Jenna Zaloom
Comprehensively Certified Pilates Instructor
Jenna loves Pilates because it demands our full undivided attention. It requires that the mind, the breath, the core and all appendages work together to move us through space safely while doing strange and challenging movements in straps and on moving surfaces. It offers us the opportunity to sometimes slow down and get aware of what we are doing. And, others, it can ask us to get out of our heads, patterns of perfection and just move because we can. It does something amazing for us in a world that never stops pulling at us and making noise, it helps us listen, connect to ourselves and get quiet. Even while a teacher is firing cues and imagery to help drop us deeper into our movements, there is a space for us to chat with ourselves.
She completed her first comprehensive Pilates teacher training program with graduates of The Pilates Center, and Physical Mind Institute in NY. After teaching part time for years around the Triangle area, while juggling a full time job and her studies at UNC Chapel Hill, she decided to explore how the Pilates world had grown and see what local Pilates programs had surfaced.
In 2010, she took some privates and classes at InsideOut BodyTherapies (IOBT) in Durham. The experience was different then what she had learned and known so far. It is also likely that she was simply more ready to receive the information in a different way, because she was older and in a different place in her own life and teaching journey. That first program was about learning the exercises, the cues, how to get up in front of a packed room and tell people what to do, how to get people moving safely, keep up their energy and embrace that while you make them work hard and get sweaty, they are going to get a little angry with you. It was a lot to juggle well and it took time to do it pretty well.
The teachers at IOBT were reading bodies, challenging patterns of movement and deeply connecting people to their movements through flow and breath and she wanted to learn how to do that magic. Under the mentorship/guidance of Deborah Matthews and Mischa Decker she went on to complete the Advanced Program through The Pilates Program which involved many trips out to Boulder, CO. Jenna had some experience so she was able to teach while in that program and went on to also complete the Masters Teacher Program through The Pilates Center in CO a few years later, so that she could teach teachers and be a bigger part of the teacher training programs where she served IOBT as the coordinator.
Years later, ever the student and thorough nerd, she went on to complete The Heritage Training program with Cara Reeser, in NYC in 2015. This program was again a way to deepen her understanding of herself, her practice, teaching and the Pilates system and how it fostered healing, strengthening and connection through imagery. Most importantly, she learned the art of letting students have the space to connect to themselves through the art of saying less as a teacher. The idea that she did not have to offer every cue she ever learned was mind-bending.
Jenna taught at IOBT for more than 13 years, and if not for a move that required her to drive two hours to teach, she would have stayed longer. During most of that time she was one of IOBT's full time teachers, and is ever grateful for that community and all that she learned while teaching.
After moving too far away from her IOBT community in 2024, Jenna explored studios closer to her new home and found Raleigh Pilates to be the perfect fit. From the warm smiles, kind hearts in butt kicking teachers with clear cues and no nonsense approach to the cozy velvet curtains, neutral calm aesthetic and olive trees that serve to cue us where the back of the room is, Jenna settled into her new Pilates home. After nearly two years and receiving gold stars (which she will always miss while it is not a thing), Jenna was convinced that she was ready and wanted to teach at Raleigh Pilates if there was ever an opportunity to be a bigger part of the world these teachers were creating. And, thankfully, she is getting her wish.