The Poetry of Learning A Collaborative Research Framework / Full Article Aaron Stern, Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D., Robin I. Goldman, Ph.D., and Marianne Murray, Ph.D.
Introduction
The seeds for this article were planted in 2013, when Aaron asked Richie to join him in conversation during a Mind and Life conference in Mungod, India. Their conversation revolved around the knotty problem of measuring the efficacy of deeply subjective and experiential practices for transformative learning. Sitting together in the extraordinary atmosphere of the one of the largest Tibetan monasteries outside of Tibet and with the Dalai Lama in attendance, they entered into a dialogue that continues to this day. Both Aaron and Richie share a deep respect for the varied disciplinary trainings from which they each emerged: Richie within the field of neuroscience, and Aaron as a musician, learning practitioner and pedagogical theorist. They also recognized early on in their relationship that they share two things that have proven integral to their professional development and to the unique institutions they created. One is a long-standing commitment to contemplative practice and meditation. Although they followed different disciplines, they are united in their conviction and understanding of what Aaron calls the “soul’s urge to learn*”. For each of them, that urge to learn has been deeply informed by their contemplative journey and the opportunities these paths have afforded for learning about their own minds. The second element they share is a conviction that the body is central to transformation. From the very earliest stages in human development, and throughout life, the body is impacted by experience, stores emotional and sensory memory, and is an extraordinarily acute source of knowing and information. To disregard the body’s agency in transformation and, from Aaron’s perspective, transformational learning, is a longstanding and serious oversight.
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* The impulse, or intrinsic sense of purpose, that, in its most unencumbered form, arises from a part of our individual nature that we could refer to as the human soul. Here, we view soul through a secular lens as the intelligence and aliveness that pre-exists and underlies our psychological development and conditioning. When nourished and cultivated, this urge to learn is experienced as a uniquely personal impulse, or motivation, or calling.
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Although the trajectories that each of their professional lives took could never have been predicted from their root disciplinary trainings, Aaron and Richie find themselves today sharing a vision in which it is possible to practice and embody a mode of being in this world where love, goodness and purpose are paramount. Through the lens of Richie’s work these qualities are the targets of his scientific focus and the drivers and the consequence of contemplative practice. Through the lens of Aaron’s work, they arise out of and support transformational learning. The convergence of their views envisions a world in which it is possible to become a practitioner of learning in service to collective transformation and, thus wellbeing. During 2017, the Academy for the Love of Learning and the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, entered into a nine-month collaborative, experiential inquiry into transformational learning (described in more detail on page 18). At the start of this inquiry, Robin Goldman, a scientist and Director of the Research Support Core at the Center for Healthy Minds, and Marianne Murray, faculty at the Academy for the Love of Learning, joined Richie and Aaron in holding that process. In addition to organizing a series of five workshops, this included the formation of a group focused on the question of how to create a scientific, evidence-based means of conceptualizing, measuring and assessing the experience of learning through the Academy’s approach. That inquiry evolved into the planning and writing of this paper. As co-authors, we endeavor to show the breadth and depth of the territory we covered in our reflections following the joint inquiry and offer suggestions for further exploration. In particular, we propose a set of capacities we deem to be essential for transformational learning and urge that these be given serious consideration as the work of the Academy, and of others exploring the link between transformative learning and wellbeing, proceeds. Early on in their conversations, Aaron and Richie recognized the interrelatedness of their work: Richie’s research into wellbeing, and Aaron’s study of transformational learning and its relationship to wellbeing. They agree that what contributes to a person’s wellbeing is deeply connected to an orientation towards learning as a way of being. From this perspective, one could say that learning is an example of wellbeing in action. Richie and Aaron have followed paths that situate them differently in relation to academia and to nonacademic contexts of personal transformation, social change, and various contexts for contemplative and creative learning, yet they are acutely aware of the importance of both these contexts and the promise that they hold for each other. As they agree, there is a certain amount of risk involved in either direction: for academia to open up to a non-academic, experiential world requires vulnerability and a willingness to be changed. The same is true when what has been learned through deeply personal individual and shared experience is brought into the scrutiny of the academic lens. Richie was drawn to this collaboration for two important reasons. First, it was the palpable sense that Aaron wove together a tapestry of concepts, practices and wisdom that he had never before seen in quite this combination before and there was something about this gestalt that resonated deeply. The other reason for the attraction was an equally energetic perception that the study of learning within the academy was in desperate need of repair! These forces together ignited a powerful attraction that continues to this day and has provided fuel for this most unusual collaboration. What has made this conversation possible is the degree of trust, vulnerability, respect and love that has grown in the relationship between Richie and Aaron, and their shared desire to see beyond the limitations of many of the existing academic models for learning. Their life-long passion for learning includes the ‘urge to
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learn,’ and an understanding of what can happen if learning is liberated from conventional constructs and wedded instead with experiential practices that engage embodied awareness, creative expression, and are oriented to wellbeing, basic goodness, and love. It is important, at this point, to acknowledge that Aaron, Richie, Marianne, and Robin have led lives of relative privilege. This has allowed them the choice to follow their individual strands of inquiry, to take risks, and to immerse themselves experientially as well as intellectually in the work described here. That being said, as co-authors, we believe that this article has the potential to speak to readers with widely ranging life experiences and areas of interest, practice, work and study. Many may feel a resonance with their own intuitive and experiential understanding of learning. It is our hope to offer the reader encouragement, and a perspective and language through which to build upon their knowledge. Two Views of Learning 1. A Science of Learning The study of learning has had a long and checkered history in psychology and neuroscience. At one point in psychology’s short run as a science, it was linked to behaviorism with scant attention paid to the mind. The principal focus was on external behavior and leaned towards simplistic reductionism to the neglect of both mind and brain. As cognitive science grew increasingly more mainstream this began to change, though the study of learning itself is still largely limited to a traditional academic framework. Declarative and Procedural Learning There are many different ways in which psychologists and neuroscientists have parsed different forms and subcomponents of learning. Fundamentally, the brain is the most complex learning machine in the universe. The vast majority of the neurons in the brain are not dedicated to either a sensory or motor function, but instead are associative in nature – they integrate incoming information, form connections, and play a fundamental role in learning. Learning literally entails alterations to the connectivity of the brain—forming new connections, pruning old connections, and strengthening and weakening other connections. These associative neurons exist to support learning. Although the brain occupies only about two percent of our body weight, it consumes 20 percent of our metabolic energy. And the vast proportion of this energy is dedicated to learning.
