-=a good reason to listen Gregorian chant=-

Hallelujah! Lower Blood Pressure And Reduce Stress Through Gregorian Chant:

And now there's another great reason to participate in this ancient ritual: its health benefits! Recent research reveals that singing Gregorian chant can lower your blood pressure, relieve stress, increase levels of performance-enhancing hormones and reduce anxiety and depression. That's in addition to its social benefits mentioned above.

Dr. Alan Watkins, senior lecturer in neuroscience at Imperial College London, connected monks to a device that monitored their heart rate and blood pressure throughout a 24-hour period. The results revealed that their heart rates and blood pressure dipped to their lowest points in the day when they were chanting. This is especially significant as blood pressure and heart rate will usually increase during activity.

Dr. Watkins explains: "The control of breathing, the feelings of well-being that communal singing bring, and the simplicity of the melodies, seem to have a powerful effect on reducing blood pressure and therefore stress."

-=A bit off topic=-

For quite some time, I've been trying all sorts of 'strange' ways of learning languages.  One of them involves brainwave entrainment.  The idea is that when we are in a certain 'brainwave frequency' learning becomes easier.  Interestingly, simply listening to Gregorian chant will naturally put a person in such a state.  But the idea of putting the two together didn't cross my mind until today.  I think I'll start listening to it more often as I learn vocabulary words.  I suppose it'll be effective.

-=Pentecost=-

Something spiritual happened to me today.  I can't say I know for sure, but I literally felt something different in today's mass.  The words of today's reading really hit me.  In short, I've drifted so far from God, and he put me back on track:

My purpose for language learning is far greater than simply learning them as I was reminded of this when hearing these words from the Acts of the Apostles: 

"And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit
and began to speak in different tongues,
as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim."

As well as the responsorial psalm which is based on Psalm 104:30:

Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.

During the homily, the priest mentioned how the apostles were ordinary men sent to the ends of the earth, like how St. Thomas went to India.  Their only 'prerequisite' to doing such amazing things was the Holy Spirit, not some kind of special degree or education.  Interestingly, he also referred to the importance of mysticism, which is a word that I never heard about from a Roman rite priest (perhaps this is coincidence?). Also, I'm referring to Christian mysticism in case someone is confused by this.  It was as if I was listening to an Orthodox priest for a moment there.  He even talked about how the Church has become so focused on academics rather than on contemplative prayer. I guess much of this is nothing new to me, but his words literally opened my eyes.

I had attended an evening Mass elsewhere today, due to not waking up early enough to attend Mass at Myeongdong, and I literally feel as if I was supposed to go to this particular Mass.

I had some things that were tempting me away from God, but after having been to Mass, I can see that these things literally pale in comparison to God.  There certainly are things that I want, but I knew in my heart, I was trying to grasp for some sort of 'power'.  Today, God helped me let go of these idols.

-=Hmm I guess I was right about unconscious learning=-

Psychologists find neurological mechanism for subliminal learning, Boston University

Watch out -- you may learn something and not even know it, says Takeo Watanabe, an associate professor of psychology at Boston University's Center for Brain and Memory. Watanabe and his team recently pinpointed the mechanism that makes subliminal learning work. Watanabe will present the team's findings at the American Psychological Society meeting in Los Angeles, May 27 and 28.

Long considered the realm of science fiction, subliminal learning occurs when individuals are influenced by a stimulus they are unaware of, like words played back below the threshold of hearing or images flashed on screen faster than the eye can perceive. Watanabe's recent findings grew out of his team's previous work in which they established that subliminal learning is real and that the brain is capable of learning without consciously focused attention.

Here's the part that's most relevant for me:

According to Watanabe, the visual cortex, the area of the brain tested in his experiments, has long been considered unchangeable in humans past 6 months of age. Watanabe found it could be "changed" and that the changes could last for a considerable period; individuals were tested again six months after the initial trials and show little or no deterioration in their ability to recognize moving dots in a visually noisy background.

"It's possible that other parts of the brain could work this way too," Watanabe says. "People might be able to improve their pronunciation of a new language, if it's presented simply, without paying attention. It's possible the brain could be changed without a lot of effort."

People can improve their pronunciation without consciously paying attention.... fascinating.  It's just like what I had posted about Chris Lonsdale's experience.

