I first learnt about Forest Bathing a year ago, just before visiting Japan as a faculty exchange for Capilano University in North Vancouver, Canada. I was surprised to learn that Shinrin-Yoku originated from the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture in the 1980s (Longhurst & Takemasa, 2018), not from a country like Canada known for its lush forests, vast oceans, and majestic mountains. But after I learnt more about their hectic lifestyle, it made perfect sense that the Japanese people needed to learn the art of relaxation through visiting forests far away from the stresses of a typical urban life.
Category: TT Article
Sleep, Exercise, and Peak Performance in the University
Air, food, water, and sleep. These are the four basic needs of the human body. University students—and their teachers—usually do fine on the first three, but the last tends to be a problem. We know the physiological importance of sleep from a rich diversity of research studies. In biology, for instance, a team led by University of Chicago scientist Allan Rechtschaffen found that “all rats subjected to unrelenting total sleep deprivation died, usually after 2–3 weeks” (as cited in Gonzales and Gadye, 2015).
Re-equipping our Classrooms for a Better Learning Experience
While giving my daughter a tour of my alma mater last year, we wandered into my old engineering department and passed by one of the lecture halls I used to frequent. Peering through the glass door, I saw that the tiers of flimsy, vinyl-clad planks and jittery overhead projector of my day had been replaced with well-padded, ergonomic thrones and two (or was it four?) massive, flat-screen displays. Oh, my! How fortunate my successors are to enjoy such luxuries!
Easy Ways to Add Movement (aka raise blood flow) to your Deskbound Classes
Introduction by Movable Class advocate Kevin McCaughey. Read his article.
A few million years as hunter-gatherers have ensured that our bodies were designed for movement. Even if movement doesn’t help us think and learn better (which it very likely does), it’s much healthier than sitting around without a break. I’ve been involved in many workshops where teachers in Africa and Europe found great joy in getting active with English, even when it’s silly.
Walking and the Wandering Mind: How Movement Enhances Creativity
Hippocrates, a Greek physician who practiced some 2,400 years ago, famously wrote the line “walking is man’s best medicine.” Since then, writers and philosophers have similarly expressed the power of walking, not only for physical health, but for mental processing. For instance, Friedrich Nietzsche is credited with saying, “All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking” while Ralph Waldo Emerson described walking as “gymnastics for the mind” and the avid walker Hemmingway stated that “I would walk along the quays when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out.