ANAT BANIEL METHOD
Nine Essentials for Learning
Essential 1
Awareness
Awaring—the action of generating awareness—is to be knowledgeable about what you are experiencing so that you can make a conscious choice in action. This type of knowing creates possibilities and potential rather than automaticity or compulsion.
Essential 4
Flexible Goals
Leaving goals loosely held allows the brain to prioritize information and to optimize the system for the greatest likelihood of success. It also allows for the appearance of additional other positive outcomes that are unexpected and unplanned.
Essential 7
Attention
When we bring attention to what we feel as we move, the brain immediately starts building billions of new neurological connections that usher in learning and growth.
Essential 2
Learning Switch
The brain is either in a learning mode, or not. Repetition, drilling, and habitual patterns all tend to turn the learning switch off. Bringing the brain into a ready to learn state provides the optimal conditions for new information to be attended to, processed, and absorbed.
Essential 5
Slow
Slowing down gets the brain’s attention and stimulates the formation of rich new neural patterns rather than reinforcing automatic responses. Learning and mastering new skills and overcoming limitations requires going slowly at first.
Essential 8
Imagination and Dreams
When imagining, the brain grows new neural connections, and figures out new possibilities without actually having to perform. Imagination and dreams provide the ability to create something that has never been there before, or to transcend current limitations. The blueprints for future success can come from imagination and dreams.
Essential 3
Subtlety
In order for the brain to receive new information, it needs to perceive differences. By reducing the force with which we move, feel, and think, we become more sensitive, thus enhancing the brain’s ability to distinguish differences of a finer and finer nature.
Essential 6
Enthusiasm
Enthusiasm is a pointer for the brain, marking what is important and amplifying it. Things that are enthusiastically supported thus grow and prosper as they stand out to the brain and signal it what to pay attention to and to give energy to.
Essential 9
Variation
Variation provides the brain with the richness of information it needs to create new possibilities and potentials.