This discovery that thought alone changes the brain’s physical structure validates strategies that practitioners of systems thinking and organizational learning have long appreciated. These strategies — effective with everyone from primary school children in the Netherlands to employees in global corporations — include listening without judging, speaking honestly, looking for interrelatedness, nurturing relationships, and asking fresh questions. Brain research suggests that such mental awareness, attentiveness, and creative questioning can actually transform our brains from rigid, automated responders to thoughtful, alert, searching, and open creators of Self and the world.

This article explains why mindfulness — being fully aware of the present moment and regarding it with openness and curiosity — is the compelling responsibility of all human beings. It explains why all of us are by definition obligated to examine and develop our inner context — the Self that thinks well, sees clearly, and decides intelligently. Our survival as individuals, organizations, and a species depends upon it.

Our Inner and Physical Contexts

For the purposes of this discussion, I use “context” in two ways. Strictly speaking, the word “context” means “the situation that surrounds us, with its conditions.” I use it to designate inner context, the mental state inside our heads that envelops us — such as our ideas, tastes, attitudes, moral principles, social rules, and worries. Used this way, “context” is synonymous with “Self or “Mind.”

I also use physical context to refer to the world surrounding us now. The Self is always moving from past to future in a physical space with its own conditions. We live among family, friends, teams, clubs, and neighbors. We occupy a workplace consisting of office furniture, equipment, tasks, deadlines, and colleagues who interact, apply knowledge, make choices, interpret events, and sometimes bring us coffee.

In the workplace — or in any physical context — people, objects, and events are woven together. Indeed, the word “context” comes from the Latin “contexere,” meaning “to weave together.” Woven together in our inner context, our Self, are all those attributes we refer to with the pronoun “I.” The Self, the Mind, emerges as brain cells (specifically, neurons) weave together and connect. Brain cells connect as a result of our experiences. Daily life builds the brain, continuously, moment by moment. We make our Selves.

For example, humans are born with the capacity to distinguish every one of the sounds contained in the 6,000 languages spoken on earth. Particular neurons are genetically assigned to receive particular sounds. The more an infant hears a single sound, such as “gr,” the more that “gr” is wired into a tiny cluster of neurons in the brain’s auditory cortex. The cluster of neurons holding “gr” comes alive with electrical activity when — and only when — that distinctive “gr” sound enters the child’s ear and passes to the brain. Clusters of neurons — circuits — in your brain hold all the sounds of the language you speak. In this way, experience decides if Italian will make sense to you or sound like gibberish.

Experience also wires the brain for music. During the first few years of life, a child’s brain can wire for any kind of music. Because in the United States children hear Western music, by the age of five, their brains have formed circuits that hold Western musical sounds. Five-year-old children know the customary chord progressions in Western music. These examples from music and speech demonstrate that use sculpts the brain.

Because personal experience generates the Self, therefore, one might well ask, “What experiences, what influences, made me the Self that I call ‘I’?” and “Will I, my Self, choose to rewire my brain by paying attention to new contexts that offer new experiences, or will I refuse?”

Perhaps the most obvious influence that shapes the human mind is culture, the context that envelops us from birth. Culture is, of course, a social invention. This invention is communicated to us by our grandparents, parents, friends, teachers, colleagues, and others. These people form a social network that hands down rules of behavior. They give us opinions about education, political parties, right and wrong, the war in Afghanistan, and offshore drilling. They tell us what knowledge is worth learning. Culture wires circuits in our brains, and, miraculously, a Self emerges.

Culture encompasses more, of course, than the social inventions of people inhabiting a broad geographical region. The term also alludes to narrow contexts, such as universities, reading groups, and NASCAR races. Economics, for example, is an academic discipline with its own culture. This academic discipline’s culture does not train economists to be ethicists who ask, “How can the economy be made to serve society?” Nor does the culture of economics departments train economists to be historians disposed to ask, for instance, “Should the Federal Reserve System, created in 1913 as an entity privately owned by the nation’s leading banks, continue to exist in its present form and continue to issue all U. S. currency, so that the federal government must borrow money from the Federal Reserve Bank to meet its financial obligations?”

Rather than consult history, economics departments focus on designing theories, abstract models divorced from ethical and historical contexts. Their models deal with describing, analyzing, and preserving the current economy, which, for better or worse, depends on market activity leading to continuous growth. The product of a narrow culture, the economist sees through a special lens. So do we all.

User’s Guide to Life

Each of us perceives reality through the unique lens of our personal values and ideas. These values and beliefs are part of us, just as surely as an arm is part of us. And just as we are unwilling to part with an arm and will fight to protect it, so we are unwilling to part with the ideas, customs, and practices that constitute the Self, our “User’s Guide to Life.”

Protective of their “User’s Guide to Life,” people who hear of a discovery that challenges their way of thinking typically say immediately, automatically, “It is not true. It is impossible.” Eventually they may admit, “Well, perhaps it is possible.” Faced with irrefutable evidence, they concede, “Ah, it is true.” In time, they incorporate that new information into their own “User’s Guide to Life,” saying, “I thought so all along.” If it is a popular discovery, invention, idea, or procedure, some might even claim, “I thought of it first.”

