Interview

From Adelaide to Barcelona

Natalia Laing and Mandy Kellor. Friday afternoons on El Punt Avui TV, Nicole chats with an English-speaking expat. Here she interviews two Australians, Mandy and Natalia.
You're my first Aus­tralian guests, though Barcelona is now your home. How did you ar­rive here?
Mandy: Well, I came here first when I was 27, and I just had this in­cred­i­ble de­sire that I needed to come to Barcelona. I got on a tour from Aus­tralia and then took a bus in Venice and de­cided to make my way here and met this lady in Milan who got on the bus. And after about half an hour she came up to me and said “where are you going?” in Span­ish and I said “I don't speak Span­ish” and she said in Eng­lish “where are you going?” and I said “to Barcelona”. So we be­came sort of sis­ters on the trip here and ar­rived here. She was study­ing to be a con­cert pi­anist and she took me back to her flat and I slept under her grand piano for three weeks while I was here and we're still very good friends. Then I had to go back to Aus­tralia and I promised my­self that I'd come back here when I was forty, and that's what I did. I knew in­side of me that I had to live here; my soul lives here. For me, this is home. I love Aus­tralia and I have two chil­dren there, and I was study­ing my ca­reer as a builder, but my heart lived here.
Na­talia: I fell madly in love with Mandy and fol­lowed her here, ba­si­cally.
Had you been to Barcelona be­fore?
N: No. But Mandy said “I'm going to Barcelona, do you want to come?” and I said yes. And that was it. I ab­solutely love it; this is my home now. It was a mas­sive jump, but in­cred­i­bly ex­cit­ing, and we came here with eight suit­cases and from the mo­ment we ar­rived doors just started open­ing up for us. It just fit.
How long have both of you been here in Barcelona?
M.: Ten years in Oc­to­ber. And I came here think­ing I was going to build. Ac­tu­ally, I came here six months be­fore we moved and set up my build­ing com­pany. Two weeks after we got here we had a meet­ing but we walked out of it and I said to Na­talia “we are going to start a pi­lates stu­dio”.
N: The orig­i­nal plan was that I was going to come over and dance, be­cause I was a pro­fes­sional dancer, and Mandy would open the build­ing com­pany. About three months into the plan I said to Mandy “I can't give up pi­lates, I don't think I can live with­out pi­lates, maybe we should have a pi­lates stu­dio”. I knew we were going to do that.
M: So four months after we got here that's what we did.
N: Our first stu­dio was in Enric Grana­dos. Now we've been liv­ing there for over 10 years and I don't re­ally want to live any­where else.
You (Mandy) said that some­thing was miss­ing when you came here.
M: Aus­tralia is quite ad­vanced in holis­tic and com­ple­men­tary health, and the UK is very sim­i­lar as well. But we re­alised that we couldn't find it here.
How did you know it was going to work?
M: We knew that we had a good stu­dio to start with, we had enough clients com­ing who use the ser­vices, and I com­pletely changed ca­reer so I had to do my ap­pren­tice­ship in the in­dus­try. It didn't just hap­pen overnight; it's been nine years now.
Your Stu­dio is called Stu­dio Aus­tralia Barcelona. Is pi­lates still the main focus?
N: Pi­lates is def­i­nitely the core of the cen­tre. We have 12 prac­tices; we're multi-skilled.
What are the 12 prac­tices that you have?
M: We do phys­i­cal ther­apy, os­teopa­thy, and so on. Na­talia spe­cialises in dis­co­ni­a­tion.
N: My sis­ter is a pi­lates in­struc­tor, too. She cre­ated the first pi­lates stu­dio in Ade­laide and I started teach­ing under her as an ap­pren­tice. We came up with a par­tic­u­lar tech­nique that I can pretty much guar­an­tee would make you pain free within one or two ses­sions. And this wasn't some­thing that I learnt from the pi­lates school, this is some­thing that my sis­ter and I de­signed to­gether. I just love that feel­ing that I can help some­one quickly, es­pe­cially when you get peo­ple com­ing to you say­ing “I've been in pain for two years; noth­ing helps”, and I love that feel­ing when at the end of the class they feel bet­ter and they go “wow, that was magic”. It's pi­lates, but it's my pi­lates method.
That's amaz­ing.
M: We also have the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion side of the cen­tre. We have an amaz­ing mas­sage ther­a­pist , also raike, acupunc­ture, well­ness mas­sage, inner health, colon hy­drother­apy, diet & nu­tri­tion, detox pro­grammes, and the pi­lates side.
You men­tioned detox. Let's move to your lat­est pro­ject.
M & N: We found peo­ple here didn't un­der­stand what detox was. It's a foun­da­tion about how you eat. For us it's was all just about food. So I've rewrit­ten a book called The Detox Jour­ney, and the idea is to help peo­ple who've never detoxed be­fore, who want to change their lifestyle and their habits. We've cre­ated a re­ally beau­ti­ful menu, so it's learn­ing all about your body and its bal­ance.
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