Learning to Juggle New Things 

Vanderbilt notes that the forced isolation we have all experienced has led many to learn new things, from online language and art classes to juggling. Juggling is one of those activities that causes remarkable alterations in the brain. As Vanderbilt notes, “…this ‘activation-dependent structural plasticity,’ as it’s called, pops up in as little as seven days. Juggling changes not only gray matter, the brain’s processing centers, but also white matter, the networked connections that bind it all together.”  Coincidentally, many of the games and initiatives we carry in our program bags as facilitators and educators are similar to juggling.  Beyond the hand-eye coordination required of tossing objects in the air, like a rubber chicken or fluffy fleece balls (some of our go-to props), there is a social component to learning something new. The gray matter of the brain processes another layer of learning: About the self, about others and the collective.   

This change in the way the brain works is familiar to High 5’s facilitators/educators. It is one of the enabling aspects of the work they do in empowering  people to see themselves and others in a new, more constructive light by helping them to unlearn unconstructive—even destructive—patterns of thinking, perception and interaction. Vanderbilt asserts, “Even as we commit to new activities, we struggle to shake off the stasis of familiar routines, especially if we are older.”