Movement and Wellness:

Improving Readiness to Learn with Adult Learners

An Annotated Bibliography to meet the requirements of CCEP 3031

Kathleen Naylor

May 2013

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How does movement support learning?

What wellness skills are most beneficial for adult learners?

What can we do at NSCC to increase that?

These were the questions that formed the basis of my proposal to do a self-directed course of readings, exploring the relationships among movement, wellness and learning. My proposal said:

“In essence, I want to know more about how to have a whole-person approach to teaching and counselling adult learners. I am interested in how I/we can create a learning environment where personal wellness is understood as an integral part of learning.”

Background

What we might call ‘care and feeding of the adult learner’, in the big picture, includes all dimensions of wellness: social, mental, emotional, spiritual, financial, physical, environmental. We often focus in on physical wellness in educational environments because it’s less intimate/intimidating than focusing on the other dimensions, and we find it easy to extol the importance of good nutrition, sleep, hygiene, exercise and reduction or abstinence from harmful substance use.

Unfortunately, exercise is a word that has negative associations for many people. While a small percentage of our adult learners are getting the quantity and quality of physical exercise needed to maintain wellness, the vast majority are not. Too often, exercise is connected with pain, discomfort, embarrassment, and a “should” that prevents positive engagement with physical activity. As a counsellor and a teacher of a whole-person wellness practice called Nia, I have realized that movement is a word that seems to be much less threatening and less aversive.

In addition, though many adult learners can identify multiple dimensions of wellness, few are able to articulate how they incorporate strategies for whole-person wellness into their lives, particularly with regard to managing stress while participating in a secondary or post-secondary learning program. I continue to be surprised by how little adults – including myself – know about how our bodies and brains actually function to maximize readiness to learn, memory, attention, and problem-solving and interpersonal skills.

My lived experience as a counsellor and Nia instructor tells me that movement does indeed improve our readiness to learn, and that by learning how we learn and how to

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maximize our learning capacity through wellness strategies, we increase our engagement in the learning environment. My intention with the self-directed course was to become more familiar with tools and resources that would support me in integrating this more into my role at NSCC, and to summarize my reading/learning in a way that might be helpful to my colleagues in various roles at the College. The reading/learning has been an integral piece of my concurrent practicum.

The genesis

Learning is usually a slow process that requires a relaxed, focused, committed mind. The learner must work hard and steadfastly without losing motivation over a number of months or sometimes years. Adult learners have so many commitments—to family, jobs, community, their health, school—that they are under tremendous pressure. In many cases, they also expect or really want quick results. The longer they are in school and working a low-paying job or are unemployed, the more their frustration and stress builds. The more stress they have, the more their learning suffers as their minds become distracted and forgetful. Disappointment, eroding motivation, and negativity may result. Because of this stress, many students drop out, often returning later to complete unmet goals.

One of the best ways that we adult educators can help our students handle stress is by taking care of ourselves emotionally, psychologically, and physically. By controlling our own stress, we can be more present for our students and give the compassion, kindness, and quality instruction that they need.

~ Marjorie Jacobs – Helping Adult Learners Handle Stress

This excerpt was the first written piece I found that tied together the importance of wellness for adult learners – and their teachers and counselors – as it relates to learning. It is important to note that although I have a role that allows me to serve the students and faculty in the School of Access, whom we traditionally call ‘adult learners’, that all of our students and staff at NSCC really are adult learners…and equally deserving of supports to encourage whole-person wellness as part of the NSCC community of learners.

Concept Mapping

The following page offers a mind-map of the ideas I’ve been exploring about how movement, wellness and learning are related. Because the font is tiny (the mind-map is an insert from Inspiration), here is a summary of the concepts:

Learning

How it occurs – build and maintain neural pathways through increasing neurotrophins

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How we measure it – academic performance: reading comprehension, test scores

How we should measure it – whole person wellness, contribution to learning environment, to community, integration of learning

Movement

cardiovascular conditioning plus complex patterns - learning patterns, making decisions, responsiveness in the moment

What’s different about adult learners?

Past experiences both positive and negative – influence self-efficacy in the learning realm

Socioeconomic challenges

Responsibilities (family, jobs, financial)

So…what can we do to serve them best?

Be well ourselves (as so eloquently stated by Marjorie Jacobs in the quote above)

Help them understand how to be well in order to learn well. Integrate these skills into transition into adult education/postsecondary training as a readiness component.

