Flow with Life
Experiencing the playful and transformational power of Nature as Teacher
by Joseph Bharat Cornell (I submitted this article for Satish Kumar’s book, Regenerative Learning which is now available.)
“Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.” — Mark Twain
A teacher in the southwest USA once asked the children in his class to draw a picture of themselves. He recalled, “The American children completely covered the paper with a drawing of their bodies, but the Navajo students drew themselves differently. They made their bodies much smaller and included in the picture the nearby mountains, canyon walls, and dry desert washes. To the Navajo, the environment is as much a part of who they are as are their own arms and legs.”
Nature’s greatest lesson, I believe, is helping us feel our oneness with all Life. Nature cares for us in countless ways: she gives us sustenance, shelter, all our daily needs. Her most precious gift, however, is the experience of her harmony, wholeness, and joyful vitality. “In Nature,” Gandhi writes, “there is a fundamental unity running through all the diversity we see about us.” We cannot see this unity, invisible to human eyes, but we can feel it. Once, while camping in the Cascade Range, I entered a small subalpine valley covered with shallow streamlets and rafts of brightly colored wildflowers. The loving presence in the valley was so palpable, so thrilling, that when it was time to leave, I had to drag myself away.
In my book, Sharing Nature with Children, I propose the teaching tenet: ‘Experience First’ to ensure that students connect with the world as it actually is before attempting to analyze and interpret it. When absorbing Nature experiences, we feel a sense of timelessness and wholeness because our awareness is singularly focused and unified. Feeling calm is like a lake without ripples: it reflects life clearly. A calm feeling is intuition, enabling us to perceive life directly, as opposed to the intellect, which can only describe life. The word, ‘ineffable’ means ‘beyond the power to describe’ and profound Nature experiences are too subtle for the intellect to comprehend fully.
The right hemisphere of the human brain perceives the richness of the present moment and sees life in its whole context, and thus enables us to be fully aware of Nature. The left hemisphere steps away from the flow of direct experience (fed to it by the right brain) in order to analyze and represent the world in an altered form. In this way, the left hemisphere offers clarity and functionality. In other words, the left’s forte is to use and manipulate Nature; the right’s forte is to revere it. Unfortunately, education today typically values left brain analysis, which reinforces the status quo and focuses on that which is already known.
As we grow beyond early childhood, it is essential that we stay immersed in the source of life itself. Just as snow in the higher mountains replenishes moist alpine meadows, enabling a luxurious growth of diverse flora, the right brain’s heightened awareness inspires and vitalizes the left-brain’s interpretation of the world. Intuition’s higher, more expansive awareness inspires all true works of art, all profound thought, and all genuine innovation.
As a young naturalist, I sensed the importance of play to break free of the limitations of the left brain and so I began to design play-centered Nature-awareness games. People would become so engrossed in the playful games that their experience would lead them seamlessly into immersion in the natural world.
An example of one such game comes from a recent workshop I held, where a participant, Johann, a professional German forester, described to me the profound change he felt in his relationship with the forest after participating in ‘Sharing Nature’ exercises. He told me, “My university training taught me to view trees as a commercial commodity. But now, after experiencing the ‘Sharing Nature’ forest exercises, I realize that the grasses are my friends, the trees are my friends, that every living thing in the woodland is my friend. This, for me, is a new way of looking at the forest. This awareness is going to fundamentally change the way I work.”
During the Sharing Nature workshop, Johann interacted with trees in a variety of innovative ways. He and his co-participants, foresters from all over Germany, ‘built a tree’ together. Several foresters acted out each tree part— tap root, lateral roots, sapwood, cambium, phloem, and bark— and in doing so experienced kinesthetically the nature and function of that tree part.
Johann was then guided through a visualization of himself as a deciduous tree, living through the seasons of the year. During the guided imagery, Johann planted himself firmly in the earth, spread out his branches, drew nourishment from the sun and sky, and turned air and light into life. With his sheltering branches, Johann cooled the summer air and warmed the winter air, thus making a more favorable environment for other life forms. Reenacting a tree’s existence and function enabled him to personally experience the role trees play in the forest ecosystem and to feel in himself many of the noble qualities of trees. By imagining himself living as a tree and nurturing the nearby plants and animals, Johann strengthened his sense of stewardship and love for the Earth. Adopting the role of a tree and offering sustenance to the life around him, Johann felt the energy of life flowing through his body and a marvelous sense of vitality, resilience, and wholeness. The variety of learning modes in this practice enhanced Johann’s imagination, intuition, reason, empathy, and love, as well as his kinesthetic and sensory awareness, and thus enriched his appreciation and understanding of trees.
