Lolita's Legacy

New York born Lolita San Miguel celebrates in 2014 her 56th anniversary of practicing the Pilates method. She received her first certification from Carola Trier, Joseph Pilates’ first disciple to open a studio and then studied with Mr. Pilates himself. Lolita holds the distinction of being one of the only two known practitioners to have been officially certified by Joseph and Clara Pilates and awarded degrees by the State University of New York to teach the Pilates Method. Lolita has also been certified by Polestar Pilates Education and was awarded a Gold Certificate by the Pilates Method Alliance. She is one of the four “Distinguished Elders” of the Pilates Method Alliance. After a distinguished career in dance–she was a soloist with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet for over ten years and ballet mistress for Ballet Hispanico for three years—Ms. San Miguel moved with her husband to Puerto Rico in 1977, where she founded Ballet Concierto de Puerto Rico–now Puerto Rico’s finest ballet company– and was its Artistic and Executive Director for 27 years. She also founded Pilates y Mas, Inc. in Puerto Rico in 2000 to teach, train and certify teachers in association with Polestar Pilates Education. Ms. San Miguel retired from Ballet Concierto in 2005 and at the age of 70 started a new career, dedicated to the teaching of the Pilates Method. In 2009, she started her successful Pilates Master Mentor Program (PMMP), which has graduated an international group of over 120 teachers from the six habitable continents.

Lolita has published eight DVDs in her brisk selling “Lolita Shares Her Pilates ” series: “Mat I,” “Mat Repertoire,” “Reformer I,” “Reformer II,” “Pilates BodyWalk,” “Pilates Cadillac,” “Pilates Chair” and “Pilates Arcs & Barrel.” She recently published 3 new DVD’s Lolita Shares her Mat with Roller, Lolita Shares her Mat with Magic Circle, and Lolita Shares her Ped-O-Pull and other Pilates apparatuses. For a complete set of videos please visit: LolitaPilates.Com.

While holding a PMMP session in Dusseldorf, Germany in 2009, Ms. San Miguel decided to celebrate the international “Pilates Day” by offering free Pilates classes to over 150 persons in the King Frederick the Great Hall in the town of Monchengladbach, where Joseph Pilates was born and 20 minutes by car from Dusseldorf. She was shocked and sad to discover that no one knew about Joseph Pilates in the town of his birth. Right there and then she made it her mission to erect a Memorial Plaque honoring her teacher in his home town. On May 7, 2011, after two years of effort and a successful fund raising campaign, Ms. San Miguel accomplished her goal and a Memorial Plaque was placed under a linden tree, exactly where once stood the house where Joseph Pilates was born on December 9, 1883: 20 Waldenhauser Strasse. To further celebrate the occasion, she organized an international Pilates conference in Monchengladbach which was attended by Pilates aficionados from all over the world - Japan, Australia, Europe, South America, the Caribbean, the U.K. and of course the U.S. Present were 31 of Ms. San Miguel’s PMMP graduates.

In the fall of 2011 Ms. San Miguel took another bold step. For years she had turned down requests to start her own Pilates teaching training program. But realizing that she now had a strong base of Pilates professionals with a solid knowledge of her methodology and approach to the Pilates Method she had trained personally through her Pilates Master Mentor Program—who called themselves “Lolita’s Disciples”—she felt motivated enough and decided that she would design her own teacher training program and started work on its preparation. The result is Lolita’s Legacy™, which was officially introduced at the 2012 Pilates Method Alliance conference in Las Vegas.