When culture produces results no one wants, people automatically distance themselves from those outcomes. We treat unwanted results as if they had an independent existence of their own. For example, human beings have degraded 21 percent of the topsoil in the world’s arable land and have reduced 80 percent of humankind to poverty, and yet we automatically disavow responsibility for these conditions. We claim to be prisoners of systems and powerless to alter them. We say we can do nothing.

Not just when our “User’s Guide to Life” faces a daunting or unwanted context, but in any context — familiar or novel — we humans tend to run on automatic pilot. In a meeting with colleagues, the Self automatically downloads a reaction: “Seen it before, know it well.” Relying on customary thoughts, we make customary judgments. As Ellen Langer, a Harvard psychologist, points out, instantly we interpret events, hastily we decide what they mean, immediately we judge and reach conclusions about what is going on around us. We defer to authority, continue the same old practices, and fiercely, sometimes violently, protect a long-held idea.

Protecting What We “Know”

It is understandable, profoundly regrettable, but by no means inevitable that human beings regularly function on automatic pilot and fight to preserve familiar ideas. Brain research suggests three reasons for this determination to protect what we know, freeze thought, and close the Self.

Need to Belong. One reason we seek to retain the lessons of culture and personal experience is that the brain is a social organ. It loves the company of other brains. Indeed, it demands the company of other brains. To survive and flourish, it must belong. Belonging is so important to the brain that it spends its downtime—when it is thinking of nothing in particular — rehashing relationships, asking, “Did I belong? Was I accepted? Did they like me?”

“Social to the core,” as Michael S. Gazzaniga put it in Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique, the brain also delights in gossip because gossip makes it feel included. Men and women alike spend hours gossiping. Cell-phone conversations are rarely about Tolstoy or astrophysics. They’re about personal matters. Women spend one-third of their conversation talking about themselves. “My friend gave me roses.” “I really do want that facelift.” “We meet every winter to ski.” Keenly interested in others, women spend two-thirds of their conversation talking about other people. “The last time I saw her, she looked upset.” Men also love to gossip. They call it “exchanging information” or “networking,” but it’s still just gossip. Furthermore, men spend two-thirds of their time talking about themselves: “I beat my own personal best in that marathon.” “I convinced the boss to use my design.” “I think she likes me.”

Belonging is so important that not belonging generates actual pain. When we do not belong — when we feel rejected, ignored, mocked, or reprimanded—we experience the same hurt that physical pain causes. Two brain regions respond to physical pain. The same two regions also respond to social pain. These two regions — the anterior cingulate cortex and the right ventral prefrontal cortex — react to the pain of a broken arm, and they react to the pain of social distress. When you break your arm, or when you are ignored, your anterior cingulate cortex immediately sends out an alarm: “Pain . . . something is terribly wrong.” This alarm serves to alert the right ventral prefrontal cortex to dampen the pain as much as possible.

The pain of not belonging is so intense that we try hard to avoid it. To avoid the pain of not belonging, we conform. We repeat the same ideas our friends and colleagues voice. We accept culture’s dictates. Willingly, we become prisoners of context, physical and mental.

Search for Meaning. A second major reason that humans automatically struggle to protect their values and convictions is that in order to survive, the brain requires meaning. In its perpetual quest for meaning, the brain looks for patterns and order in everything. Troubled by randomness, for example, it tries to make sense of life, asking, “Is my job worth doing?” “Why did those teenagers have to die in a car crash?” In its quest for meaning — for order, significance, and purpose — the brain protects, apparently, the beliefs and practices it has long known and resists anything that does not fit its patterns. Ironically, protecting meanings causes us to miss the new meaning that an immediate physical context offers us now, as we inhabit the moment.

Habit. A third major reason that human beings struggle to protect customary thoughts and practices is that habit grips the human brain. Gipsie Ranney provided a fine instance of the power of habit when she said that many CEOs insist that “increases in external incentives will enhance performance.” They make this claim despite compelling evidence showing that external incentives actually squelch creativity, discourage risk taking, and increase conformity. These CEOs cling to their belief in external incentives because, often reinforced, it has become habitual. Once a thought becomes habitual, it occupies physical space in the brain.

The Brain’s Habit Center

The habit center of the brain consists of interconnected clusters of neurons located near the core of the brain and called the basal ganglia. Scientists have long known that parts of the basal ganglia affect movement. They now realize that the basal ganglia is also implicated in storing habits. For example, when an activity is practiced so long that it becomes habitual, like leaving the house at six every morning to go jogging, the habit is stored in the basal ganglia. Habits of thought seem also to be held in parts of the basal ganglia. If throughout childhood you were treated kindly, and if you were always encouraged to practice kindness, then neurons in your basal ganglia became wired to form circuits holding the habit of kindness. Embedded in your brain and emerging in your personal Self is the habit of always doing the kind act.