We do that by teaching learners about the brain, about the body and about how learning actually takes place.

Resources Reviewed: Annotated Bibliography

I have narrowed down my selections in order to share a manageable number of resources that offer interested colleagues a good range of books, articles, and websites. For each resource, I’ve provided a summary of key ideas, a quote or excerpt that caught my attention, and an idea of how I am applying it or would like to apply it in my work at NSCC.

I would be happy for this resource to be shared among NSCC staff and students in any format, and I always like to hear from colleagues who want to share ideas around these concepts.

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Smart Moves – Why Learning is Not All in Your Head

Carla Hannaford. Great Ocean Publishers, 1995.

Key ideas

The subtitle says it all. As educators, we need to know how learning happens through all of our sensory input, and how learning ability as adults is dependent upon successful navigation of developmental stages earlier in life. The book presents a range of concepts with accessible examples to help us understand how to create learning environments and processes that will actually set the stage for real learning. Though the majority of examples are about younger learners, the principles transfer readily, and help us to understand that from a developmental perspective, if students have missed out on critical developmental experiences, there are things we can do to help with that integration in order for learners to succeed in adult education. Particular emphasis is placed on understanding the mind/body processes, and the impacts of stress on learning, including strategies for reducing stress while building skills in the learning environment, through integrative movement.

Hannaford illustrates the importance of understanding the functions and inter-relation of the two hemispheres of the brain, and the value of movement to anchor our thoughts by appropriately stimulating our proprioceptors (which help us to sharpen our danger-sensing skills to stay safe on a work site, for example) and vestibular system (which asks us, in fact, not to ‘sit still’ as we’ve done for 13 years in public school, but to move our bodies in order to develop and strengthen neural networks). She highlights the success of integrative movement such as Brain Gym to stimulate both hemispheres and prime students with all learning styles.

Best quotes

The body plays an integral part in all our intellectual processes from our earliest moments right through to old age. It is our body’s senses that feed the brain environmental information with which to form an understanding of the world and from which to draw when creating new possibilities. And it is our movements that express knowledge and facilitate greater cognitive function as they increase in complexity.

When we first learn something, it is slow going, like beating a path through untraveled terrain. But as the neurons are activated repeatedly, more myelin is laid down…therefore, the more practice, the more myelin, and the faster the processing.

Why it matters in our context/how I can apply it

We have always told ALP students: “Just keep showing up, it takes a while to adjust, etc.” Adult learners, though, (and too often their families and funders) are anxious to feel that they are learning and see results quickly. Introducing some brain basics helps

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people to understand how learning happens, and what to expect of their brain as they re-enter the formal learning environment.

In Chapter 3, Hannaford explains learning through each of the sensory organs. For example, she describes how touch is an integral part of learning: “If children are gently touched on the shoulder while they are reading, the brain connects the encouraging touch with the reading and helps to anchor the positive experience.” In a time when almost 1 in 3 boys is in a ‘remedial reading’ program by grade 3 in the United States, and we as a college struggle with how to incorporate communication skills into course content in appropriate ways with large numbers of learners working below expected skill level, we would do well to do more integration of the senses into learning. Hannaford: “My college students have commented that just having clay available to manipulate during a lecture allowed them to more easily take in information. Whenever touch is combined with the other senses, much more of the brain is activated, thus building more complex nerve networks and tapping into more learning potential.”

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Spark – The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

John J. Ratey. Little, Brown and Company, 2008.

Key ideas

Ratey explains, in approachable language, the neuroscience of how exercise improves learning on three levels: improving alertness, attention and motivation; preparing nerve cells to bind together, and encouraging the development of new cells. After establishing the evidence for exercise improving our brain function for learning, he goes on to explain how that same neurochemistry affects our physical and mental health challenges most commonly seen today.

Ratey offers multiple case studies with individuals and groups, primarily school-based research that examines the effectiveness of exercise on academic outcomes such as test scores, reading comprehension, test-taking and problem-solving skills, as well as students’ self-reports about engagement, reduced schoolyard fighting, etc.

