No one of us individually “owns” any information.The information is out there already. It just depends on when you are ready to access it.
And when you do and you create a desire to pass that information on, you become a teacher.As a teacher yourself, you must have someone YOU are learning from and the cycle continues. Your teacher is accessing information on a different level from you and so is your student. BUT the information itself remains the same.There are no new exercises. There is only new choreography. What is original is the intention you have behind the exercise and how you apply the information you have learned to the body you are teaching. You develop your own style and philosophy, BUT the information remains the same.
When you design a course or teach a workshop or write a blog, all you are doing is putting your own ideas and personality into it and the presentation may be different from someone elses’ but the basic, organic, authentic information is as old as time itself. Only our PERCEPTION of it changes.
In that respect when you see words on someone else’s website, blog, or course description that came directly from your own website,blog and course description, know that what they have taken are only the words. The idea, intention, the vision, the future of the words remain yours.The information will remain everyones.
When you teach courses, that information is just the beginning of someone’s journey and they will take it and grow from it,in their OWN way. That is how work evolves. Just as Pilates the way it was taught by Joseph Pilates is different from the way we as individuals teach,we know that we have grown his idea, hopefully made it better and added to it.In the same way Joe took information from other modalities and made something of his own
But at the end of the day we are all human and the desire to be acknowledged lies deep within us. So while the information is there for the taking, have the manners to give credit where credit is due and honor your teachers, students and clients with just a quick nod in their direction before you run off with their work, lock, stock, words and barrels. Respect and honor those who came before. Not any one of us is the BEST, the ONLY or the EXPERT. We are all in this together and are learning from each other.
So right here and now I would like to honor MY mentors, who are a huge part of whom I have become today.The people who have in one way or another changed the course of my life.
Rael Isacowitz, Alan Herdman, Laurie Akerros, Sylvia Klein-Olkin, Belinda Wright,Ina May Gaskin, every single one of the teachers who have come through my programs, my daughters and the lady in the Starbucks in Chicago this past weekend who touched my heart and with whom I made an instant connection and her simple words “we all have a story to tell eh?” …..
THANK YOU