A Career in Education

Gila's professional career began in primary education, where she worked as a teacher before moving into roles focused more specifically on physical education and development.

Working with children, teachers and families gave her an early interest in how people learn and develop, particularly the difference between simply being shown something and developing the confidence and capability to do it for themselves.

Her work increasingly focused on physical development and physical literacy, exploring how movement skills develop through experience, practice, encouragement and appropriate challenge. This eventually led Gila to complete a Postgraduate Certificate in Physical Literacy and to work more widely in education and training.

These experiences established an idea that has continued to influence her work: learning is a process of development, not simply the acquisition of knowledge.

Learning Through Movement

As Gila's work in physical education and physical literacy developed, so did her interest in the way people acquire movement skills and how confidence and capability develop through practice.

She extended her own education through postgraduate study in Physical Literacy and qualified as a Level 4 Pilates Teacher, bringing together her background in education with many years of practical movement teaching.

Working with both children and adults reinforced something she had seen throughout education: knowing what to do is very different from being able to do it. Developing a skill takes time, repetition and opportunities to practice, receive feedback, make adjustments and try again.

This increasingly shaped the way Gila thought about learning more broadly. Good education isn't simply about explaining something well. It needs to create opportunities for the learner to actively use what they are learning and progressively develop greater capability for themselves.

From Teaching Children to Teaching Adults

Over time, Gila's work expanded from education with children and teachers into teaching adults through Pilates, movement education, professional training and public speaking.

She has delivered training and presentations in the UK and internationally, including at Physical Literacy conferences, sharing practical approaches to movement, physical literacy and lifelong physical development.

Her interest in helping adults make learning practical and achievable also led her to write Enjoy Moving and Feel Fabulous, which brought together movement, Pilates and everyday habits in a way designed to help people put ideas into practice rather than simply understand them.

Although the settings and audiences changed, the educational challenge remained remarkably similar: how do you take something someone understands in principle and help them actually use it, practice it and make it part of what they do?

Bringing an Educator's Perspective to Osteopathy

As Gila became increasingly involved in developing educational resources alongside Jamie, she began to recognise that many of the questions she had encountered throughout her own career were just as relevant to postgraduate osteopathic education.

How do you move beyond simply presenting information? How do you help someone apply what they have learned? How do you structure opportunities to practice, reflect and receive feedback? And how do you support development over time rather than expecting change simply because someone has completed a course?

Working together, Jamie and Gila began to combine their different perspectives. Jamie brought his experience as an osteopath and osteopathic educator, while Gila brought her background in education, learning and the development of practical skills.

This collaboration has increasingly shaped the way The LXO approaches postgraduate education, with an emphasis not simply on what osteopaths learn, but on how that learning becomes part of what they actually do in clinical practice.

Developing The LXO Together

As The LXO has developed, so has Gila's role in shaping its educational approach.

Working alongside Jamie, she helps turn clinical knowledge and osteopathic teaching into structured learning experiences that encourage osteopaths to do something with what they are learning. This includes thinking about how subjects are broken down and built back together, how learning progresses over time and how reflection, deliberate practice, feedback and application can be incorporated into postgraduate education.

This has become particularly important in the development of The LXO Osteopath Clinical Development Pathway, where Jamie and Gila have worked together to create a progressive learning experience that goes beyond completing lessons or collecting more information.

The Pathway reflects many of the educational principles that have run throughout Gila's career: development takes time, knowledge needs to be applied and meaningful learning should ultimately change what someone is able to do.