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Recent work in neuroscience has emphasized the importance of the brain’s role in prediction (Seth & Friston, 2016). The brain is constantly in the business of anticipating and constructing the realities we inhabit, and a key task of learning is to improve our prediction or in the language of neuroscience, to minimize the prediction error. This form of learning can occur both with and without awareness. Most of the time, we are only dimly aware of the prediction process that proceeds most often in the background, in the penumbra of consciousness. There is a quality of active engagement when we are predicting what will occur in the future. When self-awareness accompanies active engagement, we are aligned with the urge to learn.
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Another way in which neuroscientists classify learning is to divide learning into two fundamentally different types – declarative and procedural. Declarative learning is learning about things. For example, we can teach our children about the value of honesty, but this will not necessarily make them an honest person. For honesty and a whole host of other virtues, declarative learning by itself is insufficient for genuine transformation. We require a second form of learning that is called procedural. Procedural learning is embodied learning. It is skill-based, acquired through practice, and operates via entirely different brain circuits than those used for declarative learning. A simple example of the difference between these types of learning is to imagine trying to learn to ride a bicycle simply by hearing someone tell you how to do it. You may end up knowing more about riding bicycles, but you’d be no closer to actually getting somewhere on one without actual practice pedaling and balancing on two wheels. Although declarative learning is heavily privileged in our culture, for learning to be transformational it is necessary for it to be both declarative and procedural. Early Development Antecedents Any parent or caregiver for infants and toddlers has an appreciation for the antecedents of the love of learning. Love of learning is an innate propensity. Although, like so many other propensities, for it to endure requires that it be nurtured. Unfortunately, mainstream modern Western education does not, in our view, do a particularly good job in nurturing this basic innate quality. What is the evidence for the innate love of learning? First, when babies learn to associate behaviors and responses – called contingencies in psychology or, in layperson’s terms, the consequences of our behavior -- they often smile and point as they repeat these actions, particularly in social learning situations (Keemink, Keshavarzi-Pour, & Kelly, 2019). The smiling is a marker of enjoyment and the pointing is a behavioral expression of engagement. And six-month old infants express a very strong preference for prosocial interactions compared with interactions that are selfish or aggressive (Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom, 2007), with nearly 100 percent of sixmonth-old infants expressing a preference for a helper compared with close to zero percent of infants preferring a hinderer. What these data collectively suggest is that humans come into the world with an innate preference for goodness -- a propensity to prefer prosocial interactions compared with selfish and antisocial interactions-and that early in life basic social learning is accompanied by behavioral markers of joy and interest. Efforts to nurture the love of learning later in life, therefore, are built upon antecedents of this yearning that can be readily observed in infants. We believe this insight has both theoretical and practical import. On the theoretical side, it suggests that the love of learning is predicated on a foundation of prosocial learning that is innate. In addition, the origins of a sense of purpose in life, so fundamental to well-being (Alimujiang et al., 2019), may have their roots in the early onset of prosocial motivation. On the practical side, the findings suggest that methods to nurture the urge to learn should be relatively easy to implement and adopt because they are built upon a solid ontogenetic foundation. The challenge that faces us as adults, who have been so deeply shaped by the various environments and relationships within which we have grown and matured, is the need to un-learn patterns of belief and behavior that mask our pure and organic motivation towards learning. The Academy for the Love of Learning’s approach to learning as a practice supports recognition of these patterns and cultivates the capacity to dismantle them by reanimating the somatic and sensory love of learning that is innate in infancy.