Touching people’s hearts inspires their thoughts and behavior. If our experience is mainly mental, our viewpoint on the subject tends to be materialistic. As a trained, practicing forester, Johann understood tree science well, but his scientific training had caused him (in his own words) to see trees simply as “a commodity.” The intentional, multifaceted Sharing Nature exercises enriched Johann’s whole being. As he experienced the forest in a more living, nuanced way, Johann himself became a more empathetic human being.
Over the years of sharing games as a teaching tool, I became aware that using the games in a particular sequence created a beautiful momentum toward a greater awareness of Nature. From that realization came Flow Learning®— an outdoor teaching system that gently, almost magically, guides participants towards uplifting Nature experiences. Because Flow Learning uses play to create an outpouring of joy and enthusiasm, it creates wholehearted engagement with the learning experience and with the subject— Nature. This process makes leading a group deeply rewarding for the leader and for the students.
Flow Learning not only helps people experience Nature directly, but also helps participants develop their higher human qualities. Attunement with the natural world awakens the human heart. It is this inner development that is essential if society as a whole is to overcome its present challenges.
Attunement with the natural world awakens the human heart.
Flow Learning has four stages: Awaken Enthusiasm; Focus Attention; Offer Direct Experience; and Share Inspiration. These stages cumulatively awaken lively interest, heightened receptivity, and profound connection with the natural world.
The Flow Learning Sequence
1. Awaken Enthusiasm
Stage One lively and playful activities make learning fun, instructive, and experiential—and establish in the students an enthusiastic rapport with the teacher and subject.
Qualities: Playfulness and Alertness
Stage Two activities, by offering simple challenges to the physical senses, help us become more calm, attentive, and receptive to Nature.
Quality: Receptivity
3. Offer Direct Experience
Stage Three activities create a deep connection with a natural site or object. These activities are generally quiet and profoundly meaningful.
Quality: Communion with Nature
4. Share Inspiration
Stage Four activities use the creative arts to clarify and strengthen personal experience. These activities nurture an uplifting atmosphere conducive to embracing noble ideals.
Qualities: Clarity and Idealism
Flow Learning’s four stages lift players into a high level of aliveness, engagement, kindness, and kinship with fellow participants. Through ‘Stillness-in-Nature’ experiences, players find their senses and perceptions sharpened, their minds calmed, their receptivity deepened, and their understanding enriched by an awakened intuitive wisdom.
During a winter Sharing Nature workshop on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido, an eight-year-old boy sat quietly, intently writing a poem while all around him thick snowflakes showered down from the sky. So focused was the boy that he was oblivious to the cold and to the snow piling up around him. The snow rose to cover his legs, then his waist, and still the boy remained virtually motionless. Everyone else had long since departed for the comfort of a large, heated tent. Knowing the group was waiting for us, I asked the boy if he had finished his poem. “Not yet,” he replied, immersing himself once again in his writing.
Like the boy in the snow, participants in Flow Learning delight in their heightened focus, calmness, and rapport with the natural world. The boy’s experience exemplifies the psychological concept of ‘intrinsic motivation’— motivation that is driven by rewards arising from within the person. Extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is driven by external rewards which can include, as examples, the desire to earn money or to receive a high test score.
Researchers in standard educational practices, though they prize intrinsic motivation, have concluded that, unfortunately, it cannot be easily summoned or sustained. Flow Learning, in marked contrast, has such a transformative effect on its participants that they do exhibit a remarkably high level of sustained interest and engagement.
A 2018 Flow Learning study involving 112 Taiwanese college students reported many beneficial results, which include:
Summarizing what Flow Learning participants experience, the author of the study, Dr. Hsiao Shu-Bih, poetically writes, “The heart is quiet enough to see what is most beautiful; the heart is quiet enough to hear the most beautiful voices. The heart is quiet enough to discover the original wisdom of life." Every human heart has the potential to be deeply touched by Nature. Flow Learning's metamorphosing process can help you as you share with others the joy and magnificence of Nature.
