What I Brought Home From the APEI Classical Pilates Conference 2026

I'm just back from three days at the APEI Classical Pilates Conference in Sydney, and I'm still

buzzing. It's the kind of event that reminds you why you fell in love with this method in the

first place, a room full of teachers who've spent decades refining their craft, all generous

enough to hand that knowledge straight over.

One of the best parts had nothing to do with the workshops themselves. I got to spend real

time with my mentor Sharon, someone I've now worked with for 2 years. But I also finally

met, in person for the first time, a handful of Pilates teachers I share classical Pilates class

with online and had never seen face to face. There's something different about sitting

across from someone after years of online conversation. The conference floor turned into its

own kind of studio: swapping notes between sessions, comparing cueing language,

laughing about the experiences every single one of us has lived through. That sense of

community is something I want to bring back into our studio here at Evolution.

None of what follows is new information exactly. It's the kind of thing you learn early and

then carry around, half on autopilot. But hearing it again, reframed through someone else's

years of experience, has a way of making it land all over again. That was the real gold of this

conference, and it came from three presenters in particular.

Gloria Gasperi: The Discipline of Getting Back to Basics

Learning from Gloria Gasperi was such a special experience. Gloria also trained under Jay

Grimes, and you can really feel that influence in the reverence she has for classical

technique and the way she approaches the work.

What stood out to me most was the energy she brought to every class. The work is

challenging and real, but Gloria has a wonderful way of making it fun and turning it into an

experience. Being able to work through the system while noticing how the work changes the

body was something I really connected with.

Her workshop, Rome Wasn't Built in a Day, was a great reminder that mastery takes time.

Sometimes we need to give ourselves and our clients permission to slow down, return to the

fundamentals and trust the process rather than feeling like we always need to move forward.

Her session on stabilisation, You Wanna Stabilise? So... Move!, also gave me a fresh

perspective on something I already teach. Stability isn't about being still, it's about

controlled movement. That simple reminder really stayed with me.

Then, in Connecting the Dots, Gloria encouraged us to move more and talk less. As

teachers, it's easy to fall into constantly explaining and cueing, but sometimes the best

teaching comes from creating space for the movement to speak for itself.

There was so much to take away from Gloria's classes, but most of all, I left feeling inspired

to keep coming back to the basics, trust the work and remember that sometimes less really

is more.

Katie Agnew: Reading the Body Properly

Katie's background as a former elite gymnast shows up in how precisely she reads a body.

Her session on hyperextension in the upper limb was something I already watch for, but

seeing it through Katie's eye sharpened it, the kind of detail that's easy to drift on in a

general class but matters enormously once you're really looking for it.

Her Pilates Baby Chair workshop was another highlight, getting hands on time with a piece

of equipment I don't have in the studio yet (I have the arm chair whose back doesn't move)

opens up a whole range of teaching options once you understand it properly. Katie teaches

with the eye of someone who's spent decades running her own studio, and it showed in

every cue.

Joel Crosby: Precision Over Power

Joel also trained under Jay Grimes, and his sessions were a masterclass in the small stuff

that makes the biggest difference. His work on breath, quite literally titled When Do I

Breathe?, took something I already knew and turned it over until it meant something

different. His line has stuck with me since: breath is a tool, not a rule. It's not about hitting a

prescribed inhale or exhale on cue; it's about using breath deliberately to change the quality

of the movement itself, focusing on only the exhale.

His Lord of the Rings workshop worked through the system using the ring itself as

feedback. Because the ring is essentially a spring, it gives the body immediate feedback in a

way that's different from the springs on other apparatus such as the reformer and Cadillac.

It was good to work through the system of exercises applying the ring, but this time with

more detail, particularly around abduction and adduction work and how that can create

different kinds of stability through the body.

Bringing It Home

What ties all of this together, Gloria's precision of eye, Katie's patience and thoughtful

approach, Joel's precision of technique, is proof that you don't need brand new information

to grow as a teacher. Sometimes you just need to hear the fundamentals again, from

someone else's mouth, in someone else's studio. That's the energy I'm bringing back to

Evolution Pilates Studio: a renewed respect for the basics, a sense of purpose, and a

reminder that revisiting what you already know is still real progress.

If you've been in one of my classes recently, expect to hear some of this language creeping

in. (Gloria, I may leave one bit out and find a different way of cueing Daisy. IYKYK.) So if you haven't been in for a while, now's a great time to come back

and feel the difference.

Lauren Hulbert - Evolution Pilates Studio