On Being a Student (once again): 5 reminders for psychophysical survival and enjoyment

Nearly 10 years after finishing my university degree in theatre in the USA, I am putting myself once again through the 4-year-plus ordeal of acquiring a second degree, in a completely unrelated field, here in Uruguay (physiotherapy).

In that 10 year span I wasn’t idle either. From 2009 to 2011 I put myself through three years of Alexander Technique teacher training and got certified in Pilates Method.

Hence, I know a thing or two about being a student… and what it does to you. I am also prone to forget what I know if I don’t remind myself about it.

With that in mind, I am putting those nuggets of wisdom in writing. These are my 5 key reminders for psychophysical survival and enjoyment as a student. They have carried me through 15 years of studying in different countries and settings (both public and private), through different approaches to learning, in different group sizes and with widely varying resources. They count for both long training courses to short one-hour lessons, and everything in between.

1. Find your “deep why” to channel your energy and drive you on.

Your “deep why” is your dharma, your calling, that thing that sets your soul on fire. Being a student is tough, especially when you also juggle a working-life and family-life. When the going gets really hard it’s tempting to just call it quits. Your “deep why” will carry you through those rough patches.

2. Make peace with how things are to husband your energy and keep you sane.

Learning situations are never ideal; one or several factors are usually not up to standard. Be clear about what you want to get out of this learning situation, why you chose the institution, teacher, venue (or whatever), and use that clarity to separate the chaff from the straw. Once in the learning situation don’t waste energy in pursuits that don’t fulfill your deep why (like complaining that things are not ideal).

3. Know your habitual patterns to avoid wasting energy and losing track of your true goal.

We all have student-personas. Different learning scenarios (study groups, exams, one-on-ones, etc.) will trigger full psychophysical reactions and you might find yourself acting like a high-school adolescent all over again. Know yourself and be prepared to inhibit your desire to “be cool”, or "be perfect", (or whatever) and direct your energy towards actions that truly fulfill your deep why.

4. Empty your glass that you might taste your teacher’s wine.

If you’ve been around for a while you’re probably already full of your own ideas about how things are (or should be). But if you’re so full of your own wine, you’ll never get a taste of your neighbour’s. So, regardless of how much you think you know about the subject, don’t fight the teacher (unless, of course, they are directly attacking you). After all, it’s you who chose to learn from them. So be humble and listen to their point of view. Try to understand what frame of thought they come from, why and how it works when it works, and how it relates to your way of thinking about it.

5. Involve yourself psychophysically that you might make your own synthesis.

Learning is simultaneously a sensual, emotional, social and mental pursuit. To get the most out of your learning bring your whole self into the matter, immerse yourself psychophysically and socially. And after full immersion take time to create your own synthesis, force yourself to elaborate your map of the subject matter. Only then will it become an integral part of you.

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The 4 most important teachers in your Life

Have you ever taken a lesson with a teacher (or session with a therapist) and, though you go through huge shifts during the lesson, you then find it difficult to translate those insights into your ‘real’ life?

It’s like your lesson belongs to one world, and your ‘real’ life to another… and they are so different, and you are so different in one and the other, that they appear to be different realities altogether… making communication between them all the more difficult.

A lesson is a ‘constructed’ situation with the aim of connecting you to certain knowledge. But the ‘real’ world isn’t constructed along the same lines; in it, it is you who has to activate the newly acquired perspective on your own. This isn’t always easy nor self-evident: what was obvious during the lesson might seem inaccessible or inapplicable in your ‘real’ life.

How is it that we can make this translation of knowledge and resources from one situation to the next?

There are 4 ways of relating to the process of learning new things. Distinguishing between them can help you generate and integrate changes. Each way serves a specific purpose, and facilitates the process in its own manner.

These 4 great teachers are:

1. Learning in an individual lesson (the guide)

2. Playing and experimenting in a group (your peers)

3. Rehearsing and practicing at home (you)

4. Real-life application (Life)

Let’s look at each in turn.

1. Individual lesson: The purpose of your lesson with a teacher or therapist is pushing the limits of what you know further into the unknown; i.e. learning new things. This is challenging in itself and may throw you into a panic at times. That is why it’s so important to choose your guide wisely. The more at ease and safe your feel in the learning situation, the faster you’ll make progress, the more you’ll learn, and the more involved and enthusiastic you’ll be about uncovering all your latent potential.