Flow learning can be used successfully in sessions lasting from thirty minutes to all day. Although it was originally developed for teaching outdoor Nature classes, it can be used to teach any subject matter, indoors or outdoors. Its four stages flow naturally from one to the next, and students respond readily to this sequence because it is in harmony with deeper aspects of human nature.
Each Flow Learning stage has its own characteristic activities: Sound Map, for example, is a Focus Attention stage activity, because players intently listen to (and mark on their map) the natural sounds around them. Participants— through joyful play and profound Nature experiences— typically become 100% committed to the class topic, a response which makes learning extremely rewarding for the students, and for the instructor. Such direct experience of Nature; intuition; creative, clear and inspired thinking; intrinsic motivation; inner stillness; present-moment awareness; flow; and fluid, rapid change—all work together to infuse Flow Learning with power. When these deeper ingredients come into play, Flow Learning becomes truly magical.
Alan Dyer, longtime Flow Learning trainer and observer of its use in Europe, writes, “Just four headings with clear notes, backed by appropriate activities have been enough to provide anyone taking others into the natural world with a powerful structure to open eyes, hearts, and minds. And I mean anyone—from the very young to the mature, from the skeptical to the expert, and from the hesitant parent to the experienced teacher.”
Experiencing the playful and transformational power of Nature as Teacher
by Joseph Bharat Cornell (I submitted this article for Satish Kumar’s book, Regenerative Learning which is now available.)
“Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.” — Mark Twain
A teacher in the southwest USA once asked the children in his class to draw a picture of themselves. He recalled, “The American children completely covered the paper with a drawing of their bodies, but the Navajo students drew themselves differently. They made their bodies much smaller and included in the picture the nearby mountains, canyon walls, and dry desert washes. To the Navajo, the environment is as much a part of who they are as are their own arms and legs.”
Nature’s greatest lesson, I believe, is helping us feel our oneness with all Life. Nature cares for us in countless ways: she gives us sustenance, shelter, all our daily needs. Her most precious gift, however, is the experience of her harmony, wholeness, and joyful vitality. “In Nature,” Gandhi writes, “there is a fundamental unity running through all the diversity we see about us.” We cannot see this unity, invisible to human eyes, but we can feel it. Once, while camping in the Cascade Range, I entered a small subalpine valley covered with shallow streamlets and rafts of brightly colored wildflowers. The loving presence in the valley was so palpable, so thrilling, that when it was time to leave, I had to drag myself away.
In my book, Sharing Nature with Children, I propose the teaching tenet: ‘Experience First’ to ensure that students connect with the world as it actually is before attempting to analyze and interpret it. When absorbing Nature experiences, we feel a sense of timelessness and wholeness because our awareness is singularly focused and unified. Feeling calm is like a lake without ripples: it reflects life clearly. A calm feeling is intuition, enabling us to perceive life directly, as opposed to the intellect, which can only describe life. The word, ‘ineffable’ means ‘beyond the power to describe’ and profound Nature experiences are too subtle for the intellect to comprehend fully.
The right hemisphere of the human brain perceives the richness of the present moment and sees life in its whole context, and thus enables us to be fully aware of Nature. The left hemisphere steps away from the flow of direct experience (fed to it by the right brain) in order to analyze and represent the world in an altered form. In this way, the left hemisphere offers clarity and functionality. In other words, the left’s forte is to use and manipulate Nature; the right’s forte is to revere it. Unfortunately, education today typically values left brain analysis, which reinforces the status quo and focuses on that which is already known.
As we grow beyond early childhood, it is essential that we stay immersed in the source of life itself. Just as snow in the higher mountains replenishes moist alpine meadows, enabling a luxurious growth of diverse flora, the right brain’s heightened awareness inspires and vitalizes the left-brain’s interpretation of the world. Intuition’s higher, more expansive awareness inspires all true works of art, all profound thought, and all genuine innovation.