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2. A Love of Learning To paraphrase educational philosopher, John Dewey (1934), experience plus reflection equals learning. This understanding is at the heart of the Academy for the Love of Learning’s pedagogical approach which, in addition to Dewey, references theorists and practitioners, such as Kolb (2015), Argyris (1991), Goodlad (2004), and Mezirow (1991) as well as others in the fields of psychology, contemplative studies, and the arts. The result is a pedagogical model that gives primacy to experience, while turning to existing knowledge as a resource for critical reflection. Rather than a closed loop of learning, this model consists of a dynamic and openended cycle, or spiral, that reflects on-going growth, while also including the potential for transformational leaps. Learning of this type begins with the supposition that, whether we’re aware of it or not, we are continually immersed in experience. Understanding this, we can bring our intention and discernment to experience as an opportunity for learning. To learn, we then engage in a process of reflection: recognizing intellectually, somatically and emotionally, how we have been impacted by the experience and giving expression to the ways in which we have been affected. Out of reflection emerge insights and the possibility of finding meaning from the experience and the impact. As we reflect and look for understanding and meaning, we may turn to relevant theory, expertise, literature, and other sources of wisdom to inform our process; thus, our learning forges pathways to existing theory and knowledge but is not pre-determined by it. Finally, we consider how to apply what we are learning, trying out and testing insights in relation to new experiences as they arise in our lives. This model is only a map, however, and not the territory, or experience, of learning. Learning has a power – it is a force. If you’ve watched with wonder as a little child explores her world, you know this. If you’ve experienced within yourself the kind of radical shift in which the person you once were no longer exists, and someone wiser and kinder now walks in your shoes, then you know this too. Theologian, Matthew Fox, observed that learning is to education what spirituality is to religion. Can we imagine, for a moment, that at the heart of our collective human aliveness is a spirit – an “animating or vital principle” [Webster, 1991, p. 1293] – that is the essence of learning: the learning spirit. Imagine that we, in our humanity, are infused with this spirit of learning and, with intention and practice we can harmonize with it in our longing to become more fully and compassionately human.
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It is no mistake that the words ‘love’ and ‘learning’ are conjoined in the name of the Academy for the Love of Learning. The very fundamental essence of learning, in the sense that we are pointing to it here, is habilitative, whole making, visionary and wise, creative, and wondrously mysterious. This is not an individual or exclusive thing, this spirit of learning, but rather it is the wind beneath the wings of all of us regardless of who we are, where we come from, our education, our privilege, or our beliefs. Whether we are aware of the spirit of learning, and how we cultivate the capacity for learning in ourselves and others, is another matter. For now, we ask you to join with us, as you read this essay, in reconnecting to the simple and mysterious power of learning. Allow the frameworks, and areas of study, the
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scholarship, and fields, and institutions of learning to fall into the background for a short while and consider – feel – the poetic nature of the learning spirit. In this view, the learning spirit offers a restorative and healing antidote to separation. Through our ability to learn we restore our connection – our belonging – to ourselves, to our communities, and to all of life. The urge to learn, or learning impulse, is both organic (energetic) and cognitive. It urges us to become ever more whole, be that through the healing of biographical wounds or trauma; expressing what we feel to be our truest and deepest creative nature; stepping into what feels like purpose or life task; opening to the transpersonal or spiritual qualities of being human; and gaining new understanding of the world in which we exist in order to find our personal expression within the zeitgeist of our times. Yet, while the urge to learn has a motivating quality, it is more connected to a quality of being than defined by any specific goal or outcome. The wholeness that we are urged towards has a felt sense of coherence, vitality, and deep fulfillment and is accompanied by the experience of wellbeing. If our learning impulse – our urge to learn – is thwarted in some way, or if it is deadened within us, we are likely to experience loss of heart, depression, and despair. With tragic frequency, this is the result of formal education. The child’s love of learning – the aliveness of her urge to learn – is coopted in service of institutional beliefs, goals, and standards for education, and how it should be delivered. Another way of framing this phenomenon is that a kind of ‘colonizing’ is taking place within the minds of children, especially within systems of formal education. There are highly significant implications for the literal and historic Colonization that has taken place, in the United States and elsewhere, through the appropriation of the lands, and destruction of language and culture, of native peoples. In our view, ‘colonization’ stands also as a metaphor for the significant implications of implanting in the minds of children the thoughts and beliefs of a prevailing culture without taking into account each child’s unique intactness and associated sovereignty. While there is clearly a need for socialization, and for the attainment of applicable skills and information, it is important that educators (and that means all of us) recognize the powerful impact of this system and ensure that the spirit of learning is not hijacked and compromised by its agenda (see more about this in “Reclaiming the Heart of Learning” on page 13.) Learning as a Practice Through cultivating a practice of learning, attuning to and refining a particular orientation of our soul’s urge to learn, we can come to discern at quite subtle levels what brings a sense of wholeness and coherence and where we become distracted by stimulations and activities that are irrelevant and thus diminish our wellbeing. As we hone our capacity to stay engaged and connected to our own learning impulse, and as we join with others in their learning, we can sense more and more the larger field and the enlivenment of the learning spirit. Approaching moment-to-moment experience as a learning practice, we can hone our capacity to stand back a little in order to notice what is going on within ourselves, as well as externally. We attend to somatic sensations, feelings, and thoughts while also remaining engaged and connected to what is around us. We are cultivating a quality of engaged awareness that can hold the tension between subjectivity and objectivity – neither fused with our experience, nor disassociated from it – free to act and make choices with regard to context, personal need, and environmental conditions, and free to express our own unencumbered goodness and compassion.
