repetition

Learning and internalizing techniques doesn’t always happen immediately — or without assistance from a teacher.

I spent many years developing and perfecting the Gokhale Method Foundations Course. After years of crafting the language, honing the metaphors, and rearranging the order in which techniques are taught, I considered the course well-constructed and comprehensive. I was proud to empower students to be independent in taking their posture journey forward. I was proud to not be peddling products gratuitously, nor to insist students keep coming back for additional lessons. 

The results of this approach were not always stellar. Though some students functioned just fine after one go-round of a full 6-lesson Foundations Course, most students, not surprisingly, needed ongoing repetition to “get it” in their minds, their bodies, and their memory.

The example that brought this point home vividly involved a student who is a physician. She had undergone one back surgery and was scheduled for another. She had extreme sciatic pain that made her want to lie down as much as possible. Driving herself anywhere was impossible, so she hired someone to drive her to her private clinic, where she worked the few 2-3 hours her pain levels would allow, and then was driven home again.

Physicians are among the many groups whose work environments can predispose them to posture issues, especially when they tuck their pelvises or stoop over patients or computers. This doctor in Angola, likely because of healthy cultural modeling, demonstrates the lovely upright bearing that’s possible (and desirable) in this context. Image courtesy Francisco Venâncio on Unsplash.

After working on the basic techniques in a few private lessons, she was able to reduce her pain level to 0 and cancel her scheduled surgery. She followed up with some recommended maintenance lessons and then let the lessons come to a halt. 

A year later she made an appointment during which I was shocked to find her in approximately the same condition she first came in with. I probed gently to discover what had happened. It emerged that one of her patients, a fitness instructor, had invited her to a weekly fitness class. Over time, she had conformed to tucking her pelvis as instructed. In the process of relating the story to me, a realization dawned on her: “Oh yeah, that’s what caused my troubles last time…” Wow. In listening to her a parallel realization dawned on me. Here was a highly-trained medical professional who had gone from being in a dire situation to being completely pain-free, and still the teaching had not held.

Fitness instruction advocating a tucked pelvis ended up making things worse for my physician student who suffered from sciatica. Image courtesy Anupam Mahapatra on Unsplash.

That was when I realized we needed a maintenance program. It’s obvious in hindsight, of course. Adults especially can feel that new information doesn’t “stick” because it gets harder to learn as you get older. I suspect that we actually overlook just how much repetition we did to learn most things when we were younger! That’s why we took over a thousand lessons in school in Math and English! If you have learned to play golf or do certain dances, how many times have you practised that swing, or rehearsed those steps? Learning takes exposure and repetition. It works.

Like perfecting a golf swing or learning a new dance step, posture techniques need regular practice in order to “stick.” Image courtesy Andrew Lomas on Unsplash.

We see some students returning to our classes after gaps of many years, and, like the physician, in that time they have often been culturally “reprogrammed” to tuck the pelvis, to slump, or to sway. We also see clearly that the forgetting curve is very real, and how easy it is to backslide into old habits. When we teach these alumni alongside more recent graduates whom we advised better about the need for revision and follow-up classes, the difference is very obvious. Humans simply learn better with repetition, and the Gokhale Method is no exception to this rule.

A great benefit of the Gokhale Method is the sheer variety of mediums available to reinforce and diversify the learning process.

To meet this need, consider refreshing the material or switching up the format. For example, all of our qualified teachers offer private lessons to alumni. It's surprising how much can be learned in a single lesson once the basics have been covered. If you've taken a Pop-up Course, consider taking a 6-lesson Gokhale Method Foundations Course — or vice versa; if you've taken a group course, consider taking a private lesson. Retreat programs at locations like Esalen Institute, Omega Institute, Kripalu, and 1440 Multiversity are helpful for newcomers and alumni alike and offer the opportunity to learn in a restorative, memorable setting. And some of our teachers offer small-group continuing education classes. All of these are rewarding pathways for relearning and refining the basic techniques, and coming away with different takeaways.

Working with students and actively helping them learn is a great joy for me and our many other Gokhale Method teachers.

Regardless of which specific new tack you choose, we recommend taking your first refresher class within 1-2 months of graduating from the Gokhale Method Foundations Course or the Pop-up Course. The next refresher happens best within 3 months of the first one. From then on we recommend doing an in-person session —  private or group — at least every six months, and sooner if there are still significant challenges. Working in-person with a teacher is always best, but if that’s not possible, a session can be scheduled online, which is surprisingly helpful for troubleshooting and keeping your own known posture challenges on your radar. So if you are one of our Foundations Course or Pop-up Course alumni, schedule that session! Our experienced teachers are ready to help.

Hands-on learning with a Gokhale Method teacher helps students refine and refresh the techniques, whether they’re just beginning their posture journey or whether it’s been years since their first lesson.

We have also created an Online University which includes 2 Live Chats with me every month and unlimited access to our on-demand library of over 60 instructional videos. Each lesson focuses on a specific posture topic, such as Beyond Stacksitting, Cooking with Healthy Posture, Foot Health, Yoga with Healthy Posture, dance, exercise routines, and so on. You are then able to revise and extend your posture expertise at any time for an entire year.  Now wouldn’t that be a great idea for 2020?

