Wholeness in Motion • The Language of Wholeness • Wholeness in Twelve
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Adaptation • Learning

Learning Happens!
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  • Your system is constantly adapting to how you go about your life and what you encounter.
  • You learn.
  • You are a learning creature.
  • Learning isn't an act you do, it happens.
  • Real learning looks like play.
  • How you set-up the conditions for learning has a huge effect on how learning happens.
  • Neuroscience research is giving us information about how learning works, everything from ideas like: we learn better when we are happy to learning happens mostly on the other-than-conscious level.
On this page we explore:
  • The nature of learning
  • A learning process based on how the system makes neural connections
  • Common interference to learning, much of which come from how we were taught
 Play Ball Demonstration of Learning
  • To evoke an optimal Learning Environment and demonstrate Target Practice as another way to think of learning.
  • Demonstrate the 3 aspects of what human’s need to thrive: 1. Empathetic Relatedness 2. Competency(success) 3. Autonomy.
  1. Hold a Ball (Can you hold it successfully?)
  2. Play with the ball and find a few things you can do with it that are easy to do and a few that you can’t quite do. (Is there a difference between doing what you can do and what you can’t? If so describe it?) note: it can be useful to ask people if they’ve noticed a difference between something and then ask to describe. A more open ended question like: What did you notice, can feel vague to people or take the group off on another track.
  3. You have a minute to do which ever play you’d like to do. You can do the activity you can already do or keep working on the one you are figuring out.
  4. What choice did you make? Why?
Many people choose the one that is they are trying to figure out, the one they are learning. Learning is fun, when we are free to learn or play.  (Note: If you chose the activity that is known it usually makes sense. If you need recuperation doing what you know is more restful than the energy of play/learning.)

TARGET PRACTICE or Mistakes and other illusions
Dr. Leon Thurman articulates a useful image for the nature of learning based on neuro-science research. He refers to learning being a matter of taking target practice. When learning a skill you have to go off target to learn the coordination, synaptic connections, neural pathways that let you acquire the skill or hit the target.

Mistakes are just human constructs often surrounded with negative connotations. “Don’t make a mistake.” “Mistakes are bad.”  Worse yet: “I’m bad because I made a mistake.” A “miss take” is what your system has to do to find the target; you have to go off target to learn where the target is. When your system registers “ah that dart went slightly to the left” then your system makes an adjustment, it learns what isn’t the target. Your job isn’t to say, “Now I’ll move my hand to the right.” You just need to keep your eye on the bull’s eye and allow your system to learn how to throw the dart and hit it. Your system learns to throw the dart and hit the bull’s eye by taking target practice, by going off target.

A Coordinating System Learning Process
(Adapted from LearningMethods™ based)
  1. Intention: Have a clear intention of what you want to do – a target or bull's eye.
  2. Do: Take action, throw the dart. You go for our intention. You do.
  3. Assess or Locate where you are in relationship to the bull's eye: Is what happened what I wanted to happen? If 'yes' then you simple carry on. If 'no' then you get specific, you clarify!
  • How close did I come to my target, my intention?
  • Specifically what didn't I like and what do I want?
  1. Clarify and specify the new, revised intention and repeat the process with this new intention.
THE LEARNING CYCLE: You intend. You do. You assess your results. You clarify or refresh your intention. Do again. Put another way: You ​choose a target. You take aim and shoot. You identify where you are in relationship to the target. Refresh your target.

This cycle gives your system time and freedom to learn the conditions and coordination necessary for the desired task.

Step three of the cycle, assessing what ​happened, is the moment when it easy to get off the learning cycle.

Detecting that what happened, wasn't what I wanted, is an absolutely necessary aspect of learning. It often feels like frustration. (If something happens ​that isn't on target but I don't register it is off target, I'll just keep doing the off target thing and never learn the coordination for hitting my target. No Learning.) If I can recognize that I didn't hit my target and simple refresh and clarify my intention - I learn.

That feeling of frustration that ​I didn't get what ​I want, shows ​me what ​I want. Sometimes ​I have trouble learning or developing a skill because ​I haven't clarified the target. Surprisingly ​I can use frustration to help ​me identify what ​I want. 
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Some Traps to Learning:
Assessment-judgment is NOT the problem. Misunderstanding what the assessment means is the problem. It is extremely important to be able to assess whether or not you did or didn't hit the target. The uncomfortable "gut wrench" feeling commonly associated with missing the target is not a feeling to avoid. It makes perfect sense if your system learned that missing the target meant being wrong and being wrong meant being a less worthy person, (or some variation of this common interpretation of mistake). In this case your "gut wrench" should be outright terror, because your system has making a mistake aligned with being worth-less. Put another way your system has the essential ingredient for learning interpreted as dangerous; mistake equals pouncing tiger. (You may not believe this intellectually but if making a mistake and a gut wrenching feeling go together there is some negative association with not hitting the target.)


Miss-taking Learning Moments
If you can stop in the moment and identify you are in one of these learning moments. You can clarify “This gut wrench is just telling me I have something to learn here”; you reinterpret the instantaneous detection of "off" target as a learning moment rather than a wrong moment or self worth moment. You are practicing seeing a “mis-take” sensation as a healthy alert signal, like a smoke alarm saying "Hey there's something to here to learn." It is time to slow down and assess what just happened and clarify my intention and give it another go.  As you engage in this ‘virtuous circle’ you can transform fear of being wrong into joy of learning.  As a person meets that moment with clarity and reinterprets the sensation, the sensation will change and ease up. It won’t be a gut wrench but a sensation of normal dissatisfaction or simply “This is not what I wanted. What now?”
 
Playing Well Trap                     
Another trap in learning is wanting to be right or good. Being right or playing "well" as goals don’t work well.  They are vague targets. There isn't anything specific the system can coordinate around. We need to attach specfic criteria to playing "well" if we want a clear intention to aim for and assess. If I say I want to hit the bull's eye then I have a clear intention. I can assess the result. I want to sing in tune or with feeling or in a particular tempo. These are clear intentions that can be assessed.

Wholeness in motion • Babette Lightner


For Mailing Address contact me by email.

WIsconsin Studio

Martell Wisconsin

Minneapolis Studio
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Ivy Arts Building
2637 - 27th Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55406




Call or Text

612.729.7127

Email

babette@wim.life
  • Home
  • About
    • About Babette
    • Gratitude
  • Courses
    • Wholeness in Twelve Embodied Earth Movement >
      • WIT Theory Classes
    • LearningMethods™ Class
    • Retreat - Living the Language of Wholeness™
    • Wholeness in Motion Immersion Program
    • Wholeness in Motion
    • Movement Sequences
  • Individual Sessions
  • Professional Development
  • Resources
  • Contact
  • Architecture/structure
  • Coordination/fiunction
  • Adaptation/learning
  • Well-being
  • Wholeness in Twelve class
  • LearningMethods Class Page.
  • LOW Deepen and Support