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The practice of learning includes on-going reflection – cultivating an attitude of interest and curiosity towards the ways in which we are impacted by experiences while we’re in the midst of them, even when there is discomfort or resistance. This also includes noticing the impact we are having on others, and on the world around us. It takes intention and practice to notice the fleeting thought, or the impulse, or the feeling, and bring awareness to it. We have to blow on the embers. Help them to catch alight. We might ask ourselves: “What’s knocking at the door? What’s wanting to be known?” There may be a clear insight, or there may be an intuitive hunch or a compelling somatic urge that, through reflection, reveals itself in a more coherent manner. Here we are attuning to and coming to trust our own urge to learn. We often miss these moments of impact, failing to consider that they may be opportunities for learning, and instead going from experience to experience to experience. Or, instinctively we turn away from them in an automatic avoidance of emotional discomfort. Learning as a practice teaches us to slow down in the midst of experience so that we can make a conscious choice to open to the potential for learning – transformation – from whatever is presenting itself in the moment. A practice of learning frequently involves unlearning in the sense that inevitably we come to recognize and are faced with letting go of beliefs that no longer serve, and the need to unpack layers of conditioning that prevent us from feeling our own aliveness. From this perspective, unlearning is the work of liberating our heart and innate goodness so it can come into expression. While it may be liberating, however, unlearning can be profoundly destabilizing. Often what we are faced with is the insubstantiality of our own identity: who we once thought we were may be no longer true. Thus, the question, “Who am I?” can be a powerful and catalytic resource in this practice of learning. At times feelings of grief, anger, denial and so forth may accompany our reflection, as in the face of loss or even death. Through learning as a practice, we grow in our capacity to encounter and embrace greater degrees of complexity and difference within ourselves, other people, and the world around us. As learners, we practice turning towards experience, opening to experience, and tolerating feelings of uncertainty, confusion, or discomfort in order explore them more deeply and to recognize what wisdom may be arising in the moment. The practice of learning, at root, is a way for us to develop the muscle and habit to stay fully in contact with ourselves and with each other as we move through the experiences of life. Learning, in this sense, is a dynamic process in which we are immersed as a personal practice, and as part of our collective potential. Through practice we gain the confidence and capacity in ourselves as learners to ride the crest of the wave that is the spirit of learning. Thus, to take on learning as a practice means to orient intentionally towards experience as a catalyst for growth and transformation.
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The work of the Academy for the Love of Learning aims to shine a light on learning, orienting people towards their own urges to learn, as well as on the spirit of learning itself. This work involves the development, testing, and research of the arts and practices of learning
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that are essential to on-going transformation and, thus, to wellbeing and a more full and compassionate engagement as human beings. At the core of this work is the intent to reanimate and bring the spirit of learning, as distinct from education, back into view, trusting that a reanimated learning spirit will guide us to new forms of education that will better serve us into the future. It is important to note that experiential methodologies and processes that support transformational learning, by design, can evoke strong feelings and responses and, as described above, feelings of disorientation or confusion are quite common. Essential to their successful application in learning is a strong ‘container’ – a safe and trustworthy context. For learning to take place, a clear ethical and environmental sensibility in the program design and facilitation is necessary. Awareness of cultural and societal conditions, history and context, sensitivity to personal and collective trauma, and well-grounded capacity and self-awareness on the part of the facilitators, are essential, and this cannot be over-stated. For example, members of the facilitation team at the Academy for the Love of Learning come from a variety of professional backgrounds including psychotherapy and anthropology, education and the arts. All are individually and collectively immersed in their own practice of learning, as well as an on-going program of peer feedback. Participation in the organization’s core curriculum and an experiential understanding of learning as a practice is a pre-requisite for joining the facilitation team. Over the past few years, a fellowship has been created in collaboration with a group of activist/artist/educators from among under-represented, non-dominant-culture communities in New Mexico, where the Academy is based. Together this group is centering the key principles embedded in the Academy’s learning practice. They are exploring ways those same principles may or may not be operating in their own communities and, if they are, how. So, jointly, we can establish more broadly, and enrich and diversify, these principles of learning as a practice. We will learn, whatever the conditions, but how and what we learn is shaped and oriented by the environment and the container. Fear contracts awareness, love expands awareness. For people to learn in ways that lead towards wholeness and transformation, we must cultivate expansion. The practices – and facilitation – that support the capacity for learning need to meet people where and how they are. From this perspective, learning, healing, and creative expression are all connected. Engaged Awareness in Action As the practice of learning takes root in us, so does our capacity to be aware of what is happening within and around us. With practice we refine our capacity to choose how we respond rather than reacting. and our actions then arise from that discerning awareness, constituting what we call engaged awareness in action. To illustrate this, Aaron often tells the story of an early, and seminal, experience as a piano student. He was learning a Beethoven Sonata, and playing it for his teacher, Mrs. Nichols. After listening for a while, she said, “You’re playing 1,000 miles an hour, and I understand that you really want to express yourself, but you have some of the notes wrong. You are mistakenly modulating into the wrong key. Are you aware of this? Do you want to know how to change that pattern?” Since he wanted to be a better musician, Aaron said, “yes.” His teacher had connected with his intrinsic motivation to express the piece accurately. She then described to him how to change the pattern that he had fallen into, and to learn the true notes. “As you’re approaching the notes you slow yourself down. Just before you hit the moment where you pivot into the wrong key, your mind tells your finger play an E flat, instead of a C sharp. By going so slowly you can anticipate it and you have to tell your finger to play the other note. You play the correct note. Your ear hears it correctly, and it registers in your whole body
