nothing good

I’ve been going to the same Pilates studio for five years now—long enough that I know how the light shifts in the room between seasons, when the early morning sun slips across the floor just right. The studio is tucked into the first floor of a beautiful prewar apartment building in my old Harlem neighborhood. Quiet, unassuming, and full of light. The kind of place you almost miss if you’re not looking closely.

I started Pilates because I was trying to figure out how to become more toned. Something about standing taller, feeling stronger, reshaping what I thought needed fixing. But like most things that stay with you, it became something else. A way to practice being inside my body when so much of life asks us to perform outside of it.

During the pandemic, I kept going—masked, spaced out, grateful just to have somewhere to move and breathe (even if breathing felt a little more complicated). I think of those quiet, careful sessions now as a kind of lifeline. My body learning how to keep going, even when everything else felt suspended.

By the time we get to leg circles, my mind usually drifts. That’s when my instructor will walk over quietly and ask, Are you breathing?

It’s never judgmental. Just a gentle nudge. A reminder to come back to myself. To the room. To my breath.

Our class ends the same way every time. She stands in front of us and says, “One: our movement is beautiful. And two: our movement is not a punishment. Because our movement is good, and nothing good can be a punishment.”

I think about that more than she probably knows. The quiet power of that language. For someone like me—who spent a long time thinking of movement as a chore, something to correct or control—it feels radical. Healing, even.

The studio has become one of the only places where I don’t feel like I have to push or prove. Just move. Breathe. Try again. It’s not always graceful. But it’s mine.

And on the days when things feels like too much and everything is running hot —I remember: I am breathing. I am moving.

That my movement is never punishment. It is enough.

-L