Coordinating System • Function
What you think, is what you get.
We are always in the perfect coordination of what we are up to with our attention and intention.
The Coordinating System paradigm demands a new approach to learning anything that involves moving,
from playing the piano to singing to running to practicing Yoga.
As this model of human functioning gets widely known you will see a revolution in teaching and learning.
The focus will switch from how-to instructions to what's my intention questions.
The new pedagogy supports the greatest efficiency, clarity and true empowerment for the learner's whole being.
This pedagogical transformation is just starting.
Wholeness in Motion™ and The Language of Wholeness™ is on the cutting edge of this revolution.
Bring this work to your life and art and well-being!
- Take Individual Lessons in Wholeness in Motion™ or LearningMethods™
- Join a Wholeness in Twelve™ class or LearningMethods™ group
- Organize a workshop or residency
- Attend a VoiceCare Network summer courses
Freedom of Movement • Cooperating with your built-in Coordinating System
How do you carry out and action? What ignites movement? Motor-learning research is pointing to a Coordinating System* in which attention and intention organizes action. The following is an exploration you can do to understand the difference between the common strategy of manipulating the body for learning a skill compared to an intentional approach:
The underpinning for the above exploration is the question of how your body is designed to function.
There is a growing body of research pointing to the answer that our human system is a *Coordinating System". Search motor learning or skill acquisition and a researcher named Wulf and you’ll find the studies moving in this direction. This link is a to a pdf summarizing ten years of Wulf’s research: Gabriele Wulf: Attentional Focus and Motor Learning: A Review of 10 Years of Research
Most of these studies are applied to sports, golf, volleyball, jumping. This motor learning research is confirming what David Gorman observed and articulated 20 years ago. I created Lightner Movement™ to see if it was possible to teach movement with minimal body-part directed teaching and maximum whole system, intentional or external focus. I was using different words to describe the difference between internal focus and external focus than that of the motor learning world but was essentially asking the same question applied to Yoga and dance like movement as well a “postural” re-education. Anecdotally and experientially the evidence was mounting that it was not only possible but preferably to scaffold movement teaching away from body parts manipulation (internal) to the whole system in action (external) as the root pedagogical approach. This is the pedagogy for the new paradigm of our Coordinating System.
The Lightner Method™ is an invitation to exploring the possibility that what has worked (pedagogy based on parts manipulation) can work better when more aligned with how we function. Focusing on a specific body part, trying to align it or put it in a better position, interferes with the freedom of the whole.
Our system is too complex a system to think we can tell parts what to do. Someone says, “Your body is perfect and the class teaches you to be free” and in the next sentence ask students to “lengthen your neck, open your chest, drop your tail” All of these directions are part driven and override the fantastic ability of the system to function in open suspension and freely coordinate action.
What you feel in any given moment is the feeling of the way you go about action. You don’t feel your body, you feel your current state of functioning. That is why you can feel heavy and strained in one moment and open and light in the other. You feel your current coordination.
How you go about an exercise completely determines which muscles fire, which lengthen, which move. The apparently same movement will be a very different coordination depending on how you approach it.
Let’s say the movement is to touch your head. If you simply touch you head, like you are scratching an itch your movement will be different from instructing yourself to take your hand to the top of your head. The former is an external focus that allows the whole system to coordinate the movement. The later is parts based in which you are focusing on the hand moving to your head. Almost anyone doing this experiment will feel the ease and effortlessness of the former and the more strain and “arm feel” of the later. As an exercise you would be exercising different things depending on how you went about the movement. THIS HAS HUGE IMPLICATIONS FOR ALL MOVEMENT TRAINING AND EXERCISES FOR REHAB!
* Coordinating System is not the term given in motor learning research. It comes to me via David Gorman’s articulation of how the system seems to be designed to coordinate the billions of bits of information into action when left free to organize around intention. Personally, I think the term would be an asset to the motor learning/skill acquisition field.
