The first course I took with Bruce Frantzis was a weekly class in Chi Gung Tui na in San Francisco in 1989. I had a private practice in Palo Alto, California doing various kinds of Asian Bodywork Therapy at the time and I was studying Chi Gung in San Jose. I have been very curious about different healing modalities and energy development practices since I was teenager. I like to check out different healing modalities. In Bruce's classes I saw and experienced how quickly Chi Gung Tui Na can specifically target and release energy blockages throughout the body. I was impressed and immediately hooked. I went on to study the whole Chi Gung program and Tai Chi with Bruce. I have incorporated Chi gung tui na into my hands-on energetic bodywork practice ever since.

You say you practice Tai Chi.
When my children were younger and every time I would come back from Europe, I'd always bring home a collection of coins from any country I visited. My youngest son would take the coins and mush them around, throw them up in the air and shout, "Money, money, money!"

Not everyone wants to learn about chi and not everyone wants to learn to meditate. I asked my teacher why he didn't teach meditation and he replied that most people don't want to learn it. In later conversations he explained that it has a lot to do with the fact that most people can't get into what meditation is and just forget about where they're going to end up.

Do you remember your favorite college professor? Was he a wizened bookworm who would quote endlessly from the classics? Was she a fiery idealist who pushed sleepy, complacent students to forge a moral identity?  Was he a wacky physicist who could barely keep his shoes tied, but couldn't care less?

While the eccentricities of our faculty of Senior Instructors might also make for some interesting stories, they have between them the depth and wealth of knowledge of any top university when it comes to Chi Gung, Tai Chi, and Ba Gua.

We currently live in an extremely over-marketed society and you could sum up marketing at one level as getting people excited about a given benefit followed by affirmations - accurate or not - that they have achieved the benefit. Suddenly, they have bragging rights along with an identity based upon the benefit.