Jillian Hessel is a Pilates instructor who has developed several Gaiam Pilates videos as well as her very own Dance Barre technique. She is on the faculty of the California Institute of the Arts and has worked with numerous celebrities including Cher, Holly Hunter and Paul Reiser. Jillian is certified as a fitness trainer through the American Council on Exercise (A.C.E.), the American College of Sports Medicine (A.C.S.M.), and UCLA Extension.

Jillian studied at George Balanchine's School of American Ballet and on full scholarship at New York City's Harkness House. For four years, she danced in Europe with the Balanchine-affiliated Geneva Ballet in Switzerland and with the Frankfurt Ballet in Germany. Upon her return to the U.S., she attended New York University, where she was introduced to modern dance and went on to perform with Ballet Hispanico of New York, Boston's Dinosaur Dance Company and Dance Miami.

When a serious back injury sidelined her from performing in 1981, a colleague encouraged Jillian to study with Kathy Grant, a New York-based movement coach who taught the Pilates method. Jillian quickly recognized the goals of this therapeutic body conditioning system as full body control, an extremely high degree of abdominal strength, greater range of motion in all movements and, most significantly, the combined power of the body and mind. Within months, Jillian was apprenticing at the Carola Trier Studio, where she trained to teach Pilates' exercises.

“I began to develop my own teaching style, a synthesis of my knowledge from years of dance training, yoga classes and my work with Kathy and Carola, two master teachers trained by (Joseph) Pilates himself,” Jillian says.

Jillian moved to Los Angeles in 1986, teaching Pilates at the Ron Fletcher Studio for Body Conchology, and then founding her own personal training studio, The Well-Tempered Workout. Today, Jillian oversees her staff of handpicked, highly skilled trainers who work in-studio and make house calls in the greater Los Angeles area.