(New) Haptic cognition-based pronunciation teaching workshop at 2016 TESL Ontario Conference

If you are coming to the 2016 TESL Ontario Conference later this month (November 24 and 25 in Toronto) please join us for the Haptic Pronunciation Teaching Workshop, on Thursday, 3:45 to 4:45. This will introduce the new "haptic cognition" framework for (amazingly) more efficient and integrated pronunciation modeling and correction that we have been developing for the last year or so. (See previous post on the applicability of a haptic cognition-based  model to pronunciation teaching in general.)

HaPT-E, v4.0

Haptic cognition defined: 

• The felt sense of pronunciation change (Gendlin, 1996) – somatic (body) awareness and conscious, meta-cognitive processing 
• Change activated consciously and initially through body movement pattern use (Lessac, 1967) 
• Haptic (movement+touch) uniting, integrating and “prioritizing” of modalities in anchoring and recall (Minogue, 2006)

Modalities of the model:

• Meta-cognitive (rules, schemas, explanations, conscious association of sound or form to other sounds or forms)
• Auditory (sound patterns presented or recalled) 
• Haptic
• Kinesthetic (movement patterns experienced/performed or mirrored by the body, gesture, motion patterns)
•  Cutaneous (differential skin touch: pressure, texture, temperature)
• Vocal resonance (vibrations throughout upper body, neck and head)
• Visual (visual schema presented or recalled: graphemes, charts, colors, modeling, demonstrations) 

 General instructional principles:

• Get to "haptic" as soon as possible in modeling and correcting.
• Use precise pedagogical movements patterns (PMPs), including tracking and speed in the visual field.
• Insure as much cutaneous anchoring as possible.
• Go “light” on visual; avoid overly “gripping” visual schema during haptic engagement.
• Use as much vocal resonance as possible.
• Repeat as few times as possible.
• Insure that homework/follow up is feasible, clear—and done (including post hoc reporting of work, results and incidental/related learnings).
• Use haptic PMPs first in correction/recall prompting, before providing oral, spoken model.

The elaborated, audio-embedded Powerpoint from the workshop will be available later this month.

KIT

Correct pronunciation by talking about it: Think or swim . . .

Photo credit: Seaglobe.com

Ever notice how students often will not notice well enough to "get it"  when you point out a pronunciation issue for them and skillfully provide them with a preferred form on the spot?

A recent study of noticing by Hanna, Mullainathan and Scwartzstein (2012) suggests something of why from a different perspective. When their subjects, seaweed farmers, were presented with data that was potentially very valuable for them in improving their work and problem solving, they didn't "uptake" much either--unless the relevance of the key elements was also explicitly linked back to why they were critical or relevant.

In other words, the new data had to be immediately linked (somehow) to acknowledged and perceived (or felt) relevance, what we (following Gendlin, 1972) refer to as "felt sense." In pronunciation teaching with adults, that at least means "getting back in touch with" earlier explicit explanation and guided practice. The problem is often, without sufficient physical experience and practice of the sound change in the first place or in the referring "teachable moment," there is little chance for most that merely pointing out or covertly throwing in correct models is going to work.

And taking valuable class time in the middle of a content-based discussion, for example, to go into an impromptu explanation right there as to why that particular sound issue is important to intelligibility for some subset of learners will probably not be productive either. So what should you do?

What does work, in our experience, in EHIEP/AHEPS, is haptic anchoring (gesture + touch on stressed words or syllables), that is much more strongly body-based initial experience of the sound or word. Having intensely experienced the physical properties of the sound early on, learners then have better access to that anchor when it is activated in a meaningful context. (The basic trick involved in hypnotic suggestion.) The primary contribution of haptic engagement in pronunciation learning or any learning system is integrating the senses, providing the link back to the experience and sound later.

That way, in spontaneous conversation or classroom talk, after a problematic word or stress pattern occurs, with a quick "haptic-anchored noticing" as the word is repeated by the instructor, often w/out even saying the word out loud, the connection is made. The same principle holds if the instructor, aware of a feature that a student or students are working on, haptically anchors some element as he or she produces it in doing an explanation or providing a comment: the visual gesture accompanying the spoken word is often enough for students to "feel" and register that token.

How well that works consistently is, of course, an empirical question, one that can and will be researched in time. In the meantime, take it from the seaweed farmers. The only way to experience this level of somatic, whole-body, experiential learning . . . is to jump in the (haptic teaching) water .  .  . and notice what happens. As we say, "Think or swim . . . take your pick!

