand. Another teacher might ask you to breathe through your nose while making a sound like the ocean in the back of your throat. And then one day you try a rapid breathing practice with an intensity that feels somewhat at odds with the word "yoga."
BRAVE ENOUGH TO TRY
"You'll never do a whole lot unless you're brave enough to try."
- Dolly Parton
We try to live by that mantra here at The Pearl. And this month, we're doing a whole lot. Two patron saints of womankind, Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem, left us recently. Opposite sides of the same coin, both spent their lives being unmistakably, bravely themselves, and taught generations of women the same lesson in a way that was uniquely their own.
A BuzzFeed quiz predicted this...
Before social media scrolling was a thing, in the golden age of BuzzFeed quizzes, when we were invested in finding out "Which Sex and the City Character Are You" or "Which Hogwarts House Do You Actually Belong In," I remember taking one called something like "Which Bronx Neighborhood Should You Live In?" At the time, I wasn't living in the Bronx. I had no plans to move to the Bronx. I don't remember why I clicked it, but I do remember the result:
WE SPEND A LOT OF TIME TOGETHER
One of the best things about my job is that I get a front-row seat to some pretty incredible people.
Some of you have been with us since opening day. Some of you joined yesterday. Some of you have hit your 400th class! Some of you have run marathons, made art, climbed mountains, raised kids, started businesses, switched careers, or have hobbies that deserve their own documentary.
SCHEDULE TETRIS
It's still summer, no question about it - the beaches are packed, the skunks are partying under our porches, and if you're lucky you've got one more trip left on the calendar. But right behind that, everyone's already prepping for fall. Teachers are setting up classrooms. Parents are buying out Target's back-to-school department. Broadway's gearing up for a new season. And over here at The Pearl, we're doing the exact same thing.
LEARNING TO FLOAT
My suitcases sat open on the living room for two full days, half unpacked, half being actively ignored, the way you ignore a problem you know is going to take twenty minutes but somehow still don't have twenty minutes for. This morning I finally hit a wall - not because anything was actually wrong, just the low-grade chaos of being back, partially still in Greece-brain but also needing to immediately function like an adult again.
We took The Pearl to Amorgos 🇬🇷
I'm writing to you from Amorgos, Greece, where somehow we're already reaching the final days of our very first retreat. I'm sitting on my hotel balcony, overlooking little bright white buildings against a mountain backdrop, the clear sparkling sea in front of them, and the expansive blue sky above.
HI FROM GREECE 🇬🇷
Our very first international retreat is about to get underway - an incredible group of people who decided to press pause on regular life for a week, to move and swim and eat well and pay attention to themselves for longer than a lunch break allows.
THE PLACES THAT REARRANGE US
Yesterday, my daughter officially learned to ride a bike.
One second she's wobbling, yelling "don't let go" over her shoulder, the next she's twenty feet ahead of us, laughing, flying on her own.
It happened on Martha's Vineyard, which feels like a Spielbergian dream location to reach a childhood milestone.
EFFORTLESS IS A LIE SOMEONE WORKED VERY HARD TO TELL YOU
I’ve sunk deeep into my couch at 11pm, wearing the same leggings I taught in seventeen hours earlier, watching a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader talk about a panic attack she had in the locker room - full hair and makeup, sequins catching the light, telling a camera crew things she might not even tell her own mother - and I have not moved in forty minutes. This is America's Sweethearts. This show is one of the most personally riveting things I've watched about female ambition in years.
MOVING TOGETHER FOR VENEZUELA 💛💙❤️
There are days when we move to get stronger. Or unstuck. Or to finally touch our toes.
And there are days when we move to show up for each other and be together.
One of the things I love most about The Pearl is that we're a community made up of people from all over the world. From the Far East to the East River and everywhere in between, every teacher, every front desk staff member, every client brings a piece of somewhere else with them.
SUMMER’S LOOKIN PRETTY GOOD AROUND HERE ☀️
Every time I think we've settled into a routine, someone comes along with an exciting new idea. A new class. A new teacher. A workshop. A meditation series. An outdoor event. Suddenly the calendar starts growing again.
Summer is starting to look like one of those seasons.
So here's what's new around the studios...
THE PILATES POLICE 🚔
Spend enough time on social media and you'll eventually conclude that every exercise is dangerous, every cue is problematic, every variation is wrong, and every teacher besides the person making the video should probably have their certification revoked immediately. Yes, it’s possible to get injured in Pilates, yoga, and other low-impact mobilities. But I’ve also hurt myself trying to fight my way out of a sports bra.
THE LEAST QUALIFIED PERSON IN THE ROOM
After four cohorts of teacher training, I've noticed a pattern. At some point during the program, almost everyone becomes convinced that they are the least qualified person in the room, and that everyone else belongs there more than they do.
But if I could collect their worries on little folded up scraps of paper and mix them up in a Yankees cap, nobody would know whose was whose when I read them out loud.
I don't know enough. I've never done anything like this before. Everyone else seems more prepared. What if I suck?
I FORGOT THAT I REMEMBERED
Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, wondering if I can still pull off eyeliner, I realized I'd morphed into full-on Sporty Spice.
Somewhere between opening two studios, teaching classes, answering emails, moving reformers, and chasing around a small child, I've fully committed to a lifestyle in which 95% of my wardrobe contains lycra