In each lesson you may look at concrete ways of translating the newly acquired knowledge to ‘real’ life situations. However, knowing the theory does not equate to being able to apply it. Sometimes the stimuli in your ‘real’ life are too strong and erratic for you to be able to act in the newly learned way. The easiest thing to do then is to fall back into your old, well-known, ‘safe’ and ‘comfortable’ ways. If this happens again and again, your process of transformation becomes arrested, and you, frustrated.

This is where the second way of relating to new material comes in handy.

2. The practice group: A practice group can be a formal (a study group or therapy group) or informal affair (a friend or partner who shares your interest). The purpose of being in a group is to practice the use of the tools and resources you learned in your individual lesson, but doing so in a safe context where the agreements are clear between participants. These practice moments are also ‘constructed’ situations, but they are nearer to what goes on in ‘real’ life because you have to relate to peers, respond to their stimuli, and manage your own reactions.

Sometimes practice groups are created specifically for the purpose of training in the use of certain tools (i.e. a study group). But this isn’t necessarily requisite. For example, if you are taking individual lessons to correct your postural faults and coordination, you might join a Pilates or Yoga group where you can practice the use of the tools you acquired in your individual lesson. The Pilates or Yoga groups wasn’t built specifically for that, but their structural characteristics are such that make them ideal places to train yourself in the use of your psychophysical re-coordinating tools.

3. Individual practice time: In the safety of your home, away from peeping eyes, you can practice and experiment with details (securing what was integrated and revealing what wasn’t). This practice time is analogous to a musicians solo practice time, when he/she takes the time to get to know his/her instrument, and himself/herself in relation to it.

Individual practice time is paramount for polishing off rough areas, to experiment with variations on a theme, to elaborate interesting questions for future experimentation with group and/or guide. Your time in your individual lesson with your teacher is going to be a lot more profitable if you have done your homework… we all know that from our school days… it’s what we tell our kids and students… and yet, do we follow our own advice?

4. The role of applying the knowledge in ‘real’ life: Finally you have to take the risk of trying out your theories in the world-out-there, in order to prove, disprove or amend them. However, you don’t need to do your first tests in the most stressful conditions you encounter in your daily life. Much like you do in the other 3 learning ways, you can start simple, safe and controlled, and progress onto more emotionally complex situations as you master each step.

For instance, if you are experimenting with a new way of reacting and relating to food, trying to eat more consciously, perhaps it’s not the best idea to start your experiment in the middle of a noisy family dinner or at a friend’s birthday party, when your main focus of attention is on other things. Start with going out on your own (or with your study-buddy) for a cup of coffee or tea, move on to consciously eating your packed-lunch at work while relatively undisturbed, and little by little add other dining situations when there are more stimuli to manage. Get the picture?

You won’t always have a guide or group readily available. Sometimes you have to, or prefer to, start by learning from a book, video, or blog. That way you also get a chance to study the material and decide if you really want to take the plunge into its serious practice and application. If you do, you’ll eventually want to go deeper, to really commit to change, and then a guide and group will become indispensable.

But remember that you always have your individual practice and your ‘real’ life experimentation available to you. Even when you do have a guide and group you are not excused from not taking the acquired knowledge and making it yours, embodying it. If you really mean to change, this is your responsibility.

Next week, we’ll look into some concrete ways of translating kinaesthetic knowledge from a lesson to daily living. I’ll start by sharing with you the practice and observation exercises I give my individual pupils. I invite you to try them out, play with them, ask me questions, and give me feedback on them.

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Guide for choosing a Guide

When you embark on a process of change (that is, in any learning process) you’re taking a step into the unknown. You entering new territory, where there’s no trodden path to follow.

The problem here is that, quite often, this is scary. Where do I start? Which way do I go? What’s the shortest path to my goal? And the safest? What monsters and dragons will I find down this road?

Although you may have a compass & map to navigate, it is never the same as actually knowing the territory. And sometimes, the mere fact of being alone in that vast and desolate place can discourage you from taking the next step… so you turn round and return to where you came from; only to live eternally with the question “Who would I be today if I had taken the leap of faith and walked the path of change?”

Do not despair. You are always on time to take up the road again and start walking. What you need is a guide; someone who already knows the place and can walk with you a while and show you the main features of the territory and introduce you to its inhabitants… Until you feel confident enough in the new place to blaze a trail on your own, courageously fathoming the unknown.

So, the question now is: how do I choose a good guide?

Sometimes you don’t have much to choose from, for you know only one inhabitant of this new place, and all you can do is accept his guidance or walk alone (and sometimes it’s better to walk alone).

Other times, there are so many available guides that you don’t know which one to choose, nor which criteria to use to make your choice. All offer something of interest and value. Which is the best fit for you?

