Karen Garcia of Alexandria is well known for her enthusiasm for health and Pilates. What few people know is that behind the Pilates instructor lives an avid reader and traveler, with a Cajun heritage.
Garcia, who grew up in the Alexandria area, traveled to Louisiana every holiday and summertime to spend time with her extended family. As an adult, Garcia said her family plays a very important role in her life, as does her Cajun heritage.
"We have a lot of family in Louisiana," she said. "I spent all my holidays and all my summers growing up there. There's very much still a tie."
"She's a Louisiana girl," her cousin Callie MacKenzie said. "She loves Cajun food. Our whole family's from Louisiana. She's a southern girl, even though she's lived up here a long time."
An active reader, Garcia most recently finished "Encore Provence" by Peter Mayle.
"I loved it," Garcia said. "He's written several books. He was an executive who basically moved [to the] south of France. It's kind of a travelogue."
"Karen is an avid reader," her mother, Louise Ziebell said. "There's nothing she doesn't read — history and everything else."
She has been an enthusiastic reader since grade school, Louise said.
"They called me up and, Mrs. Garcia, we need to speak, your daughter is reading all the time when class is going on," she said. "[She told me] 'Mom, I finished the work they ask me to do and then I read.'"
As a child, Garcia dreamed of becoming a dancer. At the age of 11, Ziebell said she walked in after dance class and threw down her slippers and swore she'd never return to the studio.
"I'll tell you what," Ziebell said. "You can leave your ballet slippers on the floor and someday you can sit in the audience and see other people perform, or you can pick up the slippers and be the performer on the stage. And she picked up the slippers and never gave up."
GARCIA WENT ON to study ballet at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. After graduation she performed with several different companies, traveling around the country for 10 years. After a debilitating knee injury took her off the stage, Garcia was unable to walk without the aid of a cane, and for a year she struggled with her lost athleticism.
"She became tremendously injured — came home in a wheelchair," Ziebell said. "That ended her career in dancing. She went back to school on crutches, and that's when she met this woman in the dance department."
The dance instructor told Garcia about Pilates, and told her if she would try Pilates she would be able to walk again.
"She began to work with Karen and [Karen began to] walk again," Ziebell said. "Pilates was the thing for her."
From this experience, Garcia decided that if Pilates could do it for her she could teach and help others heal.
Garcia traveled to New York, dog sitting to earn a living and taking instruction from one of the few original Pilates students. After becoming a certified Pilates instructor, Garcia found a new home in Alexandria, teaching in her father's basement. Eleven years later, with additional studios, Garcia said her main goal now is education.
"I think the thing I'm always doing is educating the community," Garcia said. "There's a lot of different styles [of Pilates] and what I teach, what I believe in, is the original work. A lot of people, since there's no trade mark on the name, are calling things Pilates that have nothing to do with what Pilates really is."
With studios in Arlington and Del Ray, Garcia said one of her concerns is that at none of these locations is she aware of a recycling program for businesses.
"[The studio director and I] take home our bottles and things like that," Garcia said. "Maybe there is a [program] that I don't know about. That's something and even in my own neighborhood not everybody recycles. That's my main concern that we don't throw away things that we can recycle — and that happens so often. It's not hard to throw things in bins."
Garcia said her goals for the future are to build her business, spend time with family, and clean out her basement.
"Just to continue building the studio and educating the community about Joseph Pilates work — that's my work goal," she said. "Personally, spending more time with family and friends. When you have your own business it's very easy to become a workaholic at times. And get a little more involved in the community. Those are my goals — along with cleaning out my basement. That's my summer goal."