Reaching Massage Students
“Using advanced tools such as magnetic resonance imaging, researchers are finding that writing by hand and having hand movements is more than just a way to communicate. The practice helps with learning letters and shapes, can improve idea composition and expression, and may aid fine motor-skill development”
During one study at Indiana University, researchers invited children to man a “spaceship,” actually an MRI machine using a specialized scan called “functional” MRI which spots neural activity in the brain. The kids were shown letters before and after receiving different letter-learning instruction. In children who had practiced printing by hand, the neural activity was far more enhanced and ”adult-like” than in those who had simply looked at letters.
“It seems there is something really important about manually manipulating and drawing out two-dimensional things we see all the time,” says Karin Harman James, Indiana University.
P. Murali Doraiswamy, a neuroscientist at Duke University states:”As more people lose writing skills and migrate to the computer, retraining people in handwriting skills could be a useful cognitive exercise.”
A Look at Kinesthetic Learners:
Key Learning Methods for Kinesthetic Learners:
Ways to Adapt Lessons for Kinesthetic Learners:
This adds to our theory of Body Centered Therapy
The principles of Body Centered Therapy / Education demonstrate a respect for the human spirit and our capacity for awareness, learning, and integrity. These principles set the stage for a relationship between client and therapist and/or massage student and massage instructor that provides elements that are critical to any process of self-discovery and inner transformation: curiosity, awareness, and dignity.
When we access or use more of our awareness, new things become possible. In the case of learning something new at massage school, there is a process of increasing awareness that then enables the student to do something we couldn’t do before. The same is true in the human psyche. When we increase our awareness of the subtleties of our internal experiences and the relationships between them, new things become possible. In an awareness-based therapy / learning, some of the new things that typically become possible include increased self-acceptance, a greater sense of freedom and choice in relationships and posture, and the re-integration of aspects of our selves or our experience from which we have been dis-connected.
Students and Instructors sitting in circle
“The greatest sign of success for a teacher… is to be able to say, “The students are now working as if I did not exist.””
Maria Montessori
