Subject: Activity which could be family
   Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 18:55:32 -0500
  From: "Win Wenger, Ph.D." <win@thebestweb.com>
    To: John McPherson <mcpherso>, anakin@dur.mindspring.com, mcole@napanet.net,
       mjoyner@botree.com, GeoNelson@aol.com,
       "Rolls Straveca (SRCS)" <straveca@erols.com>,
       "Swcgluck@aol.com" <Swcgluck@aol.com>, RickAshby@aol.com,
       Kuene@cts.com (Corbin/Kueneman)


Childwrite Project - an adult, and a class-based, activity which could also
be basis for families. Part of the idea-provoking context buildup----W

>winsights      win wenger, ph.d.
>
>       Creative Ways To Get High On High Art:
>
>       Experiencing With New Eyes
>
>       What follows, goes far beyond art appreciation, to enrich the raw stuff of
>perception per se. It is a really great way to create a "high" experience,
>one of the more enjoyable of your life. 
>
>       You can enhance this highly repeatable experience even further on special
>occasions with a temporary boost effect via simple nutrition. For that
>temporary boost effect before an intended main enrichment experience, just
>as you would before an important sports competition, you might wish to
>nourish your organs of perception with Vitamin A or beta carotene, the
>nucleic acids RNA/DNA, and/or brewers nutritional yeast. Heavy foods,
>alcohol or artificial substances just prior to a main perceptual enrichment
>experience would impede the highest qualities of perception even though the
>following protocols (behavior recipes) may be strong enough to carry past
>such hindrances.
>
>1.     Flick-Gazing. [For here now and at the art museum later.] Simple way to
>counter neuronal habituation which, to greater or lesser degree, normally
>deadens everyone's senses. Nerves, circuitry and the brain itself go to
>sleep on a constant signal, awaken on a changing signal. Arousing the
>sensory nervous system by rapid change of stimulus (as in sequential rapid
>montages), lets you perceive with far more aliveness.
>
>       Training plan, phase one: the "flick-gazing" exercise conducted here, by
>yourself or, preferably, in a group. (Originally published in my book,
>still available from Project Renaissance--contact http://www.winwenger.com
>or e-mail me at Win@thebestweb.com>)--How To Increase Your Intelligence.)
>See if, by looking at a different face or different feature of this room
>every half second or so for 3 to 5 minutes, you don't awaken your vision to
>see nearly as much of what you were looking at during that half second as
>you normally would by staring at it. The importance of vision--80% of the
>area of the brain is involved in visual response. This simple flick-gazing
>trains that much of your brain to handle more information far more quickly.
>If that increases intelligence, then make the most of it!
>
>       Training plan, phase two: [Here, now, on a walk through the landscape or
>streetscape just outdoors; the Art Museum later]. While here, alone with a
>tape recorder or preferably with a live partner or so: pick at least one,
>preferably two partners from here who will also be going over to the
>museum. Here, describe in detail what you encounter, to tape recorder
>and/or live partner(s). [Teachers: this is also a great thing to do for
>your classes, especially before any field trip, not just visits to an art
>museum!) At the museum, each of you together (a) remind each other to
>flick-gaze at the works around you on exhibit; (b) do so yourself; (c)
>immediately from flick-gazing, orient on one or two especially outstanding
>works to examine with awakened eyes, pointing out and describing in detail
>to each other all the features which to you are so special about that work. 
>
>       "Brainstorming" rule of Description: if it occurs to you in the context,
>go ahead and say it. Keep on finding all the fresh things to say about it
>which somehow further describe it.
>
>       Note: this descriptive phase should run 10-20 minutes, and reach a point
>where it becomes a real challenge to convey through your language the
>effects you are describing. The more you have to "reach" to effectively
>describe such effects, the greater your gains in your own powers of: [1]
>language; [2] observation; [3] intellect!
>
>       Further note: working with partners as urged here, will let you master the
>techniques to such an extent that you not only transform the special
>experience tonight at the museum but then are able forever after to use
>these ways on your own to enrich your life whenever you are in a beautiful
>setting, artistic or natural. If you opt not to work with partners tonight,
>you may or may not have enough of any of the techniques to be useful to you.
>
>2.     Cleansing the Windows of Perception: using a breathing meditation to
>clarify, among other things, vision. Preferred: that form of the
>psychegenic "Calm-Breathing Patterns" known as "Noise-Removal Breathing,"
>originally published in Beyond O.K. 
>
>       Phase One: group training here in this breathing pattern. 
>
>       In brief: With each slow next breath in, breathe in as if you were
>breathing in from below and from behind. Breathe in as if you were
>breathing in all the way up from the very bottoms of your feet, while
>releasing each breath luxuriously out through normal channels. Luxuriate
>also with the feeling of as-if your breathing were coming in and working
>its way through all the tissues and cells of your feet, ankles, legs and
>lower body up to where you release and profoundly let go through normal
>channels. Make each next breath feel more luxurious than the previous slow
>breath; manage to let go still more with each next slow breath out than
>with the previous breath out. Like the wind swirling around corners of
>buildings, swirling up debris and dry leaves and carrying them away, let
>your incoming breath seem to be swirling through all your tissues and cells
>of your feet, of your ankles, of your lower legs, swirling through all the
>nooks and crannies and swirling up and away whatever didn't belong there -
>all tensions, toxins, tiredness like those dried leaves. Let these release
>in your outgoing breath, as they hit the open air let them release into hot
>bright sparks of fresh new life energy. See how much of the tiredness or
>other stuff, other "noise" that didn't belong, you can sweep up and away
>out of various parts of your body and turn into those hot bright sparks of
>fresh new life energy....
