Workshops Overview The workshops' key objective is for all participants to acquire practical skills they will use. Participants report that they just find themselves "doing things different" without effort. These skills are acquired through both traditional and accelerated learning techniques. Because pleasure enhances the learning experience, the workshops are desigend to allow participants to enjoy themselves. Participants are encouraged to arrive with high expectations of insights, new skills, and a fun learning environment. As noted in the Testimonials section of this site, participants report “Aha!” insights, positive changes and many unexpected benefits. Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. --William Butler Yeats The workshops are designed to accommodate all learning styles, using whole-brain techniques that recognize and access participants’ multiple intelligences. Traditional MethodsFor most concepts, depending on the size of the group and the diversity of backgrounds, some or all of the following traditional methods are applied: - Introduce key concepts and component skills that form the basis for the general skill being developed, often with one or more memorable anecdotes or stories.
- Demonstrate concept for entire audience by workshop facilitator or audience member.
- Perform a brief exercise that develops and demonstrates understanding and which is designed to shift conceptual understanding from head to hearts and guts. For example, participants might get together in groups of 2-3 and briefly share by explanation or demonstration what they learned and how it might apply to them. Many of the exercises are based on accelerated learning techniques.
- Write personal applications in which participants might see themselves using and benefiting from the particular concept.
- If appropriate, express participants’ personal application within small groups, and for some, to the entire group.
- If appropriate, invite participants to share examples of their similar experiences, thereby demonstrating social proof.
- Summarize and future pace concept for integration and real world application.
Accelerated Learning Techniques An objective is to accelerate consideration, acceptance and retention of new skills resulting in changes in what we do and/or our perceptions. Hopefully--the doing becomes easier and the perceptions less clouded and more accurate. Preferred learning styles: The techniques build on a participant's preferred learning styles--even if the participant is not aware of these at the outset of the workshop. In addition, participants are introduced to others' practical results oriented techniques. Awakening from "Cultural Trance": Jonathan uses accelerated learning techniques derived from NLP, EMDR, hypnosis, trance and other effective pattern disruption techniques. In many of his workshops, especially the cross-cultural workshops, Jonathan recognizes that participants are mostly "unlearning" long-established deeply habituated behaviors and eliminating perceptual filters that have been deeply ingrained, some for as long as since as early childhood. Jonathan views these as a form of "cultural trance" and, accordingly, sees his workshops as a form of awakening from non-conscious behaviors and perceptual filters. Leverage through Personal and Private Application: Some of the accelerated learning techniques allow participants to access their own deep personal experiences that resonate with the concept being taught. To this end, the exercises are often content free, meaning they provide an empty process frame, which the participant can then privately fill with his or her own experiences. This method allows confidentiality so that participants may tailor a workshop to his or her particular needs and circumstances. The results of these techniques are best expressed in the Testimonials section of this site. Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
B. F. Skinner |