According to Pawel Lewicki, Professor of Psychology from the University of Tulsa, "only a small portion of our mental activity (such as gathering information, learning, "thinking") is conscious; the majority of our mental activity is entirely nonconscious"

Here's some more from his quick summary of Conclusions of the Research on Nonconscious Information Processing:

Conscious vs. nonconscious mind. The results demonstrate that our mind works like a "multi-tasking computer" that can do more than one thing at a time. Conscious mind is only one task. Compared to our nonconscious mind, our conscious mind is relatively limited. While we "watch and consciously experience" only a small part of what is potentially available to us in the outside world, our nonconscious mind is busy processing large amounts of information which is too hidden, too abundant, and/or too complex to be identified by our consciousness. As compared to our ability to acquire information nonconsciously, our conscious mind is incomparably slower; it is also "clumsier," less perceptive, and less capable of detecting complex patterns of information. One can say that our nonconsciousness is "smarter."

The information that is acquired nonconsciously (i.e., the nonconscious "knowledge structures") determines large portions of our personality, preferences, skills, "experience," and it is responsible for crucial aspects of our adjustment and the ability to function efficiently.

A simple example: "speech production." For example, there are thousands of pieces of information and "rules" that we need to "know and apply" in order to use a language: Those are grammatical, semantic, and syntactic rules, idiomatic conventions, countless idiosyncrasies and elements of linguistic traditions that are specific for our particular language, region of the country, city, school, neighborhood, family, etc. If we had to "experience" (and be fully aware of) all those processes, decisions, rules, etc. that are necessary to generate the spoken language (e.g., when we communicate with others), then it would take us hours before we would be able to put together a sentence. Moreover, most of us could not even articulate many of those "rules" that we use. For example, although most of us would be able to say which one of the two phrases (a) "a big, red barn" or (b) "a red, big barn" sounds better, very few of us would be able to articulate the rule that is responsible for our choice. That rule must be still somehow "functionally available" to us since we clearly use it; however, it is not available to our consciousness.

Now the big question I'm wondering is:  How do I apply these ideas to language learning?  Perhaps this is where Krashen's notion of focusing on content would fit in.  Interestingly, Suggestopedia would seem to fit in this context as well, though I really wonder how effective it is as a teaching methodology.

-=Ramblings on learning=-

Lately, I've spent some time playing around with all sorts of accelerated learning-related techniques.  It surprises me to see that some of these techniques are ridiculously simple, yet were never taught in school.

I just got my hands on Secrets of Mental Math, after having seen a youtube video of someone reviewing the book (several weeks ago).  While I haven't read all of it, I'm surprised to see how easy it is to do all sorts of mental arithmetic, and I'm not even referring to the 'genius abilities' that skills abacus users have (like in this video).  Basically, this book shows that there are tricks to doing more efficient calculations, and I still wonder:  Why wasn't I taught how to do these things?

For example:  25 x 11 = 275

Here's a quick way to do it:

1) Add 2 and 5, which is 7
2) Stick the seven inbetween 25, which is 275

Here's another example: 53 x 11 = 583

1) 5+3=8
2) 583

Here's a slightly trickier one:

57x11=627

1)  5+7=12
2)  5127

The answer is 627.  So the way to think of this is 50+12, which is 62.  Thus, 627.

Of course, this 'formula' doesn't work for all numbers, but there's all sorts of tricks that this book teaches.  It also has a short section on mnemonics.

On a similar vein, I watched some youtube videos on speedreading just today, and I decided to put them to practice.  I'm no genius speedreader, but I can tell that they work.  I will admit that I've known about some speed reading techniques for quite some time, but again I wonder:  Why wasn't I taught how to do this in school?

Several days, I purchased a book on speedreading by a relatively unknown author, since he was inspired by a guy who applied speed reading to language learning.  I was itching to get this gentleman's book (i.e. the one who applied it to language learning), but sadly, it's long out of print.  This gentleman apparently wanted schools to start teaching it, but it seems a lot of schools are against it, even though it's highly efficient.  The problem stems from the fact that kids would finish a semester too quickly, and there would be nothing left to teach the kids.  This highly suggests that there's something wrong with the school systems if they do not want children to learn faster.  It seems to me that many of these educational institutions are not really interested in educating, since a radical change in teaching methods could potentially mean a change in status quo, which would jeopardize their future jobs.  The fact that quota systems exist is more than enough proof for me that many schools are not interested in educating, since they do not give grades that students rightfully deserve.  Here in Korea, it's even worse.  Moreover, I was surprised to discover that James Asher's TPR did not make much headway until some of his senior professors had retired. 