Keep in touch.

Introduction to haptics and some possible applications

If you are new to the idea of haptics and "haptic," here is a neat 6 minute TEDYouth 2012 talk by Kuchenbecker of University of Pennsylvania (Hat tip to Karen Rauser.) Our work in haptic-integrated pronunciation teaching is something of the flip side of this. Whereas Kuchenbecker's work digitizes touch and movement to accompany video, we create the haptic felt sense of sound (through awareness of vocal resonance, upper movement and touch) to accompany the positioning of the hands and arms in the visual field. Have been working on the outlines of a TED talk proposal myself for next year. Keep in touch!

Haptic cinema and EHIEP-tic pronunciation training

My discovery of "haptic cinema" and that approach to experiential entertainment and teaching about 6 years ago was a game changer. The integration of the senses, especially the place of perceived texture in that media became the phenomenological model for "haptic-integrated clinical pronunciation," and still is. Here is a great example, "Haptic cinema: a sensory interface to the city."  It is about 11 minutes long. Put on some earphones, sit someplace where you'll have no visual distractions and experience it. 

Clip art: Clker

That is what it should feel like, the felt sense of haptic anchoring in EHIEP instruction, when the learner articulates a sound or word with rich vocal resonance as hands move across the visual field (with some degree of eye tracking) and the hands touch on the stressed vowel--possibly followed by a short continued movement completing an intonation "denouement." 

To prepare for watching it, you might go outside and hug a tree first . . . 

Synesthesia alert: No magnetic letters on your refrigerator!

Image credit: Synesthete.org

Especially if you have toddlers in the house! Well, not really. This study, by Witthoft and Winnawer of Stanford University, summarized by Science Daily, reports on what may well be a rather spurious or at least indirect correlation between the development of synesthesia and the presence on our refrigerators of those cute, plastic colored letters with magnets for young children to play with. What they found was that synesthetes, when given lists of colorless numbers and letters , tend to pick the same colors as those refrigerator magnet letters, whereas non-synesthetes' responses are pretty much random. How could that be? They don't say really, stopping short of suggesting that there is some direct relationship between the synesthesia and those letters being on the refrigerator during child development. Hmmm.  I just posted the following on an NLP discussion list:

"Interesting. Go to the website and take the test. When you do, before you respond to the query for your read on the "color" of the number or letter, say the number or letter out loud slowly, like a kid might. Note the overall felt sense of that articulation, where it lands in your head and vocal tract… and then pick your vowel. Better yet, look away from the grapheme when you do that. I can almost get to the synesthesia threshold that way . . . The research design neatly ignores controlling for how subjects get to making a decision, what cognitive and experiential process they lead with. (It is apparently done as a web-based survey only.) I am very suspicious of any direct link to childhood letters. That the letters happen to have been assigned those colors in the first place by the initial designers is probably more where it all leads."

So what does that have to do with haptic-integrated pronunciation work? Everything. The phonaesthetic   and somatic felt sense qualities of vowels, both in visual and articulatory terms, are well researched from several disciplines. Where the vowels are placed in the visual field in EHIEP and how the vowel sounds are presented and identified (or mis-identified) with letters in phonic characterizations, as in the "Refrigerator" study, does make a difference. (See earlier posts on the pedagogical application of vowel color such as this one.) Keep in touch.

Washing your hands (of/during) pronunciation teaching

Clip art: Clker

This one is too much fun to pass up. Three (female) researchers, Lapinski of Michigan State University, Maloney of University of Pennsylvania, Braz of Westchester University, and Shulman of North Central College did this study at Michigan State University of male hand washing behaviour in campus men's restrooms. What they found was that if you put up a good poster showing a guy how to and accompanying note that 4 or 5 of them do wash their hands . . . and then watch them after they read the sign . . . you find that hand washing goes up nearly 10%. (The summary in Science Daily doesn't indicate the gender of the wash room observers, actually. That certainly COULD be a factor here!) They then go on to extoll the potential benefits to public health. Interesting.

In several previous posts there have been references to hand sensitivity in haptic work. (I often use an aromatic mint-based hand cream, especially in working with small groups or individuals--and almost always in training workshops.) Clearly, in our work being able to attend closely to the felt sense of the haptic anchor (hands touching each other or some part of the body on a stress syllable)--for about 3 seconds according to research-- is highly advantageous. I have tried any number of "treatments" over the years from lotions to lofa. All seem to work, at least temporarily. (Speaking of "temporarily," check out this recent article by Asher on why TPR works and why Rosetta Stone may not for long.)

