STUDY WITH ALFONS

Since years now the views on my Youtube channel have been in steady decline, despite my best efforts. Therefore I recently started to look more seriously into what makes Youtube videos popular. In my research I found an excellent interview with the 18 year old Youtube star Jenny Hoyos. She has hundreds of millions of views on her Youtube Shorts.

One of her main points, something that she highlighted and emphasised strongly, is how important simple language is — so that everyone can understand her videos. She made it sound very positive. She wants to be accessible. Therefore she tightly controls her language to be Fifth Grade and below:

Fifth grade is the fifth year of compulsory education. In the United States, the fifth grade is typically the fifth and final year of primary school, though it may be the first year of middle school. Students in fifth grade are usually 10–11 years old.

This is still topped by, for example, Mr. Beast, one of the most popular Youtube channels with billions of views. As a rule Mr. Beast keeps their language so simple that it can be understood by First Graders.

First grade is the first year of compulsory education. It is the first year of elementary school, and the first school year after kindergarten. Children in first grade are usually 6-7 years old.

Jenny Hoyos said she uses a website called Readability Formulas to calculate readability and make sure that her language is below Fifth Grade requirements. So- I went ahead and checked the language I use here in my blog posts:

AUTOMATED READABILITY INDEX
Score: 17.06 [ = grade level ]
Reading Difficulty: Extremely Difficult
Grade Level: College Graduate
Age Range: 23+

Therefore- if you were able to read and finish this blog post apparently you are one of the smartest humans walking this earth, by Youtube standards. Thank you for reading and holding my hand in my emotional efforts to keep having faith in humanity. 🙏

However- I also had the transcript of my latest Youtube video analysed. After all I try to speak in a language that can be easily grasped and understood by everyone, including non-native English speakers from Germany, South-America, India, China, etc.

It turns out the readability of my Youtube video is graded like this:

AUTOMATED READABILITY INDEX
Score: 1 [ = grade level ]
Reading Difficulty: Extremely Easy
Grade Level: First Grade
Age Range: 6-7

Therefore- the language in my Youtube videos actually is First Grade level, who would have thought? Well, at least that’s settled. Now I can move on to research what point I’m missing, actually.

In the many methods of physical therapy, but also in a large variety of fitness methods such as Yoga, Callisthenics or Primal Fitness, there’s mainly three strategies employed:

• Strengthening
• Stretching
• Sequencing (postures, exercises, sets and reps)

These strategies, over the past 100 years (or so) have been developed to such great lengths, so thoroughly discussed and explored and diversified, that they now cover the needs of most movement-related methods.

However, there’s many more strategies. As inspired by the work of Moshé Feldenkrais, I too use a large variety of practical exercises, movement games and movement explorations to help my clients (and myself) to improve their physical abilities and general wellbeing. My approach, too, is experiential, emphasising self-awareness and self-discovery through movement. Here’s a list of additional, select strategies I make use of:

• Differentiation (to move parts independently from each other)
• Constraints (to inhibit or stop parts from participating so that movements and sensations can occur in other parts)
• Harmonisation (the blending of movement of parts to harmoniously and proportionally contribute to an overall movement such as flexion, extension, reaching with a hand, pushing with a foot, or getting up from a chair, etc)
• Orientational variability (to experience a movement in different positions and relations to gravity)
• Pauses
• Auxiliary movements (movements that at first to not seem to be related but turn out to improve the original movement and how we are able to think thereof)
• Effort reduction (to move increasingly slowly and lightly so that superfluous effort can be detected, distinguished from essential work, and dropped)
• Effort substitution (the use of props and postures to take over habitual effort and stiffness, so that it can be re-assessed and replaced by better options)
• Movement variability (to provide a variety of trajectories, pathways, easing-functions and solutions to one and the same movement task)

Apart from “doing”, the “noticing” aka “perception” is equally important, or maybe even more important. Areas of perception I work with are, for example:

• Proprioception (the ability to sense the position, orientation, and movement of one’s own body parts, to be able to notice where your body parts are in space without needing to look)
• Mechanoreception (the ability to perceive mechanical stimuli such as short pressure, prolonged pressure, very light pressure or touch, vibration, sliding motion, tension (!), and so forth)
• Equilibrioception (the sense of balance to maintain stability and posture, and to feel the pull of gravity and thus be able to work with it)

Watch someone do the dishes, or a billion dollar robot (built on top of the work of tens of thousands of the most brilliant engineers) find and lift a wooden cube — and the skills used for everyday tasks become obvious.

Yet the ease with which we humans learn and carry out such tasks is generally taken for granted. Such everyday movement activities are viewed as unsophisticated, perhaps because academic training is not required to achieve them, or perhaps because people who do this kind of physical labour for a living occupy the lowest rung of society.

The bias against the view that physical action is cognitively sophisticated is so deeply rooted that psychology, the science of mental life and behaviour, has paid scant attention to it. If looked at at all, movement experiments in psychology are more often viewed as a window into perception and cognition than as a topic of interest in its own right. In fact, most professors of psychology themselves don’t seem to be too sophisticated in movement — if they exceed the bare minimum of movement skills required to get through their days at all.

I was asked for an exercise to help with a painful left shoulder, and I said, “Maybe try my video Good Night Shoulder Circles.” And later that night it bothered me to remember that this video is only for one side, the right shoulder.

