One method for optimizing learning

[internalenthusiast]

i like your exercise, bruce. it puts the beginnings of some complex things in a very simple experiential format, for beginners.

[Bhassler]

Hey Shooter,

I always enjoy and learn a lot from reading your perspective on things. To tie it more closely to the direction I was heading with the original post, how does one take a more "conventional" class situation as a student and make it more of an intuitive learning process for themselves? Or, how does someone take their intuitive movement explorations and contextualize them combatively, again working in a more or less "normal" class environment? I'm really wanting to explore the notion of how a person with an 8-5 job, responsibilities, etc., etc., can leverage some of the principles of optimally structured training to enhance their own learning given that they're operating within the constraints of their present lives and class environments.

I have an inkling how I might answer my own questions, and I can post my thoughts after I've had a little more time to mull over and develop them....

B-

[BruceP]

cdobe and internalenthusiast, it is only preliminary, but it does offer insight to the evolutionary path that an individual's movement will take. I should have mentioned that the twisting is usually repeated a few times in each of the variations in order to track the individual's learning processes, as illustrated in the evolution of their responsive movement. The most important thing is to keep context out of the equation. Intuitive learning usually ceases where context begins.

[Chris McKinley]

I like your idea, Shooter, and would look forward to hearing more. And even as possibly contrary to what I recommend as it might seem, it's not. RE: "The most important thing is to keep context out of the equation. Intuitive learning usually ceases where context begins.". At least as far as generating movement natural to the individual, I couldn't agree more. In fact, this is one of the major factors in why I very carefully separate the learning and contextualization phases in my approach. It's not that you can't learn something in its natural context, in purely generic terms. It's that, when it comes to developing the skill to move intuitively/naturally on one hand, and simultaneously moving effectively on the other, the danger and fear inherent in the native context of combat skills is an obstacle to optimizing state-dependent learning.

[BruceP]

Hey, Bhassler

I don't know if I can really answer the first question because a 'conventional' class may not be the proper environment. Usually, that sort of setting is focused on engaging the cognitive/active self for assimilating and learning through emulation, or the development of particular skill sets. I suppose a person could pull it off if they went into that sort of environment and purposefully disregarded context associated with the material they were being given. It would be kinda like going to rehearsal for a play and doing improv instead of following the script. It would just piss everyone off.

The second question is a good one. It's something I do have experience with.

If we start with the kind of exercise I described, it assumes that the person has gained a basic understanding of the process of intuitive learning peculiar to themself, and that they have addressed their personal combat. The constraints and lifestyle etc that you alluded to are where an individual's personal combat begins. They know the pressures and forces, risks and exposures, that determine their personal combat. They can now bring context to the training through that basic overview.

My experience with sudden, choatic violence is that it is almost always navigated intuitively with brief flashes of cognitive referencing. I'm big on exploring the natural protective responses common to us all and those which are peculiar to the individual, so my own approach is to create/develop re-cognition sequences tailored to the individual according to those responses. Just as with the twisting exercise in which movement evolves with each repetition, the natural responses evolve as they're explored in context. This evolution happens naturally and intuitively because there are no prescribed solutions to the points of failure.

Context, then, comes into the picture as being unique to the individual according to their percieved role in conflict. Prey or predator? Victim or righteous defender? Reactive or responsive? Like that. Context arises almost always from the perspective of the former rather than the latter if people are honest in determining their personal combat. That's why I always say, 'Don't train for success - train for failure' When context takes this incidental role it doesn't interfere with intuitive learning because it's a soft component rather than the purpose.

I'm not certain that a person could apply this approach in a 'more or less normal class' setting if nobody else is on the same page, but I would love to see it. I have complete faith in the idea that we can't really teach anyone anything - we can only bring out what's already there. Intuitive learning is the means to that end. This approach applies equally to developing tactical skills, but again, I don't know if it could be practiced in a conventional class setting. It's like, 'hit me...no, I said hit me'. There is no beginning or end to ownership if a person believes that they have it within themself to figure it out for themself. To me, that's optimized learning.

[BruceP]

Chris, 100% agreed...as usual

[Doc Stier]

Shooter and Chris:

You guys talk about intuitive learning and responses, which is cool, but since intuitive faculties are the domain of the deeper subconscious mind, how do you access this part of the mind to program your techniques and strategies into the 'hard drive' of your survival instinct software which controls your automatic reactions and spontaneous responses?

