Piggy Pole & Aerial Fitness | Strength • Awareness • Longevity

About Piggy Pole & Aerial Fitness 🐷💗
Strength • Awareness • Longevity

Piggy Pole is evolving! ✨🐷✨

After many wonderful years of teaching pole fitness, spinning pole, pole dance and aerial hoop, I've made the incredibly difficult decision to end all face-to-face teaching, including private lessons, due to my health.

Although I'm no longer offering lessons, Piggy Pole itself isn't disappearing.

What began as a love of pole and aerial movement has grown into something much broader — a passion for helping people understand their bodies, develop confidence in movement and find approaches that support their individual needs.

And while my face-to-face teaching chapter has come to an end, the knowledge, experience and passion behind Piggy Pole are very much still here.

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN ❤️

Piggy Pole & Aerial Fitness began in 2017, growing from my own love of pole and aerial movement into something I could share with others.

I loved everything about teaching — helping people discover what their bodies were capable of, watching their confidence grow, celebrating breakthroughs and finding ways through challenges together.

Over the years, I taught students of all different abilities, backgrounds and experience levels, from complete beginners taking their first tentative steps into pole and aerial hoop to experienced students developing more advanced skills.

But what I particularly loved was helping people understand how to achieve something.

Not simply showing someone a shape and asking them to recreate it, but breaking down the movement, exploring what their body needed to do and helping them develop the strength, coordination and confidence to get there.

There was something incredibly rewarding about watching a movement suddenly make sense to someone.

And, of course, there were all the laughs, the wobbles, the pole kisses, the hoop hickies and the wonderful people I met along the way! 🐷💗

How My Teaching Evolved

Years ago, I began noticing just how many of my students were hypermobile.

That sparked a curiosity about how hypermobility affects movement and how I could better support students whose bodies didn't always respond to conventional teaching approaches.

I began researching hypermobility and adapting my teaching to better support those students — long before I was eventually diagnosed with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS) myself.

What started as a desire to better understand the people I was teaching gradually transformed my entire approach.

I became increasingly interested in the foundations that sit underneath movement and the importance of recognising that different bodies have different needs.

Rather than expecting everyone to learn or progress in the same way, I wanted to understand what each individual needed to feel more supported and confident in their movement.

Over time, my teaching developed into a much more personalised, body-aware approach that considered the whole person rather than simply the skill they were trying to achieve.

And that's where my passion for movement education really grew.

My Approach to Movement 💗

Throughout my teaching career, I became increasingly passionate about helping people understand their bodies rather than simply teaching them what to do.

My approach combined professional training, practical experience and an understanding of how individual differences can influence movement and learning.

I placed particular importance on thoughtful preparation, clear technique, individual adaptation and progression that respected each person's needs and capacity.

I also developed my own signature warm-up, which became a much-loved part of my lessons and reflected my belief that preparation and movement awareness deserve just as much attention as the skills themselves.

I worked with a wide range of students, including those living with hypermobility, chronic pain, fatigue and other health conditions, as well as neurodivergent students and people returning to movement after injury, illness or extended time away.

My aim was always to create a calm, welcoming environment where people felt comfortable asking questions, exploring movement and learning without unnecessary pressure or comparison.

I believe movement should be adapted to the individual, rather than expecting every individual to move in exactly the same way.

Although my work involved supporting people with different physical needs and conditions, my role was movement education rather than physiotherapy or medical treatment.

Experience & Professional Training

Alongside my years of teaching experience, I've undertaken professional training in pole, aerial movement and body-informed approaches to movement education.

My training includes:

XPERT: Pole Levels 1–4, Spinning Pole and Aerial Hoop.
Pole Studio: Beginners Pole certification.
EDS ECHO / The Ehlers-Danlos Society: Integral Movement Method training.
Integrative Dance Therapy: Including the Neuroscience of Dance.
First Aid certification.

My own experiences of living with chronic illness and disability have also influenced how I understand movement, accessibility and the importance of respecting individual capacity.

Together with my teaching experience and continued interest in movement education, these experiences have helped shape the person and teacher I've become.

Why I've Stepped Away From Teaching ❤️

Living with invisible and dynamic disability has meant spending much of my life adapting around pain, fatigue, joint instability and changing physical capacity.

For years, I found ways to continue teaching because I genuinely loved what I did.

But as my health became increasingly difficult to manage, the physical demands of teaching began taking more and more from the rest of my life.

Although I could still demonstrate, teach and appear physically capable, what wasn't always visible was the amount of pain I was managing or how much recovery those activities required.

Eventually, almost all my physical capacity was going into teaching and recovering from teaching, leaving very little for anything else.

In May 2026, a particularly painful subluxation of my sacroiliac joint triggered a severe flare that brought everything to a halt.

I've spent much of the time since then dealing with significant pain, debilitating fatigue and extremely limited physical capacity.

Alongside my existing conditions, I've also received a provisional diagnosis of axial spondyloarthritis with enthesitis, and I'm undergoing further investigation.

After a great deal of thought, I had to acknowledge that I no longer have the physical capacity to sustain face-to-face teaching.

It's been an incredibly difficult decision, and there's a lot of grief in closing this chapter.

But I also recognise that I need to give my health, rehabilitation, relationships and enjoyment of life the space and attention they've been missing.

I am therefore no longer offering pole or aerial lessons, including private coaching.

I'm deeply grateful to everyone who has been part of Piggy Pole over the years. Teaching has brought some wonderful people and experiences into my life, and I'll always treasure that. ❤️

Where Piggy Pole Goes From Here 🐷💗

Although face-to-face teaching has ended, my passion for helping people better understand and support their bodies certainly hasn't.

Over the years, Piggy Pole has evolved beyond teaching pole and aerial skills into a broader interest in movement education, body awareness and supporting individual needs.

I'm now exploring ways of eventually sharing my knowledge and experience in a different format, with a particular interest in making movement education more accessible.

The principles behind Piggy Pole remain:

Strength • Awareness • Longevity

For now, my priority is my health and rehabilitation, so I'm not setting deadlines or making commitments about what comes next.

But I'm looking forward to seeing where this new chapter leads.

Stay Connected ❤️

Although I'm no longer offering face-to-face lessons, I'd love to stay connected with anyone interested in Piggy Pole's future.

I'll be keeping my mailing list and using it to share occasional updates about how things are developing.

If you'd like to hear about future online resources, movement education or other developments, you're very welcome to join the Piggy Pole mailing list.

Simply get in touch and ask to be added.

There's no set schedule for updates and no pressure to keep up with anything — just the opportunity to hear from me when there's something new to share.

And to everyone who has trained with me, supported Piggy Pole or been part of this journey in any way, thank you.

I'm incredibly proud of what we've built together, and I'm grateful for all the wonderful memories and connections that have come from it. 🥹🫶❤️

Piggy Pole isn't disappearing.

It's evolving. ✨🐷✨

With love,

Sarah xXx