About Gina
Born and raised in San Francisco, I went to Mercy Burlingame and Gonzaga University where I studied Economics and Sociology. I've always had a restless mind — I was diagnosed with ADHD at 13, and for most of my life, exercise was the thing that made me feel regulated enough to function. Go to the gym, get the wiggles out, get back to work. Movement was a means to an end.
Then Gonzaga offered a one-credit yoga class in partnership with a local studio called Shala Living — and it ruined me for anything ordinary ever again.
Shala Living Yoga wasn't a gym yoga class. It had a residential teacher training program where teachers lived on-site, immersed in the practice full-time. The instruction was the real thing — precise, intentional, deeply rooted. It was the first time I experienced movement that asked something of my mind, not just my body. I wasn't just exercising anymore. I was paying attention. I was connecting. I wanted to go deeper, not just go through the motions.
I've never been to a yoga studio as good since. And I've never stopped chasing that standard.
When COVID hit in 2020, the world went still and I went inward. I ran long distances, practiced daily, explored movement with all the time and curiosity I'd never let myself have before. Something shifted in that stillness too — I stopped just going for runs and started becoming a runner. I stopped just doing yoga and started becoming a yogi. Movement stopped being something I did to cope and became something I did to explore.
Then in 2022, I found Classical Pilates — and I realized my body had been crooked the whole time.
I genuinely believed I had a good mind-body connection after years of yoga. I didn't. My alignment was off, my core was disconnected, and I had no real center to organize around. I was a floating body with arms and legs and nothing to connect them to. Classical Pilates gave me that connection — and suddenly everything I thought I understood about movement clicked into place. It was what I had always imagined yoga was supposed to feel like.
I became completely obsessed. I couldn't stop talking about it, thinking about it, dragging people into conversations about the Powerhouse and spinal articulation at dinner parties. I became known as “the Posture-Police” in my group of friends. The writing was on the wall.
But something else was happening too. After a year of committed practice — private sessions, twice a week, no shortcuts — my body started to change in ways I couldn't fully explain. I had been prescribed Adderall for over thirteen years. My body began to reject it. And eventually, I got off of it entirely. Classical Pilates changed me on a cellular level.
And that's when I understood — this wasn't something I had found. This was something that had found me.
Looking back, I can trace the thread through everything. The restless mind that needed movement to function. The yoga class that showed me what intentional movement could feel like. The COVID years spent going inward, learning to use my body as a vehicle for exploration. Every twist, every detour, every wrong turn — it all led here. To this method. To this work. To becoming a teacher.
I completed my comprehensive certification in October 2024 through Metropolitan Authentic Pilates, training under Master Trainer Dorothee Vandewalle with the mentorship of Stella Sandoval at UPPilates Burlingame. Today I teach at Raven Pilates in Nob Hill and Equinox Beale Street in the Financial District — right here, in the city I've never stopped calling home.
I don't teach watered-down Pilates. I never will. If you want the real thing — and you're ready to feel what your body is actually capable of — I'd love to be your instructor.
The Work
Joseph Pilates was obsessed with the human body — what it's capable of, what gets in its way, and how to restore it when it breaks down. Long before "functional fitness" existed as a concept, he was attaching springs to hospital beds to rehabilitate injured soldiers, building apparatuses by hand, and studying movement with a curiosity that refused to accept limitation as permanent. He called his method Contrology. He believed the mind should lead the body — precisely, deliberately, always.
That's what I teach. Not a trend. Not a modification of something else. The original system, passed down through a direct lineage of teachers who refused to water it down.
Classical Pilates works because it's complete. Every exercise has a purpose. Every sequence builds on the last. The apparatuses — the Reformer, the Cadillac, the Wunda Chair — aren't props or novelties. They're tools for teaching the body to organize itself from the inside out. When the system is taught correctly, the results compound. Posture improves. Strength deepens. Other activities get better. Pain that you'd accepted as permanent starts to lift.
I live for the moment that lands on a client's face when something finally clicks — when the powerhouse engages, when the spine lengthens, when the body does something it didn't know it could do. That ah-ha moment is what I'm after in every single session.
My teaching is precise, encouraging, and direct. Kind, but firm — because the work deserves that, and so do you.
If you're ready to find out what your body is actually capable of, you’ve come to the right place.