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as a felt sense of rightness. And then you repeat the procedure a few more times and begin to speed back up again. Then you pause about 20 measures or so later and go back and do it again. Just as you’re approaching that little section, your mind again tells you to slow down and be aware that you’re about to hit the wrong note, and then tells your finger to play an E flat, and then you move on. You never stop completely. You have to learn to catch it in action. That’s practice.” Just as in the practice of music, we can come to recognize in the moment when we are about to respond from a habitual pattern rather than awareness. We can slow ourselves down in order to discern what is a truer response, and then act from that felt sense of rightness. At its deepest, that sense of rightness is connected to an innate goodness. So it is that through the practice of learning we gain the capacity not just for awareness, but for engaged awareness. When we fully embody engaged awareness in action, we are in an active, connected dialog/engagement with the people, circumstances and environments of our lives. The practice helps us to maintain a stable quality of self-awareness, expression, and connection to our own learning and transformation, as we participate in the world around us. Coming Together The Center for Healthy Minds and the Academy for the Love of Learning initially came together with the intention to create scientific tools to measure the impact of trainings designed to cultivate wellbeing and transformational learning. But it became clear through our early discussions that we were each not quite grasping important subtleties and underlying concepts in the other’s work and worlds. Though we were drawn to bring this work together, we were speaking very different languages. So, we began a rich process of conversation, exploration, and exchange. This required curiosity, vulnerability, and openness, and an ability to put down what we “know” in order to grow together into new understanding. Those of us at the Center for Healthy Minds were coming from a place of scientific method, immersed in neuroscience and psychology, and it seemed we were not understanding key aspects of the Academy for the Love of Learning’s work. After some initial conversations, we realized that the scientists really needed to experience transformational learning through the lens of the Academy for the Love of Learning. This would give the scientists a direct taste of what we were not grasping. What better way to begin to create measures of transformational learning than to explore our own experience with it? Over a year-long period, core faculty at the Academy for the Love of Learning came to the Center for Healthy Minds to lead a group of twenty-some scientists and staff through a series of workshops drawing from the Academy’s core curriculum. These included carefully designed experiential exercises that support learning in relation to specific themes or points of inquiry. As workshop participants, we were immersed in methods of inquiry and exploration that were new to many of us, including: -
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The use of creative art forms such as painting or drawing, reflective writing, and music
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Executive Summary
Movement and dance, bringing attention to sensation and feeling, explorations of physical space in nature, and in the relational space of a group Dis-orienting processes such as drawing or writing with the non-dominant hand, or the blindfolded exploration of physical space Poesis: expressing experiential impact through poetry, story, movement, etc. within the witnessing community of the group
These experiential exercises and a variety of reflective practices, are intended to come in through the back door of people’s experience, interrupting automatic patterns of interpreting and responding to what arises in their lives. This allows participants to access new insight, as well as to transform their understanding of learning itself. To give a flavor for the types of exercises that the participating scientists and staff experienced, we describe some of the practices in more detail in the Appendix I. Alongside the workshop series, a group was formed to engage directly with that ‘knotty problem’ of what to measure and how to measure it in order to assess the impact of these experiential learning practices. The ‘Measures Group’ was made up of scientists and staff at the Center for Healthy Minds and faculty from Academy for the Love of Learning. Following each session, this group engaged in conversations about our experience in the workshop and how this mapped – or didn’t – to current scientific understanding of learning and cultivating wellbeing. We reflected together and discussed new insights and possibilities for measurement. As the conversation evolved, we turned to indicators of a Learning Field (see Appendix II) that the Academy had developed over the course of two decades. Describing the characteristics Academy faculty observed when deep learning was present, the indicators provided a focus for the way in which the measurements group could sort experience and information and helped us hone a shared language and understanding for the process of learning in this context. Out of the year-long workshop experience, and the concurrent work of the Measures Group, emerged the beginnings of a novel framework to understand the core capacities essential to a practice of transformational learning. Five Capacities that Support Learning as a Practice Learning is a practice, and one that can be nurtured and grown. Underlying this are core capacities, that when cultivated, together provide the conditions in which transformational learning can happen. The workshops, and our subsequent reflection and inquiry, highlighted the importance of embodied experience, and of using unexpected ways to see anew what we think we know/understand in order to transform our understanding and grow. Reflection plays a key part of this process, as well as vulnerability and openness, and a capacity to sit with what may seem uncomfortable or challenging, remaining open to the unknown, and at times un-learning strategies and patterns that no longer serve us. These capacities create the fertile ground upon which enduring change in the service of wellbeing – of self and other/all – grows. 1. Embodied Awareness Awareness is the gateway to all learning. Through awareness of body state and sensations, of thoughts and feelings, of how these are impacted by what we are experiencing, we become active participants in learning and transformation. Through awareness we can make conscious what is automatic, habitual, and unconscious, and in this way create the opportunity to transform it. This embodied awareness is not just an intellectual exercise. It includes a holistic awareness of what is arising within us somatically