Although I knew it intuitively, it was Ratey’s explanation of what kind of exercise we need that has helped me learn how to easily explain and encourage others: our bodies need peak and sustained aerobic activity, combined with complex pattern recognition/learning and/or problem-solving and quick response (for example, table tennis, dance, martial arts; or, cardiovascular activity paired with learning a musical instrument). That’s why individuals who practice motor activities that involve an element of patterns/quick decision making also do well academically: there’s an integrative function of both brain hemispheres that supports the neural network maintenance.

Best quote

Once I had used up a whole pack of post-it flags on a library copy of this book, I realized I had to buy my own copy. Much of what I’ve highlighted is to remind me of the technical neuroscience bits, but here are several I found helpful:

Why should you care about how your brain works? For one thing, it’s running the show. Right now the front of your brain is firing signals about what you’re reading and how much of it you soak up has a lot to do with whether there is a proper balance of neurochemicals and growth factors to bind neurons together. Exercise…sets the stage, and when you sit down to learn something new, that stimulation strengthens the relevant connections; with practice, the circuit develops definition, as if you’re wearing down a path through a forest.

I tell people that going for a run is like taking a little bit of Prozac and a little bit of Ritalin because, like the drugs, exercise elevates these neurotransmitters. It’s a handy metaphor to get the point across, but he deeper explanation is that exercise balances neurotransmitters – and keeping your brain in balance can change your life.

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While aerobic exercise elevates neurotransmitters, creates new blood vessels that pipe in growth factors, and spawns new cells, complex activities put all that material to use by strengthening and expanding networks. The more complex the movements, the more complex the synaptic connections. And even though these circuits are created through movement, they can be recruited by other areas and used for thinking. This is why learning how to play the piano makes it easier for kids to learn math. The prefrontal cortex will co-opt the mental power of the physical skills and apply it to other situations.

The way you choose to cope with stress can change not only how you feel, but also how it transforms the brain. If you react passively or if there is simply no way out, stress can become damaging. Like most psychiatric issues, chronic stress results from the brain getting locked into the same pattern, typically one marked by pessimism, fear and retreat. Active coping moves you out of this territory. What’s gotten lost amid all the advice about how to reduce the stress of modern life is that challenges are what allow us to strive and grow and learn. The parallel on the cellular level is that stress sparks bran growth. Assuming that the stress is not too severe and that the neurons are given time to recover, the connections become stronger and our mental machinery works better.

Why it matters in our context/how I can apply it

This book appealed to me on both aspects of my ALPC role: how to help learners in their academic success, and how to help them with mental health challenges. The best part is that exercise (or movement, as I prefer) is what matters most to improve both. Ratey works through a number of relevant topics in each chapter, exploring how exercise positively impacts learning, stress, anxiety, depression, ADHD, addiction, menopause and aging. The first five come up in my role on a daily basis working with students – the others less frequently but often enough that there is something for everyone.

I appreciate that Ratey does not ‘preach’ exercise, but is frank in expressing his hope that this information will help move people from a ‘should do/must do/but I hate it’ relationship with exercise, to one of motivation based on knowing and experiencing how it actually improves our lives.

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Body Learning

Rebecca Haseltine: www.bodylearning.net

Key ideas

The site is a wealth of information about somatic education and body-mind centering. It will be most relevant to individuals who have a personal practice that incorporates bodywork, and who want to consider the relationship between their wellness and their effectiveness as a teacher, counsellor, or colleague.

Best quote

Body Learning embraces three approaches: We can learn about the body through anatomy, physiology, development principles, and movement basics. We learn from the body by engaging awareness and tuning into the local intelligence within the body. Learning with the body can be a more active approach, engaging with the world through sensing, moving and responding.

Why it matters in our context/how I can apply it

This website has been most informative for me in my personal counselling relationships and as a Nia practitioner. I am grateful that I found Nia as a wellness practice while I was a newly-minted counsellor, before beginning my role at NSCC. As my experience has grown, I find that I am better able to incorporate body awareness into my work with individuals. My own confidence has increased regarding how to ‘bring in’ the body into the counselling relationship – by asking about the wisdom of the body, by exploring more deeply the physical sensations that accompany stressful life events and challenges, as well as new growth and insight, and by accompanying individuals as they learn to navigate those stressors in more healthy ways.

From the first time I read this description on the website, I appreciated the distinction of learning about, with and from the body. It has helped to organize my own learning, and the learning that I hope to offer to students/clients. Because learning about, from and with my own body has been such an enjoyable learning experience for me over the past three years, I feel more wholly well than I have in many years, and I am therefore more balanced, approachable and available to support both students and colleagues in the work that we do together.

