Lectures about the courses yesterday. Today, big lecture hall and general stuff and lots of boredom being offered: health and safety, the university´s Green work (they were selected as Greenest in London among three other universities or something, I fear I might not have been great attention at this time), then listening to some heads of department, and a long lecture by someone who has been researching (very basic) things about the bridges between Eastern science and Western science.
Most of the take on it was very basic for someone like me who has trained, studied and taught within the field for twenty years, but almost no-one in the audiance had any background in it, and for that level it was good.
Timed it today. It takes me 58 minutes of commuting to get to the university. On a good day, 45, on a bad one, 1.20. Three changes on the route. Four, if you count taking a left from the bus stop to buy a filter coffee at Pret, a chain of stores that sell ecological and fresh fast-food stuffs.
Oh, by the way, I found out yesterday that the four year part time does indeed exist. One of the course leaders had been misinformed. I know the feeling.
The first semester courses will be offered that covers basic chinese medical concepts, then one on finding and working with acupoints and meridians (”You´ll be needling each other in week four! Isn´t that exciting?”...given that no-one else has experience with needling except me, a little, and they´ll need people to practice on...yes, that sounds rather exciting).
Other courses will be clinical work and training, then one on professional relationships and development, and a focus on how to use yangsheng, ”nourishing life”, a core part of Classical Chinese Medicine. All skilled chinese medical practitioners should know the value of qigong and meditation. The most skilled ones are usually well known for their in-depth research and training in qigong. A skilled practitioner of chinese medicine looks fairly healthy all the time, in great contrast to many practitioners of Western medicine. One interesting fact mentioned today was a survey done on patients in the British NHS (sjukvården). A significant amount of them had thought their doctor looked in such bad health that they hadn´t told them the real problem, "as they didn´t want to worry them more".
Oh, and there´s a robot installation on Trafalgar Square. I´ll see if I can find a video of it. It´s worth seeing: robot arms writing words and dancing under the wide sky and the inscrutable gazes of the lions.
