The Student Is Ready When the Teacher Appears

There’s an old saying I used to share with trainee yoga teachers, years ago: the student is ready when the teacher appears.

I’ve been thinking about it again lately, but this time about whether you’re actually ready to exercise after hip replacement.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you when you’re discharged from physiotherapy: being “recovered” and being ready are not the same thing.

You did everything you were asked. You showed up to every appointment. You did your exercises. And then one day, someone signed you off, and that was that. On paper, you were done.

But readiness for what comes next – trusting your body again, walking on sand without bracing for it, sitting on the floor without calculating how you’ll get back up – that often doesn’t arrive on the same timeline as your discharge letter. Sometimes it arrives months later. Sometimes it takes a summer holiday looming, or a wobble on an uneven path, or simply getting tired of being careful all the time.

“I wish I’d found you sooner.”

I can’t count how many times I’ve heard some version of that sentence from the women I work with. It usually comes a few weeks into working together, once they’ve started to feel steadier, once something that used to worry them stops being something they think about at all.

It’s never said with regret exactly, more a kind of quiet surprise. That it didn’t need to take as long as it did. That there was a version of this available to them earlier, if they’d known to look for it, or felt ready to reach for it.

I understand it completely, because it isn’t really about me being hard to find. It’s that readiness has its own timeline, separate from the calendar, separate from being “cleared” by anyone else. You can’t rush it, and there’s no point wishing you’d arrived at it sooner – you got there exactly when you got there.

Knowing When You’re Ready to Exercise After Hip Replacement

One of the women I’ve worked with, Paula, put it this way:

“Before I met Fiona, I had never found anything that really helped my back. I have Osteogenesis Imperfecta, brittle bone disease, and could hardly stand up, never mind walk, without getting spasms. My whole body ached. Fiona identified that my spine wasn’t in good alignment, and now the difference is amazing. I’ve continued with her for four years, and my back is absolutely amazing now. I can just walk and walk and walk. Standing still is no longer an issue.”

Four years of steady, unhurried progress, not a quick fix, not a race against a deadline. Just readiness, met at the right pace.

That thought about readiness applies just as much to how I’ve built this work myself. Yvonne Rodger, who trained with me sixteen years ago at the very start of her own Pilates teaching career, put it like this recently:

“Fiona taught me so much more than simply how to teach Pilates. She gave me the knowledge, confidence and foundations that have allowed me to build a career I love and, ultimately, to run and develop my own successful Pilates and Yoga business. One of Fiona’s greatest strengths is her ability to make movement accessible and understandable. She has a wonderful way of building confidence in people and removing the intimidation that can so often surround exercise. Sixteen years on, I still regularly find myself drawing on things Fiona taught me all those years ago. I’m delighted to see Fiona now bringing all of that experience, knowledge, and encouragement to BRIO!”

Sixteen years of teaching, and the same thing keeps showing up: removing intimidation, building confidence, meeting people exactly where they are. That’s what my online Mobility & Movement Hub BRIO! is, in the end, just this same approach, made available whenever you’re ready for it.

If that’s you right now – if you’ve been following along for a while, reading, thinking “maybe,” but not quite acting – I want you to know something: that’s not you failing to get started. That’s you not being ready yet. And there’s nothing wrong with that. If you’d like to explore that feeling a bit further, I’ve written a post before about how to get motivated to exercise, starting with why, which digs into that exact place between knowing and doing.

But when you are ready, I’d love for BRIO! to be the thing that’s there, waiting.

That’s genuinely all this is for. Not a race, not a deadline you’ve missed, just a door that stays open until you’re ready to walk through it.