Anatomy of Embodied Education

Imagine that you have obtained a guidebook for exploring a vast, mysterious forest that you have heard of, but have never known how to approach-a forest so intricate and lush that most people feel reluctant to enter it without an experienced guide, and yet so alluring that you long to wander its paths, follow its streams to their source, gain access to its panoramic views of terrains that have barely begun to be mapped. What makes this terrain so alluring is that it enfolds largely untold knowledge of the processes through which humans grow, develop, learn. And as explorers understand these processes more fully, they also begin to see how they have been unnecessarily hampered by assumptions and practices endemic to their culture. Then, seeing those blockages, explorers can gather the means to dissolve them, allowing growth, development, and learning to proceed more freely and naturally. The vast, forested terrain in this metaphor is the embodied human brain, and its processes underlie not only growth, development and learning, but the mystery of consciousness itself. We authors offer this guidebook to assist you in entering and exploring that terrain.