[BruceP]

Shooter and Chris:

You guys talk about intuitive learning and responses, which is cool, but since intuitive faculties are the domain of the deeper subconscious mind, how do you access this part of the mind to program your techniques and strategies into the 'hard drive' of your survival instinct software which controls your automatic reactions and spontaneous responses?

I just googled 'intuitive learning' to see what was out there...wow some of it's really out there. Apparently, 35% of us are intuitive learners, and some folks don't dig on that type of learning at all.

Doc, I draw my inspiration from Karlheinz Stockhausen. Although his field was music, I found his ideas to be applicable to exploring combative movement. Anyway, I've shared lots of ideas, drills and training methods for accessing the intuitive mind. I've written pages of drivel on how my tai chi is practiced in a natural and spontaneous, free and easy manner where the neutrality principle rules. My heretical understanding of tjq has always been that it's an exploration of our intuitive being.

De-emphasising/disproving 'not knowing' opens the door to intuitive learning. I don't know what I don't know and I'm not interested in what I do know...kinda like that. Everyone learns differently on a cognitive level but we all learn pretty much the same on an intuitive level. IME, the point of entry to it is different for everyone, but not so much so for most of us.

I've hinted at intermediary training methods involving different kinds of 'bagwork' and other equipment training which opens the door for some folks. Although it's very basic, the exercise I outlined in this thread is pretty effective if you know what to watch for and how to follow it up. Whatever means that's employed is entirely dependent on how it's presented/introduced - or rather, not. Anyway, I think I explained that pretty thouroughly in my reply to Brian.

I don't know anything about programming techniques and strategies into the hard drive because I don't believe in techniques. At any rate, what I've taken from tjq's 5-steps and my own approach to how context and re-cognition are put together is fairly in-depth as far as the tactical development goes.

[Doc Stier]

Hey, Shooter:

Thanks for responding, man.

I'm not at all interested in the heavy bag drills or other physical techniques, however good they may be, as I already have an excessive truckload of techniques up the wazoo.

I am much more interested in the psychological programming methods employed to install the desired mojo on the subconscious hard-drive.

C'mon, man, give me something I can wrap my mind around....something believable!

[Chris McKinley]

Doc,

Good question. Intuitive processes are linked, at least partially, with processes that could be called subsconscious. However, and thankfully, the kind of intuitive movement patterns we're talking about here aren't exclusively generated there. While I believe that Shooter and I are probably talking about the same kind of thing, I'll speak only for myself just for the sake of conversational clarity. The kind of movement I'm talking about getting the person to generate is the kind that comes out most naturally in what could best be described as play. Watch a group of kids playing tag in a relatively confined area for a great example. Now, while real combat certainly isn't fun and games, the exploration of skills that can be used there can be, at least to an extent.

You're a long-time neijia guy, so I'm going to assume that you've probably played your fair share of rou shou from Bagua. Have you ever done it at 1/3 speed or slower with a partner who maintained honest movement and reactions? If so, you will have discovered that it is very easy to perceive the incoming threat from your partner's strike, intuitively recognize the type of movement pattern that is needed to avoid and counter it, and that you have plenty of time to generate such a tactic completely from scratch and on-the-fly, so to speak, without any prior choreography whatsoever. Even completely untrained people quickly get to this point once they stop worrying about what they look like to the folks training around them and just let go and get into the play of it.

This is but one fairly simple but fairly powerful example that I'm guessing you're already familiar with. There are other more tailored methods, but let's stick with this for now. Let's say in the course of playing this very slow rou shou session that as an instructor, you're watching the partners work for a while and you notice a particularly effective counter that a given student spontaneously and naturally generated against a fairly common realistic strike. You calmly ask the partners to pause for a moment, reference the strike and praise the student for his solution to it, then ask him how he did it as if you were asking him to teach you that "move".

Almost universally, the person's first reaction is something like, "I don't know, I just did it." You ignore this comment and ask him to show you, repeating your interest in the effectiveness of the movement. You step in and have the other partner repeat the same strike slowly at you, and ask the first partner to show you how he did it. He'll feel a bit nervous about teaching the teacher, but you want to get him to give you a simple explanation of what he did, preferably by having him do it again to show you. Once you can get that to happen, you praise all of the positive tactical elements of his choice of movement. You explain why that's such an effective response for that strike. Sometimes, just for the cheese factor, you can ask him, "Are you sure you haven't practiced that particular move before? Because you sure did it very effectively." He'll assure you again that he hasn't and that it just came up somehow.

