Learning from your Joints

When you are learning something new, you are not only using your brain, but also all your body, specially your joints.

I have been studying about language acquisition and I realized that people might be surprised if I tell them that they can learn by the joints. They are so accustomed with the old fashioned west ideas about the learning process that they will probably think this teacher is losing his mind. Perhaps, I am, however, if you open your mind to the new approaches, you might have a surprise.

Some people are like an oak tree: too rigid to learn how to change their minds.

As a west civilization, we are among scientists and thinkers who teaches the mind role on it; however, if somebody needs to embody a learning process, their whole body has to be in the process, specially the joints which attach our bones and veins and so on.

I guess I have passed through those studies about joints before, but I have never paid much attention to it. A few days ago, when I was teaching a learner of mine, he told me about the joints role on the learning process and I remembered that this is exactly what I do in my classes: telling people to be flexible, to have experiences instead of classes - learning with the whole body.

Actually, overcome the limitations of the learning process in our west culture is one my goals as a teacher, it is my main target; that's why I have been always interested about the east culture, philosophies and religions.

I guess that the west and east thinkers should befriend each other and learning together how each culture could help one another. Afterwards, I know that there are times in life that we need to be as rigid as an oak tree, however, if we don't learn to be like a bamboo tree, we certainly will break and lose the opportunity to learn, grow and overcome our learning barriers.