OUR PEOPLE
Marcia Shapira
(Founder/Managing Director)
Why Search for Pilates?
Search for Pilates was born out of my passion for Pilates and the desire to use my entrepreneurial and business skills to promote the Pilates Method and contribute to the Pilates community creating alternative ways for instructors to connect and engage with clients.
My teaching focus has always been in educating my clients about how to establish and achieve their health and fitness goals.
Now my goal is to provide an outstanding platform for instructors to share their knowledge and help thousands of people achieve great results with professional guidance and excellent resources.
Search for Pilates will help users find the right instructor to help them on their Pilates journey.
Our content is aimed to increase awareness of Pilates and help readers understand how important it is to be mindful in order to achieve their goals.
How I got here:
I’m originally from Brazil where I lived for 30 years. During that time I studied and worked in hospitality, graduated in Physical Education, majoring in Exercise Physiology and Sports Training. My determination to overcome life’s obstacles helped me have a speedy recovery after a car accident in 1994. Despite several injuries to my legs, I had a busy career as a personal trainer in my home town.
I discovered Pilates in 2003 in Israel where I lived for 20 months prior to moving to Australia. Pilates changed my understanding of the human body and I’ve never looked back. While in Israel I worked with Cardiac Rehabilitation patients and completed my comprehensive Pilates training.
I arrived in Australia in 2005 pregnant with my first son. In the last 8 years I have upgraded my qualifications to a Diploma of Professional Pilates Instruction with Pilates International, attended several professional development events and traveled overseas for more professional development. I currently hold a level III membership with the Pilates Alliance of Australasia and I volunteer as an Ordinary Councilor to the board of the organization.
I ran a successful Pilates studio in Willoughby NSW from 2007 until late 2011 when I decided to close the business in order to spend more time with my young children. Since then I have been implementing my vision for this platform, teaching clients privately and volunteering for the Pilates Alliance of Australasia Committee as an Ordinary Member/Marketing Officer.
Why I love Pilates?
In Pilates I found a new passion for movement and exercise. It brought me back to my childhood when I could experience complex movement with curiosity and interest. It also help me recover from a spinal injury and knee surgery like no other exercise and prepared me for a natural birth with my second child. It gives me endless tools to adapt an exercise program to my clients' needs and goals.
Pilates helps me to connect with my body, move mindfully and expand my potential. It shows me that not only I can move in different ways but improve myself by "moving" outside my comfort zone which encourages me to try new things and learn new skills on a daily basis. It also reminds me to be kind with myself and focus on my health when I obviously need to slow down and remember that less sometimes is more.
Josephine (Jo) Holecek
(Co-founder/Communications and Marketing Director)
One of the things I love about being a Pilates Instructor is being able to make a change in people’s lives, both in the studio and in the rest of their lives. By integrating what we do in the studio into their everyday activities, I see a much greater change and faster progression to reaching the goals they set out to achieve.
I also thoroughly enjoy working with student instructors and passing on my knowledge and experiences to them. I hope that by doing this, they feel more confident as an instructor, both with the repertoire and working with their clients.
Why Search for Pilates?
One of the key things to retaining your client is to understand their goals and needs and to build a great rapport from your first interaction with them. But before all this happens, you have to get them through your door. By understanding what’s in it for them (not you), you will attract more, retain more and enjoy working with them more.
With my passion for making a difference in people’s lives, my role as a Pilates instructor and student mentor, and background in psychology and Human Resources, I look forward to helping you create a winning profile to attract clients to your door and retain them beyond that initial consultation.
How I got here
My understanding and appreciation of the Pilates method, in particular its rehabilitative qualities, have stemmed from a background in competitive sports and with that, multiple injuries and surgeries. Pilates helped me overcome chronic pain resulting from these injuries and I am now able to enjoy life pain free and do what I loves.
My passion for making a difference in people’s lives started with my father, a Senior Radiation Oncologist at Royal North Shore Hospital. From a very young age, I listened to him talk about his patients, how he could best treat them and if he couldn't’t, how he would work hard to find a solution that worked best for them, regardless of the mode of treatment. Working in a teaching hospital, I always admired the time he dedicated to the young registrars who came in green to soak up as much knowledge as they could learn from an experienced practitioner.
These two things combined help me to make a difference in people’s lives with a modality that I can attribute to changing my own. I do this at the workplace and working at Pilates International and Dynamic Physique Pilates.