Embodied (and great) learning of pronunciation: Exploring Arthur Lessac!

Once in a while, we should go back to the source, what inspired us to be in this field, just to understand better where are at the moment. Two months ago, I recommended to you a new book, Movement Matters: How Embodied Cognition Informs Teaching and Learning, edited by Macrine, S. & Fugate, J., which represents some extraordinary progress is getting the body systematically back into instruction. Lessac had it figured out over 75 years ago. 

His work is not widely known outside of the fields of speech and drama, in part, because it is so "body-centered," requiring students to learn to explore themselves, their place in the world--and their voice through something similar to what we now know as "mindfulness" but also in persona of an actor to inhabit any number of other agents . . . or even musical instruments and animals, let alone metaphor upon metaphor. In other words, in theater, he had found a path back to fully engaged--and joyful use of the body and voice. 

What is so evident in Macrine & Fugate (2022) is that embodiment is key, but how you get there may vary widely . . . and neuroscience has explored a myriad ways in which that can happen effectively, many of them seem straight out of Lessac's work. 

From my perspective, in terms of a complete system, an accompanied, experiential guide to embodied "learning (through constant) exploration" (as he would characterize it), his two classics, Body Wisdom, and The Use and Training of the Human Voice, are almost without peer. 

Of course, to follow Lessac through the system, or through the courses available through the Lessac Institute, takes time, maybe six months or so before you get there, where you and your body have become wonderfully "reintegrated," as you were when you were a child. To the post-modern mind, from the "outside," it appears as though you have simply given yourself over to the whims of body, but in fact, what as happened is you and your body are just communicating together as a team. 

But to get there, generally requires going back to square one, exploring the experience of speaking and moving again, setting aside temporarily the layer upon layer of words and experience that determine what we are allowed to sense and understand. To Lessac, it was all about "exploration," being perpetually in that state of discovery with the body as the "territory," and the mind as being the map being constantly created out of experience-- not the reverse. 

In other words, to quote Lessac, train the body first. KINETIK does that. Join us this fall. (www.actonhaptic.com) or email me directly: wracton@gmail.com for custom programs, etc. 

It's good to be back. More on the KINETIK project, "KINETIK (embodied speaking and teaching) Method" soon!