Need a hand in keeping your pronunciation work "awash" with attention and engagement? You might try a poster . . . or just go check to make sure that at least the boys have washed their hands before class. 

"Effortless," fluent English speaking--even without conversation?

Clip art: Clker

Clip art: Clker

Wow. Once in a while you stumble on a commercial English teaching website where the claims are almost breathtaking. Here is one. There is 2-minute video by the creator of the program that is worth watching, if only to see the model of "effortless" English that he uses in pitching his stuff in the form of the promise of 7 rules and related materials which you can get for about $97--and to contrast that with what McCarthy is saying, as reported in the previous blogpost. The contrast is striking, to put it mildly. The "effortless English" system, like so many approaches to speaking fluency (as opposed to other aspects of communicative competence), is based on the concept of individual practice in private, without reference to how fluency, as characterized by McCarthy, is developed in conversational interaction.

There was a time when that, the "public speaking" approach, was the industry standard. No longer. There are, indeed, aspects of the experience of speaking a new language which appear to be "effortless." Most, however, are related to the felt sense of using what is known, not learning what to use. It is, of couse, possible to train to "speak" fluently, colourfully and rapidly--and still be utterly incapable of communicating interpersonally with the rest of us out here. ( I'm sure you know a native speaker who fits that category.) The antidote: something like attending skills. At least for the time being, there is no good substitute for f2f, or something very close to it, for developing genuine fluency. Now that's not hard to understand, is it? 

The music of (haptic-integrated) pronunciation instruction

Here is a set of musical terms which I have been using for some time to characterize the range of mood, expressiveness, affective setting and felt sense of various aspects of haptic-integrated, pronunciation work:

• abbandonatamente: free, relaxed
• amabile: amiable, pleasant 
• con moto: with motion
• andante: at a walking pace; i.e., at a moderate tempo
• piacevole: pleasant, agreeable
• a piacere: at pleasure; i.e., need not follow the rhythm strictly
• con anima: with feeling
• con spirito: with spirit
• liberamente: freely
• deciso: decisively
• energico: energetic, strong
• enfatico: emphatically
• espressivo: expressively
• facile: easily, without fuss  
• hervortretend: prominent, pronounced
• legato: joined; i.e., smoothly, in a connected manner
• leggiero, leggiermente or leggiadro: lightly, delicately
• mezzo forte: half loudly; i.e., moderately loudly
• mezzo piano: half softly; i.e., moderately softly

Taken together, that is provides a good impression of how the flow of HICP classroom instruction should be experienced. How might you label or describe in those terms your classroom pronunciation techniques and mood? Time to face the music?

Get in the mood for pronunciation work? Try a touch of vowel color!

Clipart: Clker

Clip art: Clker

According to this research by Ackermann and colleagues at MIT, summarized by ScienceNow, touch--expressed in texture and hardness--can not only "color" one's mood but "impact . . . how we perceive the world!" For example, " . . . running your hand over sandpaper may make you view social interactions as more hostile and competitive." In the study, subjects put together either a puzzle with pieces that had sandpaper-like texture or one where the pieces had by contrast, a very smooth surface. Depending on which puzzle they had assembled, their mood in responding to a video clip varied accordingly. So, how is what students touch in your class affecting how they feel about the work? In the EHIEP vowel protocol (a set of techniques for teaching and anchoring the vowels of English), there are four distinct touch-textures: (a) a light tapping (lax vowels), (b) gently dragging the fingernails across the palm of the other hand (diphthongs or tense vowels plus off-glide), (c) holding the hands together gently (tense vowels), and (d) one hand pushing the other hand about 5 centimeters either to left or to the right (lengthened lax vowels before voice consonants). Those pedagogical movement patterns (PMPs) are also performed while articulating the vowel with as much "euphonic resonance" as possible, anchoring the sound to the movement and touch-texture. The mood encouraged by those PMPs, based on the sensations experienced on the hands, is at least pleasant (See earlier post.), if not slightly stimulating. (This sense of the potential "coloring" of one's mood by "vowel-texture-touch" is different from but somewhat related to the inherent visual intensity or phonaesthetic quality of vowels in English, addressed in several earlier posts.) Assuming that the class began with something of a full-body warm up, the effect of haptic-integrated touch-on-vowels should at least help learners to perceive the process more positively. It does more than that, of course, but systematic attention to "mood maintenance' is always a nice touch. 