So I thought I will quickly rewrite the original text for the other side. But as you have it, I ended up doing a complete rewrite. Which cost me half a day. At first. And then I thought how about I have it read by AI instead of me, in an old British voice, David Attenborough style.

Another full work day later, yesterday night around 11pm, I finally completed a first video — only to realise that I need to rewrite the lesson text quite some more.

The lifting of the head, that’s a movement strategy I wanted to remove from the script entirely. To lift the head would introduce a new pattern, and not finishing it will not add anything useful to the lesson. And I also considered removing the shoulder circles themselves… do they really add something useful to this lesson? But then… Shoulder Circles… that’s my lesson’s title. So I had to leave them in.

Furthermore, I needed to regenerate the audio again, sentence by sentence, and then find the right timing for pauses. This I do by lying down and practicing along myself. A rather tedious process. So that’s what I’m going to be busy with today, and unfortunately maybe even longer.

Working with AI generated audio takes a lot more time than I have anticipated. But what surprises me most is this: Why is writing a lesson SO MUCH MORE WORK than just speaking it free from my heart?

Alfons: A better name for psychomotor learning.

ChatGPT: “Sensory-Motor Proficiency Training”

Alfons: Sensory-Motor sounds so dated.

ChatGPT: “Neuro-Kinetic Learning”

Alfons: Something everyone will feel they understand upon first hearing.

ChatGPT: “ActionMind Learning”

Alfons: Is it hopeless to try to make “psychomotor learning” sound any better?

ChatGPT: Finding a more relatable name for “psychomotor learning” isn’t hopeless, but it’s a challenge. The term is rooted in the fields of psychology and education, and it may require some explanation to those who are not familiar with these areas. For instance, you could focus on the “physical” and “mental” aspects of the term, or you could emphasize the concept of “learning through action” to help bridge understanding. While it requires creativity and experimentation, a well-suited name is attainable.

I’ve just had a 2-hour long conversation with ChatGPT about Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), a genetic neuromuscular disorder.

Despite ChatGPT still being convinced that Survival Motor Neuron (SMN) proteins are nothing like the yellow and purple Minions from the cartoon “Despicable Me”, in my search for treatment ideas I was able receive a list for types of activity that promote neurogenesis in the hippocampus—which plays nicely into my expertise in the field of psychomotor learning, somatic education and Feldenkrais.

However, concerning improvements to the spinal cord, my conversation with ChatGPT did not yield positive results:

While much of the research on neurogenesis has focused on regions like the hippocampus in the brain, the concept of neurogenesis occurring in the spinal cord is a topic of ongoing investigation and debate. The spinal cord is primarily associated with transmitting sensory and motor signals between the brain and the rest of the body. Unlike the hippocampus, it doesn’t exhibit the same degree of ongoing neurogenesis. [..] The challenges of promoting significant neurogenesis in the spinal cord are substantial.

However, despite treatment pathways that rely on biomedical engineering and pharmaceutical options, there might also be activity-dependent plasticity of the spinal cord. I now copy/paste the list I got for neurogenesis in the hippocampus, for your reference:

Yes, engaging in new activities such as playing a sport or learning a musical instrument can indeed stimulate neurogenesis and enhance brain plasticity. Neurogenesis refers to the process of generating new neurons (nerve cells) in the brain, particularly in regions such as the hippocampus, which is associated with learning and memory. While the extent of neurogenesis in humans is still an area of active research, studies suggest that certain activities can promote the creation of new neurons and the strengthening of neural connections.

Here’s how engaging in new activities and movement can lead to neurogenesis and enhanced brain plasticity:

1. Learning and Novelty: Activities that challenge your brain stimulate neural pathways that might not have been heavily used before, leading to increased neural activity and the potential for the creation of new neurons.
2. Complex Movements: Engaging in activities that involve complex movements, fine motor control, and coordination can activate multiple brain regions simultaneously. This coordinated activation can promote the growth of new connections between neurons and strengthen existing ones.
3. Physical Activity: Physical movement and exercise have been linked to increased levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein that supports the growth, survival, and differentiation of neurons. Higher BDNF levels are associated with improved cognitive function, mood regulation, and enhanced brain plasticity.
4. Stress and Adaptation: Challenging activities and learning new skills can initially induce stress on the brain. In response to this stress, the brain adapts by generating new neurons and optimizing neural circuits to handle the demands of the new activity more efficiently.
5. Practice and Repetition: As you practice and refine your skills in a new activity, your brain strengthens the neural pathways associated with that activity. This process involves synaptic plasticity, where existing connections between neurons are modified and strengthened through repeated use.
6. Mind-Body Connection: Activities that require a strong mind-body connection can lead to changes in brain structure and connectivity. The brain regions responsible for motor control, sensory processing, and coordination become more interconnected and specialized.

It’s important to note that the benefits of neurogenesis and enhanced brain plasticity are not solely limited to movement-related activities. Engaging in a variety of cognitive, social, and physical challenges can collectively contribute to brain health and cognitive function throughout life.

In summary, new and challenging activities that involve movement can indeed stimulate neurogenesis and promote brain plasticity. The brain’s ability to adapt and rewire itself in response to novel experiences is a remarkable aspect of human biology that supports lifelong learning and skill development.