We had our Shiatsu Eval today at school. I arrived right at 13:15 as William, one of the Eastern team’s instructors, was taking roll. I sat down in the circle on the floor and we did our meditation, then listened to my favorite Zen Koan, Chop Wood, Carry Water.
The young monks in the monastery were talking among themselves one day. They were wondering what their master does with his day during the time that he is not instructing them. He only was with them for a single hour a day. So one day, they worked up enough courage to ask him saying, “Master, you are with us only for a single hour a day. What do you do with the rest of your time?”
He replied, “When I was a young monk like you are all right now, I chopped wood and carried water.”
They accepted his answer, but later realized that he hadn’t told them what he did with his time now that he was the Master, so the next day they asked him again.
He said to them, “Ah yes, now that I have found enlightenment and the wisdom that I teach to you, I chop wood and carry water.”
So, Annie, my eval partner, worked on me first, and her touch was more confident than it had been on Friday. I could tell that she had practiced some this past weekend.
But when my turn came to work, my prone sequence went just fine, so I turned her over and for some strange reason, I started working on her legs, completely skipping the face, neck, abdomen, and arms. I was working on her left leg and noticed that all the other students were on the face and/or neck. Doh! So I finished that leg, then calmly moved back up to the face and started the supine sequence from where it was meant to be started.
But, I had “wasted” about two minutes on that leg, so I had to increase my tempo, so I focused my chi and sped up. Even though I didn’t feel like I was going faster, by the time I was done with the face and neck part of the sequence, I had caught up to the other students and very nearly started the abdomen sequence with them.
I re-did the legs and ended with some time to spare, so I did the Golden Fish maneuver for about 45 seconds more than I would have had to have done. Annie was a complete dish-rag at the end of that.
After the eval, we watched Bill Moyers’ Healing and the Mind episode on Chi while William and Sharlene, the instructors who were evaluating us, went off and compiled their grades for us. Even with totally boofing the supine sequence (I got a Needs Improvement mark on that), I still got an A on the evaluation.
He wrote in the notes “focused, driven work w/soft, compassionate presence.”
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