Written by: Rachel Marie Paling, Senior Level Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Today is a significant day for me. I am sitting on the high speed train travelling to Madrid to attend my first live presentation at a conference. As an extremely kinaesthetic person, travelling and movement were and still are an inherent part of my life and somehow each and every one of us has been impacted by the events of the last two years. Today it almost feels like somewhere along the way we lost two years! And yet, it also feels as if I never stopped travelling and everything feels exciting, novel but at the same time familiar. Have I missed travelling over the past two years?
Honestly, no I haven’t because I live in a beautiful place near the sea, near the mountains and with beautiful weather most of the year, and extremely grateful that this was the place I was destined to “live through” the pandemic. It was also nice to have some downtime as in 2019 I had been travelling all over the world and really working 200%. But now, today, my kinaesthetic soul feels like a big kid again, relishing staring out the window, watching the different dramatic countryside scenes from Barcelona to Madrid take shape in front of my scenery starved eyes, lapping in the sensations, the smells, the sounds, the sights that merge and dance through my brain as the signals hit my senses and sensory perception.
One of the fascinating things for me about travelling is the powerful stimulus it provokes in me to write, learn, perform, CREATE. As I look back through my life, I really can join the dots of my Kinaesthetic self. I started dancing at the age of two and a half and actually dreamed of being a professional dancer! At playtime at school in those early years 5-7, I remember always pretending to be Robin Hood (I come from Nottingham, so I guess it makes sense!) and acting was also a great part of my life. When I studied for my Postgraduate in Law I remember walking the dog reading my course books. As an entrepreneur, I discovered I hated doing my accounts, but discovered if I took my accounting book and receipts to the airport when I was travelling, with a glass of wine waiting for the plane, accounts suddenly became enjoyable. And in these recent years that I have written blogs and books, I am most creative when I am travelling. Like today, writing this article! In fact, the manuals for my courses were mostly written when I was travelling or had travelled somewhere different with the intention of writing and I know that if I want to create something new or write my next book, the best scenario for me will be to plan a getaway, start writing at the airport and then continue to write at the destination, in between sports activities, walking tours, and yoga.
Neuroscientists are also researching more and more the impact movement has on learning. Physical exercise releases proteins in the brain that help improve mental energy, cognitive performance and memory, due to the fact that the hippocampus (who I call our “memory master”) responds well to these proteins. In addition, blood pumps to the brain, neurons are firing and cell growth is promoted – so, neurogenesis, especially in the hippocampal region.
Recently in 2017, the research paper “It takes biking to learn: Physical activity improves learning a second language”, Fengqin Liu, Simone Sulpizio, Suchada Kornpetpanee, Remo Job, May 18, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0177624 actually looked at language vocabulary learning while exercising prior to and during the instruction. Fascinatingly, at the end of each lesson, the students who had been on the bike did better on the vocabulary tests than those who did not exercise. The bikers could also recognize proper sentences better but that was not evident until after a few weeks and they even retained the words and understood them more in sentences a month after the testing. It was clear that the exercisers had a more impacting learning process than the statics.
Could we say then that we should never underestimate the importance of movement and exercise to provoke creativity, flow and learning? I definitely know that it is essential to get me into the right brain state and not only that, it also helps me to create, learn, sharpen memory and retrieve better. So next time, you are feeling uninspired or you feel learning is difficult, you never know how effective it might be to get up and walk, run or dance.
Rachel Marie Paling, Senior Level Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Rachel Marie Paling is an International Game Changer in Education, in particular, the education of languages. She has created the method and approach Neurolanguage Coaching, which incorporates professional coaching and neuroscience principles into the learning process. She coaches and trains teachers worldwide, transforming them into certified and ICF accredited Neurolanguage coaches and has created the Neurolanguage Coach network with over 1000 NL Coaches in just over 100 countries worldwide and is now bringing the approach to schools and institutions over the world through her licensed trainers and in nine languages. Rachel started teaching language at 17 and has a BA Honours in Law and Spanish, MA in Human Rights. She is a qualified UK lawyer, MA in Applied Neuroscience, and a PCC ICF Life Coach. She is the author of the books Neurolanguage Coaching and Brain-friendly Grammar and has written numerous blog articles about learning, coaching, and neuroscience. She has spoken at many international conferences, and her company was awarded the Bronze Award at the Reimagine Education Awards 2019 in the Science in Education category. She is dedicated to the shift in education and is currently establishing an educational foundation to bring coaching, neuroscience, and heart science into educational processes.
