Tense shoulders. Flat breath. Crunched forehead.
“I cannot remember how to do this exercise.”
This is what some students experience way too often.
It seems like the “lid” on our head is closed and we are straining to find an answer inside us to a similar question we may have done before.
But is there a way not to try to remember but to open up to our inspiration and let the answers come to us?
Sounds a bit like science fiction, but I feel that it is worth delving in.
Recently I have been enrolled in a 7-week training about different disciplines of thinking. What really took me in was the interplay of inspiration and intuition on one hand and reason on the other (“The inner navigation” viviandittmar.net). It occurred to me, that what I was observing with my students for the last one and a half decades is that some had good connection with their inspiration when it comes to doing math and some didn’t.
As if trying to dig up the answer from somewhere deep inside, the students are going through a catalogue of already completed questions, trying to see which one resembles the current one the most, but often unsuccessfully – the students then talk about a black-out.
Now, some students might suffer from exam stress and anxiety, and this should be taken seriously and the roots and causes of this should be examined.
But often it is “just” a situation where they are cutting themselves away from their inspiration, intuition and so on, as they do not see how these have anything to do with math.
I believe that our creativity is an important part of any thinking discipline and any subject – even math, and not only higher level math.
Yes, being creative and inspired in subjects like art, drama, or music and even in languages sounds logical. After all, creative thinking plays a big part in the IB curriculum.
But creativity in math?
“That is not for me. I am just happy to pass, and I anyway have to do it the way the teacher has explained it. There is no space for creativity.”
Well, yes there is!
And not in the sense that you should get a Nobel prize for a new solving method, but rather that you trust that you can get the idea how to tackle the problem from your inspiration. Maybe this still sounds somewhat unusual, but see it as an experiment and just try it out, make your own experiences with it.
Start by letting go of tension in your body and letting your breath flow freely.
By doing this you are not only getting more oxygen in your blood and brain but also you are not spending your energy on holding tension. So, you are just ending any unnecessary activity in your body.
Then imagine that your head space is getting wider and more open, like lifting a lid that was over your head, or like inflating a balloon around your head.
Imagine a vertical channel that goes through your head, out of your body and stay with it.
Send up the question, letting it go and not holding tensely onto it. And then just be open so that the ideas can “sink into” you. Trust that there is a part of you that knows how to do this.
This should be the attitude which you should take before you start doing math, or anything else, really.
Our brains operate in many ways.
Think of them also as receivers, that do not make up stuff but get tuned in as radios in the big cloud (i-cloud;-)) and receive the impulse and the idea, which way to go and how leave the dead end road. And then it is back to our reason to put the pieces together, compile the information and solve the problem.
So, let’s get that attitude that it is all out there, trusting that we can do it, and the process of doing math will be much more enjoyable and successful!
#IBMath #Inspiration #VivianDittmar