The workshop that workshopped me.

Friends, I think I may have something here. I can't tell you how long it's been since I actually sat at my desk and clapped and smiled like a kid getting her birthday cake because I was about to write an entry. This just might be the color of my parachute. Sorry I've been off a couple of days, I was gathering inspiration from the weekend's events and working these out in my head. So here goes...




This past weekend I was signed up to go to a workshop called Advanced Food Healing. I was so very excited to learn all kinds of new things about the healing powers of food and the different combinations of those foods to help prevent disease. I know that good food has this power. I have read all about the superfoods, I shop on the outskirts of the grocery store, I heart greek yogurt. I'm a fan, a well educated fan. My expectations for this workshop were high, and yet, a little voice in my head started the night before asking all kinds of qualifying questions, already doubting the information I was about to receive. How is that possible? I'm usually a very open-minded person, maybe a little too trusting. I didn't know who this guy was, or where he was from, didn't know if he was a doctor or a nutritionist or even had any kind of health/fitness degree (btw, found out he didn't). I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, told myself to calm down and to have an open mind, this was going to be a great workshop! Woo hoo!




I arrived at the hotel, got a great parking space on the street and made my way to the conference room. People started gathering. I met a couple of ladies who had gone to the QiGong workshop that I was meant to go to, but was unable to because I was out of town (silly me, remind me to check my calendar before signing up for a class next time, k?) so here I was. One of the women worked at the Optimum Health Institute, the other was a life coach in Houston, I think. They were lovely. After we all found our seats and made friends with our fellow workshoppers, the class began.




Our teacher was about average height. He had long black hair slicked back into a ponytail and his outfit was black with white Chinese button knots - this is his signature look. He stood up on stage, behind a long table with a black tablecloth set with all kinds of fruits, veggies, supplements and bagged goodies. Everyone was eager to find out what all those things were and and how we were going to combine them to make smoothies to CHANGE OUR LIVES ;)




Then he started talking. I have to admit that the minute I started writing notes, the little voice in my head said "Yeah, you better write this shit down, you're going to have to research all of it Monday morning once you get online" and slowly progressed to this "Can you believe this guy?If anything, write it down so you have some funny quotes for your blog" right before I left at lunch. Every time he picked up one of his supplements and said it was from across the ocean, limited in resources, very potent, powerful and rare - and also available for sale at the table right over there, I cringed. I looked at the publications during our short break because there were no handouts of any of the information. He broke all the information from the two days into two books and a DVD. http://www.qigong.com/press_pages/food.html. Someone else in the class brought up that there were no citations in his book "That's because my information comes from science" he said. I flipped through the pages that contained the text exactly as he spoke and with clip art from when I was in Jr. High.




There was an elderly man there. He was in a wheelchair, used an oxygen tank and a hearing aid - they put him in the back and kind of behind a column. His breathing machine was not quiet, but it was steady and once you got over it, blended into the background as white noise. Two of the ladies who were sitting next to me moved their chairs and themselves complaining it was too loud. I told him he could move his chair so that he could see better if he wanted to (and perhaps hear better since our speaker had a hard time projecting) he chose not to move. At one point his hearing aide was making sounds and the speaker was giving him dirty looks instead of offering to have the man sit closer or speaking up - and you know that feeling - when the whole room is either for you or against you? He got the whole room to be against this man. That really pissed me off. He was freaking lucky to even HAVE that guy at his stupid workshop and now he was all pissy because of a hearing aide. WTF.


More gems:

"You may ask yourself how do the fish get it? That's a good question" he didn't answer it.



"Like America, A real country who has a higher life expectancy"



"If you look at all the longevity of the earth"



and this was my favorite - when touting the goodness of the egg.



"I hung out with a Tibetan Monk and I went to the place where they eat, and I said 'Wow, you guys gotta lotta eggs here'"



What I ended up learning was that it doesn't matter how much you know about a certain subject, if your audience doesn't believe you, it may as well all be a lie. I also learned that you can overpay for a lesson. I had already paid for the class, but how much of my time was I going to give to this guy knowing that I didn't belive a word he said?