Habits — good and bad alike — are hard to break. One reason habits are hard to break is that they occupy physical space in the brain. The more a habit is practiced, the more real estate it usurps.

Habits are also hard to break because when we try to get rid of a habit, one part of the brain, the orbital frontal cortex, sends out an error message. The orbital frontal cortex, located just above and behind the eyes, is the brain’s error detector, constantly appraising situations to see how things are going. When expectations are thwarted, the orbital frontal cortex sends out an error alert — like a flashing orange hand at a crosswalk that warns pedestrians to rush to the safety of the curb. This error message says, “Something is not right.”

When a healthy person tries to break a habit, the orbital frontal cortex resists doing so, in effect declaring, “Breaking this habit is wrong.” The error message at the same time triggers overwhelming emotions strong enough to vanquish rational thought. Overpowered by these emotions, the brain does not want to listen to reason. The brain wants victory, not truth. It wants to defend its interests, even if what it defends is illogical and unsubstantiated.

The following two versions of the “Trolley Game” illustrate the tendency of emotion to vanquish reason. While the first version favors reason, the second defers to emotion.

Version 1. You are on a bridge watching as an out-of-control train hurtles toward five unsuspecting workers on a track. There is a switch near you that you can use to divert the train onto a different track, where only one worker is standing. Would you divert the train to hit one person in order to save five? Most people answer, “Yes.” It’s a question of logic. The part of your brain that reasons does the math. It tells you to sacrifice one to save five.

Version 2. You are standing on a bridge watching the train aim at five people. There is no way to divert the train. However, standing next to you on the bridge is a massively overweight stranger. If you push him off the bridge and onto the track, he will stop the train. You will kill him and save five. Will you push the stranger off the bridge?

Most people will not push the stranger. Simple logic says, “Kill one; save five.” But now emotion is involved. It feels bad to push a stranger to his death. Emotion defeats reason.

Emotion also trumps reason in a well-known experiment called the “Ultimate Bargaining Game,” involving sharing. Two players are given a chance to split money. One player receives $100.00 and is invited to propose a split. The other player is allowed to accept or reject the offer. If he rejects it, neither player gets anything. Pure logic says, “Having money is desirable.” Therefore one expects the first player to offer the worst possible split. Logic also says, “A little money is better than none.” Therefore one expects the second player to take whatever is offered. However, typically players in the experiment defy logic. The person proposing the split frequently offers almost a fifty-fifty sharing, which is illogical. Such a split is normally accepted. However, when the first player offers significantly less than a fifty-fifty split, the second player rejects the offer. The second player’s feelings of insult, anger, and unfairness trump logical self-interest. Emotions sometimes help us make good decisions, sometimes not.

Mirror Neurons for a Change

Fortunately, we are not trapped in an overwhelmingly emotional, habit-ridden, culture-molded Self. We are capable of opening our minds, hearts, and wills, as systems thinkers and management theorists Otto Scharmer and Peter Senge so emphatically encourage us to do. We are capable of learning from one another, paying attention, thinking well, and seeing clearly.

Mirror neurons are the cells in the brain that make it possible for us to know what it is like to be another person. Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues at the University of Parma discovered mirror neurons in 1996. They were studying how the brains of monkeys buzzed with activity when the animals picked up different objects. Astonishingly, when a trainer picked up some nuts and the monkeys just sat watching, the monkeys’ neurons began to buzz — as if they were picking up the nuts. Watching the scientists grasp food had activated in the monkeys’ brains the identical neurons that had buzzed earlier when the monkeys picked up food. Just watching caused neurons to fire and create circuits.

Human brains behave the same way. We, too, have mirror neurons. Mirror neurons look like any other neuron, but they have a surprising and unique double function. These neurons fire both when you do something — that is, when you perform an action or feel an emotion — and when you watch someone else do something — when you watch someone else perform an action or feel an emotion. Mirror neurons cause you to imitate that action or feeling in your brain.

For example, when someone else kicks a ball, your brain kicks the ball. When you see someone else feel an emotion, then your mirror neurons cause you to feel that same emotion. Your brain makes circuits that hold that feeling. When you observe a woman smile in happiness, then your mirror neurons cause you to feel that same happiness. Because of mirror neurons, you do not have to reason to yourself, “That woman looks happy; therefore she must be happy.” Mirror neurons let you just know the person is happy.

Furthermore, suppose that you are with a friend who is anxious. As you watch your friend feeling anxious, your mirror neurons wire to imitate your friend’s emotion. You “catch” his anxiety. Now you feel anxious, too. Furthermore, your anxiety causes your own body to react. In effect, secondhand emotion affects us physically. When we see an emotion on another’s face, that sight affects both brain and body.

Mirror neurons are sometimes called “empathy neurons” because they let us empathize. They let us unite with another, understanding another’s experience completely and compassionately.

