Some thoughts on my classes and students

While Bruce has been exploring wonderful places in the city, I have been busy teaching. This time I taught two different two-day, intensive courses. One was a required Kinesiology class and the other a new "Integration and Supervision Class'.  Both were wonderful, but also intense, since each day was 8 hours of teaching. (I usually arrived home, exhausted.. though Bruce was usually wanting to go out and explore some, more distant area, beyond the confines of our local 'village community'.)

Students in Beijing Class (well except for the lovely skeleton
There are many reasons I love working with the students here. First, they are deeply curious about everything and, because they are more advanced students, their questions are  thoughtful, perceptive and also challenging for me to think about my response to. In the anatomy class, there were so many wonderful moments where as I taught, I got glimpses of how the body and healing are viewed from a Tradional Chinese Medicine perspective.  While the students seemed to value and appreciate the western lens I brought, I loved hearing their more wholistic and poetic (to me) views. We would have conversations comparing balance and alignment from a muscle and bone perspective and then in relationship to more metaphoric harmonies related to Yin/Yang or concepts such as dry, wet, cold or heat.  Through my students, I continue to both value the causal specificity of our western system (if something hurts, we search for its cause and then figure out what to do to fix it) and also  wish I could have a more profound grasp of traditional Chinese understanding of health and healing.

Students resting before afternoon class 
Each time I have taught the Anatomy/Kinesiology class here, many in the class appreciate knowing the actual mechanics of movement and motion. They often express regret that their traditional dance teachers did not seem to understand the actual mechanics of how movement can happen most easily and efficiently. I am also starting to notice some cultural differences as well (anatomy geek alert coming up!). While many of my students in America have difficulty using deeper pelvic support muscles, many of the students in China already use these muscles to move. It makes me wonder if things like the prevalence of squat toilets here, versus our seat toilets in the US, also impacts basic movement patterns.
Presenting certificate of completion to Penny,
the organizer for the Beijing class 

Finally, one of the rituals I love about teaching classes here is that each class ends with a ritual of presenting certificates of completion. This has happened even for two-day intensive classes. My role is giving the certificate to each student, one by one.. using two hands to hand to present it to them. (They also receive it with two hands.)  Then we hug, and another student takes a picture of the two of us hugging, or standing formally holding the certificate. This occurs for each student in the class, with the other students helping take pictures and also celebrating their fellow student.

I am writing this from Shanghai (we arrived last night) but I look forward to this ritual at the end of the 4-day class I will be teaching next.

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