One of the most striking parallels between these two men's work is the sweeping view they had of the health challenges facing mankind today, and of the wide-ranging benefits that would come about if their ideas were put into practice. They both spent many years experimenting and working on themselves, making their own bodies as laboratories, as it were, for testing each new idea. They both also acquired considerable experience in working with others to improve their functioning and they both repeatedly offered to demonstrate their methods to anyone in authority who would take the time to investigate them.
In each of their first major publications, they express frustration with the direction the human race is taking and make urgent calls for remedial action based on their discoveries. At the start of "Your Health", published in 1934, Joseph Pilates writes:
"Daily, from sunrise to sunset, radio, newspapers and magazines broadcast to the world how to maintain health, how to regulate health, what to eat, what to drink, even what to think.
"This conflicting information... (has caused) nothing less than confusion (to those) who are so unfortunate as to hear or read the diametrically opposed viewpoints of our so-called guardians of our health, since it is rather the exception than the rule, that these instructions are in agreement in their ideas and methods.
"To one who has devoted the major portion of his life to the scientific study of the body and, to practical application of natures's laws of life pertaining to the natural development of coordinated physical and mental health, and to the prevention rather that the cure of disease, the misinformation I have so often listened to or read borders closely on the criminal. Why? Because the acceptance of many of these popular yet bogus theories not only results in the squandering of untold millions of dollars, but, more seriously, can and does actually shorten the lives of uncounted millions."
Apart from not mentioning television or the internet, one would have no way of knowing this was written over seventy years ago. We continue to be subjected to conflicting advice about almost everything related to health - nutrition, exercise, posture, prescription drugs, to name but a few examples.
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