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Learning, Creating, Knowing By Sappho 04/25/02 02:31:12 PM

Date: 04/25/02 02:31:12 PM
Name: Sappho
Email: gratiaetvirtutis@yahoo.com
Subject: Learning, Creating, Knowing

Just dropped in for a petit chat. Hope everyone won't start yawning over these books, which have been around for a decade or two. And, heaven forbid, I hope I won't sound like a Pollyanna, Polly Parrot, or worse, Polyphemus--Odysseus' cave captor.I still find these books to be helpful starting points in revving up creativity and building the momentum needed to keep reading, writing, learning and creating at the keyboard. (Mac or Yamaha) Titles--Quantum Learning: Unleashing the Genius in You by DePorter with Hernacki; and The Path of Least Resistance--Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life by Robert Fritz, who also wrote Creating.

"Food for Thought," as Martha has written. Literacy remains a rudimentary tool in masticating the food, but these books are useful in finding many ways of knowing in a creative, directed, nonrestrictive manner.

Sappho

Re: Learning, Creating, Knowing By Nigel Fletcher 04/26/02 08:49:06 AM

Date: 04/26/02 08:49:06 AM
Name: Nigel Fletcher
Email: c/oIancburn@aol.com
Subject: Re: Learning, Creating, Knowing

Dear Sappho,

My friend Ian's loaned me his PC, and I can't figure out how to reach yahoo using the remote modem, which seems to have a mind of its own. Have you read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi? Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience and another book, Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. Fritz's work is similar in some respects.

Csikszentmihalyi lists eight elements to what he calls flow, and what I think your athletes here call 'being in the zone'. Through conscious effort in processes such as goal setting, in gearing skill or level of mastery to the challenge at hand, intense focusing, heeding feedback and so on, the 'practitioner' or learner reaches step 8, a point where the sense of time is transformed. No longer ruled or driven by the clock, creativity takes off.

This University of Chicago psychologist and researcher describes the results as the antithesis of entropy, which some have dubbed syntropy. He says that scientists and artists 'escape' forward, reaching heightened awareness and greater achievement at the same time they realize a sense of flow or ease in routine everyday tasks. The opposite, entropy, can manifest itself as escape into drugs, food bingeing, binge buying or other non-chemical opiates. All the 'bad habits' that keep 12-step programs filled to capacity and the shrinks in business.

I think the research is important for people who are trying out new ways of self-teaching, teaching, 'mentoring' and learning. Like Fritz's, this approach can help break through mythical creative blocks and push beyond comfortable plateaus.

Such 'steps' to creative realization are the opposite of force-fed course work between the bell-break noise and room-to-room shuffling about that John Taylor Gatto describes as part of the rat-cage regimen to which schoolchildren are subjected. After twelve or more years of being chained to treadmill distraction, we might expect that achieving a state of flow would not come overnight or through spontaneous remission 'school sick'.

Was it Emerson who said, 'as if we could kill time without injuring eternity'?

In Burnt Norton, the first of the Four Quartets, Eliot says:
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time . . .

If you're actually a poet, Sappho, I thought surely you'd enjoy these lines!

Nigel
Replying to:

Just dropped in for a petit chat. Hope everyone won't start yawning over these books, which have been around for a decade or two. And, heaven forbid, I hope I won't sound like a Pollyanna, Polly Parrot, or worse, Polyphemus--Odysseus' cave captor.I still find these books to be helpful starting points in revving up creativity and building the momentum needed to keep reading, writing, learning and creating at the keyboard. (Mac or Yamaha) Titles--Quantum Learning: Unleashing the Genius in You by DePorter with Hernacki; and The Path of Least Resistance--Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life by Robert Fritz, who also wrote Creating.

"Food for Thought," as Martha has written. Literacy remains a rudimentary tool in masticating the food, but these books are useful in finding many ways of knowing in a creative, directed, nonrestrictive manner.