Interestingly, this is precisely the type of thing that educators trained in accelerated learning have been saying for years.  I can't help but think to myself, "Why would a school not be interested in using teaching methods that are far more efficient for learning?" Speedreading has been around for 100 years already.  Mnemonics date back to the ancient greeks.  Why is it that I was taught to spell words by phonetically sounding them out?  Even the word 'phonetic' doesn't have an 'F'.  Friend is, oddly enough, spelled with an 'i', otherwise it would be 'frend', yet 'trend' is never spelt as 'triend'.  And I suppose that means since 'tomb' rhymes with 'boom' it should be spelt as 'toom'?

I find it so ridiculous how my school teachers gave spelling tests without ever teaching how to actually spell correctly.  I was fortunate since I was naturally doing what good spellers do -  imagining letters (but, I never knew why I was good at spelling until 2 years ago when I consciously noticed what I had been doing in my mind).  Had some of my elementary school classmates been better spellers, they would have gotten into better classes in high school, which would have led to potentially better chances at going to a better university.

The way I see it, the education system in both the States and Korea need some radical reform, especially the way they teach languages.  My 4 semesters of Chinese at Rutgers did very little for me.  A few months in China were far better, which tells me that in itself shows that there is something seriously wrong with university language classes.  Additionally, I'm appalled by the fact that there are so many unqualified English teachers here in Korea, many of which have taught in Korea for several years by using inefficient methods.  Upon closer investigation, I discovered many of these experienced-teachers are not here to truly educate, since they're only in it for the benefits that the jobs provide.  Perhaps I'm a little too critical. 

After having taken my TESOL classes, I had thought that the communicative approach to language teaching was the ideal method, since it was the method I was trained to use, but now I'm convinced that this method, for the most part, is detrimental towards language learning, despite some of the claims of peer-review journals.  After all, students who speak incorrectly will reinforce these errors to the other students, and teachers cannot possibly correct every single one.  Even if they did correct students mistakes, this generally destroys student's confidence.  When used in appropriate times, it could be extremely useful, but by itself, I find the approach highly inefficient for both teachers and students.

This problem with the communicative approach leads me to believe that languages can in fact be learned unconsciously (though not entirely).  My experiences at work prove this to be true.  This also leads me to think that grammar should be never be the focus of language learning.  The fact that babies can learn languages rapidly without learning grammar is enough proof that we can learn languages quite rapidly without grammar.  I'm entertaining the idea that language learning should be done like the way speed reading is done:  By focusing on the whole, not the parts.  Based on the split-brain theory, I'm referring to a right-brain approach, which focuses on the forest, while the left-brain focuses on individual trees.  Clearly, both are very important, but the current education system seems to neglect the right side.

Interestingly, imagining, memorizing, and speedreading are all based on the right brain.  In fact the youtube videos of babies reading are all based on the early use of the right brain.  I think I'm on to something.  Perhaps using the right brain could make language learning much more efficient.

-=change in focus?=-

Wow... having read a lot of my previous blog entries, it's clear to me that religious tone of this blog is virtually gone, which means I should probably start a new blog altogether, yet I'm a bit lazy to do so.  I suppose it really doesn't matter.

It also may suggest something about my spiritual life. 

-=Jesus Prayer=-

Fortunately, I've been keeping in touch with my spiritual father, and what I've discovered about the Jesus Prayer is that in many ways, it seems a lot like Eastern mysticism.  In fact, in an email, I had written the following:

In fact, St. Simeon the New Theologian's directions on the Jesus prayer sound strikingly similar to methods for deep meditation (i.e. as in Far Eastern religions):
"Sit alone and in silence; bow your head and close your eyes; relax your breathing and with your imagination look into your heart; direct your thoughts from your head into your heart. and while inhaling say, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me," either softly with your lips or in your mind. Endeavor to fight distractions but be patient and peaceful and repeat this process frequently"

This sounds strikingly similar to my past experiences with meditation, and he responded by writing the following:

Yes – you did your homework. The most developed practice of the Jesus Prayer involves techniques employed in the Far East as well.  We continually forget (or suppress?) the fact that Christianity is an Asian religion! We know how far the Church of the East extended into central and eastern Asia in the first millennium. Was entry into this culture significant for the development of this prayer in the Syrian Church?
 