Choosing a good guide can make all the difference when it comes to actually enjoying the process of change. The best guide for you might not necessarily be the most versed in the new territory, but the one who knows how to adapt the best to changing circumstances in the new territory, and can therefore show and model the process of adaptation that you need to undergo.

Although it is imposible to be infalible when making your choice, I venture to give you the 8 tips that I use to recognize a good guide. Use them as a checklist for when you’re choosing a teacher, guru, leader, mentor, facilitator, coach or therapist; that is, when choosing any person who’ll show you how to start your journey through the new territory.

1) Around him/her you feel safe. If you’re in any way worried about protecting or defending yourself against the behavior of your guide you are in no place to absorb new information: all your focus is directed towards survival. Feeling safe is a direct result of your ability to self-regulate, and a good guide can help you with that when he/she had developed that ability in themselves.

This is the MOST IMPORTANT point; all the following tips are useless if this first point is not satisfied. Moreover, all following tips are just different variables that allow you to feel safe around your guide.

2) Knows how to listen. A guide may know the whole breadth, width and depth of the territory and every available road within it, but if he/she can’t listen to what you’re asking, he/she might lead you astray. Of course, it’s your responsibility to ask a clear question to get a clear answer. However, the best guides are also able to help you clarify your question if you’re not even sure what that is in the first place.

3) Knows a little bit more than you about the territory. He/She does not need to be an expert in the matter. Sometimes all he/she needs to be is a step ahead of you, so that he/she may leave a footprint that shows you the next step on your journey.

4) Gives clear explanations. It is important that your guide is able to explain to you the next step in a way that you can understand and that captures your attention. We all learn in different ways, and a good guide knows how to adapt his/her explanation to suit yours.

5) You share principles. Every guide bases his/her work on certain key principles or fundamental beliefs about ‘how things are’, which underlie his/her explanations and concrete methodology. If you want to enjoy the journey he/she invites you on, it is important that you resonate with his/her philosophy.

6) Walks the talk. You want a guide that acts and lives in coherence with what he/she teaches. A guide who only knows the theory of the problem and solution is useless for all practical purposes. Only a guide who walks the talk will be able to understand the obstacles your face at each stage of the journey.

7) Takes responsibility for his/her role. This means that he/she is conscious of his role in your life and acts in consequence, accepting the responsibilities that come with the role, and never misusing the power that comes with it too. His/her idea of what this implies will be based on his/her principles (see item 4).

8) Is flexible and humble. As you advance in your journey through the unknown, you’ll become confident enough to elaborate your own ideas as to where you’d like to go and how you’d like to get there. A flexible guide allows you to freely express your burgeoning curiosity and supports you in your forays into the unknown. A humble guide knows when your questions, interest, or needs go beyond his/her resources or would be better satisfied by another guide. The best guide is he/she who will then bless you and allow you to fly free to look for another guide, happy that his/her mission in your life has been successfully completed.

Tu sum up, when you choose your guide make sure that at his/her side you feel that you can unfold your full potential, the whole span of your wings. We are all different and different things make us feel safe; therefore there is no one guide who is the best for all. The supreme guide is within you, it’s that voice that tells you, “Follow this person for a while, he/she has the next piece of the puzzle to your journey.”

Nevertheless, a great guide can’t ensure your success. If you don’t take the chance to walk a bit on your own, at least in those stretches of road that you have already walked with your guide, in order to habituate the new patterns, you’ll never be truly free in the new territory. A guide is not meant to be a crutch for life, he/she is meant to be a trampoline into it!

How is it that we achieve this freedom in the new territory?

Next blog we’ll explore the 3 basic tools you need to make the new territory your new home:

1. The role of the guide (pushing the limits of the unknown)

2. The role of the practice group (practicing the tools to successfully live within the new conquered territory)

3. The role of your personal practice (securing the conquered territory and giving birth to new questions that will take you onto new discoveries)

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Image credit: pixabay

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How to deal with decision fatigue? The power of teachers and routines

The academic (school) year begins, and in Uruguay that means the year sort of finally begins for everyone… (and it finishes “beginning” after Holy Week... don't ask... it's complicated).

What does that mean for many people (she-who-writes included)? 

Stress… stretched across several weeks.

What specific form of stress? 

Scheduling-stress.

Why does scheduling produce stress? 

Decisions, too many decisions, and not all depending solely on your preferences or your times.

If you have kids you know what I mean: juggling your schedule around your kids’ school and extracurricular activities, so that everyone (and that includes you) is where they have to be on time.

Do I have a solution that will remove all stress from this time of the year? 

Unfortunately, no. I’m afraid that, at least for the time being, I’ll have to accept it as part of Life.

