In this episode, I sit down with someone I've had the pleasure of knowing since her earliest days in Pilates — Mina Aleshina, functional movement coach and founder of Saana Studio in Geneva, Switzerland. This one got me fired up in the best way possible, and I think it will for you too.

Mila is a STOTT Pilates instructor, Functional Range Conditioning mobility specialist, ELDOA practitioner, and TRX trainer. She works out of a physical therapy center in Geneva where she takes a deeply therapeutic approach to movement — and she is not afraid to say exactly what she thinks about where the Pilates industry is headed.

In this episode we talk about:

• Mila's personal journey from discovering Pilates for her own rehabilitation to building a multi-disciplinary practice that blends Pilates, ELDOA, FRC, and TRX

• Why finishing your certification is just the beginning — and how working under an osteopath early in her career shaped everything

• The Pilates boom: what's exciting about it, what's deeply concerning, and why Mila calls it "the McDonald's era of the Pilates industry"

• How watered-down training and fitness-branded Pilates is feeding off a therapeutic reputation it hasn't earned — and who gets hurt in the process

• The client who came in saying Pilates hurt their back (and why that should never happen)

• Why I believe — and Mila agrees — that Joseph Pilates himself would have kept evolving the method

• Knowing your "why" as an instructor and choosing a lane: therapeutic vs. fitness Pilates and why trying to be both often means serving no one well

• The moment early in my career that reminded me exactly why I do this work (and it involved a client with tears in her eyes)

• Teaching the person in front of you — not the exercise

• The connection between nutrition and movement, why Mila brought in a clinical dietitian to work alongside her practice, and why exercise alone isn't the full picture

• Battling sarcopenia, building bones, and why the unsexy basics — consistency, nutrition, movement — are still the most effective tools we have

• Mila's expanding studio in Geneva, her growing reformer classes, and her vision for a space that never capitalizes on women's insecurities

~ Connect With Mila ~

Instagram - @mila_aleshina_

Website - www.sanastudio.ch

TikTok - @mila_aleshina_

~ Connect With Me ~

Instagram - @adriana.rotella

Website - adrianarotella.ca