The fact that human beings are equipped with these powerful mirror neurons changes our view of human nature. By nature, human beings seek intimacy and form close ties with others. By nature, humans are highly social, cooperative, and collaborative. By nature, humans are an “empathic species,” born equipped with neurons that unite us. It is possible that, given this capacity for empathy, human beings have survived not primarily by being aggressive, self-sufficient, independent competitors fighting tooth and claw to gain every advantage. On the contrary, it seems that we have survived by seeing with another’s eyes and feeling with another’s heart. Neuroscientist Richard Restak says, “If we try to think in a compassionate manner about the other person — no matter how difficult that may be — we then become capable of empathizing — of thinking and feeling as that person does.” We become one with the person, united.

A New Responsibility

Understanding the power of mirror neurons as well as the fact that daily life shapes the brain brings with it great responsibility. We now realize that those watching our actions and displays of emotion will “catch” our behavior, performing it in their own brains. Surely we must take care, then, that our behavior is worthy of emulation. We must also be careful of what we are willing to observe. When we observe the actions and feelings of others, especially for a sustained period, our brains perform those same actions and feelings. What behavior do we want our brains to replicate?

And what truth does knowledge of mirror neurons and the brain’s plasticity permit us to confidently promulgate? How do we know that our own peculiar daily life and interactions have led us to truths?

Culture gives us, of course, its version of truth. For example, virtually all cultures teach a few universal moral principles.

1. Do no harm. Be compassionate, empathize, oppose cruelty, alleviate suffering.
2. Be fair. Give everyone an equal chance. Punish cheaters; repay kindnesses. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
3. Support the community. Share, be generous, collaborate, volunteer.
4. Respect authority. Show respect for those in authority. Fulfill duties and obligations.
5. Be pure. Reject things that contaminate, such as incest and polygamy.

The trouble is that interpretations of these universal principles are local. In some countries and in some religions, do no harm permits stoning a woman to death for having sex out of wedlock. Surely we must be wary of judging right and wrong based upon universal moral codes that yield widely divergent interpretations.

But if we can’t trust local interpretations of universal moral codes, what foundation does allow us to make moral judgments? Science might help. For example, as Professor Will Keepin explains, “In field after field, in biology, physics, nonlinear dynamics, artificial life, complexity theory . . . [is] a new idea . . . that beyond the physical realm, there exist invisible patterns and principles that somehow organize what we observe and experience.” Apparently there exists “a realm beyond the observed, material, empirical world . . . Something transpires behind that which appears.” Might an ethic be drawn from that observation? What might a new moral code be? Perhaps a new moral code will emerge from our capacity to empathize.

The point is that definitive concepts of right and wrong are elusive. Achieving the fullest understanding possible about ethical and other matters is exceedingly difficult. Because it is so difficult, each of us has a responsibility to open our minds and hearts to every single context we inhabit, always searching for truth. To open our minds intelligently demands, among other things, thinking well and paying attention.

Thinking Well. Thought alone — just thinking — can actually connect neurons in emotional regions of the brain so that they hold a positive outlook. If we begin each morning writing down three reasons to be grateful, we will in time weave brain circuits that hold a grateful attitude. Buddhists meditate on compassion and as a result generate brain circuits in which compassion is embedded.

Paying Attention. Thinking well requires paying attention. Paying attention in a disciplined way intensifies the brain’s response to any thought or sensation. To understand the force of paying attention, consider that all objects possess shape and color. Take a chair, for example. The shape of the chair is processed by distinctive circuits of neurons. The color of the chair is processed by an entirely different circuit of neurons. Neurons that process the shape of the chair have nothing to do with those that process the chair’s color. Therefore, if you choose to pay attention only to an object’s shape, then you strengthen only the neurons that specialize in shape. If you then focus on the object’s color, you will bolster the neurons that specialize in color.

Targeting an object, taking aim, is the first step in paying attention. Having chosen the target, concentrate on it. Ignore distractions and irrelevancies. Return wandering attention to the target, re-aim. This process wires the target into the brain’s circuitry, thus changing the brain’s physical structure.

Paying attention is of huge importance to anyone interested in context because it makes the brain alert and vigilant. Otherwise, we might end up in this situation:

• “What big eyes you have Grandma,” Red Riding Hood said, oblivious of the countless past visits when her Grandma’s eyes did not seem big.
• “What big ears you have, Grandma,” she said matter-of-factly. Had she concentrated, Red Riding Hood would have recalled that her grandma’s ears had never looked big, furry, and pointed.
• “What a deep voice you have, Grandma,” she said blandly, as if her Grandmother’s voice had always sounded deep and low.
• “What big teeth . . .” At last paying attention — too late — Red Riding Hood realized that she had been talking to a wolf.

Poor Red Riding Hood. No one taught her to concentrate, so she wasn’t vigilant. Clearly William James was right when he said, “An education that would improve attention would be the education par excellence.”

A Work in Progress

We human beings are capable of exercising mindfulness — of paying attention and thinking well. We are able to suspend disbelief, listen, learn, and deepen understanding.

• Shall we, then, in any context strive intentionally to cultivate compassion, patience, and love?
• Shall we perhaps apply the term “social” not only to relationships among human beings, but to relationships among every living thing?
• Shall our values serve not only our own ends, but those of all life?