Sappho

Re: Re: Learning, Creating, Knowing By Sappho 04/26/02 11:46:42 PM

Date: 04/26/02 11:46:42 PM
Name: Sappho
Email: gratiaetvirtutis@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Re: Learning, Creating, Knowing
Dear Nigel,

No dissing on this board, but you couldn't send an email? Yes, my real middle name is Sappho and my first name is Grace. Is your name Nigel? Or Christian? No, I'm not a poet, but I do write. I'm an amateur percussionist and artist, and I've learned on my own, which my father used to tell me was "the hard way." Trial and error? Who knows?

Yeah, I've read the guy with the long last name. Good ideas for beefing up work and bypassing burnout. I also try to apply Feng Shui (never can remember how to spell it!) to create an environment that's conducive to work.

Because of personal challenges, I was forced to try alternative medicine, which led to exploring different ways of knowing, including healing. When my friends in Div School couldn't help me, I started to learn about shamanism and the healing work of doctors like Dolores Krieger and Larry Dossey.

It's hard to say how much this helped me with my own physical problems, but I've learned to apply it in my work with companion animals who have what my clients call "behavior problems."

I never was too keen on T.S. Eliot. Nice to chat . . . but I'm out of time.

Grace
Replying to:

Dear Sappho,

My friend Ian's loaned me his PC, and I can't figure out how to reach yahoo using the remote modem, which seems to have a mind of its own. Have you read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi? Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience and another book, Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. Fritz's work is similar in some respects.

Csikszentmihalyi lists eight elements to what he calls flow, and what I think your athletes here call 'being in the zone'. Through conscious effort in processes such as goal setting, in gearing skill or level of mastery to the challenge at hand, intense focusing, heeding feedback and so on, the 'practitioner' or learner reaches step 8, a point where the sense of time is transformed. No longer ruled or driven by the clock, creativity takes off.

This University of Chicago psychologist and researcher describes the results as the antithesis of entropy, which some have dubbed syntropy. He says that scientists and artists 'escape' forward, reaching heightened awareness and greater achievement at the same time they realize a sense of flow or ease in routine everyday tasks. The opposite, entropy, can manifest itself as escape into drugs, food bingeing, binge buying or other non-chemical opiates. All the 'bad habits' that keep 12-step programs filled to capacity and the shrinks in business.

I think the research is important for people who are trying out new ways of self-teaching, teaching, 'mentoring' and learning. Like Fritz's, this approach can help break through mythical creative blocks and push beyond comfortable plateaus.

Such 'steps' to creative realization are the opposite of force-fed course work between the bell-break noise and room-to-room shuffling about that John Taylor Gatto describes as part of the rat-cage regimen to which schoolchildren are subjected. After twelve or more years of being chained to treadmill distraction, we might expect that achieving a state of flow would not come overnight or through spontaneous remission 'school sick'.

Was it Emerson who said, 'as if we could kill time without injuring eternity'?

In Burnt Norton, the first of the Four Quartets, Eliot says:
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time . . .

If you're actually a poet, Sappho, I thought surely you'd enjoy these lines!

Nigel
Replying to:

Just dropped in for a petit chat. Hope everyone won't start yawning over these books, which have been around for a decade or two. And, heaven forbid, I hope I won't sound like a Pollyanna, Polly Parrot, or worse, Polyphemus--Odysseus' cave captor.I still find these books to be helpful starting points in revving up creativity and building the momentum needed to keep reading, writing, learning and creating at the keyboard. (Mac or Yamaha) Titles--Quantum Learning: Unleashing the Genius in You by DePorter with Hernacki; and The Path of Least Resistance--Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life by Robert Fritz, who also wrote Creating.

"Food for Thought," as Martha has written. Literacy remains a rudimentary tool in masticating the food, but these books are useful in finding many ways of knowing in a creative, directed, nonrestrictive manner.

Sappho

Re: Re: Re: Learning, Creating, Knowing By Hilda 04/27/02 06:40:26 PM

Date: 04/27/02 06:40:26 PM
Name: Hilda
Email: Hildalawrence@aolcom
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Learning, Creating, Knowing
Dear Grace,

Martha offered food for thought and Andy Weil, a former Harvard Med School MD, offers nutrients for thought. Since you like Dossey, thought you'd like to visit www.drweil.com

Weil heads up the Integrataive Medicine Program at the University of Arizona and seems to work wonders in combining the best of Western-style medicine with nutrition and holistic healing.