The big difference with non-Christian use of meditation (ancient and modern) is, of course, the invocation of the name of Jesus which makes the practice a matter of personal relationship with God (in contrast to any other use). Since the time of St Justin it has been affirmed that anything can be (and probably has already been) baptized, including meditation. Sometimes Christianity has taken an arguably second place in all this, such as the neo-platonism of a Diadochos or the aristotlianism of the scholastics. The important thing is to keep the Gospel paramount in any expression of faith.

Western Christianity has tended to see Christian faith and practice coming down in a linear way from the OT (Moses and the prophets) to the NT to contemporary interpreters, be they the popes or Calvinist exegetes. Next time you come to the States we must go to some real Eastern liturgies (eg Assyrian or Indian) to see the interplay of these pre-Christian cultures.

I had asked him his thoughts regarding religious experience with regards to right brain functions.  I had seen this TED presentation of Jill Taylor, a neuroanatomist who basically studied her brain as she was having a stroke. (a first hand experience!) In the process, she experienced something similar to a near death experience due to her impaired left analytical brain.  This made me wonder if religious experience is entirely in one's head.  He responded in this way:

Does recognition of more Oriental ways of learning and communicating imply that, as you said, “religious experience is entirely in one’s head.” Surely there is that possibility – hence the Eastern Churches’ insistence that the first explanation for believer’s visions, etc. is delusion while the second is demonic deception. And hence the principle that deepening one’s spiritual life may only be rightly done with humility and with guidance. This reminds me of the Desert Father who was visited by a heavenly being claiming to be the Archangel Gabriel, come with a message from God. The Father replied, “Oh, you must have made a mistake – I am not worthy of receiving angels.” At that the “angel” disappeared.

I had asked him all these questions simply because there is some strange phenomena that occurs with the use of one's right brain, like heightened intuition or having such odd 'visions' like a near death experience.  (Lately, I've been reading quite a bit about what the right brain can do like accelerate the learning process, but it turns out that the right brain is also involved with such odd phenomena.)

I assumed that perhaps this phenomena could be a natural function of the brain, and they are not spiritual in nature (thus implying a split between the physical and the spiritual).  His response was as follows:

It is always a temptation to oppose the physical to the spiritual (how could painted boards be "spiritual?") or to equate them in such a way as to make mundane things "spiritual."  (his use of 'painted boards' refers to icons)

Since you have The Way of a Pilgram at hand, note how, when the pilgrim reports the ease and lightness to which saying 12,000 Jesus Prayers a day has brought him, the elder says, "Do you see with what excellent faculties the God who loves mankind has fitted even the sensual nature of humanity?" He notes that this experience is sensual, natural, even artificial rather than pure prayer, but affirms it as a step. It is precisely our makeup which makes prayer possible. His Spirit cannot bear witness with our spirit (cf Romans 8:16) unless we have a natural spirit (or nous or inner self or whatever you want to call it, in which the Spirit of God can dwell.

One of the big follies of the modern West has been to banally equate et cum spiritu tuo with and with you too. The Lord be "with your spirit" - that innermost aspect of your being which can touch God - is not just a figure of speech, but a reality of our nature in God's image.

Now that's some profound stuff.  I had always thought of spiritual and physical things as somehow separate, like they're compartmentalized.  Eastern Christianity has more of a holistic view of man it seems, just as Traditional Chinese Medicine looks at the human body in a holistic manner.  I then asked him to expand on his thoughts:

The point I was trying to make is this: psychic prenomena are NOT "supernatural," they are natural once you recognize the phychic dimension of man's makeup. This is especially comprehensible when you see man's makeup in the tripartite perspective of St Paul (body, soul, spirit). For more on this see Hausherr as I mentioned and Bishop Hierotheos Vlachos of Nafpaktos, many of whose writings have been translated into English.

Interestingly, awhile ago, he told me to read about Bishop Hierotheos Vlachos, who has written Orthodox Psychotherapy, which is a book that I'd like to get my hands on.  Fortunately, some of the chapters are available online.

-=On a more random note=-

My girlfriend was baptized about a week ago.  She has taken on the name 'Michaela' =)