Maha, can you think of anything you missed with the student? Not something that caused the student to try and please you, rather some sort motivator that catches their own desire to participate. This is hard because regardless of their willingness to participate you feel the lack of connection is your responsibility–the voice in you is saying “I can fix this, I was trained for it, I WANT it.” And it didn’t happen.

This happened with a few of my apprentices and though it’s an untested thought, I may have tried too hard? “Connect with me and I can teach you” was what I might have been projecting and one apprentice finally told me to back-off and let him learn on his own. And thinking about it later realized that’s exactly the way I learned.

There’s a curious sensation sometimes even in adult courses where it feels someone’s trying to “teach” me. Get it from doctors too. It might be my inner juvenile delinquent reacting to authority figures except it doesn’t feel irrational or rebellious, something just sounds wrong. Maybe I should do a dialog analysis on a recent conversation where the spooky teacher voice appeared? It does have something to do with the difference between telling and speaking.

We don’t always connect with people but since teachers aren’t wired to accept that as a useful bit of advice I won’t say it again.