16. Can you really learn the Internal Arts online? – My Journey EP16

Responses

1. 

   Rainer Wilhelm 27th November 2021

   Finally i get confirmed in my attitude and understanding
   that online learning is possible in many aspects.
   Thanks to master Yap Boh Heong and his charming manner and profound knowledge and experience i realise that i am not alone in my Thinking and Acting and Teaching.
   A clever and experienced teacher and a motivated and patient student can learn a lot online up to a certain level – confirmed here – and if the teacher, like Yap, is open to offer his knowledge and strategies and instructions in a profound way the pupil can reach quite some level. Being decades in the Feldenkrais Method i have realised that cleverness of instructions and the elaborated feedback levels offered can help the student very much and induce quite some understanding and capabilities in them.
   So thanks to Master Yap and Kieren to clarify this often misunderstood possibilities in our current times. On the other hand, if the teacher is reluctant to offer knowledge, help and methods to learn – i have experienced quite some of them – then there is the signal to look elswhere. IMHO
   Finally, to be honest, teaching online is a lot more demanding, so i see that some teachers
   avoid the efforts and feel themselves more convenient in personal groups!

2. 

   Wojtek Laskowski 13th February 2022

   Teaching and learning internal arts present a similar difficulty as teaching and learning so called body-work methods (e.g. Feldenkrais Method, Alexander Technique, Eutony, Bodynamics etc.). I’m a lecturer and linguist, so it is, to me, very much a matter of language. I study for sometime now, language used in somatic psychotherapy. Body therapists talk a lot about grounding, centering, setting boundaries etc. Below You find an article written by Danish psychotherapist Merete Holm Brantbjerg – she refers to very similar concepts, which Master Yap Boh Heong shares with us.
   https://www.bodynamic.com/blog/caring-for-yourself-while-caring-for-others/

3. 

   Janice Wong 16th May 2022

   (Disclaimer: This is my interpretation and experience and I am prepared to be be corrected)
   Thanks to Master Yap Bok Heong, I have learned to identify my landmarks with my students:
   1) the importance to focus on the bottom of the feet, moving energy upwards with song downwards: grounding: I push my students, they do not move ; they feel relaxed and not pushing back: online: I ask them to ask someone to push them but not rooting where they can absorb completely energies from others
   2) alignement of structure with movement of energy from bottom fo the feet to hand while keeping the joints relaxed: they can push a person , even though they feel they have not used significant energy (in person I push, online they get pushed) but can not convert energies
   3) the feeling and understanding of strings: I test this with balance and feeling of structure with tingling finger tips
   Some other distinguishing factors I have noticed in my online and in person classes but cannot tell you what energy we are feeling (Help??)
   3) the colour of their hands and feelings at the tip of the fingers: motley red and tingling at the tip
   4) relaxed and hands that are flexed: when walking in a circle, flexed hands allow them to walk faster without increasing their heart rate significantly, rather they feel relaxed as they build speed.
   5) feeling of a ball between their hands and with that focus. their range of movements increase and smoothly
   6) the relaxed feeling they achieve and what I can see in movement and answers to my questions online and what I can test in person.
   Key benefits to-date:
   1) Nurse: how to move patients without injuring herself further, same competence: lifting heavy objects or doing more strenuous labour with no pain afterwards(raking the lawn, moving 5 cubic yard of dirt) in relaxed rather then tense physical state.
   2) Flexibility improvements: stretch when relaxed; gain with no pain.
   3) Mobility improvements: slow movements and improvement of range by focusing breath into the full range of movement
   4) Dealing with stress and changes: they feel they can achieve more and are much stronger in the state of song then with intended contractions physically and now mentally when dealing with personal conflicts
   5) Releasing tense muscles: able to direct breath and movement to increase blood flow to lower back, shoulders/neck, release sciatic nerve pain…with increased body awareness before the body locks into positions with tense muscles
   6) Karate students: better endurance, more power and quicker in their movements (moving to less thinking to simply react to opponents)
   I have been using physical and mental” landmarks” with my online students since 2020 and now with what I have learned from Master Yap Boh Heong, I have increased the use of “landmarks” and I now call them “landmarks”.

   What level I have reached (I do not know) and what I have to achieve next (not sure: except to activate the strings and song more). I would love the opportunity to learn more.

   In online teaching, my feedback is how they feel in stiffness and pain or levels of anxieties before and after the sessions. I look for structural alignment, flexibility and smoothness in movements, but it does not tell me everything. I needed to know how they feel, in the contact of their feet with the floor, what their hands look like and if anything feels tense and I slow down all the movements. How they react to outside forces, I ask them to find a partner.

   I agree with master Yap Bok Heong that even with the landmarks I am not sure what level I am at and I do not know what the different energies and transformation of energies feel like.
   His demonstration with Jimmy is fantastic.

   I would love to have your opinions on my observations and experience:)

   Janice
   My background is EE in software, M of educational counselling, specifically. learning sciences and research in the development of online learning.