Four Stages of Learning: Bargaining (3)

Over the many years of teaching, we have noticed four stages of learning that students go through when faced with new information. These stages are based solely on our observation and time spent in yoga rooms around the world. They are also based on how we have personally reacted when faced with a new approach. 

In this blog series, we will outline what we have noticed both in our students and in our own experience learning new, and sometimes challenging, information. Here is the third blog in this series. ​

The third stage of learning is bargaining. We have successfully heard something new, and we have begun to see how it conflicts with a belief we have been holding. We have managed to parse the details and have located the very place where there is conflict in our minds between what we previously thought and what we are learning now. 

Now what?

Now is the bargaining phase. This is where we think things like, "Maybe this is just a different approach..." or "Maybe both of these facts are true...." or "Maybe the teacher I learned from really meant this ​but just explained it differently....". 

This is where the questions become how to integrate what we are learning into what we already learned. This is a normal response, however this is not the best approach.

​Sometimes we learn something new that needs to replace what we learned previously. It is not a matter of integrating the two pieces of understanding together, it is a matter of replacing what we know with the better piece of knowledge. 

​It is true that there are infinite beliefs. But belief is not the same as knowledge: knowledge requires truth and does not require belief. 

Here we need to figure out what is our belief and what is true knowledge. This is another challenging stage of learning because we once again push up against what we think we know and even, who we think we are. Humans tend to hold their beliefs so close that we mistake our beliefs for the self. In this stage of learning, we can often feel that our very identity is under conflict. 

This gives us three options.... Next time in stage four of learning: The Crack.