As a young naturalist, I sensed the importance of play to break free of the limitations of the left brain and so I began to design play-centered Nature-awareness games. People would become so engrossed in the playful games that their experience would lead them seamlessly into immersion in the natural world.
An example of one such game comes from a recent workshop I held, where a participant, Johann, a professional German forester, described to me the profound change he felt in his relationship with the forest after participating in ‘Sharing Nature’ exercises. He told me, “My university training taught me to view trees as a commercial commodity. But now, after experiencing the ‘Sharing Nature’ forest exercises, I realize that the grasses are my friends, the trees are my friends, that every living thing in the woodland is my friend. This, for me, is a new way of looking at the forest. This awareness is going to fundamentally change the way I work.”
During the Sharing Nature workshop, Johann interacted with trees in a variety of innovative ways. He and his co-participants, foresters from all over Germany, ‘built a tree’ together. Several foresters acted out each tree part— tap root, lateral roots, sapwood, cambium, phloem, and bark— and in doing so experienced kinesthetically the nature and function of that tree part.
Johann was then guided through a visualization of himself as a deciduous tree, living through the seasons of the year. During the guided imagery, Johann planted himself firmly in the earth, spread out his branches, drew nourishment from the sun and sky, and turned air and light into life. With his sheltering branches, Johann cooled the summer air and warmed the winter air, thus making a more favorable environment for other life forms. Reenacting a tree’s existence and function enabled him to personally experience the role trees play in the forest ecosystem and to feel in himself many of the noble qualities of trees. By imagining himself living as a tree and nurturing the nearby plants and animals, Johann strengthened his sense of stewardship and love for the Earth. Adopting the role of a tree and offering sustenance to the life around him, Johann felt the energy of life flowing through his body and a marvelous sense of vitality, resilience, and wholeness. The variety of learning modes in this practice enhanced Johann’s imagination, intuition, reason, empathy, and love, as well as his kinesthetic and sensory awareness, and thus enriched his appreciation and understanding of trees.
Touching people’s hearts inspires their thoughts and behavior. If our experience is mainly mental, our viewpoint on the subject tends to be materialistic. As a trained, practicing forester, Johann understood tree science well, but his scientific training had caused him (in his own words) to see trees simply as “a commodity.” The intentional, multifaceted Sharing Nature exercises enriched Johann’s whole being. As he experienced the forest in a more living, nuanced way, Johann himself became a more empathetic human being.
Over the years of sharing games as a teaching tool, I became aware that using the games in a particular sequence created a beautiful momentum toward a greater awareness of Nature. From that realization came Flow Learning®— an outdoor teaching system that gently, almost magically, guides participants towards uplifting Nature experiences. Because Flow Learning uses play to create an outpouring of joy and enthusiasm, it creates wholehearted engagement with the learning experience and with the subject— Nature. This process makes leading a group deeply rewarding for the leader and for the students.
Flow Learning not only helps people experience Nature directly, but also helps participants develop their higher human qualities. Attunement with the natural world awakens the human heart. It is this inner development that is essential if society as a whole is to overcome its present challenges.
Attunement with the natural world awakens the human heart.
Flow Learning has four stages: Awaken Enthusiasm; Focus Attention; Offer Direct Experience; and Share Inspiration. These stages cumulatively awaken lively interest, heightened receptivity, and profound connection with the natural world.
The Flow Learning Sequence
1. Awaken Enthusiasm
Stage One lively and playful activities make learning fun, instructive, and experiential—and establish in the students an enthusiastic rapport with the teacher and subject.
Qualities: Playfulness and Alertness
- Builds on people’s love of play
- Creates an atmosphere of enthusiasm
- A dynamic beginning gets everyone saying, “Yes, I like this!”
- Develops alertness and overcomes passivity
- Creates involvement
- Minimizes discipline problems
- Develops rapport between participants, leader, and subject
- Fosters positive group bonding
- Provides direction and structure
- Prepares for later, more sensitive activities
Stage Two activities, by offering simple challenges to the physical senses, help us become more calm, attentive, and receptive to Nature.
Quality: Receptivity
- Increases attention span and concentration
- Deepens awareness by focusing attention
- Positively channels the enthusiasm generated in Stage One
- Develops observational skills
- Calms the mind
- Develops receptivity for more sensitive Nature experiences
3. Offer Direct Experience
Stage Three activities create a deep connection with a natural site or object. These activities are generally quiet and profoundly meaningful.
