Menlo Park resident Lisa Burnett passes away at age 73

This post comes from the heart as Lisa Burnett, who passed away on January 16 at the age of 73 after a long battle against sarcoma, was not only my long time Pilates teacher but a friend. So consider this my tribute to her.

What strikes me most is the tremendous legacy she leaves behind — a community of women and men bound by her warm and welcoming personality — along with some serious instruction! A community that cared about each other and who were there for each other.

Lisa, who grew up in Salt Lake City, was a dancer, shiatsu practitioner, and equestrian, along with being a wife, mother and Pilates teacher. If you can’t quite connect the dots, she did.

“Teaching is the thread that runs through the dancing/shiatsu/Pilates/riding,” she told me some years ago. “They all relate and overlap with each other. It’s wonderful!”

It began with dancing. Intrigued with classes her Stanford college roommate was taking, she took classes locally in both ballet — “it was so hard and my body was not ideal for it but I loved it so much I kept at it,” she recalled — and modern dance. She also got a Masters in Dance Education from Stanford and some years later an MA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Moving back to the Bay Area, she took over the teaching duties at the dance studio, Zohar, in Palo Alto. “I started with three students and built up a wonderful group of dancers.”

The next discipline she added to her repertoire was shiatsu. “The dancing and the shiatsu went together well. It gave me a broader way to look at dancers and clients.”

Along the way came Pilates. “A dancer friend of mine introduced me. What I liked about it was that it was similar to dance in the way one transforms ideas into movement,” she explained.

She brought creativity to her Pilates instruction. Yes, she had a home studio but during the warm weather months when she was teaching at Stanford, classes were moved outdoors, most notably on a grassy area adjacent to the horse barn — my personal favorite.

Which brings us to Lisa’s equestrian pursuits. “I loved horses as a kid,” she told me. “When I took my first lesson at age 6, my mom said that when I was 12 she’d get me a horse, thinking I would forget about it! When I was 12, I went down to the barn with friends who had just gotten a horse and met Geyser, a retired Saddlebred. I couldn’t believe it, but my parents bought him for me!

“I learned, showed, and loved him, but went off to college and didn’t ride for a very long time. Then my son Wyatt became interested as a little guy. The smell of the horses and the sawdust brought back many memories. I couldn’t help myself and started riding again.”

Lisa is survived by her husband Larry Cofer and son Wyatt Burnett as well as brothers David Burnett and Tom Burnett. A memorial gathering will be held Saturday, April 4, from 2:00 to 4:00 pm at Cubberley Theatre (4120 Middlefield Rd., Palo Alto.

In memory of Lisa, please consider making a donation to Stanford Sarcoma Research. Under “Other”, type “The Dr. Anusha Kalbasi Sarcoma Research Fun” or “The Dr. Nam Q Bui Sarcoma Research Fund.”

Top photo shows Lisa and pony Stanley at Sonoma Horse Show in 2015; second photo is from a Pilates class in 2011. Both (c) InMenlo 2026