The Self, a work in progress until the day we die, has the power to grow and learn in all the contexts it inhabits. What’s more, it has the power to transform these contexts and, in so doing, perhaps even save the world. Let’s use our knowledge of the brain to cultivate reason, curiosity, mindfulness, and empathy now, in today’s context, so that our wise decisions enable human beings and Earth to flourish always.

Elaine B. Johnson, Ph. D., a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and Honorary Fellow of Huron University College, Canada, is an internationally recognized authority on contextual teaching and learning and a popular interpreter of brain research. Author of the definitive study on teaching in context, Contextual Teaching and Learning: What it Is and Why It’s Here to Stay (2002), Johnson is in demand as a consultant to businesses and schools. She is currently writing a book about the brain tentatively called Love Your Brain, Improve Your Life.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The material in this article is based on numerous studies that, in an academic journal, would be scrupulously documented. For this publication, space permits mentioning only a few major sources: Sharon Begley, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain (NewYork: Ballantine Books, 2007), pp. 156-160; John B. Cobb, Jr., “Capital,” a paper written for a conference in Suzhou, China, January 2009, pp. 4-13; David Dobbs, “A Revealing Reflection,” Scientific American Mind, April/May 2006, pp. 22-27; Michael Gazzaniga, Human (New York: HarperCollins, 2008); Marco Iacoboni, Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), pp. 1-46; Will Keepin, “Science and the Spirit: Integrating the Sacred and the Secular,” Timeline, September/October 1998, p. 15; Ellen J. Langer, The Power of Mindful Learning (Cambridge: Perseus Books, 1997), pp. 1, 4, 16- 18,100, 103-105; Daniel J. Levitin, This Is Your Brain on Music (New York: Plume/Penguin, 2007), pp. 26-27, 40-43; Gipsie B. Ranney, “The Trouble with Incentives: They Work,” Ongoing Discussion Thought Piece for Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne’s Enterprise Thinking Network, pp. 5-7; Richard Restak, The Secret Life of the Brain (New York: Dana Press & The Joseph Henry Press), 2001, pp. 44-45; C. Otto Scharmer, Theory U (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2009), 119-121; Theory U’s Foreword by management theorist Peter Senge, p.xiii; Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M. D., and Sharon Begley, The Mind and the Brain (New York: Harper Collins, 2002), pp. 59-73; Daniel Siegel, The Mindful Brain (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007), pp. 110-118. For the relationship of emotion to reason, see Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error (New York: Avon Books, 1994), pp. 70-71, 159-160. Matthew Lieberman and Naomi Eisenberger, working at UCLA, discovered that emotional pain is comparable to physical pain.

The post Changing Our Systems by Changing Our Brains: The Leverage in Mindfulness appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

This kind of “trust walk” is one example of what we might call experiential learning, but other examples abound. Facilitators use energizers, brief activities to get participants’ blood and creative juices flowing at the outset of meetings. Managers practice techniques derived from Aikido to better understand physically and metaphorically their patterns of interaction with others. Workshop participants walk ancient labyrinths as a meditative way of seeking solutions to vexing problems. Marketing and distribution specialists play games designed to help them understand the consequences of various decision-making strategies. Long-range planners use powerful software programs to play out different scenarios in cyber-space before they try them in the real world. And, leadership teams practice working with risk and fear by rappelling from rocky cliffs. All these experiences were designed to capitalize on the human brain’s remarkable capacity to learn in tandem with the body.

Experiential learning engages the entire physiology, by design.

What is experiential learning? With such a wide variety of activities that fall under a common heading, the definition can be elusive. After years of talking about the difference between process and content and relating elaborate tales about the power of learning by doing, I have come to rely on this simple and straightforward response: Experiential learning engages the entire physiology, by design.

The significant elements of this definition lie in the qualifier, entire, and in the phrase, by design. In other words, experiential learning involves questions of degree and intent. So, it follows that instructors who use an experiential approach should intentionally engage as much of the physiology as possible in the learning process. Indeed, some exciting new discoveries about the mind/body connection suggest that we should attempt to infuse all learning with experience.

A Sedentary Lifestyle

In the future, we will come to rely more and more upon experiential learning because of the double-edged sword of technological advances. Technology has eliminated large portions of the physical work that daily living used to require, such as chopping wood and carrying water. The upside to this change is that we now have more time to pursue other kinds of work and leisure. The downside is that it has also lopped off a fair amount of the activity that grounds us in the natural world and, in the long run, keeps us healthy.

We are an active species, just a few twists of DNA away from the rest of the mammals. And unless the family dogs have become addicted to reruns of Lassie, you will not find any other animals that sit stone-faced in front of CRTs. Nor will you find them staring at each other all day across tables made of plastic laminate. Rather, they spend their waking hours playing, stretching, exploring, and learning. They engage the world continuously with their entire beings. We, on the other hand, have conditioned ourselves to suppress the urge to move around and experience things, instead confining our existence to small boxes surrounded by profoundly uninteresting scenery and sensation-deadening appliances.

