About Union Pilates
Building a community that supports you beyond the mat.
Established 2013
Union Pilates is a classical Pilates studio in Seattle's Eastlake neighborhood, founded by owner and instructor Ashley Newman.
Union Pilates was founded on a simple conviction: that Pilates, taught with real fidelity to the classical method, is one of the most effective tools there is for feeling stronger, more connected, and more at home in your body.
Ashley opened Union in 2013 with a clear intention: to build a studio where the classical method was taught without compromise. Small class sizes. High-quality, personalized instruction. Authentic Gratz equipment. And a community worth showing up for.
More than a decade later, that vision still shapes everything about how Union operates. From our team, our training, our equipment, and how we show up for our clients every day.
What Makes Us Different
The Classical Method
We teach Pilates as Joseph Pilates developed it: the full-body system, prioritizing each client's foundational needs, imparting the philosophy of movement he spent a lifetime refining. We don't blend methods or modify the work into something more palatable. We believe in teaching the original system.
Authentic Gratz Equipment
Our studio is fully outfitted with Gratz Pilates apparatus, the equipment Joseph Pilates himself originally designed, still manufactured to the same specifications. It's built to move the way the method requires, and the difference is felt in the work.
Intentionally Small
Private sessions, duet sessions, and tower classes of six students or fewer. Small settings mean your instructor can see you, adjust you, and build a practice around your specific body, not a general program.
Comprehensively Trained Instructors
Every Union instructor has completed a classical Pilates certification requiring a minimum of 700 apprenticeship hours and 60 hours of classroom education, with years of real teaching experience and a commitment to continuing our education. Together, our team brings more than 38 years of Pilates instruction.
We hold ourselves to high standards that we constantly strive to lift, as we tell our clients: there is always room for growth and improvement, that applies to us too.
Authenticity
Integrity
Community
Quality
Authenticity Integrity Community Quality
Values Important To Us
Union’s mission is to serve its clients and teachers by upholding standards and values that guide our work and trajectory. We believe by holding to these standards we are able to serve our community a lasting impact on our community both in Seattle, but also in the larger Pilates community and world.
Union is committed to cultivating an environment and community that is inclusive of all people regardless of their shape, size, color, gender, orientation, background or other differences.
Union acknowledges that we exist on the unceded ancestral lands of the Coast Salish and Duwamish Indigenous people. We pay our respects to the Indigenous elders past, present, and emerging, and recognize the enduring presence of the Duwamish, Suquamish, Muckleshoot, and Snoqualmie and other local Indigenous tribes.
Meet Our Seattle-Based Team
Ashley Newman
OWNER & LEAD INSTRUCTOR
Cortado in hand, always choosing Short Spinal Massage on the reformer, currently listening to KEXP Seattle, & originally from Annapolis, Maryland.
Ashley founded Union Pilates in 2013 after training extensively in the classical Pilates method. She is a comprehensively certified classical Pilates instructor and has spent nearly two decades teaching students of all levels, backgrounds, and body types in Seattle. Her teaching is precise, perceptive, and deeply rooted in the original Pilates system.
Elise Johnson
INSTRUCTOR
Fueled by homemade coffee ice cream, forever working on and loving the Swan, happiest on the Spine Corrector, and counting down to summers filled with swimming, camping, and live music.
Elise's path to Pilates began with a single class in San Francisco in 2019 that she describes as unlike any movement instruction she'd experienced before. That session planted a seed that led her to leave Martha's Vineyard, move across the country, and enroll in the Metropolitan Authentic Training program under master teacher Dorothee Van De Walle at Metropolitan Pilates in Seattle, earning her comprehensive M.A.T. Pilates Equipment and Mat Certification in 2021. Her teaching is precise and thorough, and she focuses on helping clients build real autonomy in their practice, both in the studio and on their own.
Crystal Brooks
INSTRUCTOR
Inseparable from my Lhasa Apso LouLou, you'll find me enjoying centering on the Ped-O-Pull and when I'm not I'm not teaching Pilates, I'm wandering art museums or dreaming about my next trip back to southern Italy.
Crystal came to Pilates in 2001 as a practice body for a friend pursuing her certification, and was immediately hooked by the focus, precision, and full-body demand of the work. She went on to earn her mat certification through Power Pilates in New York City in 2005, followed by her comprehensive apparatus certification through Core Pilates in 2011. With over 20 years of teaching experience, Crystal brings a deep belief in meeting each student exactly where they are, whether they're recovering from injury, building strength, or simply looking to reconnect with their body.
Whether you're brand new to Pilates or coming back to the method with fresh eyes, Union Pilates is a place to build something real.
