This is the twenty-fourth in a series of articles where I take a look at key words and phrases that play an important role in the work I do, helping people discover ways to live and love like they mean it.
You can view the entire series here.
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What is Experiential Learning
Experiential learning is a catch-all term that encompasses education and learning that involves direct practical experiences and activities such as movement, reflections, conversations, and mindfulness exercises. In short, it’s learning by doing.
It’s popular because it gets results by taking a ‘show, don’t tell’ approach. This allows us to develop an understanding of ourselves and our abilities on a deeper level than is usually possible in more passive learning environments such as classrooms.
Direct experiences provide us with unique and powerful insights about ourselves and the world around us, allowing us to see internal shifts happen for ourselves rather than just being told about them.
A Path to Change
Expanding our knowledge doesn’t initiate change very often. For real change to happen, we need to engage our emotions and bodies as well as our minds. And the practical nature of experiential learning provides a perfect opportunity for us to do this.
Experiencing something directly improves our understanding significantly. Exercises involving breathwork, grounded practices and guided interactions make learning a process that involves and impacts our entire body.
The Science Behind It
Neuroscience shows that the effectiveness of experiential learning lies in how it aligns with the way our brains form patterns. Taking part in mindful activities and practical exercises activates various neural pathways on a cognitive and emotional level, enabling the creation of new neural pathways.
This process is called neuroplasticity, and repeated experiential learning reinforces these pathways. The emotional impact of experiential learning is important for memory recall as our brains register and remember emotive experiences more than any other.
Examples of Experiential Learning
Retreats
Experiential learning is widely used in meditation retreats. By integrating guided activities with time for reflection and practice, these immersive events equip participants with tools that aid personal and professional growth, helping us experience deeper clarity and emotional release.
Workshops
Workshops are ideal for experiential learning because they offer something different to the normal routine of life, therefore increasing engagement.
In a workshop, we actually get to feel what we’re learning, to practice exercises in-person, often alongside other people. This kind of learning transforms mindset development from being theory-based into embodied understanding.
Psychotherapy and Life
Psychotherapy can afford us a new experience in which we feel safe enough to emotionally explore what’s inside us and to try different ways of being and relating. With the help of a trusted other, we can lean into new emotional experiences in which we find the courage to face feelings and emotionally engage with another in ways we may have avoided in the past. By finding the courage to do something new, we break the hold of old patterns and fear, and start to forge new ground. We expand into a healthier, more integrated experience of ourselves which, in turn, updates our own internal wiring. We can then translate this new way of being into our experiences with others in our lives and continue to grow and evolve through those lived experiences as well.
Benefits of Experiential Learning
Although traditional class-based learning still has its place, the more practical nature of experiential learning–developing the capacity to be present with and better navigate and make use of our emotional experience–brings many tangible benefits:
Encourages Creativity
Experiential learning engages the creative areas of our brains, supporting the development of creative problem-solving and analytical abilities.
Overcome Old Fears
Trial by error skills cannot be effectively developed in the classroom. Only by taking part in practical exercises can we expand outside of our comfort zone and find what’s most beneficial. Lived experiences reveal to us if certain approaches work better than others and give us a chance to make mistakes in a safe space that helps us overcome old, wired-in fears.
Faster Learning
Our brains and our nervous systems get smarter the more we practice something, so hands-on experiential learning is a great way to develop and strengthen neural connections at speed.
Support Personal Growth
Developing on a personal level requires us to do more than merely understand what needs to change for us to progress. We need to actually try something new to get the kind of deep transformation that changes the way we think, how we behave, and how we relate to ourselves and others. Reflection, guided activities, and awareness (emotional mindfulness) helps us uncover feelings and insights and leads us to make discoveries in terms of our confidence, abilities, and resilience. We can try out new ways of working with and of approaching what we’re doing, learning to become more present with our feelings in the process.
In Conclusion
Experiential learning engages our emotions, bodies, and minds, and results in new ways of being. Lived experiences have the potential to change us from the inside out. They expand our emotional repertoire and reveal new concepts, perspectives, and insights, allowing us to develop a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us, as well as an expanded range of functioning. It also puts us in a strong position to make lasting and important changes that enhance our personal development and self-awareness in ways that benefit us both personally and professionally.
