"Beautiful People Under 35": Shondelle and Ron Miles...Empowering Others in Mind...Body...Spirit!"

When you get to know them, you know they are together not by happenstance but by a greater force at work. Only Spirit could have aligned their life’s plans and the overall direction they are taking together as a couple, fulfilling both their individual and joint goals, and with such sure steps.


Individually, each is a force to be reckoned with and unstoppable in his and her own right. As a team, their merged energy creates dynamism and an illumination that is blazing a trail that benefits so many others.

Shondelle is shining the light of empowerment for many in her personal training and fitness gym. Ron is charting his course through the path of Education. What’s amazing is that this trailblazing couple still is under 35. They both will celebrate that age this year.

Shondelle’s full awakening to Spirit happened out of the blue, when it seemed she just woke up one day in her early 30s and knew that she was not walking alone. That’s when she became fully conscious of the constant Presence of a shadow greater than her own.


Ron, it seems to all who know him, was born an “old soul.” Even as a boy, he had a wisdom within him that led him to do and be greater things than his age suggested he could.

As one of two children, Ron did not have an easy beginning. He was the product of a single mom who was overwhelmed by her responsibilities. That didn’t stop her, though, from seeking through her friends and relatives the best for her boy and girl, slightly older than Ron.

The fact that Ron and his sister, Rhonda, turned out so well is a testament to their mother’s love. When she died at the relatively young age of 46 in 2001, she died with the contentment of knowing that the goals she may not have accomplished for herself in her lifetime, she’d ensured both her kids would in theirs.

Shondelle is the eldest of three children; Saudia, follows her, then Steven, the youngest. As the eldest child, Shondelle could have been crippled by the divorce of her parents when she was still attending high school. Instead, she saw the strength of Spirit displayed by her mom, suddenly single, and made that strength and courage an example to follow, not to use for despair.


There they came: one from a single-home environment; one from a broken home. They met at Columbia University, New York City, where each attended undergraduate school. They became fast friends, and only friends, for many years, until they both graduated in 1996 and went their separate ways.


As Spirit would have it, though, this was not the ending that was to be.


Upon graduating with his degree in Spanish Literature and Language, Ron returned to Oakland, Calif., where he’d grown up. Since in addition to English and Spanish, he also was fluent in Italian and Portuguese, he began working for a translation company in San Francisco. Upon obtaining her Pre-Med and Psychology degree, Shondelle, who grew up in Silver Spring & Hyattsville, MD, was doing social work in New York City. She was not enjoying the work and also realized then that long term, she did not want to work for others. Yet, she did not know what she wanted to do.

She did not want to return home, because she wanted to show her mother that she’d developed the independence and strength of Spirit she’d always been taught. It was then that Ron invited Shondelle out to Oakland, as a friend, to visit. She accepted Ron’s invitation.

The rest became history.


It was in Oakland, Calif., that Shondelle fully developed her Physical Fitness training skills, working at 24-Hour Fitness, Oakland, which she describes as the “best training I ever could have had.”


Shondelle credits 24-Hour Fitness’ caring about her as an employee, enabling her to receive her certifications, and providing her with a certain level of stability and the solid foundation to make Physical Fitness training her career goal.

Granted, her passion for the field began years before that. It could have started when as a young girl, she saw her father, Percival, a fitness enthusiast, doing his daily work out. But she thinks the real stirrings came when she began working at the college gym at Columbia.

While working at the gym as a receptionist, she said she began to “play around” with the weights and other equipment. She began to like it. Then the idea began to germinate in her mind that she could do Personal Training as a business endeavor.

At Columbia, she developed her own following of students who paid her a “small” fee for personal training, even before the field was truly popular. She began to attract so many students that the college gym administrators got a wind of it. Realizing the demand for this type of training, the university decided that they would implement their own Personal Training department. She should have been out of a job, except that even then, her clients were loyal to her and continued to follow her for training during her off hours at the gym.

The seed was planted.

Shondelle and Ron moved to the greater Ft. Lauderdale area in 2000, because “we vacationed there and realized that this was WHO we were: the tropical weather and the overall lifestyle were US!”

Shondelle began to work at the local gym of a major national fitness chain, but she soon perceived that the business was not about the clients but “about the profits and how we, as personal fitness trainers, should be motivated to act with them. This concerned me to no end,” she says.

At that gym, though, she saw the beginnings of the potential for making a successful business. She personal trained several people as an independent trainer, until the chain went to an employee-based system for all Personal Training. Moving to another gym as an independent soon after that, she also experienced the same fate. This was in late 2003, and she was pregnant with her son, Jasai. By then, too, she began to lose all interest in working for others.


