This has been a thirty-five year dance. The adolescent and 20 year old leapt and turned across classrooms and stages, conquesting movement, intoxicated with movement. The 30 year old balletmaster guided onward the next generation of dancers, passing on his craft and devotion. The massage therapist leaned and dragged across tables, rediscovering touch, making love to the body. The 40 year old re-incarnated as an aquatic bodyworker in warm water pools, rising and sinking with Watsu, waving and spiraling with the Healing Dance, and then diving and surfacing with WaterDance. Now the 50 year old teacher of aquatic bodywork is passing on his techniques and insights. My desire has always been to give the "good" movement, that which nurtures, opens the doors to freedom, and inspires dance. It’s been a love affair with the living, breathing body, with full and glorious movement, and with benevolent and caring Spirit, guiding us all homeward. This is my invitation.
Preparation Dedicate the course to spirit. Be still to know that you desire that the purposes of spirit be served. Ask beforehand in meditation/prayer and at the outset of the course, inviting the group to join you, for the Light to accompany and guide you all. Collective prayer is sweeter to Deity than requests for self, alone. You need to be a part of the process, not apart from it. "May we be open to receive the gifts of spirit this week." Return to the dedication alone and with the group throughout the course. Here is an example of a personal dedication:
"My wish is to honor this work and to be worthy of it; to be an ethical representative of aquatic bodywork, modeling the states of being and the approach it calls for. May there be as elevated a concept as I can put across, that it encompass and be for those learning it all that it is and can be. I want the course to be the unfolding each needs to be able to embrace this sharing. I want each to have the space and encouragement to enter the feeling states in which aquatic bodywork happens at its fullest. I teach in simplicity. The learning is effortless, a becoming, an embodiment of ideas. I ask that Spirit be with me and with us in this time together and that all the potential lessons are realized. I dedicate this course to Spirit and hold the space for Spirit to unfold its higher purposes in our midst.
"I allow our flow to carry us where the greatest good of all beings is served. I open to and remain open to guidance in the role it is for me to play in the coming shared gestures. May we each be advanced along our paths and attain the increment awaiting us. May we each release the tethers to the limiting past, to constructs. May the vision of our becoming appear to us and magnetize us to its realization. May the most exalted of paths lying before us be revealed. May we understand and leave aside all impediments to the realization of our Being."
2. Come into relation with your internal resistance to the dedication. Find a way "in". I like to sneak up on the course, come in sideways, come gradually into focus.
3. Before each class review the material, no matter how many times you have already taught it. Return to the "feel" of the level, of the particular training. Review the order in which to present the material, and how much time you have to arrive at each point in its presentation.
4. Re-examine how you present. Be open to new ideas, inspirations. Does what you do answer students’ needs? Is it essential? Can anything be taken away or added?
5. Have as much a picture of the participants in advance as possible. Know their experience in the water, where they are from, their professions and ages; know the gender balance of the training. Compare this to reading a table of contents and skimming through a book, without drawing conclusions.
6. Remember teaching is co-creation. What transpires is determined by the intersection of the receptivity and personality constellation of the group with you. Not everything can be prepared or planned in advance. A certain amount of structure should never be sacrificed, but the rest should be flexible.