The information age has converted us into a sedentary culture that has forgotten the powerful synergy of mind and body working together. We have relegated physical activity to the role of stress and health-management techniques that serve the sole function of enabling us to remain productive workers and consumers. As a culture, we have not yet found the appropriate blending of action and contemplation that will lead to the next curve of our evolution. This leap to the next curve will require a robust society whose individuals have reestablished the connection between mind and body in their working lives.

If we are to pay attention to an entire system, be it organizational, national, or global, we must begin with the system that lies within each of us. This step will require a rich infusion of experience to recapture the capacities of our natural learning systems. Let’s look at some of the scientific underpinnings for experiential learning and think about ways we can increase the amount of day-to-day experience in our organizational lives.

The Corporal Self in Cognition

A Sea of Hormones. Recent research on consciousness, most notably by Antonio Damasio, suggests that our attention and arousal systems emerge from complex interactions between the central nervous system and chemical activators that surge continually throughout the body. Even the title of his book on this topic, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (Harcourt Brace, 1999), hints at a revolutionary perspective on the role of the corporal self in cognition. Sure, we still need the cognitive and language areas of the brain to recall facts and manipulate variables as we solve problems. But the emotions are essential players in the attention system and, by direct consequence, in the learning system. Without emotions, we would not engage ourselves in, or for that matter even recognize, the problems at hand.

Here is an example: If you narrowly miss striking a child on a bicycle who has veered in front of your car, for 20 minutes after the event, your heart pounds, your muscles shake, and your anxiety levels remain high. You are so distracted, you might miss your turn into the office’s parking lot. This disturbance to your equilibrium results from your adrenal gland’s releasing a tiny amount of epinephrine into your system. This hormone produces a state of mind and a level of physical readiness that enable you to take evasive action, but it leaves you with a bit of a hangover.

Mercifully, these attention-getting chemical alarms do not activate often. The real news is that powerful but very subtle chemical states influence virtually all of our cognitive functioning! Below the level of our recognition, human consciousness floats on an ever-changing sea of hormones and peptides. Here is a case in point: Low-level stress, the kind that is our near-constant companion in Western civilization, produces cortisol, a hormone that stays with us for hours. Cortisol interferes with learning and memory, ultimately causing the axons and dendrites in a part of the brain associated with long-term memory to atrophy and, in extreme cases, to die. Stress breaks down the neural networks that keep us in touch with ourselves. As we lose touch with ourselves, we lose touch with those around us – something that should be of great concern to managers.

Try not to let this information drag you down (remember, all that cortisol is not good for you). Better to ask how we can create working environments that support rather than inhibit learning. Our internal chemical environment determines not only what we learn, but also how well we learn it. Thus, our first task should be to attend to the physical/emotional status of learners. By acknowledging the primacy of biology, good experiential design works toward this end.

Mirror Neurons. On another research front, scientists have opened up an entirely new field of investigation that may have extensive ramifications for learning and teaching. Cutting-edge imaging technology affords researchers the ability to study brains at work. It should come as no surprise that certain areas of the brain become active when we make different motions. What is very surprising is that Giacomo Rizzolatti and his partners at the University of Parma have discovered a collection of neurons in higher primates that light up when an action is merely observed. Shortly after this announcement in the late 1990s, another Italian team confirmed the existence of a similar structure in humans.

Dubbed mirror neurons, these cells fire when we watch someone else perform an action, say picking up an apple. For example, if a dozen people are in a room with a single apple, only one person can pick up and taste the fruit, but 12 brains will mimic the action and activate salivary glands to begin digestion. Mirror neurons could account for a whole host of behaviors related to the power of suggestion, including the contagious nature of yawns, and are most likely linked to things such as the learning of tasks, intuition, empathy, and language acquisition.

In humans, mirror neurons are associated with the portion of the brain most directly connected to speech production. Rizzolatti and others speculate that the physical mirroring capacity in this area allows sophisticated human communication to develop and evolve. In other words, one’s abilities to perform an action and then to talk about that action may develop in tandem. This mutual emergence of experience and language holds great importance for us in that it suggests we are biologically programmed to employ thought and action simultaneously.

The speculation that talking and doing are inextricably entwined in our brains has mind-boggling implications for educators and facilitators. If true, then role playing, drama, energizers, and other experiential activities should take a central role, equal with lectures and written material, in any learning endeavor. An ancient proverb reminds us that a picture is worth 10,000 words. By extension, might an experience be worth 10,000 pictures?

Furthermore, imaging technologies are showing researchers that seemingly unrelated functions of the mind interact with and influence one another. In other words, an action can influence a mood, and a change in mood can affect your perspective on an issue. Laughter may truly be the best medicine. Of course, the subtle interplay of various portions of the body and mind is much more complex than we may ever understand. But the current research suggests that if we are serious about tapping all our learning capacities, we will seek physiologically engaged learning. In short, get out of your seat and act!