Every beginning, (be it of the year, of a new project, of a new home, of a new member in the family… or whatever) will put stress on your system.

Why? 

Because we don’t yet have routines (i.e. habits) around it. It’s a new stimulus that’s challenging our status-quo, our current equilibrium point. All our previously carefully planned systems and routines are put on their heads, everything is up for grabs, and whatever wasn’t seriously rooted in our being, will be gone with the winds of change.

At those times, we’ll bank heavily on our deeper, more ingrained, habits… those we don’t have to think about at all because they’re firmly rooted in our self-definition. If you’re a smoker, you’ll smoke more, if you’re a worrier, you’ll worry more, if you’re a binge-eater, you’ll binge more.

Why? 

Once again, decision fatigue. While trying to deal with the stress-factor, all our mental energy is used up, and there’s no self-regulatory power left for other areas. You’re too tired to cook a healthy meal (unless eating healthy is so ingrained in you that you can’t imagine not doing it) so you end up eating out, or calling for a pizza. You’re too tired to keep up your exercise routine (unless exercising is something you can’t imagine living without), so you fall off the bandwagon. Get the picture?

What to do about it? 

To begin with, don’t try to change too many things at once. Choose only 2… and deal with each according to its characteristics.

There’s already one area that needs your attention, is the highest stress inducing stimuli, and dealing with it depends solely on you (i.e. nobody else can arrange your schedule for you). That change-inducing stimulus comes from outside of you, from your context. The amount of stress it generates will depend on your personality and the characteristics of your own particular context (i.e. how many balls you’re juggling at one single time).

These types of changes are the urgent (but not always or necessarily important) type. They spring up on you unawares, and there’s not much you can do to anticipate their consequences. For example: arranging schedules at the beginning of the school year.

The second area of change is that stressor which you have placed upon yourself, in order to improve your conditions (your health, your posture, your finances, your relationships, etc.). 

These are the types of change that are important, they produce long-term satisfaction. But since they don’t always seem urgent (which doesn’t mean they’re not), they tend to get postponed until the latest crisis is dealt with (by which time a new crisis may well have popped up on the radar… such is life).

How can you keep that second, life-bettering-change going when Life throws a curve ball of scheduling-frenzy your way? 

Get help that will enable you to create change-inducing routines.

Help of this type comes in many guises, depending on the type of change you’re dealing with: a group, a friend, a class, a therapist, a teacher, a coach, a cook, a nanny (Get the picture?). 

The important point is getting some of the decision-angst off your shoulders, delegating some of the decisions onto someone else who is better prepared to shoulder the hugest bulk of the burden… so that you can concentrate on the essentials.

This is why we take lessons, join classes, go to gyms, join meditation groups, enroll in courses, etc. What we want is the results and the joy of doing something for our benefit… with only as much thinking and decisions as we can currently handle, and so avoid being completely swallowed up and paralysed by them.

For example, when you start taking lessons in some form of dance, it’s already hard enough to grapple with the learning itself, with being a complete beginner all over again. It’s plenty hard to know which foot to place where, in what sequence, to get the timing, the rhythm, the feel, etc. You don’t want to also be deciding which music to play, what step to learn today that will build up on your previously learned step, how to find a suitable venue and time for your learning period, etc.

Going to a teacher for lessons (be it an individual lesson or a group lesson) takes away all that responsibility off your un-prepared shoulders: your job is to be student and learn the dance (the essential point)… the rest, your teacher can take care of, that’s what she’s prepared to do.

Undergoing your change-effort in good company helps you remain motivated throughout the process (despite the scheduling-frenzy or other external stressors).

It puts order in your life by creating a routine that you can follow (e.g. lessons are Mondays at 2pm. Period), which takes a away many energy-swallowing decisions you’d otherwise need to be making. This means you have energy for the actual change. It also helps you create a habit of change: it puts the steps in order, it gives you the time and space to practice, it challenges you to take yourself to the next level of achievement.

So what are you waiting for? 

Life won’t stop sending you curve balls. Perhaps, what you need to learn is how to bat them without even flinching, with grace, elegance, and a smile. 

So, go! Find yourself a teacher! Become a Master of Change.

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Image credits:

"Back To School" by samarttiw /freedigitalphotos.net

"New Life Or Old Life" by mrpuen  /freedigitalphotos.net

"Man Sleeping On The Couch" by artur84  /freedigitalphotos.net

"Urgent Stamp" by Stuart Miles /freedigitalphotos.net

"Important Stamp" by Stuart Miles /freedigitalphotos.net

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