- When practicing or learning a skill whether it is golf, singing or yoga identify when you give a direction to a part of your body, an internal focus. For example saying to your self “Bring my shoulders back or use my abs or take a breath.”
- Experiment with broadening your intention from the body part to the larger purpose of the skill, external focus, such as where you want the ball to go, or where you want to go or the meaning and quality of the musical phrase or the over all shape in space of your body.
- Compare the felt experience of these two different approaches.
The underpinning for the above exploration is the question of how your body is designed to function.
- Do you have a system that works best when parts are manipulated to produce results or does it work best when the system is free to coordinate to your intention to produce results?
There is a growing body of research pointing to the answer that our human system is a *Coordinating System". Search motor learning or skill acquisition and a researcher named Wulf and you’ll find the studies moving in this direction. This link is a to a pdf summarizing ten years of Wulf’s research: Gabriele Wulf: Attentional Focus and Motor Learning: A Review of 10 Years of Research
- “Importantly, not only performance, but the whole learning process seems to affected by what the learner focuses on while practicing a skill. (for a comprehensive review, see wulf 2007). That is, how fast a skill is learned, how well it is retained, is largely determined by the individual’s focus of attention that is induced by the instructions or feedback given him or her. The present article reviews the findings from studies, conducted over the past decade, that have specifically examined an internal versus external focus of attention. As originally defined by Wulf, Hob, and Prinz (1998), an internal focus is one that is directed at the performer’s own body movements, whereas the external focus is directed to the effects that his or her movement have on the environment. As I will demonstrate in this review, there is considerable evidence that an external focus of attention is more effective for performance and learning.” Hossner and Wenderoth.
Most of these studies are applied to sports, golf, volleyball, jumping. This motor learning research is confirming what David Gorman observed and articulated 20 years ago. I created Lightner Movement™ to see if it was possible to teach movement with minimal body-part directed teaching and maximum whole system, intentional or external focus. I was using different words to describe the difference between internal focus and external focus than that of the motor learning world but was essentially asking the same question applied to Yoga and dance like movement as well a “postural” re-education. Anecdotally and experientially the evidence was mounting that it was not only possible but preferably to scaffold movement teaching away from body parts manipulation (internal) to the whole system in action (external) as the root pedagogical approach. This is the pedagogy for the new paradigm of our Coordinating System.
The Lightner Method™ is an invitation to exploring the possibility that what has worked (pedagogy based on parts manipulation) can work better when more aligned with how we function. Focusing on a specific body part, trying to align it or put it in a better position, interferes with the freedom of the whole.
Our system is too complex a system to think we can tell parts what to do. Someone says, “Your body is perfect and the class teaches you to be free” and in the next sentence ask students to “lengthen your neck, open your chest, drop your tail” All of these directions are part driven and override the fantastic ability of the system to function in open suspension and freely coordinate action.
What you feel in any given moment is the feeling of the way you go about action. You don’t feel your body, you feel your current state of functioning. That is why you can feel heavy and strained in one moment and open and light in the other. You feel your current coordination.
How you go about an exercise completely determines which muscles fire, which lengthen, which move. The apparently same movement will be a very different coordination depending on how you approach it.
Let’s say the movement is to touch your head. If you simply touch you head, like you are scratching an itch your movement will be different from instructing yourself to take your hand to the top of your head. The former is an external focus that allows the whole system to coordinate the movement. The later is parts based in which you are focusing on the hand moving to your head. Almost anyone doing this experiment will feel the ease and effortlessness of the former and the more strain and “arm feel” of the later. As an exercise you would be exercising different things depending on how you went about the movement. THIS HAS HUGE IMPLICATIONS FOR ALL MOVEMENT TRAINING AND EXERCISES FOR REHAB!
* Coordinating System is not the term given in motor learning research. It comes to me via David Gorman’s articulation of how the system seems to be designed to coordinate the billions of bits of information into action when left free to organize around intention. Personally, I think the term would be an asset to the motor learning/skill acquisition field.