The Learning Continuum

At one end of the learning continuum, the subject is passive; the emotions lie dormant; few senses are engaged; and the ideas are abstract. At the other end, the learner is physically active; is emotionally involved; is sensorially alive; and is grappling with tangible things. Any learning event may be placed along this continuum. I believe that our current understanding of learning suggests that, to the extent possible, we should be striving toward the experiential end of the spectrum.

When I mention the learning environment in an organization, I’m referring to much more than typical training settings. I include all those events where two or more come together for collaborative work. In any organization really trying to be a learning organization, every daily encounter should create the conditions in which learning best occurs. These conditions include a high challenge/low threat environment, a minimum of distractions, sufficient time for quiet reflection, and physical activity.

As we begin to appreciate the complexity of the learning process, the challenge of designing an instructional experience that engages the entire physiology can feel overwhelming. How can we attend to the thousands of factors that can be manipulated to influence a person’s learning? How can we incorporate some of the wonderful work that has been done involving learning styles and multiple intelligences by Howard Gardner, Daniel Goleman, MelLevine, Dawna Markova, and others?

Fortunately, the task need not be daunting. One possible path through the complexity is a simple approach that stems from the early work of Geoffrey and Renate Caine, whose classic Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain(Addison-Wesley,1994) has helped many educators come to a better understanding of how humans learn (see the reinforcing loops of “The Experiential Learning Cycle”). As a place to begin, this framework ensures that three essential ingredients for effective learning are added to the curriculum: paying attention to the learner’s biology, providing an engaging experience, and assisting the learner to make meaning of the experience.

Relaxed Alertness. The circle begins with relaxed alertness. Creating a warm and welcoming atmosphere is important and not as simple as merely providing fresh coffee and a box of Krispy Kreme donuts. In fact, every sensory stimulus in the environment, planned or not, will either contribute to or detract from your purpose. Traffic noise, cooking smells, and other peripheral distractions make a difference.

At a more sophisticated level, the emotional and physical status of individuals and the group will affect outcomes. With the discovery of mirror neurons, we now have tangible evidence that one person’s emotional state will affect the entire group. For this reason, facilitators should create a warm and supportive tone, in effect modeling a relaxed and attentive approach to the session. Beyond that, they can choose from a host of techniques aimed at relaxing the body and preparing the mind, including progressive relaxation, guided imagery, and balancing and centering techniques. None of this suggests that facilitators should lull participants to sleep. Rather, the intent is to remove threats and in so doing allow the participants to focus exclusively on the challenging work of learning something new.

With the exception of on-the-job coaching, all structured learning events are to a certain extent artificial. After all, they are not intended to be real life/make-or-break events. Instead, I think of them as learning laboratories where participants may increase their skill, understanding, and capacity to better meet the challenges that lie ahead. Because the facilitator is creating the environment, it must be the facilitator’s role to prepare learners to enter that environment.

THE EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING CYCLE

This model captures the flow of three essential components in the learning process. Beginning at relaxed alertness will always remind us to attend to the learner’s biology first.(Adapted from Education at the Edge of Possibility, Caine and Caine (ASCD,1997))

This means creating safe physical and emotional spaces in which to begin an activity. It also means being clear about expectations for levels of participation and attending to the physical needs of the people in the room. Remember that during any learning session, participants will, for their own reasons, “check out” from time to time. Sitting in a classroom or meeting, they can do so unnoticed and then refocus on the session when ready. In any experiential work, “checking out” becomes obvious to the entire group. Making this need for downtime acceptable from the outset is part of the facilitator’s role. One way to do so is to acknowledge that everyone learns differently and that some people may choose to step out of an activity and merely observe for a while.

Immersion in Complex Experience. The circle continues with orchestrated immersion in complex experience. One of the grand paradoxes of designing rich learning environments is that we are never sure what learning is going to emerge. The richer the design, the more room for creativity and insight. In fact, aside from the teaching of essential skills and the conveyance of rote information, any attempt to limit or control the outcome of an event will likely impede the progress of the learners. Why limit participants only to what we know or expect? Also, complex activities provide opportunities for all learners to find a point of access that suits their particular learning style or intelligence.

By now, you are wondering if I’m going to say anything about the actual design of an activity. Because of space limitations, the answer is “no.” There are many excellent resources and books that, combined, provide thousands of activities aimed at specific learning outcomes. The key is to always let your intent drive your search for activities rather than the other way around.

Here are a few questions that may help guide you in increasing the “experience” factor in designing your own context-specific activities:

• What do I want the learners to learn?
• What do I want the learners to be able to do?
• How can I inspire the learners to become emotionally engaged in this activity?
• How can I involve their senses in the process?
• How can I engage them with another person?
• How can I encourage the learners to physically move, even if it is just to make a gesture?
• How can I increase the richness of the experience?

To the extent that you move learners along the continuum toward more experience, you will increase the potential for learning.

