Meet the Instructors
Miren Armenta, Owner & Instructor
Miren Armenta is the owner of Pilates SYV and a certified Pilates instructor with a lifelong passion for movement. With four decades of ballet experience, she brings a deep understanding of movement, alignment, strength, and body awareness to her teaching.
Miren completed comprehensive Pilates teacher training covering the full Pilates apparatus—including mat, reformer, tower, Cadillac, chair, arcs, and barrels—and has continued to expand her education through advanced training, including study at the Swiss Pilates Institute in France.
Her teaching philosophy centers on helping clients better understand and connect with their bodies while building strength, balance, mobility, and control. She is especially passionate about the role Pilates can play in healthy aging and believes that intelligent, challenging movement can help people feel stronger and more capable at every stage of life.
Miren’s classes are personal, attentive, and encouraging. She is a hands-on instructor who provides plenty of verbal cueing and individual guidance, helping clients get more out of each movement. While her teaching is grounded in the principles of traditional Pilates, she loves adding contemporary movement and strength-building elements to keep classes challenging, engaging, and fun.
A Santa Ynez Valley resident since 1984, Miren has deep roots in the community she calls home. Opening Pilates SYV is the realization of a longtime dream: creating a welcoming, beautiful studio where people can move, get stronger, challenge themselves, and feel genuinely connected to their bodies and their community.
Mila Gray, Instructor
Originally from Los Olivos, Molly Gray has been a Pilates instructor since 2023. She grew up dancing at the Los Olivos Dance Gallery, and went on to study dance at UC Irvine. It was there that she first started practicing Pilates as a form of cross training, and she quickly fell in love with the rehabilitative elements of the practice and its emphasis on functional movement. After college Molly moved to New York City to pursue a dance career, and it was there that she decided to become a Pilates instructor to help people build healthier relationships with their bodies. She attended Kinected at the Kane School under the direction of Kelly Kane and Matt McCulloch in Manhattan.
As an instructor, Molly focuses on helping clients build strength through slow and sustained exercises that promote functionality and bodily awareness. Her classes are a blend of mindful movement and endurance exercises, designed with the intention to help people live the longest, fullest, and most independent lives possible.
Mindy Horowitz, Instructor
For over 50 years Mindy Horwitz has performed, choreographed and taught nationally and internationally in ballet, modern, jazz and theatre techniques. After rehabilitating from multiple injuries, she discovered the benefit of Pilates. She became a certified instructor in 1996 through Long Beach Dance Conditioning and has since continued her education with accreditations in the Pink Ribbon Breast Cancer Program, Pilates for Golf, Pilates for Equestrians and McEntire Neuro-movement. In 2002, Mindy became a certified level I GYROTONIC instructor. She has since become a level II instructor specializing in hip/knee rehabilitation, spinal mobility and other modalities. Mindy strives to meet her clients’ needs for developing strength, balance and mobility.
Her years of experience in the world of movement have given her a trained eye for analyzing the body and the practical knowledge for helping her clients achieve their Goals. Mindy owned Simpatico Pilates in Montecito, California from 2010 through 2023. She and her family moved to Santa Ynez in July 2024 to build a family compound.
The compound now consists of 5 adults, 2 young children, 4 dogs and 12 chickens. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling, dabbling in the arts and listening to classical music.
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