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and emotionally, an awareness of the impact of what is arising by monitoring body state. This is a quality of awareness that can hold the tension between subjectivity and objectivity, being fully in an experience while also not being melded with it.† 2. 1. Connection This is a capacity of being present within one’s self as well as recognizing and valuing presence in another person, or persons – and/or the environment. It is being open to a mutual experience of contact, neither relinquishing connection within one’s self or needing to overtake or be subsumed by the other. It is a sense of connection between two individuals, or between one and one’s environment, still individuated but founded on fluidity between self and other. There is intention or agency, touching what is there to be touched, whether in oneself or external to oneself. It is a sense of connectedness, interconnectedness, intimacy, and awareness of existing within a system; the recognition of the intrinsic connection of all things, and moving toward that. 3. 1. Vulnerability/Openness In order to learn, we must be willing to unlearn, to let go of knowing, to be open to whatever is arising. This openness is an active rendering of vulnerability, of making oneself available to all life and what touches us. It is a capacity for letting go of what we have held to be the “truth” of something, loosening self-fixation and attachment to identity, allowing one’s construction of the world to be open to something different, to dissolve and reform as something else. 4. 1. Capacity to sit in disorientation While it is inherently vulnerable to open to what arises, it then also takes courage, fearlessness, and equanimity to stay open to what has arisen. Letting go of knowing can be disorienting, but learning emerges through a capacity to be with the unknown. It is an ability to sit in discomfort, both physical and psychological (this could be confusion, uncertainty, fear, grief, rage, etc.) when the instinct or impulse is to avoid or fix the discomfort. It requires a degree of or a capacity for self-knowing, and to choose differently than the path of least resistance, to choose not to rush to form, not to rush to an answer. 5. 2. Discernment So much is arising all the time, how does one know when the possibility for true learning is present? This is when discernment comes to bear. Discernment is the capacity to sense that transformational potential sits in this moment, that the possibility for learning and transformation lives within staying present with an experience. It is the ability to notice there is something of consequence to be seen in what is arising, something to open to and stay with in order to learn. Discernment, then, is the noticing and recognition of the arising of something that is aligned with
† Melding with experience Richie and his team have termed “experiential fusion” (Dahl et al., 2015). Many flow
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experiences are of this kind. It is possible to be fully present in the absence of experiential fusion, and it is this form of awareness, in particular, that we point to as embodied awareness.
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the urge to learn, or emerges out of the urge to learn, and the awareness of the felt sense of that recognition. When cultivated, it becomes a practice of finding, clarifying and distilling the essence of what is being learned and incorporated, recognizing what fits and what doesn’t, in order to satisfy learning. Thus, we become acquainted with our unique urge to learn, its directionality, and when it is present and not present. These five capacities are interdependent, and integral to our ability to live and act with engaged awareness. The urge to learn is the motivating force that allows or draws a person to cultivate the five capacities and to use them in the service of learning. As we embody them, we open up to the spirit of learning as it moves us, individually and collectively, through life. Scientists are trained to solve complex problems by breaking them apart into root components, into essential smaller parts that can each be isolated and studied in some controlled way. Experientially, the above components do not exist in isolation; rather they are connected and intertwined capacities. They feed each other and are fed by each other, and together provide the fertile ground from which transformational learning can emerge. We are still living in the question of how these two vantage points coexist in the study of wellbeing, and this paper is an attempt to share the conversation. We realize the importance of being able to language/ parse these concepts for scientific study while at the same time holding the awareness that each is a part of a whole that cannot be truly isolated. We believe it is possible to hold both views, and in that way our hope is that we are making a contribution to integrative forms of inquiry, combining qualitative and quantitative knowledge. Why This Matters Re-claiming the Heart of Learning The human impulse to learn – the soul’s urge to learn – in the context that we describe above, is powerful when it is awakened and encouraged to thrive. It activates curiosity, expression, and connection. It is characterized by exploration, reflection and critical inquiry, as well as the sense of wellbeing and wholeness that comes when the learning urge is satisfied in its fullest extent. Unfortunately, our early experiences of learning within the context of formal education, and often within our family environments, can lead to the learning impulse being co-opted by the beliefs and systems that have become embedded in our culture and that, to a large extent, define what we consider learning to be. Childhood, then, becomes more a process of uncritical indoctrination into the prevailing culture than an initiation into self-discovery, connection, and exploration. The education of our young in the United States, as well as much of the West, is defined by a purpose that is quite narrow and arguably misguided. At its foundation, it can be said that we are educating primarily for participation in an economy – one that fuels materialism and the extraction of resources, whether human or natural. This becomes the context that surrounds and confines the learning spirit. The spirit of learning in effect becomes co-opted by and confused with that which is being learned in the name of education. The educational atmosphere that our children breathe is quite limited, and in many respects, perhaps morally questionable. We have mentioned above, the very real risk of overtaking, or colonizing, the sovereignty of children’s minds in the service of efficiency, institutional standards, and increasingly narrowing curricula. We have to ask what effect might this have on the learning spirit?
