Pilates Intel Online Newsletter for the Pilates Teaching Community

Issue #289 – Wednesday, February 5, 2020

To Be or Not To Be a Teacher

by Kaisa Marran

Pilates teachers rock, they change people’s lives!

Joseph Pilates may not have been a great teacher, but he was a genius, no doubt. He had an obsession where nothing stopped him working on his ideas and, as all matters circumstantially tied in with his work, Pilates was able to pass on his Contrology method to many students. What I believe in strongly, based on the elders’ stories, is that his partner Clara was the reason that many students did not leave the original studio as Joseph himself was not very nice to his devotees. They both were teachers, just different. So are we and we need people around us.

Everyone is unique, but we have the same source to drink from

My 28 years of teaching experiences have let me begin to understand teaching mechanisms, meanings of different methods and human psychology, I believe that students of masters (geniuses) are actually messengers to carry on the work. As the master himself concentrates on the subject he is creating (and works with great passion on it), students work to understand the master’s ideas and then refine and filter them. The more students one master has, the more filters there are and the more aspects they can reflect, each student doing so from their own perspective. Every human being is different, every word said works differently for every listener – every relationship between teacher and student is unique. Every person stepping in your studio’s door is also unique and your relationship to him or her will depend on many things. But the first and most important are: do you believe in Pilates, are you a devoted teacher, are you a messenger of the Pilates system?

“My teacher knows, I can trust my teacher.” Can they trust you?

Another question: are you ready for not being the genius yourself but instead respecting your role as a filter and being a very good teacher? You might be a filter with big holes that let many different types of materials through. Or you can be a fine-tuning filter to let through only the purest molecules of the Pilates work. To become a great teacher, the finest filter of the master’s work, we should have the talent of thinking and ability of passing on our knowledge and skills to others. To listen and lead, observe and guide, ask proper questions and reflect students’ ideas is part of our work. To be able to use these tools, we need to become strong and smart, let ourselves be guided as a student first, learn everything, find ourselves in the work, start to overflow and then begin passing on the work.

Are you a true teacher?

They also say the teacher appears when the student is ready, but I would gladly put that in opposite direction, too – students appear when the teacher is ready. As teachers, we should reflect the work we teach and we should show with our body and spirit that we believe in Pilates. We should be like sponges that have absorbed so much liquid that we are dripping and we need people to start sucking in our knowledge and skills to clean up the mess we would otherwise create . Before becoming a teacher, we need something to share. So, do you have enough skills and knowledge of Pilates to share with others? Are you dripping, are you there already?

It might take time to start to overflow and the process needs patience. For me, 28 years of learning and teaching about human body (15 years of that about Pilates) have made me feel I’ve got something to share. I know that I’m just a baby in Pilates. What about you? I love to teach and use all my talents to become better at teaching others what I love doing myself. As we develop by layers doing Pilates, we also develop step-by-step as we teach this genius method to others. We need to understand where we stand and where we are going to have fellow travelers, to be true teachers.

Still looking for a place on Mother Earth?

I would like to ask you some more questions:

1. Do you have financial freedom or good students? Can you have both?

2. Did you start teaching or open your own studio because you needed work?

3. Did you find yourself working a lot because you had so many students that you started thinking about opening your own studio?

Any answer is correct, because we all have different experiences and lives, we all are in a different phase. But to avoid quick burnout as a multitasker, we should find ourselves, put our foot down and say to ourselves what we really are eager to achieve. Money? Friends? Fellow Travelers? Partners? Fun? Flow? Easy living? Dripping phase? Love and peace? Has teaching Pilates helped you get all this?

Everyone is talented in one thing more than others. Find your talent!

Yes, we can have both things – a lot of students and a studio of our own – and be both great teachers and studio owners. But there is always one of these two that comes first, because we have more talent in it. I truly believe that anybody can become a teacher but only a few are destined to become great teachers. I have been an owner and a teacher for more than 2 decades; it took time to achieve what I have now. What I have always known is that I want to teach. People around me make it possible, because they are more talented in what they do, this way I can teach and we all get paid. And after every hard day, I know what I truly want do tomorrow – I want to go deeper, teach better and help people change their lives.

As you read my thoughts right now and think of your work as a Pilates teacher, answer this: what is your true goal? Are you happy with your work as a teacher who needs to understand people’s moods and behaviors, their pros and cons, read their minds and bodies? Are you totally feeling eager to dive into teaching for better results, carry on the master’s work, teach the best class ever every time you start working? And when you’re tired, and you’re having a very bad day, do you still teach because it’s your ultimate goal? I do. Really. Because I have a passion to teach and I have this great method called Pilates that helps me change people’s lives to be better than they ever thought they could be.

Lots of Estonians, including Kaisa, at the Deb Lessen worskhop in Stockholm

Last but not least

Find out who you are and what you honestly want to do. If you actually love to count money more than dive into human movement analysis, then keep looking for your income somewhere else. But if you look forward to diving deeper, believing that you can help people and loving the healthy postures that you have helped to create, then teach Pilates! Do it the best way you can and continue studying because this way you tune your filter to let through more quality than quantity of the master’s work.

Yours sincerely

Kaisa

woman, wife, teacher, studio owner and mother of 3