Keeping your pronunciation teaching house in order (the Martha Steward checklist approach!)

Following up on the previous blogpost on PTC, I came upon yet another kind of capital, what let's term "Integrated House Keeping Capital!" And where better to find out about that then at the "Source," Martha Stewart! Check out that deceptively simple, 6 Things to do Everyday Checklist. All six TBDs represent principles of system integration that work regardless of context, especially where it is critical that attention and time be managed efficiently. Let me interpret the application of those to our work: (This is, of course, really obvious in some respects, but the specific connection to haptic-integration is worth foregrounding.)

Clip art: Clker

Photo credit:
Martha Stewart Living

• Make the bed - (Tidiness begets tidiness.) The interplay between planned integration and impromptu anchoring of "targets of opportunity" such as mispronunciation of a key word during discussion is critical.
• Manage Clutter - (Insist that everyone . . . do the same.) Especially visual clutter is often toxic to haptic anchoring.
• Sort the Mail - (Keep a trash bin near . . .) Skill at strategic decision making as to what to anchor or correct in the course of spontaneous classwork develops with experience. That is, in fact, one of the best indices of "time in grade." 
• Clean as You Cook - (Don't "sink" too much!) Ultimately, the simpler, more focused interventions and corrections of pronunciation are optimal. Simple "pointing out" or "noticing" is generally at best a waste of time, potentially leaving more distraction than lasting anchors. 
• Wipe up Spills while They're Fresh - (e.g., sauce and make up!) Context, context, context. Timing, timing, timing. 
• Sweep the Kitchen Floor when you're done - (Makes mopping up much easier!) In addition to having a good closer and picking up loose ends, especially with haptic interventions, "seal off" the felt sense of the lesson so that learners are not "sinking about" the anchored sounds or words as they walk out the door. (See earlier posts on effective in- versus out of class practices.)  

Triggers that "figure" . . .

Clip art: Clker

Clip art: Clker

When you look at that picture to the left of the trigger (or Picasso) fish, what does it bring to mind? An aquarium that you like? A scuba diving trip to the Bahamas? A recent Disney movie? A paint-by-number project you did in elementary school? A favorite sushi? What memory (or appetite?) does it trigger? In a couple of earlier posts I reviewed research on the effect and mechanisms involved in triggering. This piece from Lifehacker.com does a nice job of informally characterizing triggers and prescribing what to do about them to manage those in your life and work more effectively. The previous blogpost on how anchors work, especially the role of visual (and auditory) triggers in haptic-integrated pronunciation work, was addressing much of the same idea. The Lifehacker review of a couple dozen techniques for dealing with them in just organizing the clutter around your laptop could easily be translated into a recipe for design and monitoring of optimal classroom milieu (cf.,"boutique" Suggestopedia method.) It takes a little semiotic extrapolation, of course, but once you get into that temporary "hyper-sensual" frame of reference--where virtually everything in the instructional environment can potentially affect everything--you are at least capable of making some new choices. And when you do, the impact on learner attention, and yours, will at least for a time work for you. Go figure . . . then "pull the trigger" (in either sense!) 

What fowl language tells us about rough speech

(Credit: Markus Boeckle)

Always on the lookout for textural descriptors of speech. (See earlier blogpost on research showing that the brain seems to process textural "metaphors" quite literally.) It has been discovered that ravens lower their voices in response to calls from enemies or strangers, according to the researchers, to affect the perception of a larger body size. They note other studies showing that "smaller" mammals, including smaller humans, tend to "roughen" their voices to accomplish something of the same function. (I'm following up on that rabbit trail as well, of course!) In EHIEP, for example, we use the term "rough" with students to refer to most lax (short) vowels, in part to help distance them from their four tense "neighbors." Tense vowels, in turn, are termed, smooth, and diphthongs as "double (smooth)." One of the basic principles of voice training or simple change in voice quality setting is the requirement that learners adopt a new felt sense of their voice as "homework" temporarily. The basic idea is to create a separate, almost parallel voice style that can be worked on somewhat independently without at least initially interfering with normal day to day conversation. That may be done by slightly deepening, raising, smoothing or "roughening" the presenting vocal style, just enough so that the learner can switch into it consistently in practice. Got a few "foul vowels" among your students? Just rough them up or smooth them out . . . 

