BMA Curriculum Overview
Welcome! Listed below you will find:
The BMA Network Curricula - introducing - The Amend Integrative Model (AIM)
The AIM Conversation
Specialized AIM Curriculum Offerings for the Public & Professionals
The BMA Professional Training Tracks
Pilates by AIM - On-Site & Online Curricula
Pilates by AIM Tutor
BMA Somatic Movement Educator
The Bodies Mind® Academy Network Curricula
Amend Integrative Model (AIM)
The AIM Conversation
The AIM Conversation is a grass roots community of dialogue dedicated to its vision of embodiment and societal change, primarily inspired by Joseph H. Pilates, among others. We are committed to advancing interdisciplinary dialogue and research via AIM – the Amend Integrative Model, a unique and groundbreaking first-person model for movement analysis, pedagogy, and practice.
Formerly called AASI (AIM Academy for Somatic Integration) Gatherings when first offered On-Site in 2001, these events began as a way to enhance communication, connection, and collaboration in the cooperative networks of pilates teachers, as well as serves to educate enthusiasts on the benefits and full scope of pilates practice.
Renamed in 2020, The AIM Conversation is now an online advocacy project of Bodies Mind® Academy, providing information to enhance and embrace the recognition of all perspectives on pilates as paths to health and happiness, as our global community network evolves.Pilates proponents from all pilates professional lineages, programs, and disciplines, as well as from multidisciplinary professions (manual and/or movement) are invited to participate to distinguish and uplift pilates practice.
While every AIM Conversation event (via Zoom) is free to attend, we call attention to and welcome contributions/donations towards initiatives and projects that support our values at BMA.
We encourage all Pilates Enthusiasts - those committed to JHPilates’ idea of “mental and physical balance” - to stay tuned for BMA news, events, and offerings for the public and prospective BMA participants and students.
We hope you’ll join us!
* * *
Stay tuned for two ~NEW~ offerings - coming soon:
The First Hour at Bodies Mind® Studio
and
Intro to AIM - a brief history of its development & applications
* * *
The Bodies Mind® Academy Professional Training Tracks
Pilates by AIM
Learn how our Curriculum and Community Structures serve to elevate your teaching and help to clarify your life purpose (pilates and beyond!), by enhancing your experience of the joy of connecting with clients and colleagues in deeply meaningful ways towards sharing your unique gifts with the world!
ONLINE Curriculum
Intro to Pilates by AIM
*Rethink the Cues You Use. . .introducing BMA’s New Introductory Playshops
At BMA, one of our commitments is to “support, preserve, and evolve the work of Joseph H. Pilates and its original philosophy for healthy living, happiness, and personal transformation.” We’ve been teaching the physical practice and theoretical basis of Pilates by AIM to workshop participants ON- SITE since 2004, and the full Pilates by AIM (Level 1) ONLINE since 2017. This bodymind process has deepened the sensory experience of the pilates original repertoire - to reveal a common language for all pilates practicers.
Now, you have a chance to immediately experience our skilled cueing techniques in action in our Introductory “Playshops.” You’ll enjoy takeaways that give you a sense of how cueing has evolved from Joseph Pilates’ Original Principles to the Friedman/Eisen Principles to the various Pilates Teacher Training perspectives to the Principles named in AIM’s Micro Model. You’ll experience the difference that Pilates by AIM’s Somatic Movement approach brings to the teacher-client relationship, and feel fully supported and validated, as well as inspired, in your journey towards physical and mental autonomy.
*Note: Our Playshops are sure to spark your interest in the full Pilates by AIM Continuing Education Curricula - the technical theory that advances the depth and width of your professional expertise!
* * *
The Pilates-Evolved Principles (PEP) Online Series
Add some “PEP” to your pilates practice!
Experience our skilled cueing techniques in action while utilizing the pilates Apparatus!
Our online PEP Series Playshops offer an experience of how Pilates by AIM has both advanced - and simultaneously simplified - teaching techniques, and the ways in which that translates to the pilates apparatus environment, no matter what brand is in use.
Each Playshop in the series focuses on either one pilates exercise or a series of exercises and the many possible ways of sensing and thinking to deepen your personal pilates practice towards guiding your clients to enhanced outcomes in their pilates practices.
Over a 3-month period, 3-Playshops and a whole lot of BMA Forum discussion in between, participants are encouraged to share their individual paths of learning how to cue, in order to begin to sense new possibilities for the embodiment of our “common sense” as fellow pilates professionals.