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Children must have the freedom to come to understand their proclivities, impulses, and particular capacities, and to trust that there is a place for their development. Imagine teachers who ask not only, “What do I have to teach this human being?” but also, “Who IS this human being?” Imagine an educational system that surrounds the activity of learning with love, rather than a fear of failure. Imagine a system that is compassionate and inspirational rather than punitive and defined by its testing. It is a human right to be able to learn, to follow our natural love of learning, and to manifest the fullness of our humanity. Conversely, one need only read the mission statement of the US Department of Education to get a sense of the distance between the image of learning portrayed by the Academy for the Love of Learning and today’s dominant culture: “The mission of the US Department of Education is to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.” While this may be a noble intention, it falls short of the far-reaching deeper nature and call of the spirit of learning as described here. From our perspective, if the nation, and indeed the modern world, continues to focus its educational philosophy and policies primarily on preparing its children to compete and achieve in an economic, materialist/ acquisitiveness context, and if measures of educational success are defined by this context, then there will, ironically, be a continuing/corresponding diminishment of deeper levels of wellbeing among those whose lives are shaped by such an education. When a child’s urge to learn is thwarted or overtaken in service of a bureaucratic mandate, then a part of that child’s aliveness will wither and die. That, in our view, is an unsanctionable loss both to the individual and to the collective. In this light it is encouraging to highlight one portion of the Sustainable Developmental Goal 4 of the United Nations (SDG 4.7): “By 2030 ensure all learners acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including among others through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship, and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development.” A Vision of Wellbeing
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There are many indicators today that suggest we are suffering from a crisis in wellbeing. Distractibility and attention problems are growing in both children and adults. Loneliness is at the highest level ever measured in the US with more significant health consequences than obesity (Holt-Lunstad, Smith, Baker, Harris, & Stephenson, 2015). Depression and suicide rates are rising at an alarming rate in the US and globally, now exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic (World Health Organization, 2021; COVID-19 Mental Disorders Collaborators, 2021). And the happiness level of the US has declined dramatically over the past decade. We are now ranked 112 out of 132 countries in showing the largest declines in happiness over the past decade (Helliwell, Layard, & Sachs, 2019). By all of these indicators, the trajectory on which humans are traversing is not sustainable. A course-correction and recalibration are urgently needed.
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Executive Summary
The capacities that constitute a practice of transformational learning, as we have described it above, are precisely the qualities that will serve as effective antidotes to our current state of ill-being. They enable us to recognize the urge to learn and to engage in all aspects of our lives with engaged awareness. The liberation of the spirit of learning is critical if we are to transform our species into a form that will promote human flourishing. The pro-social orientation of this approach stands as a bulwark against the self-centeredness, othering, and greed that lies at the root of the most devastating of the ills that plague our world today. While we have confidence in this vision, there are many crucial questions about scalability and implementation that remain unaddressed and will require thoughtful and innovative explorations as this work continues in the future. As co-authors, we believe our unusual collaboration and the juxtaposition of our diverse disciplines and perspectives to be a hopeful sign and an exemplar of the new forms that may be required to catalyze the soul’s urge to learn and unleash the spirit of learning in different sectors of our culture today. It is our hope that by bringing together the very different paths that led Aaron and Richie into their deep inquiry, and by describing the findings made by them and others in their organizations, we may inspire a wide-ranging recognition that learning is inseparable from transformation, and transformational learning is inseparable from wellbeing. As practitioners of learning, our engaged awareness with everything around us is enlivening, fills us with wellbeing. Aliveness is contagious. The wellbeing spreads.
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Appendix I. Impulse Exercise In this exercise, consisting of three ‘rounds’, participants working in dyads explore their own learning impulses and natural movements in response to uplifting background music: Partner 1 wears a blindfold throughout the exercise and is asked to follow his or her own impulses whether through movement or stillness, staying true to whatever is arising in the body. Partner 2 has the role of guide and his or her first responsibility is to ensure that Partner 1 is safe. Through the three rounds of the exercise, the partners experience – as learners and as guides – the embodied movement from complete freedom, through supportive guidance, to directive control of experience. This experience is designed to take participants into a discovery of what supports – and what thwarts – their natural impulse or motivation towards learning, and to explore how they encounter and respond to the unexpected. Participants also gain a deepening understanding of the learning that comes with staying true to the impulses that exist not only as an idea in the mind, but also, and perhaps especially, through awareness of physical and energetic responses to internal and external environments. In doing so, participants connect more fully with their own natural learning impulse and their capacity to attune to that learning impulse in another. They gain also a sense of how the learning impulse and the desire to educate can come directly into conflict or become conflated, thus destroying the urge to learn. Polarity Exercise In this exercise, participants identify and reflect upon an internal polarity – such as the polarity between a sense of urgency/responsibility and a feeling of exhaustion/resignation. On separate pieces of paper, they create a symbol or word for each side of the polarity and place them on the floor some distance from each other. Participants then explore their experience of these polarities by moving between the two paper ‘poles.’ The participants are asked to allow themselves to be filled with, embody, and express the feelings, beliefs, sensations, memories, and emotional quality at each side of the polarity, remembering that these polarities live in them, and are familiar. They are then guided to explore how it is to find their way, and stand in the middle ground between each side. In this way, they attend to the felt sense, rather than a mental analysis, of the polarity and are introduced to learning as an embodied practice that can be deepened through movement and expression. Partnering
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Following an immersion in these experiential exercises, participants have time for personal reflection (writing, drawing, contemplation, walking outside) and then are introduced to a process called Partnering that supports identifying and exploring an insight arising out of their experience. A key question is asked, such as ‘what is wanting to make itself known? designed to focus attention on and orient the learner on their internal urge to learn. The Partnering model has its roots in the Gestalt contact-withdrawal cycle (2002) and is designed as a co-learning practice in which three participants: listener, speaker and witness, take turns to support each other to explore a personal point of inquiry. This partnering process invites participants to become familiar with their own urge to learn, and to attune to and support others in their learning.