Prana(yama)nciation work readiness: Bee "Mmmm"

Clipart: Clker

Some kind of warm up is often essential before attention to pronunciation. The current warm up in the  EHIEP system, designed to loosen up mind and body,  takes about three minutes and resembles a cross between exuberant choral conducting, ballet moves and body building stretches. (See the linked Youtube in the right column for an earlier version.) The warm up function can be accomplished many ways. In developing an EHIEP adaptation for use in India, I went back to my earlier experience with yoga and began experimenting with versions of the "Pranayama" or "Bee" technique. As noted in a recent post, the paralinguistic side of HICP work must be culturally attuned to appropriate nonverbal behaviorial norms of the students. Although it seems to take about twice as long to "get there' (at least for ME!), the effect or mind/body state you arrive at seems remarkably similar. Of course, if you can't do a good lotus position, don't have a venue where your intense buzzing won't be seen as socially dysfunctional--or have serious nasal congestion--this might not be for you. But it is worth trying once, just to get the felt sense of what optimal, holistic readiness is like. So, pour yourself a cup of herbal tea, relax, sit down, and follow the directions. Will give you a buzz . . . Pranayam(a)ise!

Grasping Haptic II: Haptic presence

So what does it "feel" like, what is the "felt sense," when one is fully engaged in haptic-integrated pronunciation work? About the best term or metaphor I have encountered is "grasp," in the sense that McLuhan was alluding to (掴む 'tsukamu' in Japanese is even better.) It entails both perception of the object or person and the sensation of near-physical presence or connectedness to it. In this piece by Abeele et al (2007) the discussion of the distinction between social presence and connectedness points to the key notion in haptic anchoring: the former is entirely outward directed; the latter, more  internal, emotional.

In other words, effective haptic anchoring depends upon being able to totally embrace, momentarily, the somatic (body), internal sensations of a sound--completely disregarding "incoming" data and stimulation:  total, undivided attention! The ability to do that should later result in both more efficient monitoring of--and integration of new sounds into--spontaneous speech. And that is easily within the 掴む of any learner.

Thinking (and learning) on your feet: an in-spider's view

Clip art: Clker

I was inspired by this Science Daily summary of research by Wcislo at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama showing that "nymphs in the genus Mysmena" family extend their brains into their legs. As odd as that may sound at first, when you think about it, although technically our brains are in our heads--with some notable exceptions such as some movie stars and professional athletes, of course--we often think in those terms. Even our metaphors such as "think on your feet," etc., suggest that we function with many levels of consciousness.

Here is a website for a very slick consulting company, Thinkonyourfeet.com, that uses that moniker for its public speaking for professionals training program. It is worth book marking that page just for the outline of the skills involved in effective presentations!

Many cultures view "thought" as originating throughout the body. You have certainly seen the shiatsu charts of body parts maps on the feet, etc., or similar maps of related pressure vectors in various body manipulation systems. In HICP work we do teach at least one process "on our feet:" rhythm, part of the reason for that being the assumption that body rhythm is driven most effectively and dynamically by the lower body . . . just take it from Monika .  .  . 

Sensory grounding and integration in HICP

Clip art: Clker

In this MIT research summary, a range of therapeutic, haptic applications are reviewed. Of those, two are particularly relevant here: grounding and integration. HICP/EHIEP work generally procedes in two phases, a set of three techniques (protocols) that basically establish the felt sense of English vowels, consonants and rhythm, and then a second set of three which serve to integrate new or modified words in speech.

HICP isn't therapy, but not infrequently learners report that just "getting their (rhythmic and sensory) feet (of English anchored firmly) on the ground" in this system appears to contribute to resolution of other personal, identity-related issues--in addition to pronunciation. Can't get your pronunciation teaching off the ground and integrated in the classroom? Senseless!

Walkabout talk: The TalkaboutWalkabout

Clip art: Clker

While in Japan, while teaching speaking classes of 50+, I developed an effective (primarily kinaesthetic) technique called the "TalkaboutWalkabout," inspired by the movie, Crocodile Dundee. (It has been cited in several methods texts.) Basically, students prepared a couple of good 3-minute stories that they could tell to fellow students using an attending skills format (See earlier posts.) as homework. In the two-hour class the next day, after some initial warm up, students walked around the perimeter of the room continuously for the next 90 minutes or outside in a larger fixed loop around campus, telling their stories and listening to the story of another student--switching partners every 8 minutes (about 10 times). In effect, each student told each of two stories four times and heard eight others.