If you are one of our Foundations Course or Pop-up Course alumni, you can sample a free session of Online University content here. And from now through December 20, 2019, all of our alumni can save $100 on a year-long Online University membership! You must call our support team at 1-888-557-6788 to receive this special rate.

We wish you a peaceful holiday season filled with good posture!

When we first learn new information, we create shallow neural pathways in our brain that can quickly disappear. To retain information for the long-term requires reuse. Beyond the learning techniques referred to in Don’t Forget The Forgetting Curve (Part 1) (mnemonic devices, association, and multi-channel learning), re-engagement with the material is crucial in deepening the related neural pathways. Some aspects of re-engagement that play a big role in mitigating the effects of the forgetting curve are:

Repetition
Recall
The Halo Effect

Repetition is one form of engagement that is built into the Gokhale Method Foundations Course. Each technique is taught repeatedly in the course, and in multiple contexts. The most-repeated techniques in the course are:
Stretchsitting: we begin the course with this technique, repeat it whenever we prepare to watch slides, and use it to do our check-ins at the beginning of each lesson.
Shoulder roll: the simplest and easiest of our techniques, it is a part of stretchsitting, stacksitting, tallstanding, and glidewalking.

The shoulder roll is repeated throughout the Gokhale Method Foundations course

Butt-squeeze walking: Students learn this in Lesson 1, and return to it adding additional features in Lessons 3, 5, and 6.
Breathing into the back: This is a subtle but key concept that students meet in Lessons 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. In spite of the emphasis and importance placed on this technique, it seems to get forgotten easily.

Repetition is crucial for kinetic experiences, as it establishes muscle memory and gets you comfortable with new movements or body positions. It builds physical patterns as well as mental ones (think about how an annoying pop song that plays repeatedly on the radio can get stuck in your head!)
 

Recall, or conscious remembering, is a type of re-engagement that is superior to repetition for certain learning experiences. Rereading your textbook after class constitutes repetition; taking a booster quiz qualifies as recall. A booster quiz might use multiple choice questions that ask you to think situationally about the subject to choose a best answer, or it might include short-answer questions that require you to think critically and apply your understanding of the learned concepts. The effectiveness of recall quizzes as booster events for memory is demonstrated in the graph below.  

The graph shows the difference in the amount of material remembered between two groups, one of which took time to reread the material, and the other of which took the same amount of time to answer questions asking them to recall the material.
 

‘Booster events’ in the hours, days, and weeks following learning dramatically impact how much you can recall on the subject matter, and for how long. Repeat booster events give you a bigger return for each consecutive effort.

Each green line on the graph represents memory retention after a booster event. The rate of memory loss decreases with each successive event.
 

“If your goal is to produce long-term retention, and if your goal is to produce behavior change, then what you do after training is more important than what you do during training.” Art Kohn, Professor, Portland State Univ School of Business, on holding corporate training programs.

Now you might think that to retain all the information you learned in the Gokhale Method Foundations Course, you will have to recall every topic covered. Luckily, this isn’t the case due to something called the halo effect. The halo effect shows us that recalling just a few ideas improves retention of the whole learning experience. Seeing the nubs of a Stretchsit® cushion can help remind you to traction the back against the backrest, which will help recall a shoulder roll, more expansive breathing in the chest, and a general feeling of wellness and being in “good shape.”

In the Gokhale Method, each technique you learn connects with other techniques, body parts, feelings... For example, rib anchoring not only lengthens your lumbar spine, but sets up a natural spinal self-massage accompanying the breath, delivering an overall feeling of well-being. It may also cue you to elongate your neck, adjust your pelvis, and shape your feet whether standing, sitting, or laying down. Any of these hooks can serve up the halo effect and benefit your posture and your wellness.

The rib anchor is a key concept in primal posture. Recalling it can trigger the halo effect, bringing about length in the lumbar spine, a shift in breathing pattern, and a sense of well-being.
 

Towards the goal of providing our students with better booster events, the Gokhale Method Institute is building some additional services:

1. An online complement to the Gokhale Method Foundations course, including mini-quizzes, a way to track progress, recaps, etc. We will call this the Posture Oasis. If you are a graduate of the course, you will be able to work and play in the Posture Oasis retroactively.

2. Geographically-based Chapters that will allow graduates of the Gokhale Method Foundations course to connect with each other for in-person study groups, review and online discussion.

Of course, we will continue to send you these bi-weekly newsletters and encourage you to attend Alumni Workshops and sign up for our Online University for graduates. For those who haven’t taken the Foundations Course yet, that’s a great place to start! We look forward to a society that has better posture, less pain, and great function!

Pop quiz: What posture technique(s) does the poised Burkina woman below remind you to do?

 
Burkina woman drying her laundry

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Notes: For more information on the history of the concept of the forgetting curve, you can read more here on Wikipedia. These research articles, “Benefits of Testing Memory. Best Practices and Boundary Conditions,” and “The Power of Testing Memory,” go into more depth about the forgetting curve and how to overcome it.