3. Embodiment

Embodiment in Design explores other ways of knowing—body, mind, heart and spirit

Embodiment happens when you learn through experience. Let’s imagine for a moment that you’ve been taking Spanish lessons once a week for 6 weeks.  You have a sense of the sounds, pronunciation, some vocabulary and rudimentary grammar.  Now imagine that instead you are in a Latin American country for a month-long experience which includes course work, living with a family, volunteering in a community project in a small village.  Consider the differences in your learning and embodying the language.  We are sensing beings.  In our designs for human engagement, the more we invite people to experience learning from and with each other through a variety of modalities (sensory, somatic, emotional, play, metaphor, sound, art) the greater the potential for embodying  learning.   Consider adult learning principles represented in this Chinese proverb: Tell me and I forget…show me and I may remember….involve me and I will understand.

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