Back then I was not working with explicit haptic anchoring but it was remarkable how the pace of the walking came to regulate the rhythm of speaking, and how relaxed and fluent the conversations became. By the end, students were invariably struck by how "good" they felt about speaking English. The "felt sense" of the walkabout that they had "discovered" became our model or metaphor for how good discussions should "feel" as well.

There are, of course, any number of possible explanations for why that technique may work, several have been introduced here earlier, including jogging, but this quote from a holistic medicine website, connecting up to the function of the (somewhat mythical) Australian walkabout of Dundee,  presents an interesting perspective on some of what is involved: " . . . a journey of healing and rediscovering the link between mind, body, and spirit." The effect in your class might not be quite that heavy duty or "anchored," but I can guarantee that it will at least provide a great deal to "talk about!" 

"Let the motive for action be in the action itself and not in the event." (NC Wyeth)

Photo credit:
Wikipedia

The quote above, by N.C. Wyeth, father of the great American painter, Andrew Wyeth, although made in the context of describing the life of the artist, is also perhaps a most elegant and insightful description of what we mean by the "felt sense" of a sound or the experience of performing a near perfect haptic anchor of a word. The "motive" or rationale for the act of anchoring, with complete attention given to what is happening throughout the body as the word is articulated, needs to be an entirely, intensely personal and "intra-personal" experience, not a social, relational or interpersonal event. In that sense, it is artistic in creation but not in performance as a public event.

That is a crucial distinction in what we do. Drama, music, dance and other "arts" have much to contribute and teach us about the process of learning the sounds of language, but I am more and more convinced that the often excessively "dramatic events" in the pronunciation lesson (and pronunciation instructors tend to be irrepressible performers, themselves) can ultimately be counterproductive, just as Wyeth observed: the event overpowers and undermines the "art" and impact of the action.

Our work should be as thoroughly moving and touching . . . as it is uneventful!

Aesthetics of embodied pronunciation teaching

In an attempt to "smoke out" some of the more cognitive/aesthetic features of HICP work--recalling Ecco's "Everything is related to everything" principle--I came upon this set of parameters of quality and excellence that, like the previous "felt feelings" post, seem to be equally applicable here {The bracketed comments are mine.}:

Photo credit: People Mag.

• Consistency is the key factor {especially as regards execution of homework}
• Content must be consistently processed {especially in terms of felt sense anchoring}
• It should be neither under or over-filled {(Timing, mood and pace is critical.) or over-embodied--as depicted there at the right . . . }
• It should "burn" all the way down . . . {Attention and intensity must be managed effectively.}
• It should have a good mouth feel {of the L2}
• It should look good {or at least learners should be at ease with the most "gesticular" pedagogical movement patterns.}
• It should have a good aesthetic quality {be seen as close to expressive or interpretative dance}
• It should taste good {We do use "breath wafers" and aromatic hand creams at times!}
• "Subjectivity of taste is one of life's fascinations!" {Personal, felt-sense is the "heart" of HICP work.}
• Anything less is but a weak imitation . . . perhaps close, but no cigar!

Body (and pronunciation) ownership and the rubber hand technique

Clip art: Clker

A recent study using the "rubber hand illusion, " demonstrated that schizophrenics have a relatively low sense of "body ownership," that is the subjects with the condition had significantly more difficulty in distinguishing between their own hand and that of a rubber "decoy" in their  carefully partitioned visual field during the experiments. One of the conclusions of the study is worth noting: "These findings suggest that focused physical exercise which involves precise body control, such as yoga and dancing, could be a beneficial form of treatment for this disorder."

The concept of body ownership (or optimal body awareness) comes up in several forms in other disciplines as well, from sport  to drama to stress management. The brain of the classic "type A" personality, one prone to be driven and "stressed" easily, is often characterized as having little connection to the rest of the body. (Re-establishing that connection is often the key to stress management, etc.) In my earlier work with moderating the effects of fossilized pronunciation, I was often struck by how many of my clients appeared to have little body awareness. Biofeedback techniques were consistently helpful in establishing workable "felt sense" of both body and pronunciation from which to begin the process of change.

Failing that, I might first send a student to a stress therapist for a few sessions, just to get things loosened up.  I like the parallel of "focused, precise physical exercise" being instrumental in establishing enhanced body ownership. If you are "of two minds" about haptic-integrated clinical pronunciation work, just do a set of HICP or similar exercises consistently and it will soon enough own you--and your body!