May 9, 2007

Know Your Learning Style

You have been in school for a month, and you are swimming in a sea of anatomical terms. You do your best to stay focused, but you find your instructor’s voice very soothing as it becomes background noise to your latest daydream. You wish you could snap out of it, but you don’t know how.

One way to improve concentration and succeed in the classroom is to identify your learning style.

Do you enjoy abstract concepts like physiology, business and ethics? If so, your dominant representational system may be auditory or visual (you may be able to visualize ideas based on what you hear in the classroom).

If you learn best through hearing, make a recording of the origins and insertions of muscles and play it back until you memorize them. Make up anatomy songs and sing them to your classmates. Use humor as a tool—it makes learning easier and more fun.

If you are visually oriented and quickly bored by reading text, try studying with flash cards, transparencies and pictures.

Do you learn through touch or feeling? If so, your dominant sense is kinesthetic. In this case, work with your subjects manually; practice your massage techniques on people so you develop your skills. To learn anatomy, use clay sculptures to form muscles.

If you know how you learn best, ask your instructors to teach you the material in a way that you can best understand it. Make up exercises to learn in ways that work best for you.

Visit this site to take a fun quiz that will help determine your learning style:
www.learning-styles-online.com/inventory.

Ariel F. Hubbard, H.H.P., is the founder and chancellor of the California Academy for the Healing Arts and has had an active massage and energy-work practice since 1995.