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Learning the “Container” of Learning
The main intention is to capitalize on what neuroscientists know about the brain, and how to learning is a container, not a one way road from the outside in.
Awareness of this “container” diffuses anxiety, frustration, or anger by balancing incoming information conflicting with what is going on inside. To learn the container children have to turn their outer attention inward. Together, their inner attention can just to understand how to balance with their outer attention and “who” is reacting.
The two-way road between the brain and body processings information from sensory-motor circuits. These “circuits” ARE perception. For the brain to learn, sensory feedback senses the situation. The “feedback” is literally a feeling of what will be termed a Sensory Body.
Children 8 to 10 Years of Age
Intro to What the Body Knows the Brain Doesn’t
The older kids in elementary schools, fourth and fifth-grader, need a little coercion to get them curious about their Sensory Bodies. So we start a Science of the brain lesson with a Muscle Testing lesson. (Found in the book, A New SENSORY Self Awareness.) The Muscle Testing lesson is a fun way to help children feel what their bodies’ know their brains don’t. The lesson uses the body strength to the relationship of being able to listen.
How do the two, muscles and listening, come together? The feeling of being or not being hydrated. The brain and nerves need water to dissolve salts in the blood and help new information assimilate. (See more information in “Notes and Background” at the back of the book, A New Sensory Self Awareness.)
Note: Kindergartners to third graders are more open-minded and can play with being silly, like doing the Personal Bubbles Freeze Dance or the Home Breath lesson. These lessons are accessible online: Get Sensational Attention.
Children 10 and Older
Lesson 1 The Brain and the Sensory Body
Pick a child from the class and look at how big his/her head is, then use a water balloon to represent the size of the brain. Share with the children the brain is also full of water, and drinks more water than any other organ. As a result, if students did not feel they needed water, they may not know why they have difficulty with attention, listening, or memory. And their muscles knew before their brains the brain isn’t hydrated. Ta-da! You just stimulated their curiosity to learn about the Sensory Body.
The older elementary school kids are in for a treat with the game Hula Relay“(p. 58), a more grown-up version of Personal Bubbles Freeze Dance. This relay game is not just any game, like Personal Bubbles Freeze Dance; it’s a fun-filled adventure that introduces the Sensory Body by first teaching spatial awareness around them and then inside their bodies.
In the Hula Relay game, participants run around an obstacle course of hula-hoops. What is tricky is not to step on a hula-hoop or bump into each other. The movement activity helps give participants the sensation of spatial awareness. The participants are then directed inside their bodies by introducing the Home Breath lesson. The inner attention of “Home” provides sensory feedback that opens awareness to the internal space of the self. This “internal self” then helps balance with the external environment. Participants get a chance to feel the differences between how they move with each other with and without internal awareness.
Introducing participants to the “who” that is learning, is like introducing them to their best friend, the Sensory Body. The uniqueness of who they are comes into awareness through the Sensory Body. No two Sensory Bodies function the same way. As their awareness grows, they learn not just from their minds but also from their hearts, sparking a curiosity that leads to a broader sense of exploration of learning.
Lesson 2 Writing from “Home,” the Sensory Body
1. Learn the Home Breath (click)
The Sensory Body will become your student’s best friend. Help them feeling from “Home,” and their honesty, integrity, and character will improve. Teach the differences between being in and out of “Home” and how things are perceived “out there.”
The treasure lies in feeling the differences between the two: awareness inside the body to a situation or circumstance, and awareness only to a circumstance. “Home” is the container that becomes the treasure. Home is their spirit with how they think, feel, and act to their world. Home is the “who” they will become. “Home” is the container that guides each individual in their thinking and learning. Home becomes a best friend, navigator, and guide.
Fourth-graders and older students need a little coercion. To get them curious about their Sensory Bodies, do a Science lesson on the brain and the Muscle Testing lesson in the book A New SENSORY Self-Awareness. The Muscle Testinglesson is a fun way to help students feel what their bodies know their brains don’t. The lesson uses the body’s muscle strength to relate to their ability to listen.
How do the two, muscles and listening, come together? The ability to feel if one is hydrated or not long before thirst. The brain and nerves need water to dissolve salts in the blood and help new information assimilate. (See more information in “Notes and Background” at the back of the book, A New Sensory Self Awareness.)
We also did a science lesson on the brain and how much it needs to “eat” water to function. The brain uses more water than any other part of the human body.
