After reading Caged Lion, my commitment to Joseph Pilates doubled because I was both inspired and saddened at the same time that he never saw his work come to what it is despite all.
When a student doesn’t understand a connection to her body, I work hard and dig inside my brain to make her realize what she should feel, and when she does, I always say, ” Joe really was a genius,” a phrase that many teachers before me had used. Now, this phrase has more meaning because it comes from my understanding of what he was looking for because this work is not mine but his. Despite all the things that have happened to Pilates over the years, there’re still so many dedicated teachers and people that understand his work on a deeper level and work tirelessly to set the record right and preserve his work for generations to come.
John Howard Steel, the author of Caged one of Joseph’s students, was a lawyer that didn’t become a Pilates Teacher but simply wrote The Cage to set the record straight about the lineage of Pilates.