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Helping Adult Learners Handle Stress

Marjorie Jacobs, 2003.

Source: www.sabes.org/resources/publications/fieldnotes/vol13/f131jacobs.htm

Key ideas

Adult learners experience multiple stressors, and are at high risk for negative outcomes due to determinants of health such as socioeconomic status, low literacy and the wide-ranging effects of years or decades of living with limited resources. Since stress negatively impacts learning, teachers and counsellors need to address it directly by providing an environment that reduces stress and by explicitly teaching skills to reduce and manage the effects of negative stress. The article identifies ten Stress Erasers for the Classroom, some of which are for individuals and some for the group.

Best quote

One of the best ways that we adult educators can help our students handle stress is by taking care of ourselves emotionally, psychologically, and physically. By controlling our own stress, we can be more present for our students and give the compassion, kindness and quality instruction that they need.

Why it matters in our context/how I can apply it

Many of the identified ‘Stress Erasers’ are done to some extent for ALP students during orientation, Transition Elective/Transition Period, Science (psychology module) and Communications classes.

My experience at Lunenburg campus indicates that once students are comfortable talking about stress and addressing it in real ways (as opposed to simplistic statements of ‘I’m feeling so stressed…”), then mutual modeling and resonance occur, which contributes to positive momentum for progress in class. We’ve used this article as a reading for students in the Transition Elective, and in conjunction with teaching skills for stress reduction and supporting individuals with personal wellness goal-setting, it has been well-received as an accessible resource.

The next step is to figure out how to give more of this knowledge and these tools to students in programs outside the School of Access.

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Learning and Violence

www.learningandviolence.net

www.learningandviolence.net/JudyMurphy/JudyMurphy.html

Key ideas

This is a fascinating resource. What at first appears visually quite different in a world of ‘flash’ technology on websites, eventually reveals itself to be rich with resources that are Canadian, current, and relevant. From a Universal Design point of view, it is excellent and stands out from any other.

The site offers a range of resources for adult literacy learners and educators, and – unusually – also for counsellors working in adult learning environments. Judy Murphy’s subpage offers her own summary, in a refreshingly genuine format, of learning to use body/mind work to support adult learners.

Violence is understood as a spectrum of experiences that have limited an individual and/or group of people from full and healthy development.

Best quote

Violence is being ignored in education – its impact on learning isn’t acknowledged. Many people would rather avoid it, or walk around it, or pretend it doesn’t exist. Violence is like the elephant in the room. We could ignore it, except that for learning to occur, we have to be aware of both its presence and its impacts. We must acknowledge violence, address the impacts and teach and run programs in ways that support learning.

Why it matters in our context/how I can apply it

I appreciate that this resource offers tools for educators, counsellors, and students. Adult learning really involves a contract between adults with different but equal roles and life experiences.

In the Learning To Teach section, we find a report on a pilot project at George Brown College that focuses on building Essential Skills. Interestingly, they are not the ‘top 3’’ essential skills we commonly see in the TOWES assessments or Occupational Profiles (Numeracy, Reading Text and Document Use). The focus here is on Thinking Skills and Working With Others, and I agree that this is really the best place to start with individuals who have experienced violence.

Many of the ideas, tools and resources here are valuable for Access programs, for Women Unlimited, but perhaps more importantly, for all faculty and staff in terms of understanding the long-term impacts of violence on learning.

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I am also grateful for the personal nature of sharing offered by Judy Murphy, including poetry and video clips of meditative movement and breathwork that is essential to success for survivors of violence of any kind in a learning environment. My own response to discovering her multi-sensory summary of her work was relief. As a counsellor supporting adult learners, my highest priority is on maintaining my own wellness in order to be there to serve others…and in an environment which is not quite ready to accept the value of whole-person learning, this resource is a rare find to encourage that priority.

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Mindsight – The New Science of Personal Transformation

Daniel J. Siegel. Bantam Books, 2010.

Key ideas

Dan Siegel is a prolific and respected contributor in the exciting field of neuroscience, and his emerging specialty lies in what he calls interpersonal neurobiology. That is, he focuses on studying how the actual architecture of the brain is impacted by, and in turn impacts, our interpersonal relationships and our social construction of our world. His experience lies in incorporating mindfulness with an understanding of brain function, to offer a more holistic understanding of the mind within the body.