He gives great tips on how to keep memory sharp and neurons firing to improve neurological function, ability to learn, and memory, all of which can be impaired by stress.

Since schools and many workplaces are stressful places, good nutrition, in addition to "good vibes," can boost brain functioning and diminish maladaptive behavior or habits.

Of course, if enough people ate healthful foods, the pharmacapitalists in the medical-pharmaceutical industry would see a dive in snake-oil stocks. Makers of Ritalin, Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa, Valium, Viagra . . . A lot of biochemists and pharmacologists might be out of work.

Hilda
Replying to:

Dear Nigel,

No dissing on this board, but you couldn't send an email? Yes, my real middle name is Sappho and my first name is Grace. Is your name Nigel? Or Christian? No, I'm not a poet, but I do write. I'm an amateur percussionist and artist, and I've learned on my own, which my father used to tell me was "the hard way." Trial and error? Who knows?

Yeah, I've read the guy with the long last name. Good ideas for beefing up work and bypassing burnout. I also try to apply Feng Shui (never can remember how to spell it!) to create an environment that's conducive to work.

Because of personal challenges, I was forced to try alternative medicine, which led to exploring different ways of knowing, including healing. When my friends in Div School couldn't help me, I started to learn about shamanism and the healing work of doctors like Dolores Krieger and Larry Dossey.

It's hard to say how much this helped me with my own physical problems, but I've learned to apply it in my work with companion animals who have what my clients call "behavior problems."

I never was too keen on T.S. Eliot. Nice to chat . . . but I'm out of time.

Grace
Replying to:

Dear Sappho,

My friend Ian's loaned me his PC, and I can't figure out how to reach yahoo using the remote modem, which seems to have a mind of its own. Have you read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi? Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience and another book, Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. Fritz's work is similar in some respects.

Csikszentmihalyi lists eight elements to what he calls flow, and what I think your athletes here call 'being in the zone'. Through conscious effort in processes such as goal setting, in gearing skill or level of mastery to the challenge at hand, intense focusing, heeding feedback and so on, the 'practitioner' or learner reaches step 8, a point where the sense of time is transformed. No longer ruled or driven by the clock, creativity takes off.

This University of Chicago psychologist and researcher describes the results as the antithesis of entropy, which some have dubbed syntropy. He says that scientists and artists 'escape' forward, reaching heightened awareness and greater achievement at the same time they realize a sense of flow or ease in routine everyday tasks. The opposite, entropy, can manifest itself as escape into drugs, food bingeing, binge buying or other non-chemical opiates. All the 'bad habits' that keep 12-step programs filled to capacity and the shrinks in business.

I think the research is important for people who are trying out new ways of self-teaching, teaching, 'mentoring' and learning. Like Fritz's, this approach can help break through mythical creative blocks and push beyond comfortable plateaus.

Such 'steps' to creative realization are the opposite of force-fed course work between the bell-break noise and room-to-room shuffling about that John Taylor Gatto describes as part of the rat-cage regimen to which schoolchildren are subjected. After twelve or more years of being chained to treadmill distraction, we might expect that achieving a state of flow would not come overnight or through spontaneous remission 'school sick'.

Was it Emerson who said, 'as if we could kill time without injuring eternity'?

In Burnt Norton, the first of the Four Quartets, Eliot says:
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time . . .

If you're actually a poet, Sappho, I thought surely you'd enjoy these lines!

Nigel

Replying to:

Just dropped in for a petit chat. Hope everyone won't start yawning over these books, which have been around for a decade or two. And, heaven forbid, I hope I won't sound like a Pollyanna, Polly Parrot, or worse, Polyphemus--Odysseus' cave captor.I still find these books to be helpful starting points in revving up creativity and building the momentum needed to keep reading, writing, learning and creating at the keyboard. (Mac or Yamaha) Titles--Quantum Learning: Unleashing the Genius in You by DePorter with Hernacki; and The Path of Least Resistance--Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life by Robert Fritz, who also wrote Creating.

"Food for Thought," as Martha has written. Literacy remains a rudimentary tool in masticating the food, but these books are useful in finding many ways of knowing in a creative, directed, nonrestrictive manner.

Sappho