An Interview With Leanna
Leanna Welch — Founder & Lead Instructor
Q: How did you find Pilates?
Through chronic pain, honestly. I was dealing with degenerative disc disease and sciatic nerve pain so severe it led to partial paralysis, alongside an ongoing practice of managing vestibular migraines and stress. Pilates gave me a way back into my own body. Everything I do now grew out of that recovery.
Q: What does your training background look like?
I spent years working with Han Tran at Project Pilates in Jersey City. Based on her recommendation I started teacher training in comprehensive mat and apparatus certification from the Kane School of Core Integration, studying under Kelly Kane and Matt McCullough. The program is set inside a physical therapy clinic, and it was intellectually rigorous in a way that felt like exactly what I needed. Beyond that, I’ve done classical worskshops under Maria Earle and Blossom Leilani, I’m studying Tom Myers’ Anatomy Trains program, and I’m a devoted historian of the Pilates Elders particularly Kathy Grant, Ron Fletcher, and Eve Gentry.
Q: What are your specialties?
Prenatal and postpartum work, conservative pain management, and what I call joyful embodiment and somatic literacy. I’m teaching people to move in ways that carry over into everything they do outside the studio, not just what happens on the reformer. It’s classical tradition, layered with contemporary principles, filtered through twelve years of my own practice.
Q: How would you describe your teaching style?
Anatomy-driven and unapologetically fun. Light, humorous, informative, and always meeting people exactly where they’re at. The throughline across every class is BREATHE. My go-to cue is deep exhale, no gripping, lengthen, because the goal was never more movement it’s more connection.
Q: What’s changed most in your teaching since you started?
My confidence. My willingness to make mistakes. My cueing has gotten a lot better, and getting people out of pain is so rewarding.
Q: Who do you work best with?
People who want to have fun. People who are committed to their health and movement, and who take what they learn in class and apply it in their day-to-day life and in other training they do.
Q: What are you curious about in your own practice right now?
The nervous system and how it shapes movement. Fascia. Helping postpartum clients reconnect to a sense of self after growing a life. The glutes, the shoulders, the multifidi of the spine, honestly just the whole beautiful ecosystem of the body and the way it moves. I’m endlessly inspired by it.
Q: What’s inspiring the way you teach right now?
The animal kingdom. Joseph Pilates loved cats.. I love monkeys, and cephalopods, and jellyfish. We’re primates. I love teaching people to get back into their animal selves, return to nature, and liberate themselves from the chains of technology. Once we can do that, we can really start to thrive as the animals we still are, living on this planet.
Q: Where do you want to take your practice over the next few years?
I want to keep deepening my understanding of the systems in human body and what makes people thrive in longevity. I want to become a well-respected, influential entrepreneur and movement practitioner, and I want to teach other people and to help them feel truly empowered to move, adapt, and overcome whatever setbacks come their way.