At this point, you could ask him if he wouldn't mind if you borrowed him for a bit to explore that movement some more. Have him switch partners or work with him directly yourself and repeat the strike and counter. At this point, have him tweak the response to be even better by saying, "What would happen if you did it slightly more like this, or did this at the same time", etc. IOW, have him explore it with you, even if you already know where all this is leading. By becoming a co-partner in his development instead of you just doling out meager bits of skill to him like he was waiting on line for gubmint cheese, he begins to take ownership of what he discovers, and he develops a vested interest in his own improvement. He also begins to develop the ability to recognize what works, what doesn't, and why, from an experiential not academic perspective.....a skill he would not realistically expect to pick up in more common "traditional" training found in the typical IMA school.

During this exploration phase, you carefully point out for him all of the elements that make it so effective, and any additional elements that you have both discovered while tweaking it. List them out for him. Even on paper, if need be. After this exploration phase, have him partner up with someone and begin to practice the movement, with all tweaks and essential elements in place. Use full speed in this practice only for those elements absolutely dependent upon it; this will be rare. I cannot emphasize enough that it is the process of exploring, analyzing/evaluating, and performing the movement at this artificially slow pace that is the key to forming connections between the motor cortex (where the move initially originated) and the specific triggers and stimuli that represent the appropriate time to use it, as well as connections with the conscious mind and its ever-growing library of patterns, and the ability to recognize the elements that make the tactic work. It is the building of these connections that not only allows for the proper integration of this movement into unconscious competence in context, but also allows for that movement to be later evaluated unconsciously against already-recognized patterns, leading to even further unconsciously and spontaneously-generated responses in the future.

The stronger these connections are made, the more the student's ability to intuitively generate effective responses spontaneously will improve, and the more quickly it will improve. In fact, done correctly, the rate of improvement will begin to improve exponentially quickly....it does not follow a linear path the way it does with more typical training approaches.

But back to our story....after you've had him practice the tactic and had him pay special attention to the individual elements that make it work better, it's time to have him move into the early phase of contextualizing that new skill. Up till now, he's discovered a new toy, shined it up and polished it, but he hasn't yet had a chance to take it out and play with it. We begin by having him relax his focus on the individual elements and have him instead just let the movement come out naturally as one integrated whole. His partner is instructed to gradually build up speed and power in his strike, until eventually, he's attacking at full speed. If the tactic begins to show stress points or fails entirely, immediately slow it down and go back to the practice phase, identifying the weak element(s) for the student and having him shore those up for a while. Once he's got it down, you begin the gradual build up of speed and power again. Repeat as necessary until he's consistently and effectively responding to the strike at full speed and power. End on a high note ( a good performance) and go home.

At the next class, have the student begin back at the learning phase again, and have him identify and demonstrate all of the essential elements that go into a successful performance of the tactic. Keep the mood light and playful. It's easiest to do this at the beginning of the class when everybody's kind of laid-back and light-hearted naturally. After he's had a chance to go over in detail all of the essential component elements of the tactic, have him switch to practicing phase, where he will focus on them individually and "pretty up" the movement. Then, just as last time, have him switch to contextualizing, where his partner will once again begin that slow build up of both speed and power with his strike. As the instructor, watch closely again for stress points or failures in the tactic. When they occur, immediately have the student go back to practicing and focus on the offending element until it is as flawless as he can muster. Then start the contextualizing gradual build up of speed and power again. Repeat as necessary.

What I've just described is an oversimplified example of the absolutely most bare-boned skeleton of the method I use. I call it the Sculptor method, mostly because I was tired of calling it Phil or Chuck, and I was feeling extra artsy fartsy one particular day. I don't use exactly the same approach with everyone, and that description is nothing close to a complete look at the method. But that's the very, very most basic version of it, and it's one that just about anybody can put to use immediately.

[Doc Stier]

Chris:

Thanks for responding to my question.

Your method of pedagogy is a good one, and no doubt produces excellent results. Thanks for sharing the process in such detail.

