July 2001Mara Alagic: "Brain Dancing"1 Brain Dancing My interpretations of the Patrick T. Magee’s book with the same title

July 2001Mara Alagic: "Brain Dancing"2 Mental Leverage How do we manage the interplay and the mental dance between complementary modes of thinking conscious subconscious individual thought dialog left brain mode right brain mode detailed thought high level thought

July 2001Mara Alagic: "Brain Dancing"3 Thought Spectrum Chart (1) (Scale/Range of Thought) FOCUS: Daydreaming Concentrating AWARENESS: Subconscious Conscious TIME ORIENTATION: Past Present Future DECISION: Minor Destiny Shaping INQUIRY: Questions Answers MODALITY: Kinesthetic Auditory Visual ATTITUDE: Positive Negative

July 2001Mara Alagic: "Brain Dancing"4 Thought Spectrum Chart (2) (Scale/Range of Thought) EMOTION: Passionate Ambivalent BRAIN WAVE FREQUENCY: Delta Theta Alpha Beta DIALOGUE: None Many People DETAIL LEVEL: General Specific METAPHOR: Orientation Ontological Structural FREQUENCY CENTER: Heart Mind

July 2001Mara Alagic: "Brain Dancing"5 Small Action Properly Focused - Great Impact “Focused action beats brilliance any day” Art Turock “When the captain turns the wheel, it turns the trim tab, which turns the ruder, which turns the ship” Your example?

July 2001Mara Alagic: "Brain Dancing"6 Learning: An Example “Two things seemed pretty apparent to me. One was, that in order to be a [Mississippi River] pilot a man had got to learn more than any one man ought to be allowed to know; and the other was, that he must learn it all over again in a different way every 24 hours.” – Mark Twain

July 2001Mara Alagic: "Brain Dancing"7 Self-Communicating Strategies Visualization –mental snapshot, submodality, drawing, visualization task Metaphors (to communicate meaning) –Mind is to the brain what software is to hardware Full physiology affirmations –involve thinking about your desired outcome at moments when you have developed powerful physiology Employing alpha brain waves –by thinking about your desired outcomes

July 2001Mara Alagic: "Brain Dancing"8 Self Communicating Principles Two dimensions: physical and mental Power of subconscious: Give yourself a reason to use your subconscious Your mind cannot focus on the opposite of an idea: positive versus neutral mental energy Incubation - “We learn to swim in winter and skate in summer.” William James; Personal ecology: self-communication and subconscious believes not in contradiction A picture in your mind is worth a thousand words as well: “The dog jumped over the fence.”

July 2001Mara Alagic: "Brain Dancing"9 Mapping for Learning Most people can hold 5-9 ideas in their mind simultaneously If pictures can be enriched to contain many objects or symbols and each symbol can represent multiple ideas, then this distinction can be used to break this idea limitation “Imagination is more important than knowledge” Einstein

July 2001Mara Alagic: "Brain Dancing"10 Mapping for Learning ANCHOR Mapping for learning mobilizes untapped intellectual resources of learners Mapping for learning inspires effective mental action

July 2001Mara Alagic: "Brain Dancing"11 Metaphore Greek roots: pherein = to carry, meta = beyond, over It is not what a metaphor is - It is what the metaphor does Good metaphors inspire both creative and critical thinking tip the first domino Brain and mind - hardware and software...

July 2001Mara Alagic: "Brain Dancing"12 Strategies for developing visualization “Some things you see with your eyes, others you must see with your heart” - from the movie, Land Before Time

July 2001Mara Alagic: "Brain Dancing"13 Brain Wave Frequencies (Cycles/Sec) (Marilyn Ferguson, The Brain Revolution) DELTA (.5 - 3) Large and slow. Deep, dreamless sleep. THETA (4 - 7) Seem to be involved in emotionality, creative imagery and computation on a deep level. They rarely occur while awake. ALPHA (8 - 13) Associated with an alert but relaxed state of mind. Most people produce alpha waves when they close their eyes or when their brain is scanning for a pattern. Typical waking, eyes-open EEG shows alpha waves mixed with other patterns. However, steady alpha waves are uncommon in one whose eyes are open. BETA ( ) Fast, tight pattern occurs during logical thought, analysis, action and normal conversation.

July 2001Mara Alagic: "Brain Dancing"14 Generating ALPHA state “Just as you learned to drive a car, you can learn to drive your subconscious mind with alpha brain waves.” Progressing through the following stages: Unconscious incompetence (You don’t know what you don’t know.) Conscious incompetence (Awareness that you do not know something that you would like to learn.) Conscious competence (You can do it devoting all of your attention to it.) Unconscious competence (You can do the task not without having to think about it much.)

July 2001Mara Alagic: "Brain Dancing"15 Creating Mental Models and Questioning Generalization –“If something is true in one case, it is probably true in other cases.” Always? Never? (To be evaluated in the context!) Deletion –“can’t”, “have to”, “should” - What would happen if...? What has to happen in order for...? Distortion –seeing a process as an event - awareness - How can that process be optimized in order to better meet our objectives?

July 2001Mara Alagic: "Brain Dancing"16 The Six Thinking Hats as Three Pairs of Opposites (from the book by Edward de Bono) White and Red –neutral and objective - Just the facts, please! –emotional - gut reactions Black and Yellow –devil’s advocate - looking for what’s wrong –optimistic, positive, focus on the potential of the ideas Green and Blue –being creative and generating new ideas –control and organization - making sure the other hats are used effectively