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The Lightner Method™ • Babette Lightner
Spring News 2017

Welcome Spring!


When the spring equinox is just days away, dawn and dusk are glorious. It is like we are being cradled in the light between the horizons, the bright full moon and the warm rose sun. May spring bring you life and light.

Babette

Below is information on Spring classes and a reflection on Sensory Intelligence. There are also several links to useful resources on neuroanatomy, brain science and sensory intelligence. 

LearningMethods™ On-Line Group

Monday Evenings 6-8 CST/7-9EST
April 24 to June 12 (8 weeks) $240
Sessions recorded


LearningMethods™ is a powerful tool for direct inquiry into making sense of our experience.  How do we unveil the root of a symptom or interference?  We often guess or ignore or stay stuck in problems that are easily solved if we look in useful places, right in the moment of the issue. This work gives you a specific tool kit to make sense of your life and help others do the same.  LearningMethods™ is invaluable for seeing clearly and directly how we work.

LearningMethods™ is the underpinning approach to the Pedagogy of Empowerment, which many of you have experienced with me or Jennifer Moir. It is also a root of the work we do at VoiceCare. The tools of this material can be adapted for all kinds of teaching and coaching. It gives you the ability to get to the root of interferences and back to the skill building and learning at hand.

We start with the question: Why does this makes sense in this exact moment when it is happening?  We can find strategies to change when we can makes sense of experiences like:

  • being afraid to sing
  • getting anxious easily
  • having painful feet
  • getting headaches often
  • never having enough time
  • feeling burned out
  • not exercising when we want to
What I have found to be the most profound by-product of the LearningMethods™ skill-set is the ability to make my own discoveries about how the world works. Instead of trying to practice an idea of how to live life, a commandment or precept, I am guided by my own system, my own inquiry.  There is no striving for better. There is simple clarity of the reality of this moment as it is.
 

Please contact me to register.
For more info:
INFO

On-line Movement Class
Patterns of Joy • Wholeness in Motion

Fridays, 7:15 to 8:15 AM CST/8:15 to 9:15 AM EST, April 14 to June 2.

This on-line format is wonderful for giving you the privacy and space to explore on your own at your own pace but also have a sense of community. The Individual class gives time to answer questions, do more detail work and personalize the material. I offer time before class to answer questions.

Learn more about Wholeness in Motion™
Learn about the movement sequences you will learn.

Spring Session includes: 8 group classes, 2 private 30 minute individual sessions and recordings of each class.  Fee: US $150


Please contact me to Register.
For more registration: INFO

Sensory Intelligence*
If you have participated in a class or workshop with me you know that I often start by asking you to: look around the room, listen to the sounds of the moment, note your mood, describe the sensations of your state-of-being, notice how warm or cold you feel. I am essentially asking you to come to your senses. The purpose is to awaken you to your sensory information. When I first developed this exercise I wasn’t exactly sure why. It felt useful and had a different emphasis than mindfulness guidance. Over time the content evolved and the purpose clarified. When I conclude the exercise I state the significance of it like this:

In our culture information coming to us from NPR or the BBC or from research articles or some other external expert is given great validity. It is as if the only source of valid and true information is external to us and cognitive.

We just explored your system’s amazing and on-going ability to give you information through your senses, the senses telling you about your inner state and about the world around you. As an artist, this is your most essential source of information. It allows you to make choices. It gives you the information of what does and doesn’t serve your purpose; what does and doesn’t give you joy or power or anything you want. This is not to say external information is less valid. This is to invite you to have access to as many sources of information as possible to navigate your life. This is about revalidating your inner-compass, your body, as the foundation of well-being. Learning to accurately interpret this vast wealth of sensory information is the skill of Sensory Intelligence.


I came upon the work of neuroanatomist Dr. Bud Craig. His book is How Do You Feel? An Interoceptive Moment with Your Neurobiological Self.  He presents a new paradigm for understanding how we feel, literally.  What he has discovered couldn’t have been mapped previously because we didn’t have the instruments to see the tiny, tiny tissues he has mapped. His work is vast and complex. I quote him below about people who have higher levels of bodily awareness as measured by their ability to count the number of heartbeats he or she feels in objectively timed intervals. He refers to them as heartbeat perceivers.

“Better heartbeat perceivers are better at reading their own emotional feelings...and are better at reading others' emotional feelings...Better heartbeat perceivers function better not only on an emotional level but also cognitively. They make better decisions based on subtle environmental cues, they perform better in tasks of selective and divided attention, and they respond more quickly to intuitive choices. They also have a more accurate subjective sense of time...they expend less energy than poor heartbeat perceivers.” -- Dr. Bud Craig. How Do You Feel? An Interoceptive Moment with Your Neurobiological Self, p 6-7.

 While slightly ironic, it IS gratifying when a hypothesis arrived at through experience like the Coming to Your Senses exploration, (sensory information is not only valid but crucial information for living life) is confirmed in research.

In the modern dance world we have known through experience that mind is not separate from body. Movement, sensation and body is our mind. We are whole and embodied. To dancers, Descartes thesis “I think, therefore I am,” has long been seen as inaccurate at best and the root of a sick, disembodied western society at worst. In his introduction Craig writes:

 
“ ’I feel, therefore I am,’ or more aptly, as I will explain, ’I feel that I am.’ ”

An understanding of embodiment isn’t revolutionary anymore.  But, Craig makes a thrilling contribution to the field. 

The Lightner Method™ is about developing practical strategies to apply new information about how your system works to daily and artistic life. The root idea being that you can experience the mechanics and miracle of your own being and harness that information to live and do what you want with less obstacles and roadblocks. Sensory information is crucial information about how you work. But it is often misinterpreted. The intelligence part of 'sensory intelligence' is learning to accurately interpret sensory information. The movement class and Learningmethods™ are embedded with experiences and tools to more accurately understand the sensory language of your system.


Here is a link to the Coming to Your Sense script.
Here is link to a talk by Craig: How Do You Feel.
I also highly recommend Dr. Ginger Campbell’s  Brain Science Podcast. I first heard Craig in episode 121.


* Sensory Intelligence is a term I am using to denote the need to learn to use sensory information skillfully.
 

VoiceCare Network
Summer 2017 • Collegeville, Minnesota
BodyMind and Voice July 13-20
Continuing: Conducting Gesture & Voice July 23-28


Western University Choral Music Summer Education • London, Ontario
Explorations in Gesture, Sound and Pedagogy August 26-30th
 
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Copyright © *2017* *|Babette Lightner|*, All rights reserved.
www.lightnemethod.com
babette@lightnermethod.com
612.729.7127
The top image is by Debra Frasier and her beautiful book On The Day You Were Born.


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Wholeness in Motion · W4722 770th Ave · Spring Valley, WI 54767 · USA

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