Mindsight is the phrase that Siegel has coined to explain our individual sense of being able to understand our own minds (insight), and those of others with whom we are in communication (empathy). Both insight and empathy are crucial for successful navigation of relationships in all spheres of life, and Siegel helps us to understand how these skills develop (or do not) across life’s stages.

Though the book is clearly written in accessible language, it is also thick with information and must be absorbed and then considered and applied in stages. Along with his earlier book The Mindful Brain and the subsequent The Mindful Therapist, Siegel’s work is instrumental in helping counsellors learn how to work with individuals to help them understand how their brains actually work, and how that can benefit them and their relationships.

Of particular interest to counsellors (but beyond the scope of this brief summary) will be his explanation of eight domains of integration that contribute to personal transformation and well-being, and the Wheel of Awareness concept that Siegel proposes as a framework to help us literally ‘see’ our own minds.

Best quotes

It’s important to remember that the activity of what we’re calling the ‘brain’ is not just in our heads. The neural networks throughout the interior of the body, including those surrounding the hollow organs, such as the intestines and the heart, send complex sensory input to the skull-based brain. This data forms the foundation for visceral maps that help us have a ‘gut feeling’ or a ‘heartfelt’ sense. Such input from the body forms a vital source of intuition and powerfully influences our reasoning and the way we create meaning in our lives.

People sometimes hear the word mindfulness and think religion. But the reality is that focusing our attention in this way is a biological process that promotes health – a form of brain hygiene – not a religion. Various religions may encourage this health-promoting practice, but learning the skill of mindful awareness is simply a way of cultivating what we have defined as the integration of consciousness.

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Becoming open to our body’s states – the feelings in our heart, the sensations in our belly, the rhythm of our breathing – is a powerful source of knowledge. …relationships are woven into the fabric of our interior world. We come to know our own minds through our interactions with others. Mindsight permits us to invite these fast and automatic sources of our mental life into the theater of consciousness.

In direct opposition to the common concern that psychotherapy and contemplation are ‘self indulgent’ activities, clarifying mindsight’s lens actually led to a very different state…a deep sense of wanting to give back to others.

Why it matters in our context/how I can apply it

Because I continue to be surprised at how little people seem to know about how their brains (and/or minds) function, this book has been a turning point for me in questioning how I can best incorporate this awareness into my individual work with clients/students. Mindsight goes beyond what is helpful about cognitive behavioural therapy by connecting the thoughts to the actual structures and functions of the brain, and goes deeper than mindfulness education by supplying the ‘hard science’ that some people need to trust that being successful is not just ‘touchy-feely awareness’ stuff.

What I appreciate most about Siegel’s work is that he promotes optimism that even in the absence of early support, mindsight can be cultivated throughout the lifespan. In essence, his marriage of neurobiology with the research on attachment theory and emotional regulation gives us hope that early neglect can, in fact, be repaired later in life. Though for many individuals, that would involved a long-term relationship with a skilled therapist outside of NSCC services, I also see how much we do in our own learning environment (particularly in ALP) that offers a secure base for personal growth and academic learning to take hold anew in people’s lives.

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The Healthy Mind Platter

David Rock and Daniel Siegel. The Mindsight Institute, 2011.

Source: www.drdansiegel.com

Key ideas

This tool plays on the idea of a ‘recommended daily diet’ for a healthy mind. The authors identify seven essential ingredients that provide our minds with the right mix, over time, of benefits. These include focus time, play time, connecting time, physical time, time in, down time and sleep time.

Best quote

Mental wellness is all about reinforcing our connections with others and the world around us; and it is also about strengthening the connections within the brain itself. When we vary the focus of attention with this spectrum of mental activities, we give the brain lots of opportunities to develop in different ways.

Why it matters in our context/how I can apply it

This is a simple-to-understand resource. Students can grasp the importance of each of the ingredients. Used with a 24-hour or multi-day image, they can reflect on how they are doing at incorporating each type of healthy mind time, and create strategies to do more of each. Because it’s not prescriptive, it feels open to personal interpretation, and less pressured.

Staff at the Mindsight Institute promptly granted copyright permission for use in our ALP Transition Elective wellness modules.