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Appendix II.
Executive Summary
The Learning Field: Conditions for deep, transformative learning Faculty of the Academy for the Love of Learning comprise artists, teachers, consultants, theorists, facilitators, and researchers. Above all, we are learners. Through exploring and coming to understand ourselves and those with whom we work as learners, we have identified certain conditions that constitute what we call a Learning Field. When a Learning Field is truly present, we are immersed in a shared impulse – the Learning Spirit – that moves us dynamically towards individual and collective growth, including transpersonal qualities of insight and being, and it is towards this end that all our work is aimed. What follows are the key characteristics of Learning Fields that we first identified two decades ago and have continued to explore since. Over this time, our understanding of these characteristics has grown and deepened, fundamentally informing our curriculum and underlying theory as well as our comprehensive approach to depth facilitation. When these characteristics are present, the likelihood for transformative learning is enhanced. During 2017, we entered into a body of work with a select group of scientists and administrators from the Center for Healthy Minds (CHM), at the University of Wisconsin – Madison with the goal of establishing an evidence base for our work. The Academy’s Learning Field characteristics proved fertile ground from which to establish the theoretical framework of transformational learning capacities, subsequently described in an article we wrote in collaboration with CHM (The Poetry of Learning). Characteristics of a Learning Field Field Conditions Conditions that support opening to deep learning include: trust; honesty, with an absence of recrimination; personal responsibility and self-discipline; a non-exploitative environment; a recognition of interconnection and interdependency; an authentic valuing of humanity and human relationships; awareness that what one learns benefits the other as well as one’s self; an openness to and inviting of discerning reflection; a knowing that all is workable. Clearly, in a group, these qualities need to develop over time, but they are seeded and sustained through the essential presence of those facilitating and holding the space. Equanimity (n.) mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation. To learn deeply, we must cultivate equanimity and develop the capacity to go to difficult places in ourselves, and to experience difficulty in relationship. Equanimity enables us to do this without having to banish parts of our humanity or the humanity of others. It helps us remain fluid and engaged, inviting of the unknown rather than resistant. In the same way, when we bring equanimity to our exploration of existing knowledge, we can lead with curiosity and an invitation for continuing inquiry. Individuality to Wholeness Learning is a dance between me, we, it, and all. For example, by learning who I am – what shapes and forms my way of being in the world – and by embracing my deepest longings, I develop a deepening appreciation and understanding for others and the longings that live in them. A connection is made. My capacity increases. I bring a fullness of being to relationships of all kinds and to the activity of learning itself. Within a learning group or community, as shared awareness develops, so does the collective capacity to engage more fully in all aspects of our inner and outer worlds.
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Integral For us to feel truly whole, learning must be integral, involving body, mind, emotions, and spirit. When we overlook, or banish, aspects of our selves we literally compromise our own integrity and that of the work we bring into the world. Contemplation, art, and movement; psychological and philosophical; experience, reflection, and theory; material and imaginal; intellectual and intuitive; physical, sensual, or transcendent – all are facets of our wholeness. A generative learning environment invites us to know our own complexity and supports us in expressing and integrating parts of ourselves that we may have shunned. Relationship Learning is a relational process. Whether with other people or with an object such as a work of art, music, or with the non-human natural world, we gain deep and lasting insights through attending to the inner and outer dynamics between self and other. In southern African countries, the Zulu word, ubuntu means that it is through other people that a person is a person or, as is it is more frequently translated: “I am because you are”. Unlearning Implicit in the process of learning is a parallel process of unlearning. Through discerning reflection, we can identify beliefs and views that limit our capacity and prevent us from opening into the movement of dynamic relational learning. In other words, we come to see habitual patterns in ourselves that must be unlearned so we can become more whole. We may grieve the loss of familiar ways of being, or at the recognition of opportunities that have been missed. However, over time and with intention we come to welcome change, and through practice and awareness, we learn to divest ourselves of old limitations. Mystery Present in the learning field is that which is not-yet-known. Sometimes, we have to cultivate emptiness and un-knowing, letting go of any reflexive need for ‘answers’ or ‘facts’ or ‘evidence’ and simply wait receptively for whatever will reveal itself. We approach the mystery of learning with a spirit of invitation, opening ourselves to the ever-changing ambiguity of known and unknown – form and formlessness.
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Executive Summary
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