The Mi&Lu Team
“You are only as strong as your weakest link”
Meet The Team
We are best friends and colleagues and we teach Pilates/Functional Movement/MELT retreats and workshops. Movement is something we are very passionate about and understand really well. Take advantage of this unique opportunity to work with two master teachers at the same time!
Lucero Barry teaches both the classical Pilates Method of exercise and the MELT Method of self-care. In 2000, Lucero completed a rigorous certification program with Romana Kryzanowska, a pupil of Joseph Pilates himself, and with master-teacher Bob Liekens. Since 2012, Lucero has become an advanced level MELT Method instructor by Sue Hitzmann, the Method's creator.
Lucero received a B.F.A. in dance from the Boston Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, with an emphasis on choreography and teaching. After graduation, she moved to New York City where she spent eight years studying and teaching dance. She taught dance at The Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Floating Hospital, and Homes for The Homeless, among other places. Throughout the years she took many workshops with Jean-Claude West, a leading kinesiologist who shifted a paradigm by combining human bio-mechanics with the Pilates Method.
As cross-training, Lucero has run marathons, rides her bike everywhere, takes long fast walks, studies functional movement with Michele Oppliger, Dr. Craig Liebenson, Beth Lewis and practices yoga. She is a dedicated practitioner in meditation and completed a two-year mindfulness program run by Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Long meditation retreats heal her heart. All of these practices influence her teaching.
Michèle Oppliger was a professional modern dancer in New York City for over two decades. After her dancing career ended, she took her love and experience of movement and became a certified Pilates and MELT teacher. She studied with Karen Carlson in Philadelphia and got her Pilates certification in 2002. That same year, she also got her MELT certification from MELT creator Sue Hitzman. She was among the first teachers getting certified in the MELT Method. For 20 years, she maintained a private practice in New York City and 9 years ago she started teaching Upstate NY where she now lives. Since the pandemic, she has been teaching via Zoom, which offers her students the opportunity to take class wherever they are. They don’t have to miss a class because the are away. It has also opened the possibility for students from far away to join Michèle’s classes: East Coast, West Coast, Canada, Europe, Israel. She is constantly evolving her practice with new information and has added other modalities to her teaching. In the last 6 years she has taken numerous workshops with Dr. Craig Liebenson from L.A. incorporating functional movement in her teaching with great results. She has studied with Phase Six and and is now studying with Beth Lewis.
Her students are getting stronger, more resilient and are functioning better in their daily lives with the combination of Pilates, MELT and strength training.
“There is not much we have control over these days, but our fitness level is one area we have the ability to change.”