* * *
Pilates by AIM
Pilates by AIM - Level 1 Online
At BMA, we believe that the field of pilates deserves a theory and language of its own, distinct from other disciplines, that expresses the full scope and potential of pilates practice within the Somatic Integration Landscape.
Our Somatic Movement Approach - utilizing the Amend Integrative Model (AIM) - heralds, first and foremost, a major shift in the mental conditioning and the teacher-client relationship aspects of movement practice. When applied to the work of Joseph H. Pilates, AIM’s universal human movement principles lead to individual cueing protocols which spontaneously restore the body’s natural mechanisms, bringing balance to the bodymind and enhancing our personal paths of transformation. The Pilates by AIM process reveals specific human movement mechanisms - unique to pilates practice - that have rendered current ideas perpetuating discussions, such as the Classical vs. Contemporary and Flatback vs. Neutral controversies, obsolete.
Finally, a *client-enabling* common language that is a widely accessible and highly applicable standard specific to the field of pilates!
The Pilates by AIM L1 Online Curriculum is a 4-Course Continuing Education Offering (see L1 Content) for Comprehensively-trained Pilates Instructors, Mat Instructors, and fully Pre-trained BMA Apprentices who are ready for their next best step!
In Level 1, you will gain new knowledge and movement skills (not part of any other pilates Teacher Training), which will serve to deepen your pilates practice. You will expand your awareness of the full scope of the work of Joseph H. Pilates, enabling you to reach and connect with a more diverse clientele. Together, as a community, we are “charting a new course” for the future of the pilates profession (see Workbook 1 to get the pun!), as we shift the structure of Teaching Training in the field of Pilates, and elevate the standard of our profession. We invite you to be a part of that evolution!
* * *
Pilates by AIM - Level 2 Online
Level 2 is open to our Pilates by AIM Participants - our “PAPS” - after attending L1 at least once. While the concepts taught in L1 are necessary to build a base language and physical practice, L2 dives deeper into the building blocks of creating uniform development and balance of body and mind. This in turn, helps to deepen your L1 experience, which is why our unique Curriculum Format repeats in cycles (no extra charge!) and includes membership in the ongoing BMA Forum to deepen the process.
A major takeaway of Level 2 is an understanding of one of the Pilates by AIM mottos, “Universal principles, Personal protocols.” The Pilates by AIM L2 Curriculum is designed to enhance the teacher-client relationship in ways that welcome a more diverse clientele.
Pilates by AIM Tutor
Pilates by AIM Tutor Candidates have completed the full Pilates by AIM Curriculum.
Finally, there’s a way to support pilates teachers in creating sustainable businesses, while advancing the standard of pilates teacher training, as well as public perception of the work of Joseph H. Pilates!
Pilates by AIM Teachers chart their own path of advancement by their own merit, whether that be
teaching individuals & groups, directing a studio of colleagues, Tutoring both novice teachers-in-training and fellow professionals, completing the BMA SME Program, or achieving placement on the BMA Pilates by AIM Faculty, and beyond to further pursuits.
This Track progresses teaching skills in order to Pre-train prospective pilates teachers - as Clients FIRST - in the pilates repertoire, before entering the Pilates by AIM Curriculum. The BMA Tutor Team works collaboratively to continually up-level the Pre-Training Curriculum, as well as create new programs for Continuing Education for the Pilates by AIM Training Track.
BMA’s Pilates by AIM Tutor Track promises to uphold BMA’s commitment to “shift the dominant mentor-student dynamic of the hierarchical, expert-driven, pilates teacher-training model by building our academy of reciprocal learning to expand our sustainable, equitable, and collaborative community structure with fellow pilates colleagues.”
Corporate Pilates and other Repertoire-based Teacher Trainings have become overcomplicated, exorbitant in cost, and often impersonal. AIM’s analysis, theory, and philosophy along with BMA’s Community Structure brings us back to the roots of the boutique studio apprenticeship model with the added benefit of being Tutored by a Pilates by AIM Professional.
BMA Somatic Movement Educator
Curriculum & Research Projects
The Bodies Mind® Academy SME Curriculum is for Movement Teachers of all disciplines seeking to educate the public towards body-mind autonomy and full potential. This is a multidisciplinary, whole-person approach to Somatic Movement Education, integrating the Pilates by AIM foundational, self-organization concepts and expanding into expressive movement arts.
To expand on our theories and discoveries at Bodies Mind®, we look forward to building collaborative relationships with curious researchers across the Somatic Integration Professional landscape. We fully expect that advancement in the fields of Biomechanics, Kinesiology, and Neuroscience, as well as Medical Ethics, and Social Change will follow.
The above are ongoing works-in-progress. More information coming soon!