I’ve been working in education and coaching my whole life, from preschools to the variety of adults in Chinese Medicine college, and the offering of CEU courses. With 17 years at AIMC in Berkeley I see a constant parade of brilliant, big-hearted healers ready to impact the art of Chinese Medicine, only to get sucker punched by the onslaught of rote memorization and watering down of that very art.
So, in my practice of being a teacher to both my patients, and my students, the mission of bringing positivity and pleasure and being a part of something really, really BIG, is what I’m trying to do every day in my classes and in my office in Occidental California.
I can’t think of many things better than to know that maybe I’ve bumped up someone’s day/trimester/career/well-being with new information that inspires a better life for them and their practice.
With that idea is the thought that we in the West, are pretty strong and full of Qi, barring acute or deeper illnesses. Much of my work on my patients, and certainly my own self care, is about the stagnation we harbor in both large and small scales. I feel like with students and patients alike, my job is to identify the types and locations of those obstacles, and then find effective strategies for clearing and freeing. This is a simple idea that keeps me busy everyday.