Continuous Core Thoughts
Core thoughts: Still the main core thought I standby: “Learning to learning to learn,” Sir Drop-A-Lot, discovered later in Lessons from the Art of Juggling by Michael J Gelb and Tony Buzan. Page xvi, and also heard mentioned by distinguished jugglers…
One main thing Juggling teaches is “Learning to learn.” From Learning to learn to learn, parsing and scaffolding, these principles can be applied to everything new. Remembering that learning requires dropping the ball.
Learning to learn means parsing and scaffolding: breaking ideas down, analyzing them (Parsing) and then finding incremental steps, marginal gains, towards building back up (Scaffolding).
Learning to learn to learn is essentially learning the idea to do that. Learning to learn is do the process of parsing and scaffolding, and then Learning is the feeling of successful steps.
Additional thoughts applied for “Learning to learn”
Other ideas added to this page will be thoughts gained from actually juggling.
Why Juggle? Juggling offers a chance to practice focus and concentration on something that at it’s essence is so simple. Practice really amounts to throwing and catching one ball at a time which becomes like breathe work, meditation, mindfulness, focus and concentration. Then we challenge ourselves for our entertainment, ego, frustration, and fun.
The mental, focus and concentration, benefits of juggling come from basic throws and catches. What feels basic for whatever level you are at. The mind can focus on one ball at a time and concentrate to keep up the duration. Yet, the ego wants more. It wants that new pattern, to understand a new complex pattern. The ego breaks the focus and concentration to pursue mental and mind puzzles, trying to have new knowledge and further understand bigger and better patterns and changes.
One toss too many- can’t finish with success, muscle memory cant throw correctly, try to finish with success to promote muscle memory(ideomotor)
Why do I make that extra throw? Usually, it’s lack of control to prepare to stop and catch. Throw that extra throw when things get erratic, leaves less time for a proper throw. The hand has less time to come up squarely, resulting in body throws, further confusing the mind on which hand to catch with, and throwing forward needing to adjust stance, stepping forward.
For corrections, or corrective thoughts look to previous throw for parsing, or corrections.
Looking up, see the ball, “It’s already been thrown, in past tense.” It is the previous throw, what you see is the ball that has already left the hand. Therefore, when considering tricks, mistakes, change ups one must look to the previous 1,2, or 3 throws previously to prepare.
Teaching, try to throw outside body shots: anything inside the body column confuses brain on which hand to use for throwing or catching. I call these body shots. This principle is applied to racket sports, where a shot towards the opponents body is more difficult to manage.
Elbows in, at the side, hands out free to roam and circulate to the side of the body, not so much in front or across the body which tightens and confuses the mind and body.