The importance of changing one's routine

It is always good when circumstances shake us out of a routine into which we have settled a bit too comfortably.  And teaching can become a bit like a routine if we are not careful to revisit what we are doing from time to time, not only to stimulate those coming to learn from us but also to encourage us to develop new ways of thinking about what we do.  Today, circumstances have forced me to do just that, and I am trying to devise a new plan to adjust to these new circumstances.

For the past few years we have always used the reception room at our Harley Street practice for our clinical seminars.  The room is large enough to hold about 18-20 people, although it is certainly not an ideal seminar room because it comes full of those deep leather sofas and armchairs all waiting-rooms seem to demand.  Before this room became available a few years ago, we used to run more frequent but smaller seminars from our own practice room downstairs, into which a maximum of 8 – 10 people could fit.  We have now been told that we can no longer use the reception room, which is why I have to think again about how I want to do my teaching.

Of course we could hire a room, and this might be sensible as all our seminars increasingly overbooked, but do I want to go to all the hassle and much greater expense of doing that?  And is the kind of seminar I have run really the best way to pass on my five element knowledge?  Is this change telling me that it is time to look again at what I am trying to do with my teaching in London, and perhaps my experiences in China can be used to develop a new approach to what I should be doing here.  I write “should”, but perhaps it should be “could”, for this surely is an opportunity to re-assess what I can offer and to whom I can be offering it.

Up till now I have not really considered these two questions.  Instead I have simply done much of the same at each seminar, and offered it to many of the same people, all of whom are on SOFEA’s distribution list and have registered their interest.  In other words, we advertised the seminars and accepted whoever applied on a strictly first-come, first-served basis.  Should I be a bit more selective about this, for example by restricting the number of students, and focussing more on established practitioners?  Would this be a better use of my time? 

I think that I should be doing more to help the more advanced practitioners, particularly since Guy Caplan is now expanding the teaching he is doing to include some of the groups I was already teaching, particularly in Europe, and others that I might have engaged with if Guy had not been there.  The important thing here is to gear whatever I do to a format which I would be happy to regard as part of what I now like to think of as my legacy.  And what this tells me is that I need to concentrate more on teaching the more experienced five element practitioners, leaving to others the task of inducting five element novices into the delights of what we do.

So I have made the decision, a decision essentially made for me by the withdrawal of the use of the Harley Street reception room, no longer to hold seminars open to everyone, from the student to the more experienced five element practitioner, but to offer my expertise only to the latter group.  This decision has been made easier by my experiences in China, where the very keen group of five element practitioners that have attended my seminars over the past six years are now themselves teaching various five element introductory classes throughout China in order to prepare those who wish to come to our more advanced seminars.  By themselves, in their highly organized way, they have thus made it possible to spread the word about five element acupuncture in the most efficient way and to as many people as possible, allowing me and my team to move away from the beginner level to the intermediate level (and, for just a few of the more experienced, to the advanced level), and therefore making it possible to reach more of the many hundreds enrolling in our programmes.

I am a little sad to have had to abandon novice five element acupuncturists to others, but I hope in future years to catch up with them as they in turn gain sufficient experience to welcome the kind of teaching I will now be concentrating upon.