However, the instructional method you outlined still seems to be more of a physically programmed and conditioned response, rather than a deep mind re-programming capable of profoundly altering instant automatic reactions and sudden spontaneous responses in emergency situations, ambush attack defenses, or the split second dynamics of serious combat scenarios.

How to enhance these more primal survival responses is what I am primarily interested in.

[Chris McKinley]

Doc,

I believe that's the first time I've ever actually described the intact method in any detail online, but I'm happy to do so.

RE: "However, the instructional method you outlined still seems to be more of a physically programmed and conditioned response, rather than a deep mind re-programming capable of profoundly altering instant automatic reactions and sudden spontaneous responses in emergency situations, ambush attack defenses, or the split second dynamics of serious combat scenarios.". That's because you're starting with some expectations/assumptions about the process that IME are in error with regard to both the percentage of importance of purely non-kinesthetic mental processes as well as in the expectation that one is necessarily "profoundly altering instant automatic reactions and sudden spontaneous responses". In fact, almost in contrast, the kind of thing I'm talking about isn't necessarily about fundamentally altering such responses so that they begin to resemble the stylized recognizeable movements we see in the classical Bagua curriculum, for instance, as it is identifying, consciously recognizing, and further refining those responses into something that is both effective for the given tactic it was originally a response to, as well as generative in terms of creating even more and better spontaneous responses in the future.

As a trainer of Master Trainer level practitioners of NLP, I know a thing or three about re-programming at unconscious levels, but I must tell you, there's not a whole lot of re-programming even going on. Instead of radical substitution, it's more about coaxing even more out of the responses already there. Now granted, in my previous description, I didn't go into a lot of detail about the contextualization process, but I did that for a reason. Without the emphasis on creating the connections that occur in the learning and practicing phases, contextualization alone won't necessarily yield particularly impressive results. I also didn't want to write a novella just to answer your post.

RE: "How to enhance these more primal survival responses is what I am primarily interested in.". Uh huh. Me, too. And these are exactly the kind of responses I'm talking about working with. I think perhaps that you are just erroneously assuming that the only way to elicit them is to subject the trainee to full-on attack. It's not. And in fact, doing so puts a fairly dramatic and unnecessary limit on what the student is ultimately capable of generating and using for that context.

[Doc Stier]

Doc,

...you're starting with some expectations/assumptions about the process that IME are in error with regard to both the percentage of importance of purely non-kinesthetic mental processes as well as in the expectation that one is necessarily "profoundly altering instant automatic reactions and sudden spontaneous responses".

I think perhaps that you are just erroneously assuming that the only way to elicit them is to subject the trainee to full-on attack.

No way, McK, but thanks for the mind reading and professional analysis of my mental process.

[Chris McKinley]

Don't get bitchy and sarcastic. You asked for my opinions and you got them in great detail. You then tell me I'm not dealing with what you're interested in because you make clear that I'm not describing enough of a purely mental process dealing with the subconscious mind. I'm telling you that IME the assumption that you even need a lot of that is erroneous. I don't care if you agree with me or not. Feel free to believe whatever you wish.

As to my comment about how you seem to think such responses are elicited, I carefully put the word "perhaps" in there just to avoid the kind of childish sarcasm about "mind reading and professional analysis of [your] mental process", but you went there anyway, and completely unnecessarily. If you are yet again looking for a reason to start giving me crap, take it somewhere else. I'm not interested this particular go round. If you want a serious discussion of the issue, let's have one. I've given you a large volume of serious information to start with, and in response to your specifically asking me for it. Now, if you don't mind, let's leave out the sarcasm and personal comments and get back to the discussion.

[Doc Stier]

Don't get bitchy and sarcastic. You asked for my opinions and you got them in great detail. You then tell me I'm not dealing with what you're interested in because you make clear that I'm not describing enough of a purely mental process dealing with the subconscious mind. I'm telling you that IME the assumption that you even need a lot of that is erroneous. I don't care if you agree with me or not. Feel free to believe whatever you wish.

While gratefully acknowledging the value of your teaching process, that is not what I was asking about. I specifically inquired about the "purely mental process dealing with the subconscious mind", as you correctly stated, and nothing more.

If you have nothing to share on the subject, or simply don't wish to address such an inquiry, that's fine. Just say so! But please don't presume to tell me what I am assuming, or that my perceived thinking is erroneous, and then claim that I'm giving you attitude. Sheesh!