>
>       .....Make this into a well-practiced, very good feeling, meditation, 5-20
>minutes at a time. See if you can get in at least 3 rounds of such practice
>before you go to that art museum experience....
>
>       ....Fix your gaze upon some feature of the room or landscape across from
>you, or later at the museum upon some work of art... Sweep your incoming
>breath through that space between you and what you are gazing at, sweeping
>up and away whatever had been between you and fuller, richer perception of
>what you are gazing at.....
>
>       Phase Two: with your previously selected partner(s), at the Museum, using
>the Noise-Removal Breathing to intensify/ clarify perception of select
>works of art, comparing notes in detail with your partner(s) as to what
>this breathing brings into view for you about that particular work of art.
>
>3.     Seeing Through And With The Eyes of the Artist. Experience "putting on
>the head" of some artist to "become" that artist. First, here, experience
>an imaginary garden landscape, describing to your partner(s) every detail.
>Then bring in the artist, describe her or him or it, to live partner or to
>your tape recorder. Imagine putting on the head of that artist, as
>concretely as you can. Waft forward into that imagined artist, bring your
>eyes to where the eyes are of this artist so you are looking through and
>with those artist's eyes. Bring your ears and other senses to where those
>of the imagined artist's are, so you are listening and sensing through and
>with those of the artist. Use her or his senses and sensibilities to look
>around at this same garden landscape and amazedly detail what the artist is
>seeing that you hadn't noticed before you became that artist. Then and only
>then go through some of the experience of that artist creating his/her art.
>
>       At the Museum: with your partner(s) (or pocket tape recorder), view select
>works of art first with objective (your own) eyes; then put on the head and
>eyes of that work's artist, richly describing in detail to one-another the
>resulting changes in perception of the painting or sculpture.
>
>       Note: this "putting on the head of the artist" is also used to actually
>and rapidly learn the skills of the artist, and can be used to accelerate
>and enrich the learning of virtually any subject or skill. It is a form of
>"Periscopic Learning" or "High Leverage Learning" as trained in detail in
>the book Beyond Teaching And Learning. In turn, this type of learning
>method is only one of a dozen major types of accelerated/enhanced learning
>method now in world use. Some types, as does "Periscopic Learning," feature
>use of forty or more specific individual methods and techniques, each of
>which conveys years of learning or sophistication within hours of practice.
>The first mention in the literature of periscopic-type learning as an
>accelerated learning procedure was Schroeder and Ostrander's early report
>on art classes (and later music) conducted by Russian hypnotist Vladimir
>Raikov.
>
>4.     Tuning into the Infinite Aesthetic Hologram--(whimsically, this may also
>be referred to as "tuning into the G.H.P.B.S. network broadcast"--the
>Galactic Holomindartcast Public Broadcasting Service!)
>
>       Here: learn to Image Stream, as per previous "winsights" entries, or send
>for your set of free instructions how, to win@thebestweb.com.
>
>       At the end of the Museum experience or immediately thereafter, while you
>are still with one or both partners: Let your arts-stimulated image
>streaming faculties show you their art gallery. While you describe back and
>forth with your partners, let your "Arts Channel" Image Stream show you
>works of art possibly even more beautiful than those you have been viewing
>at the Museum.
>
>       This "Arts Channel" happens spontaneously anyway if you do some practice
>in Image Streaming, and the arts reward is so strong we don't try to
>interpret the meaning of the images in that channel--we just detail and
>enjoy the beauty. You may be astonished at how intensely your
>beauty-perceiving faculties may be activated.
>       ------------------------
>
>These 4 protocols are yours to enjoy and, if you so choose, to share with
>co-explorers and people whom you care about, even to teach. It is a way to
>enrich without significant cost, not only the experience of art and beauty,
>but life generally.
>
>Note: Not only the arts themselves, but the act of art criticism and music
>criticism, by expressively working together widely separate regions of the
>brain working together, may cumulatively integrate phase relationships
>between those regions of the brain and so build intelligence--see our
>descriptions, in "winsights" and elsewhere, of brain-based "Pole-Bridging."
>--So detail those descriptions!
>
>Amended for this "winsights" column, these 4 protocols were developed by
>Project Renaissance specifically for the Arts Themebase of the 1994
>Creative Problem Solving Institute, for educative purposes. Copyright 1994,
>1997, by Win Wenger, Ph.D., 301/948-1122 or Box 332, Gaithersburg, MD
>20884-0332 U.S.A. However, this paper may be freely reproduced (in whole,
>including this copyright notice, but not in part) to share with people whom
>you care about. Enjoy!