Slow + Aware + Gentle + Playful = Learn Anything

HOW TO LEARN, ANYTHING.
If you want to learn something, you need to mix these four ingredients:
Slow + Awareness + Gentle + Playful

As in the recent essay at WakeUp Feldenkrais, if you try to learn to tie your shoes the opposite way in a rush, you are bound for many hurried failures. If you want to figure it out the inverse way, you are going to have to slow way down and see what's going on, and then slowly try the new way.

Without slow,
we can't do it any way
but the way we've always done.

And why go slow?
So we can check things out, notice, pay attention, i.e. wake up
and be
aware.

Without awareness we can be
a high functioning robot
or a low functioning robot.

But to learn, we can't be a robot.

So, we need awareness.
Of our speaking and defensiveness, if we want to improve our communication.
Of our habits of moving, if we want to learn better ways of
playing tennis,
or walking,
or making love,
or sitting in a chair,
or doing yoga.
Of what we aren't yet aware of, if we want to have
a better and sweeter life than we already do.

We need awareness of more than what we are habitually aware of.
We need awareness of what these new ways of being might be like.
We need awareness of how we are actually going about something, anything
that we usually just cruise through.


Gentle doesn't mean you can't learn to lift weights, or do strenuous yoga poses, it just means that you keep your awareness alive by not pushing yourself into the 100% effort box, which always means straining. While we are busy straining, our brains are all wrapped up in "trying," and learning flies out the window.

Here's what I tell people: use 80% of your trying effort, or go to 80% of your "limit," and with the ease this creates, use 300% of your usual awareness.


Playful means that if we do something the same old boring robot way over and over, we won't be interested and we won't learn because it's the fun and play of trying and discovering new ways that makes learning a possibility and a delight.

If we really want to learn, we have to mess around, do things wrong, try out the "wrong ways," experiment with "ridiculous" ways of doing something.

We need to allow right and wrong to step aside and exploration to come to the fore.


So it's fun and it's aware and it's slow and it's gentle and we can learn anything and have a wonderful life.

P.S.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRENDAN.
I LOVE YOU.

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CURRENTLY OFFERING THESE CLASSES

ONGOING POSSIBILITIES:

THE TWENTY TWENTY TWENTY PROCESS
Combine 20
Functional Integration® Lessons
( Amazing, Gentle, Transformative
Individual Lessons)
+
20 Minutes a Day of HomePlay ( not Homework)
=
Move, Think and Feel
TWENTY YEARS YOUNGER!

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COMING WORKSHOPS

WONDERFUL RELATIONSHIP
April 29, 12- 6 PM


Amazing Parenting
May 20, 12-6 PM


• Improving Backs, Necks, Shoulders
Sports, yoga, health and Learning
June 17, 12- 6 PM

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More Details
at
Workshops and Classes, Coming Up

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INTRODUCTORY CLASS:
For the brain
for the "body"
for moving with more ease
for healing
for learning
for fun.


Monday lunch break class
12:30-1:20 PM

$20
includes touch guided and movement lessons
come wishing and willing for transformation

SONOMA BALLET CONSERVATORY
off Broadway
around the corner from the Post Office
and the Art Museum,
the little side street between.

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For amazing and transformative
and gentle
one on one lessons,
called
Functional Integration®
seeIndividual Lessons
•

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PLEASE BE WELL:


Pleasure
Ease
Awareness
Sensitive Strength
Enlightenment

BE

Waking up to now.
Embracing Change.
Learning to learn.
Loving to move, improve and transform.