Sixth seminar in China

Guy and I are off to China again on Sunday for my sixth visit there and Guy’s fourth.  I had to tot up on my fingers the number of visits, and was surprised to find they were as many as that.  Luckily there is now a non-stop British Airways flight from Heathrow to Chengdu where, again, we will be met by our lovely Chengdu group of practitioners.  They shepherd us beautifully around from one airport terminal to another, and invite us out to a lunch in-between.  Then on to Nanning, where Liu Lihong and his group of practitioners will be waiting for us at the airport, with the usual huge clusters of flowers and warm cries of greeting, rather to the bewilderment of the Chinese travellers surrounding us.

We have a leisurely first day to recover from our jet lag (13 hours flight!), then the hard work begins.  Each day is full to the brim with teaching, supervising treatments and trying to give all those coming for the first time some idea of their element.  This entails observing them carefully throughout our two weeks there to see whether our initial diagnosis still feels alright, and, if not, trying to work out in double-quick time which other element it might be.  This is not something for the faint-hearted, and, as I have said before, it takes some courage even to attempt a diagnosis under such very rushed and quite stressful conditions.  I’m pleased, though, that at previous seminars I had sufficient time to correct any diagnosis I was not happy with.  And if these same practitioners come again this time, Guy and I will double-check whether we are happy with our original diagnoses.

As usual, there will be over 60 practitioners at the seminar, of which 40 have already been to previous seminars and 20 will be new people.  I like the mix of the more experienced and the total novices, and love seeing how the more experienced are now gradually stepping more confidently into the role of teacher.