Active Processing. The next step along the circular path is active processing. All learning that arises from direct experience is felt by the learner. It lies inside his or her body, perhaps locked in some complex chemical mix that he or she cannot express verbally. Meaning may be hidden from the learner and, by logical extension, from the rest of the group. Processing is the act of teasing into consciousness and giving language to those feelings in the body. This process may begin as a solitary task employing a bit of quiet reflection. Things will eventually begin to emerge, such as creative solutions to difficult problems, new ways of framing essential questions, or insights about patterns of interaction in a work group. Tapping into the body’s innate intelligence takes time and patience but can lead to great rewards.

At some point, the facilitator may encourage participants to share their thoughts with the group, asking questions such as: What happened during the experience? What meaning does that hold for us? And, now what do we do with our new understanding? As observations come to the fore, the group can consider them and arrive at some shared learning. Often the understandings that emerge involve underlying assumptions about how the world works. (One advantage to participating in structured experiences that are not directly related to the bottom line is that they can allow learners to feel and speak very freely without fear of criticism or reprisal.)

Once the group has processed and assimilated the learning from an activity, it is ready to continue its journey through the cycle again (see “Guidelines for Experiential Learning Design”).

Initial Resistance

When you introduce experiential activities to a group, you may encounter some initial resistance. Here are some arguments I have heard against experiential learning, as well as some responses:

“We don’t have time for this; just tell me what I need to know.” Because we tend to separate physical activity from the intellectual work many of us do to make a living, assumptions about what it means to spend productive time on the job may lead some to question the appropriateness of physically and emotionally engaged learning. Despite all attempts to make it something else, learning is a biological process that takes time. The expedience of just telling people what they need to know often undermines their actually learning it.

“We don’t want to get into how people feel about this.” Deep learning profoundly touches people. When we employ experiential methods that require high levels of commitment and involvement, emotionally charged issues will emerge. Unless the group is a highly functioning and trustworthy team, or unless a skilled facilitator is present to help manage these difficult situations, the quality of interaction can deteriorate and the session may be counterproductive.

“None of that touchy-feely stuff for me.” Experiential learning often involves sharing emotions and, in some cases, physical touch. Some participants, especially if they are old enough to remember the encounter groups of the late 1960s, will react with everything from reluctance to disdain. This guilt by association is unfortunate. Well-designed experiences in work settings should not involve coercion, expectations to participate outside one’s level of comfort, or inappropriate physical touch. Facilitators must also remain aware of particular cultural differences regarding the appropriateness of different forms of touch. And although facilitators may sometimes borrow from the language of counseling, experiential learning is not about psychotherapy or probing into participants’ personal lives.

“You can’t prove to me this works any better than just having a meeting.” That is probably true, at least in the short term. The process is messy. Outcomes are often unpredictable, and evaluation can be difficult. Of course, we can measure whether or not learners have acquired some new understanding or skill. But the deeper learnings that involve changes in perception, behavior, or fundamental assumptions about how the world works are always in process. Perceptions shift, and meaning emerges over time. Traditional forms of assessment do not measure these things well, if at all.

“This stuff just doesn’t apply in the real world.” Some people will criticize an experiential approach because the game-playing nature of many activities and the emphasis on relaxed alertness do not seem to adequately mirror the difficult lives they lead in the work world. They wonder, justifiably, how a consciously constructed model or simulation relates to the chaotic nature of today’s business environment.

In response to this concern, I refer to the most stressful environment I know: emergency medicine and rescue. In training people to work under severe stress, where life and death decisions are often necessary and complex techniques and equipment must be employed, the training is often fun, laid back, infused with humor, and highly experiential. Although their jobs are loaded with real-world stress, these professionals generally build skills and capacities in an arena that supports learning.

Nevertheless, the issue of context raises legitimate concerns. Research and practical experience suggest that learning is highly specific to the environment in which it was acquired, and we must be very careful about assuming that learning will somehow magically transfer from one setting to another. Processing, by raising issues to the conscious level, may help us to frame questions differently or experiment with options, but with no guarantees of crossover.

A Seamless Whole

I’ve said nothing new. Experiential learning predates the emergence of Homo sapiens. But we need only to look at the state of most public schools to recognize that the techniques and technologies supporting learning have reached a bit of a standstill in the past century.

Brain research, still in its infancy, promises to help us gain some insight into natural learning propensities we have lost. Even now, it is providing good reason to do away with some of the dualistic thinking about human behavior that informs our culture. Paired opposites such as physical/mental, affective/cognitive, and hard skills/soft skills may drop from usage in the next generation.

Upon reflection, even the term experiential learning feels a bit dated. Science is now offering us a new way of framing experience that dramatically illuminates the relationship between head and heart. Perhaps as our understanding evolves, we will invent new language that honors the complex relationships that weave human experience into a seamless whole.

We have, with our technology, created a complex and challenging future – a future that will demand increasingly sophisticated learning to negotiate. But however advanced we become, we must remember that learning will always remain rooted firmly in our biology.

Kenneth L. Thompson is chair of the department of Experiential Education at Albuquerque Academy, an independent secondary school in New Mexico, where he coordinates wilderness programs and project-based learning. His 20-year career in education includes university teaching and work in corporate and organizational consulting.

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