What You Can Expect from a Workshop, Retreat or Instructor Training

Decades of teaching experience has led me to the conclusion that the worst thing anyone can do is waste your time. You can get your money back in one of a million ways, but you cannot get back the time of your life. On the other hand, when teaching I cannot keep on shoving material down students' throats without allowing time enough for them to absorb it. Otherwise, what happens is that although they get very excited, afterwards it's a bit like the infamous Chinese meal-you're hungry an hour later!

Whenever I teach an evening, full day or even a weekend workshop, I try to limit very clearly what it is I will cover. After having taught 15,000+ students for more than 40 years, I have a pretty good sense of how much people can absorb. I teach every workshop from one of two perspectives:

1. The student knows nothing of the subject.
2. The student has a solid background, up to and including 20-30 years, base-knowledge.

Often times I split the class into two groups. While one group is practicing and doing partner exercises, I'll demonstrate and speak to the other group. I don't aim my teaching toward the worst students and I don't aim them purely toward the prodigies although I will try to give those who can handle it a little something more.

The fact is that I can only do so much in a couple days because learning is cumulative. Absorption rates increase as we have more time. Let's say a given student can absorb 10 units of information on the first day of class. By the end of two days, that student will likely be capable of taking in up to 25 units of information. By the end of five or six days, the student is likely taking in up to 50 units of information smoothly. If you have two weeks to a month, that same student may be capable of absorbing as much as 100 units of information in a very digestible form. The reality of learning is that with time information can be integrated and the background starts coming together. Students begin to see where I'm going whereas, when things are completely new, the experience in itself can be overwhelming.

What most can expect from me during a workshop:

1. I will not hold back the knowledge I have; I will put out as much as the group can handle.
2. Regardless of the subject matter, my basic philosophy is to upgrade the human beings who attend my teachings to the best of my ability. To use a metaphor, if you walk in as a 10, I would like you to walk out as a 12; if you walk in as a 200, I would like you to walk out as a 220 or 250. The process is incredibly individualized and I make comments to three or four people, even while I'm talking to a group as a whole, by very clearly zoning in on them. And, they often know when it's happening.

What most can expect from me during a retreat:

The same amount of material is taught over a week or two as with a day or weekend workshop; however, the difference is how deep we go. It is one thing to know about a sport called running; it's another process to learn how to run.

Workshops tend to be more for a select group of people whereas my goal in the retreat setting is to give a really solid grounding in the subject being taught. I want you to walk away being very clear, not just inspired by what's possible, and get a sense of how to practice on your own.

What most can expect from me during an Instructor training:

Now, again, even those events that go for one or two weeks are different than Instructor trainings because when I teach workshops and retreats, I'm always aiming to benefit the participants personally. When I do an Instructor training, that is not my goal.

I want Instructor trainees to learn pretty much everything or as much as is possible about the subject they're going to teach because they will carry the responsibility of passing down their knowledge to another generation. For this reason, Instructor trainings are more intense, carry the most amount of information and I get down to the real nitty-gritty about what's involved in teaching a given subject. In order to teach something, not only do you have to know it, you have to know it well enough to adapt it to the different types of people who are going to come to you.

My main focus in an Instructor training is to ensure that trainees are given the best opportunity to do a good job teaching. Currently, in the whole tai chi and chi gung field, many people get instructors certificates who are not very good teachers and actually don't really know much about their subject. I want to raise the level of the game. So, I keep my Instructor trainings down to defined parameters that are possible to accomplish in the allotted time period.

In an ideal world I would live in your neighborhood-one block from you. We would have a school and we would train together over many, many years-constantly. Since this is not the reality, I recommend preparing for a workshop, retreat or Instructor training with one of my Certified Instructors so that you can absorb as much as possible during our time together.