Hawaii Island Pilates

Hawaii Island Pilates Classes

Hawaii Island Pilates is owned and operated by certified Stott Pilates Instructor, Leslie Larch. Her passion for teaching Pilates stems from her dance career that began at age 8 when she began ballet lessons. By age 14, Leslie was awarded a series of scholarships to study with San Francisco Ballet and to participate with the company in classes. In 1978, “The World’s Biggest Show” (Don Arden’s “Hello, Hollywood, Hello”) opened on “The World’s Largest Stage” (the MGM Grand in Reno, NV), where Leslie was hired, and thus began her professional career in cabaret dance. Retired from dance at age 28, she began a formal college education and achieved a BFA in Dance at Cornish College of the Arts in 1996. She continued her education in a post baccalaureate program through Western Washington University and acquired an elementary/K-8 teaching certificate in 1998. An injury ended her public school teaching career as a Creative Dance Specialist, but inspired her intensive study of Pilates. Leslie owned and operated Island Pilates Center for 10 years. Leslie and her husband moved to Hawaii in 2013 and now reside in Laupahoehoe, Hawaii.

As a comprehensively trained and certified Stott Pilates Instructor, Leslie has completed well beyond the required minimum of 500 hours of education and training, which includes effective communication and observation skills, modifications for specific body types, and theory and practice of postural analysis. Her formal academic study of human movement, has allowed her to apply her life-long personal history of physically challenging experiences to create classes with exercises for most every body type and condition. Hawaii Island Pilates offers both personalized and group cueing and imagery. The teaching style you can expect from Leslie is more observational than participatory: She is adept at layering those skills that result in an effective program design for each person’s needs. Participants in Leslies Pilates classes will learn to execute increasingly challenging exercises safely, precisely, and with appropriate alignment. In sum, Leslie believes that a solid foundation in the principles of Pilates can be applied to everyone’s everyday movement activities for effective endurance and healthy preservation of the body.