Daily Prompt: What’s your learning style? Do you prefer learning in a group and in an interactive setting? Or one-on-one? Do you retain information best through lectures, or visuals, or simply by reading books?
hat we have that settled I can move on.What a vast and fascinating topic. Is it a style, a preference, a socio-heretic trait? Why do some absorb information more efficiently and effectively through audio or visual stimuli and others more through kinetic or even intuitive means? I feel the question may be irrelevant in contrast to the truth around the answer for ourselves.
The instructors at The National Holistic Institute of San Francisco explained to me right out of the gate about different learning styles, that they would be switching between them throughout the curriculum and to bear with the styles that don’t particularly resonate while patiently awaiting the method to come around that does. Mainly audio (lectures), visual (white board, reading), and kinetic (hands on). Regardless of your preference, you’re going to get hit with all three and sometimes simultaneously. But for me, with at the time some elementary understanding of ‘mindfulness practice’, I was cognitive of the times where I had ‘Teflon brain”. My judgment around the delivery interfered with the absorption rate while at the same time, learning some real insight into the workings of Pavlo Stog.
The yearlong course I took at NHI certified me as a massage therapist and holistic health educator. I had no idea at the time it would be just another prerequisite to Life’s Master Plan program.
This works for me; Audio, visual, and kinetic transmissions with appropriate doses of humor delivered in concentrated increments, abbreviated by contemplation.
What a mouthful!
Now, as a mindfulness instructor, I know that the real core of effective transmission is authenticity, relevance and relationship. These things don’t come form anywhere but honesty, experience and compassion. I’ve learned that sometimes the best lesson comes from throwing away the lesson plan. The Zen mind IS the beginner’s mind. I aspire to have the ability to build the Taj Mahal and never lose the value of finger-painting.
