My Bond with the Elderly
On the first Friday of every month, I still go to the seniors’ hall in Guangfu to teach relaxation.
At first I really did go intending to teach relaxation, but I soon found it would not work. Picture it: I walk to the middle of the room and ask everyone to relax, and within a few minutes more than half of the elders have fallen into deep sleep; before long someone is snoring loudly. To an onlooker I must have looked exactly like a lifelong charlatan who had driven all the way to Guangfu to swindle that meagre teaching fee.
If not relaxation, then what should I teach?
These days I write the two characters for qigong by hand in the blank course field, and the two hours have shifted from plain relaxation practice towards nurturing, training and moving qi — things the elderly can take up with ease.
I remember the first class: I taught blankly, running through every form I knew from the beginning, then watched the elders drop off to sleep one by one. By the next time we met it was as if we had never met — they no longer remembered who I was, and everything I had carefully explained had been returned to me in full.
So as not to waste each other’s time, I decided to break with routine: I stepped down from the podium and sat among them. I sincerely invited them to throw out whatever small everyday ailments they had. Whenever someone was willing to ask, I would design a qi-circulating regimen tailored to them, and demonstrate it myself.
It worked. Instead of the dazed, unmoored look of earlier classes, almost everyone crowded forward, each telling me about the complaint that had troubled them for years. A few took out pen and paper to ask my name, and were the first to write down the dates of all my classes for the second half of the year. Even one older woman who had never joined in and had never once looked me in the eye came up after class, leaning on her cane, to talk with me.
I have to admit the sudden turn caught me off guard. I had already planned to resign at the end of the year, to step gradually into the background and focus on developing the method and on training new relaxation practitioners.
Well, now it seems I cannot let go quite so easily.