Boosting our 'efficiency-equilibrium'

YOGA and The Energies of Men, William James, 1907

My Dad, William Dixon, realizing his potential in the Newsweek copy room, leading eventually to his job with TIME magazine in London.

While taking this coursera / Rely KIPP schools class, Teaching Character and Creating Positive Classrooms, I have been briefly sidetracked by the thought of early psychologist and lecturer, William James. He and his brother Henry James (the literary critic) worked in the early 19th century and both have left a substantial influence on modern psychology and literary criticism, respectively.

William James' basic argument, "Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake"

hit me hard recently because a good friend told me the other week to "Wake Up!" and basically live life to its fullest and take advantage of my potential. So as I work unlock hidden reserves of my professional energy, I was drawn to his comments about our need to access our full potential as humans. James says of men and women in general; "He energizes below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum."

And as working to ones potential is central to education (and human motivation in general) this post aims to use a few quotes from James's essay, The Energies of Men, to discuss some practical ways to apply character development to our classrooms.

James was an early supporter of yoga. In his essay, he introduces one of his friend's experiences of fasting and studying yoga by saying, "But the most venerable ascetic system, and the one whose results have the most voluminous experimental corroboration is undoubtedly the Yoga system..."

Yoga forces us to push through mental boundaries and break limits in order to arrive at new mental and physical places. And this is key. Being able to push through ones mental barriers and limits - physically and mentally. I think in the physical world, we do a pretty good job of studying and understanding this phenomenon. One of the truths that all coaches and trainers share is that working above ones physical limits for at least some percent of a workout or practice session is essential to improve athletically.

But as far as teachers, the same needs to be taught in the academic classroom setting. As James says,  Mental activity shows the phenomenon [of getting a second or third wind) as well as physical, and in exceptional cases we may find, beyond the very extremity of fatigue-distress, amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own, sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we never push through the obstruction, never pass those early critical points.

So in order to encourage students to reach beyond their comfort zones, and find new ease and power in activities that were once difficult, we need to explicitly teach this skill.

Yoga in the classroom is a tool - incorporating even simple exercises in the end or beginning of class - or doing activities like vocabulary yoga - choosing a pose for each of 8-10 different vocabulary words and practicing those poses and repeating them - certainly helps the kinesthetic learners in the group.

Also, SMART goals, mind maps, all these activities force students to center and concentrate their energies and begin to focus and then "push through the obstruction" and reach new potential. Whichever method you choose to implement this objective of working to one's full potential is sure to be helpful in the classroom and your life.

Authors Note: This post is turned into a post for educators, but it is a work in progress as I am attempting to develop the following structure: marriage of "forgotten" modern thought (20th century) with current (2013/2014) events with useful and helpful connections. In this case I chose to connect to education.

Feb. 2?, revision: