How do you know what a good college is?
When it comes to studying Tui Na, my teacher always used to say the secrets of success are hidden on the inside in other words if a course looks good and sounds good and it sounds like it is offering you the earth just make sure that you are absolutely certain that is what you want to do. Often here at The Clinics INMI we invite perspective students to come down and spend a day or two with us to see what it is that we do here before they make a decision about what they wish to do in terms of studying Tui Na or Acupuncture for that matter. Since 2010 Tui na has become a standardised education system coming from China. In other words most of the people going through their training for Tui Na as a doctor train solely in Tui Na for 6 to 7 years within the Chinese TCM system. This will allow Tui Na to have some kind of systematic standard across the whole board.This is a good thing and also be construed as a bad thing partly because there is so many different styles of Tui Na Much of which are family styles, some of which have been made up by people who have failed to revisit their training.
Here at the INMI we have direct links to the major hospitals in China based both in Shanghia and Hang Zhou. We are also partnered with Errol Lynch of Touch Tui Na fame. He is currently the greatest pioneer of Tui Na in the West at this current point in time. And we are also partnered with Zhejiang Provincial hospital of TCM.
So as a teaching Institute we have extremely strong links to the sources of Tui Na and Acupuncture. And we want to make this absolutely certain to accept no other substitute for those that have worked hard and are regularly working in the field using Tui na. One of the greatest test you can give any college or teaching institute are. Are the teachers themselves busy? A lot of the teachers and alot of the colleges are without doubt what i call “Hobbyist”. That means that they may be teaching 5 or 10 people a week not on a regular basis. All are teachers, all of them abar none treat between 20-25 to 30 people or more in some cases 60 people per week regularly. So i ask yourselves who would you want to teach you clinically?. Who would you want to learn the information from? I know that as a student i would rather learn and i have learned directly from some of the best people i know. Some of the doctors in China would treat up to 40 people a day. Their knowledge and their experience is far superior to many of the teachers i have met here in Ireland.
So we try to emulate as much as we can what they are doing across the world both in the UK and in China, USA, Taiwan,and we bring the best of the best that we can and hopefully as a student you will see the beauty of what we bring is only really revealed when you work with it on a regular basis. And as my teacher used to say “the secrets of success are held on the inside”. So only you will know over time of whether what we teach you comes through tuition or as a therapist you thrive in this modern fast paced world.
I wish you all the best
Be well and take care
Anthony Monteith