She’d completed her studies and had obtained a master’s degree in Sports Medicine from the University of Miami. Ron, during this time, was a highly successful southeast regional sales manager for Prentice Hall, a textbook publisher. He was earning a significant enough income, and he encouraged Shondelle to step out and try to do the Physical Fitness training business on her own.


They set up the first gym in their garage at home: The Fitness Playground. It was approximately 600 square feet. From there, the business began to grow and grow.

Meanwhile, as Shondelle’s business was growing, Ron began to ask himself some tough questions. In 2004, his son, Jasai, was born. He began to hate the weekends, the many, many weekends, when he had to fly to another city in order to meet with another school about new textbooks.



In 2005, he had his own spiritual awakening. “I declared that my family and personal fulfillment were the only priorities in my life,” he says. “In a seamless act of liberation, I decided to trade in my successful traveling sales manager career to spend quality time with the greatest gifts life has yet to offer me...a loving relationship with my wife and child (ren).”

He left educational publishing in 2006, but the time he’d spent there was not for naught. "It had opened my eyes to the true, abysmal state of education in the United States. What I witnessed ignited an urgent desire in my Spirit to get involved on the front lines and to join in the fight to find relevant and effective solutions.

“The Ivy Leaguer in me came alive, and I felt compelled to learn more, to dig beneath the surface to better comprehend and improve the function of education in the 21st Century."



He began to work at a local private school and began his work towards a master’s degree in International and Intercultural Education at Florida International University and also worked towards attaining a graduate certificate specializing in Africa-New World Studies (Africana Studies).


Since that time, Ron has earned his degree and certification and has worked in the private school sector with gifted and talented students, special needs students, and English language learners ranging from grades Pre-K3 through 12th grade. He also has taught a variety of subjects including Spanish, World History and Multicultural Dance. This fall, he will begin a doctoral program in Curriculum and Instruction, specializing in Language, Literacy and Culture.

“This is an exciting time to be in higher education,” he says. “The 19th century model of education that we currently follow in the United States is outdated and has no place in the 21st century. Through my PhD research, I intend to answer critical questions that assert my theories about which direction educational leaders need to take American education.”

Ron’s personal philosophy is “NONE of us is stronger than ALL of us.”





He and Shondelle travel often to their second home in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (This is where they got engaged.) Because of his language skills, Ron always has been a world traveler and now considers himself a resident of Florida but a “citizen of the world.”

Today, the Miles’ Personal Training business, Synergize!, (http://synergizeweightloss.com), is housed in a 6,000-square-foot facility in Hollywood, Florida. It has a current membership of a few hundred people and employs six personal trainers and three other part-time workers. Voted the “Best Place to Work out in Hollywood, Florida” for three consecutive years, Synergize !, offers semi-private training classes, boot camp and group classes that include Spinning, *Cardio Dance, Kickboxing, Mat Pilates and Yoga. Shondelle states that since 2004 when she had her first gym, she must have trained some 800 people.

“It is a great sense of accomplishment to know that you were involved in getting someone to feel better about himself,”she says. “I have had one client who lost 90 pounds and has kept it off for more than five years. We offer our clients much more than a weight loss and exercise program. We offer them a new way of looking at life and doing life for successful results."

Shondelle gives all the glory for the success to Spirit.

“I feel so aligned to Spirit that sometimes I feel unstoppable because of the connection. Once I align with my Spirit, I know I can fulfill any goal, because I know I am not walking alone.

“Even when I’m in my human moments, and feel fear, I act in spite of that fear, anyway. I feel the fear and keep acting anyway...because I know it’s all going to be okay.”

Despite his involvement in Education, Ron has not missed on sharing Shondelle’s passion for fitness. He serves Synergize! as a Group Fitness Instructor and Manager. Drawing on his love of dance, he created a group fitness exercise class that explores traditional dance movements from the Caribbean and Latin American carnival celebrations. *Cardio P.A. R. A. D.E (Pan- African Rhythms and Danceable Exercises) fuses standard aerobic movements set to Soca, Samba, Merengue, Salsa, Konpa and Hip Hop music.

He says, “This is real life synergy in its best form as Shondelle and I continually work to combine our personal strengths and professional interests! What a blessing!”

Shondelle and Ron attend Ft. Lauderdale-based, Universal Truth Center, led by Rev. Dr. Mary Pumpkin. In April 2008, the couple welcomed their second child, a girl, Senaya.



Beautiful young people each realizing their dreams by following the guidance of Spirit.

Namaste’,

Che’

NOTE: Shondelle is my niece, daughter of my sister, Merlyn Vyfhuis Solomon. Ron is the nephew of my heart. I also knew and loved his mom, Kathy Miles.
In 2006, Shondelle published, “The Ultimate Fat Loss Guide: 18 Strategies for Blasting Away Stubborn Body Fat.” This is available for purchase through her Website: http://www.synergizeweightloss.com.