Suna Pilates + Wellbeing - Takapuna Studio

Why Suna?

Discover life-changing fitness and wellbeing with our unique combination of low and high intensity Pilates-based classes and holistic wellness! Prioritise your wellbeing and enjoy a stronger, more vibrant, energised and balanced you. You’ll feel incredible, look fantastic, and live well longer and stronger.

Suna Pilates Classes
Our exercise is so much more than Pilates. Over 20+ years, we’ve evolved Pilates to deliver faster, whole body fitness transformations. With a blend of interval training, Pilates postural principals and functional fitness we’ll help you create a stronger, leaner body that looks great, feels amazing, and ages well.

Suna offers 100+ Pilates workouts every week, with limited numbers and highly trained instructors who ensure that you get extensive personal direction to help you smash your fitness goals. Posture is key to effective exercise, and our focus on mind-body connection means you’ll leave workouts refreshed and energised. Work the body - Free the mind!

Suna Wellbeing

One size doesn’t fit all in terms of exercise and nutrition. Qualified Suna staff combine insights from kinesiology and metabolic typing to create completely personalised programmes that work for each individual.  With a tailored blend of nutrition, exercise and kinesiology we can help you change old habits - and feel calm, balanced, and vibrantly alive.

Suna Instructor Training

Suna Pilates ® Instructor Training  is considered the best and most comprehensive training available. We have a unique teaching method and a proven track record of successful graduate trainers. 

Suna Pilates Instructors Provide Expert Guidance

We believe our trainers are the best qualified and most experienced Pilates instructors in New Zealand, because we choose to train them in Suna-style Pilates from the onset, and our education and investment in our trainers never stops. 

Our trainers are knowledgeable about all studio equipment and understand how to assist each client to work at their optimum level within the group and safely rehabilitate any issues. All our instructors continue developing their skills with professional education throughout the year. We are proud of our trainers both as amazing human beings and exceptional teachers of strength, wellness and health. They teach, train, educate, motivate and care!        

Suna Pilates Workouts are High-Energy Low-Impact Workouts for Everyone! 

There’s a common misconception that Pilates is similar to yoga or that Pilates is just stretching – it's not! We’ve had All Blacks tell us that Suna is the hardest workout they’ve ever done. Suna Pilates is high energy and really challenging exercise – but it’s kind to your body. Every class we run is multilevel as, with our small class sizes and high level of personal attention, each workout can be tailored to fit your fitness level and accommodate any health issues.

Correct posture is essential to achieve excellent results, so our Pilates instructors correct and adjust your posture throughout each workout. Great posture makes you feel good, and improves your body’s function, and your fitness - really quickly. We work people smarter, rather than harder. 

We always wanted to offer more than other Pilates studios and provide truly fantastic Pilates classes. Developed over 20 years, our Pilates is based on fitness not physio. We’ve taken the original basis of Joseph Pilates’ exercise and incorporated learnings from bio-mechanical and anatomical research, as well as years of hands on development in the studio. We use the best Pilates Reformers and incorporate Pilates equipment into our workouts.

We believe that we are the clear leader in the Pilates field - with a new generation of Pilates. Suna Pilates is different and better because it includes:

  • updated Pilates exercises to include learnings in functional anatomy from the last 100 years and improved postural training
  • muscular sequencing training, to ensure we get the correct muscles to work for each Pilates movement we do
  • dynamic interval training - improves all over health and heart health
  • diaphragmatic breathing - improves oxygen saturation for increased energy
  • seasonal training - movements fit the seasonal changes in our bodies to restore better seasonal and circadian rhythms
  • "neurobic" training - mind body connection, exercise for brain and body to keep both young
  • metabolic training - increasing and maintaining metabolic rate, better for weight loss and optimizing all body systems - from immune function to digestion, through a combination of the above
  • meditation/being present to clear head space and de-stress

We’ve tailored the price of our classes to encourage you to come as many times a week as you can. Memberships start from just $16.00 per week, similar to many gym memberships, yet we provide fully directed and supervised equipment based Pilates classes and top quality Pilates Reformers.

The Suna Pilates Story

Our History

The Suna Story began almost accidentally over 20 years ago. Susie Turner (Cleland) never intended to start a Pilates studio – she actually started her formal training in wellbeing as a yoga teacher, hoping to fix the pain that had resulted from numerous snowboarding injuries.  

While Susie enjoyed yoga it didn’t resolve her pain, and then a friend suggested she try Pilates. Fixing her posture with Pilates literally changed her life by making her pain free, and started her on a lifelong wellbeing journey focused on helping others do what was right and good for their bodies. Susie’s initial training with Stott Pilates was followed up by multi-discipline courses all over the world, eventually leading to the founding of Suna Pilates in 2000.

After over two decades of operating Suna Pilates, Susie wanted to explore other areas of personal development and sought new owners to bring fresh energy to the studio. She found them in Jim and Norie Bregman, who purchased the studio in August 2023.

  Jim and Norie are originally from the States and the legal/corporate world; however, over the years they have lived in dozens of different places and countries and have been involved in several diverse businesses and ventures. The one common thread in their lives is a passion for health and fitness. Norie has been a life-long dancer (ballet) and managed a ballet studio for three years. Jim is a keen sailor and outdoorsman. He played squash for decades and managed a squash club for five years, and in the past three years he has taken up surfing. Jim and Norie are very excited to combine their love of fitness and health with their business experience in the running of Suna Pilates.

Our Philosophy

Suna Pilates is a unique form of exercise, which has evolved over 20 plus years. The Suna method is Pilates-based, with all the traditional focus on correct posture and breathing, but it is enriched with the latest anatomical and biomechanical research, plus an additional cardio focus through high intensity low impact training (HIIT) for cardiac health, as well as functional fitness and suspension training. 

Suna Pilates is designed to create long lean muscles and a healthy flexible well-balanced body with a robust heart and lungs – to enable you to live well, longer and stronger!

But what is really important about Suna is that everyone who works here has come to Suna in one way or another to fix themselves – from the inside out. For all of us it’s not just a job, it’s a way of being.  We are working on ourselves as well as our customers every day and, after over 20 years in business and over 20 years of helping people, we know what works and what doesn’t. We know there are no ‘silver bullets’ and ‘quick fixes’ in wellbeing. We know that changing and correcting posture can change everything and that small lifestyle changes can add up to really big and sustainable improvements in wellbeing.

We believe that we aren’t just teachers and trainers ensuring you leave your workout challenged and feeling great, but that we are educators empowering you to do what is right for your body in order to feel better, live better and look better. We are not into the traditional exercise model of over exercising and under eating! For you, Suna Pilates might be a workout – for us it’s an opportunity to teach you great posture, correct breathing, and functional fitness that you can carry into your everyday life.