The Heart of the Brain

Do you learn best through your own experience? Why is it that some things are easier for you to do than others? How do play, nature, music, and making art influence you in ways that nothing else can? The doctor encourages you to exercise, sleep, hydrate and ‘eat an apple a day’. That is for your body’s well-being, but now you will learn how vital these things are to your brain’s health and why.

What will you know and be able to do as a result of this workshop? Workshop participants will learn basic principles of the brain’s function and plasticity – how it learns, remembers, creates, and imagines in childhood and across life; the difference between good and bad stress; and new skills to keep it healthy, enhance memory, and support skill and talent.

This course is designed to be a series of experiences that will disrupt and dismantle old understanding about the brain (i.e., you are born with all of the brain cells you will ever have) and replace it with fresh emerging information and new insight (i.e., the brain ‘moonlights’ during sleep to help you form lasting memories and get rid of information you no longer need).

This combination of science lecture, art and craft, and an intentional exercise using images and prose will allow you to feel or see what ‘I mean’, not just hear what ‘I say’. This workshop promises a small but mighty transformation in how you understand your brain and yourself.

Please click on the Welcome Letter/Itinerary tab for a tentative schedule.

Layne Kalbfleisch speaks from decades of experience as a researcher in her field with the skills of a college professor.

• Podcast from a radio interview with The Coffee Klatch, Special Needs Radio 
• Interview published by the 2E Newsletter
• Article from EdWeek covered by Layne Kalbfleisch at the symposium she chaired at the American Education Research Association (AERA) in Vancouver in 2012

Layne’s class was the best I have ever taken. She structured it beautifully both to convey a lot of information and provide a nurturing atmosphere of openness. It was life-changing.

Layne is an excellent communicator and cares for those in attendance.