Embracing Our Embodied Minds: Emotion, Cognition, and Body Knowledge

In past decades, there has been a lot of research on the teaching and development of skills to support “rational, higher-order thinking.” People commonly think that teaching good thinking is about teaching specific thinking moves that build upon what is known from this research. But what about our embodied emotional processes? Recognizing that we have embodied minds with emotion as a key driver that weaves through our thinking processes should change how we teach thinking and how we conceptualize it in the workplace.  

This self-guided course developed by NLL researchers includes modules on how to understand, navigate, and leverage our emotional assets. The main ideas in this course are:

1. We can benefit from our background emotions.  Our background emotions contribute to our consciousness and well-being as part of our broader landscape of emotions, operating as a backdrop whether we are aware of them or not. Reflecting upon our background emotions and generating moves to manage them can support our best learning and performance.
   
2. Concentration involves managing the balance between stimulation and calm. Finding and maintaining the right balance between being calm and energetic in the workplace and in learning can be challenging, but it is critical to productivity and success. Techniques for managing internal focus can be learned and can have powerful payoffs.  
   
3. Our “finding out” or “epistemic emotions” can be powerful allies in motivating work performance. Epistemic emotions support workplace learning by facilitating transfer by helping us to make new connections, improving intrinsic motivation because we want to find out, and motivating conceptual change as we trade less developed ideas for more powerful ones. They can also help us feel a sense of purpose at work and improve our collaborative engagement with colleagues.  
   
4. Our amygdala spurs “shortcut reactions” that we need to understand and plan for so that they don’t hijack us. We can manage the consequences of our amygdala by: 1) recognizing the potential for amygdala hijack before it happens; 2) realizing instances when we have been hijacked and having “moves” that enable us to manage it; and 3) adjusting our environments so that we are less likely to be triggered in a way that results in an amygdala hijack. 

Each of these main ideas is represented in a separate self-guided module in the course on Embracing Our Embodied Minds, which is part of our larger learning series “A User’s Guide to the Mind: Next Level Lab Self-Guided Courses to Support Learning and Work Performance.” . The modules can be done individually, or they can provide the basis for group sessions and discussions. Downloadable module materials are linked in the table below.

Embracing Our Embodied Minds Course Materials