Last night, something came to me. It was a stroke of brilliance, so I know it didn’t originate from me. What came to me was a short thought on the learning process, or how one learns.
I started thinking of how one learns something, especially something like Reiki, or a martial art, basically something that is more than just a thought process.
The simplicity of these statements is nice, yet says a lot.
How We Learn...
We Learn by Watching
We Learn by Doing
We Learn by Teaching
We Learn by Watching
We watch the demonstrations/examples given, noticing all we can so that we will be able to do the process when we get the chance to try it.
We Learn by Doing
At first, we practice what we have been shown, doing it until we get proficient. Next, once we are proficient, we continue to learn as we do the process. We know how to do it, but we continue to get better as we continue practicing.
We Learn by Teaching
Once we know something, we try to explain it to others. To explain it well enough to someone else, we have to be able to break it down to small parts. When we can break it down piece by piece, enough so that someone else can understand it, then we have learned it intimately. However, when we explain it to different people, to teach them, we find that everyone learns differently, and perceives differently. We need to learn the process more, so that we can explain it so everyone can understand it in their own manner, changing things until they do it properly.
Basically,
A student learns by watching and then doing.
A practitioner learns as they do because they continue to grow.
A teacher learns by teaching because they need to know the process intimately, and work with each student’s level of learning.
The best teacher is the one that learns as much as their students.
Interesting huh??