2. Weekly Writing Prompts
The writing prompts below are suggested to do once-a-week so for the rest of the week children can apply being in and out of the Sensory Body, and how circumstances change accordingly. Becoming aware of the differences in and out of feeling “Home” is KEY!
Using the writing prompts, children will being to sense the opportunities of learning from their bodies versus their brains. Again, I can’t stress this enough: feeling the differences in and out of Home is KEY. Whether playing from ‘Home’ during physical education activities or listening and sharing in a classroom, the experiences from the sensory awareness will enhance learning, social skills, and character. (See Principal Garcia’s Testimonial)
Week 1 Finding Home
- Have you ever got in trouble and not know why? What was the circumstance? Was your reaction familiar?
- Have you ever not been able to hear someone when they are speaking? What did you feel? Was anything inside your body felt, or was just “out there” about someone else the only thing you could think of? At the time, was “Home” present in your awareness ?
- Can you feel where Home rests in your body? Can you put your hand there and feel that area while thinking of the other person involved in getting you in trouble? What happens to your perception?
- Close your eyes, and do the Home Breath again. Drop everything in your head down into the area you feel Home. Keep feeling inside where Home rests and ask yourself what changes in your attitude. Write about it. For example, did your emotion, character, or frustration shift? In Home, what seems now not so important than when you are not in Home?
- How can you use the experience of Home in other situations? How can you be the “who” you are in Home at school, home, or work? (Notice any shifts in your attitude, patience, are perception of others.)
Learning from the Sensory Body can only happen by experience. Feeling the changes between where attention is from attention in your body will make the learning different for each individual.
Try this: Repeat the Home Breath and feel where your exhalations end in your body. With attention there inside (at the end of the exhalation) does your attitude or perception change? Don’t let your attention let go of you when you answer this question.
Week 2 The “You” Inside and the “You” Outside
- What do you feel in your body when you want to get away and take time out?
- Where do you feel tight?
- What does the tightness say?
- Be honest with yourself; this is just for you to write. You don’t have to share it.
Week 3 How Does the “You” Change in Home
- What do you do when you are mad at someone and don’t want to talk with them instead?
- Were you in or out of “Home” when you got mad?
- Do the Home Breath again and see if you can keep your attention where the exhalations end as you write about what made you mad. Important: If you lose the feeling inside the body where Home is, stop writing and pause. When you are able to be back in Home start writing.
- Do you notice when you go out of Home?
- Who do you like better, the person in Home or out of Home? Why?
Note: Each child’s end of the exhalation will differ in each body because muscle tension (relates to behavior) is held differently with everyone.
Teach Through the Body
If you would rather do something physical with your students, look at the book A New Sensory Self Awareness. Specifically, look at the section called “Lesson Sequences ” (pages 36 and 37).
Lesson Sequences are biologically designed as building blocks for sensing the Sensory Body. The Sensory Body is first introduced by space and time. ” Space” is both spatial awareness and the sense of a three-dimensional space inside the body. Start to wonder how the feeling of doing each lesson builds on the next.
In each lesson, there is a “body ownership” (scientist label) that will come into awareness through movement and attention. Attention between what is inside and outward is what develops Sensory Body awareness. Attention learns to locate inside the body with or to the present circumstances. This type of dual attention is the theme in all the lessons.
Once students can feel this type of dual awareness the Sensory Body can alert them, long before the brain realizes, of internal processes that need to be addressed. For example, if a student feels stiff-chested and not breathing because of anger from frustration of not understanding something, the Sensory Body tells the brain, “Hey my chest is tight, and I am not breathing!” Something must be wrong.”
To learn from the Sensory Body process, the student must slow down and check in with the sense of holding the breath. At this point, the student is asked to wonder how it is different listening from a stiff chest and not breathing to just slowing down and feeling the breathing or holding the breath.
Students who are angry, frustrated, or confused will stop breathing. As a result, either attention and listening disappear, and fidgety returns, or the student realizes only the “outer world around them” exists, and they are removed from the situation.
The Sensory Body is saying, ” I stopped breathing. I disappeared from the outer world. I can’t comprehend anything. I am agitated and can’t hear the teacher. If the behavior is a familiar pattern in the student must slow down, wait for what breathes them, and from there, listen to what the body is saying the mind is doing. At that point, the student shares with the teacher, and the process of doing the Home Breath is repeated.
