Happy Birthday Lolita! Pilate’s Elder, Lolita San Miguel, turns 80 today. I am so honored to be attending her 80th Birthday Party Tonight In Palm Beach Gardens. Take a moment to read a little about her and enjoy some of her pictures. Please share! ( It is also her husband HIrams Birthday and the day the Joseph Pilates Passed away) Lolita San Miguel New York-born Lolita San Miguel celebrates in 2014 her 80th Birthday and her 56th anniversary of practicing the Pilates Methods of Body Conditioning. She received her first certification from Carola Trier, Joseph Pilates’ first disciple to open a studio and then studied with 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 two remaining “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 more than 100 Second Generation Teachers from the six habitable continents. Ms. San Miguel is in great demand throughout the United States, the Caribbean, Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia and South America, and has international students and teachers come to train with her. She has published nine DVDs in her brisk selling “Lolita Shares Her Pilates ” series: “Mat I,” “Mat Repertoire,” “Reformer I,” “Reformer II,” “Pilates BodyWalk,” “Pilates Cadillac,” “Pilates Chair,” “Pilates Arcs & Barrel” and the latest in 2013 “Lolita Shares Her Mat with Foam Roller.” Ms. San Miguel is married to former banker and management consultant Mr. Hiram C. Cintron and has her permanent residence in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. In 2009 Ms. San Miguel, while holding a PMMP session in Dusseldorf and discovered that no one knew about Joseph Pilates in the town of his birth, Monchengladbach, Germany. She made it her mission to erect a Memorial in his home town in his honor. 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—20 Waldenhauser Strasse—and to celebrate, she organized an international Pilates conference in Monchengladbach 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.A., including 31 of Ms. San Miguel’s PMMP graduates.
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 12:54:37 +0000