Quality: Communion with Nature
- Fosters deeper learning and intuitive understanding
- Inspires wonder, empathy, and love
- Promotes personal revelation and artistic inspiration
- Awakens an enduring connection with some part of Nature
- Conveys a sense of wholeness and harmony
4. Share Inspiration
Stage Four activities use the creative arts to clarify and strengthen personal experience. These activities nurture an uplifting atmosphere conducive to embracing noble ideals.
Qualities: Clarity and Idealism
- Clarifies and strengthens personal experience
- Increases learning
- Builds on uplifted mood
- Promotes positive peer reinforcement
- Fosters group bonding
- Encourages idealism and altruistic behavior.
- Provides feedback for the leader
Flow Learning’s four stages lift players into a high level of aliveness, engagement, kindness, and kinship with fellow participants. Through ‘Stillness-in-Nature’ experiences, players find their senses and perceptions sharpened, their minds calmed, their receptivity deepened, and their understanding enriched by an awakened intuitive wisdom.
During a winter Sharing Nature workshop on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido, an eight-year-old boy sat quietly, intently writing a poem while all around him thick snowflakes showered down from the sky. So focused was the boy that he was oblivious to the cold and to the snow piling up around him. The snow rose to cover his legs, then his waist, and still the boy remained virtually motionless. Everyone else had long since departed for the comfort of a large, heated tent. Knowing the group was waiting for us, I asked the boy if he had finished his poem. “Not yet,” he replied, immersing himself once again in his writing.
Like the boy in the snow, participants in Flow Learning delight in their heightened focus, calmness, and rapport with the natural world. The boy’s experience exemplifies the psychological concept of ‘intrinsic motivation’— motivation that is driven by rewards arising from within the person. Extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is driven by external rewards which can include, as examples, the desire to earn money or to receive a high test score.
Researchers in standard educational practices, though they prize intrinsic motivation, have concluded that, unfortunately, it cannot be easily summoned or sustained. Flow Learning, in marked contrast, has such a transformative effect on its participants that they do exhibit a remarkably high level of sustained interest and engagement.
A 2018 Flow Learning study involving 112 Taiwanese college students reported many beneficial results, which include:
- 96 percent of participants experienced an increase in their ability to feel Nature deeply
- 97 percent of participants were strongly inspired to love and protect Nature
- 100 percent of participants were ‘able to open themselves to Nature with innocence.’
Summarizing what Flow Learning participants experience, the author of the study, Dr. Hsiao Shu-Bih, poetically writes, “The heart is quiet enough to see what is most beautiful; the heart is quiet enough to hear the most beautiful voices. The heart is quiet enough to discover the original wisdom of life." Every human heart has the potential to be deeply touched by Nature. Flow Learning's metamorphosing process can help you as you share with others the joy and magnificence of Nature.
Flow learning can be used successfully in sessions lasting from thirty minutes to all day. Although it was originally developed for teaching outdoor Nature classes, it can be used to teach any subject matter, indoors or outdoors. Its four stages flow naturally from one to the next, and students respond readily to this sequence because it is in harmony with deeper aspects of human nature.
Each Flow Learning stage has its own characteristic activities: Sound Map, for example, is a Focus Attention stage activity, because players intently listen to (and mark on their map) the natural sounds around them. Participants— through joyful play and profound Nature experiences— typically become 100% committed to the class topic, a response which makes learning extremely rewarding for the students, and for the instructor. Such direct experience of Nature; intuition; creative, clear and inspired thinking; intrinsic motivation; inner stillness; present-moment awareness; flow; and fluid, rapid change—all work together to infuse Flow Learning with power. When these deeper ingredients come into play, Flow Learning becomes truly magical.
Alan Dyer, longtime Flow Learning trainer and observer of its use in Europe, writes, “Just four headings with clear notes, backed by appropriate activities have been enough to provide anyone taking others into the natural world with a powerful structure to open eyes, hearts, and minds. And I mean anyone—from the very young to the mature, from the skeptical to the expert, and from the hesitant parent to the experienced teacher.”
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