Mental imagery as a tool in learning new skills

Just  a month back, I started hula hooping and was excited to learn it over a few days. I picked up the waist-hooping in three days, and soon progressed in duration (ten minutes!), and then added more challenging hoop tricks with the lighter polypro hoops (called off-body hooping): hand spins, palm spins, cross arm throws, skipping, both hand rotations, foot hooping, chest rolls!  I felt like a circus-artist, magician, and a happy child all rolled into one. I am in my mid-50s, and around this point is when most women are sniffling in some corner, feeling lost. So in a sense my yoga and hooping have kept me from these dark spaces that other people in my age group recede.

Most importantly, the flush of self-approval that followed this innocent activity (of hooping)  made me sit up and wonder why others were not engaging themselves in novel body movements that released them.
It was not just the hooping but the intense joy it gave. Plus, I realised, that it was improving the execution of my yoga poses substantially, and making me feel lighter in very tough poses. It was as if there was a greater clarity in execution and a litheness of the body and mind. I wanted to find out more about learning new skills. And this is the first in a series I intend to do here.

An exciting study by sports psychologist William Straub found that imagining a skill, and "practicing" this regularly can actually fast-forward your learning. In fact when compared with those who practiced physically, and those who did mental "practising", the latter seemed to have an advantage. When they combined mental skill with physical practice, obviously their advantage sky-rocketed.

I first read about this in the book by Sandra Blakesle and Mathew Blakesle ( Book image, above). Studies done with three groups established that mental imagery by itself had the greatest impact on learning a new skill, even more than physical practice. And when combined with physical practice, as less just one day of actually practising it,  the results  got even better. The game that was used in this research was dart-throwing.

Just relaxing, and visualizing oneself throwing a dart, and feeling the sense of satisfaction at having done it well was the primary mental practice. This was done over a period of eight weeks. Listening to training tapes, and actively engaging the mind in the skill required, and doing it in a relaxed manner seemed to get these fabulous results.

This happens because the brain is plastic, it can learn anything when it gets engaged. And when this happens, you actually use less energy because the mind is relaxed.

When I teach advanced poses in my yoga class, I tell those who are taking the longest to learn some pose, to stop stressing over the physical attempt and focus longer on their mental imagery: chunking the pose, and then running it over and over in their mind. If they have control over their mental imagery and self-talk, these students do pick it up rather fast. However it is important at this point to understand that their inner self-talk is important. How well they talk to themselves, and whether they listen to themselves, and if there is clarity in their inner talk, all this matters. This is a rare ability, and  I believe those who meditate regularly have this skill.  Others seem to have mixed results if they are really not convinced about the efficacy of their mind playing a role in such skills.

This also happens because those are not used to  this sort of inner talk can actually create what is referred as the self-talk dissonance: meaning, they do not acknowledge their fears and instead pretend themselves to be calm. This difference in actual and imagined states can ruin skill-learning, or any performance.

As a teacher, I often have this problem with students, especially students who are a bit disconnected with their body, or u can say, do not have an intense body awareness. Apparently, another study has found that this lacuna in body awareness, and dissonance, can come from childhood where physical contact with care-givers is restricted.

That's interesting. And a bit discomfitting.

Because then the hurdles while learning something new can really be high.

If you meditate, or are trained to watch your thoughts, you can learn other skills that manipulate your inner self-talk: Stop  negative self-talk, and rewrite it into a positive and proactive one.

More on this engrossing topic soon.