Blog: “Pilates is about strength in your body and mind”

My name is Jeannie Di Bon, I am 47 years old and live in Wimbledon, where I run a Pilates and movement studio. I have joint hypermobility syndrome and a life-long lung condition triggered by several bouts of pneumonia.

I'm a passionate believer in making fitness accessible to everyone, including people with impairments and those living with chronic conditions. Being active changed my life, so I'm always trying to spread that message and call for more inclusivity and greater accessibility across the sports, fitness and movement sectors. 

I was first introduced to Pilates by the physiotherapist I was seeing for a chronic shoulder injury, which was the result of my unmanaged hypermobility. I loved it straightaway and it was my first step in taking control of my health and wellbeing.

I enjoyed it so much that I decide to do a professional Pilates qualification in 2007 and started teaching. Since then, I have completed more training on rehabilitation, including biomechanical training and philosophies of movement. Learning about movement helped me to understand my own body, its hypermobility and how to manage the pain I was in.

The training has since allowed me to help others who experience pain. Drawing on my own experiences, I teach Pilates in specialised, individual sessions, helping clients who struggle with chronic pain, hypermobility, and other invisible disabilities. Pilates can be hugely beneficial for many conditions, but I know that a lack of accessibility and awareness can often exclude or put people off from engaging in exercise. As an instructor, I believe it’s important that the fitness community is supportive, accommodating, and understanding of the full spectrum of varied abilities. 

For me, being active is an essential part of leading a healthy, happy lifestyle. It helps with sleep and feeling relaxed, all of which contributes to feeling well. I find that being active is also beneficial for my mental health and mindfulness. The more venues and instructors who are open-minded about providing support and coaching for disabled people and those with life-long conditions, the better. 

Pilates is my profession, and I teach it every day, but I still enjoy practising it on my own in my studio. Ideally, I would practise daily. Pilates is about strength, when you take the time to really engage with it, you feel the effects of this strength in your body and mind. The feeling of really getting to grips with and being in control of my body and how it moves is empowering – particularly as hypermobility and chronic pain meant that I have felt a lack of control in the past.

The support of my family is so important, and means a lot to me. Getting to where I am now required a drastic change, which, in turn made a dramatic difference to my health. My family’s compassion through times of illness and support during the changes I've made to my life means the world.

Over the coming year, I am looking forward to continuing my work with my clients, and practising in my studio. I also have been looking into ways to make the work I do more accessible to those who might not be able to reach my classes in Wimbledon and London.

For those thinking about being more active, I would wholeheartedly encourage you to go for it. Being active, in whichever way you can, completely changes how you feel. It’s important to find an exercise that works for you. Some people still have a particular idea about what exercise disabled people can and can’t do, and this is often quite limiting. My advice would be to ignore this negativity! The most important thing is that you do an activity that makes you feel good – I promise there’s one out there for you and when you find it, you won’t look back!