Shanghai part 2: Scenes from the train and thoughts about Shanghai students

This is being written on the train to Beijing, which due to a ticket mixup is a later train than planned, but I am in a first class seat. (I am not sure what that actually means but so far the seats are softer and bigger.. and as luck would have it my seat mate is a friendly Chinese guy living in Beijing but from New Zealand who was visiting family in Shanghai, and who speaks English). I  am typing as the train speeds by large apartment buildings withmany many many solar panels plus lots and lots and lots of construction. 

The class I was teaching in Shanghai focused on DMT (Dance/Movement Therapy) and Trauma- an interesting and also draining course to take and teach. For a start, half of the class was made up of students who were more advanced DMT students and the other half were people for whom this was their first DMT class - including several professional dancers and dance teachers. I alternated between teaching the neurology of trauma and how to apply those frameworks clinically - and also trying to explain to the other half of the class how therapy of any sort is much different from a professional dance class. (And the studio was a Belly Dance studio with lots of mirrors and not alot of privacy...so always in the background were reflections of hips undulating and pulsing to slightly exotic music- nice to know that we westerners are not the only folks who exoticize the Middle East. 

Shanghai Train Station from Above

(side comment- the train just passed a giant (maybe 20 stories high) statue of Quan Yin, next to what looked like an amusement park, surrounded by apartment buildings- quite a combination.. we were going too fast for me to take a picture but there is lots to see out the window) 

Back to the class: At one point, when I asked the class to take about 7-8 minutes to follow what their body needed for self-care, the DMT students spent time deeply following their body while the dancers spent almost all of the time  time looking in the mirror. One of the more interesting parts of the class was on the last day when I asked the class about how trauma was addressed in Chinese tradition.  Not surprisingly this was a very challenging and loaded question for most of them.  At first, everyone was chaotically talking, which was very different from the usual initial silence of waiting for someone else to speak first. Then the students shared many different ‘folk traditions’ that were practiced in ‘the old days’ by ‘rural people’ (none of which seemed to have much to do with trauma), and then came the silence.  Clearly this was a challenging topic and question.And one that was usually culturally ignored as later confirmed by the woman translating for the class. 

After the class I am still curious about how this ancient culture with such a long history of trauma deals with the many layers of trauma that exist. Especially since it is also a culture that is also highly relational with minimal permission to express strong or scary emotions. As a westerner, I generally have a bias th. But is this view also relevant in Chinese culture?  I did notice that some students, shared that it had been helpful for them to express those deep emotions, but other students seemed distant and withdrawn. They were also the ones that in their movement explorations sprouted wings and flew above it all.I also often notice what to me is a fairly frequent level of   hitting, yelling and slapping among friends and famly members, especially parents toward children.  Is this avoidance or just another way of appropriately coping with trauma. However, given my poor Mandarin language skills (e.g. absolutely no skill at all)   and the short duration of the class, I will probably never know.. but I am still curious and hope to continue learning,