The LaFOL approach & methodology
Quick and ready to use learning capability is the key to success. Learning means not only building of „technical skills” but also the capabilities to build relationship with others, coordination, trust, skilful communication, etc.
In a quickly changing world, we are often confronted with situations that need a different approach. These include changes of jobs, roles, strategies, tools, but also changing relationships at job, in families, and different areas of interest.
Often despite achieving a level of success, we can increasingly feel a lack of fulfillment and joy or even begin to develop symptoms of depression and other civilization diseases.
Benefits of LaFOL approach
It happens that despite professional and private life success, we feel a certain emptiness and lack of ‘joie de vivre’. Sometimes we feel lost: too many opportunities, too many success cases, too much publicity and media information. We don’t really feel what is important to us, what we really want, what makes our life unique. Integrated approach supports to touch what is deeply within us, what makes our life meaningful and full of taste.
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Using different approaches makes learning quick and measurable.
It doesn’t aim to ‘repair’ a human being. The goal is to develop very specific skills, behaviors or ways of doing. It asks fewer questions about ’Why’? (why I reacted in such a way?; is it because of what happened in my childhood?, etc). It focuses more on questions: ‘How’, for example : how to build trust; how to build satisfactory relationship with children, with a subordinate, with the boss; how to manage own commitments, how to build dignity, how to build the courage in pursuing what is important to me, how to find what is meaningful in my life.
Often new skills that we recently learned are available if we focus on them. However in the moments of physical, emotional or psychological fatigue or under stress – the old ways of responding and action prevail.
Through systematic work through the body we can embody new skills and make them available even in difficult situations.
Every person has a specific reaction to stressful situations. Biologically it defends a human being against the threat. It impacts heart beat, breathing, sweating but also dictates contractions of some muscles including those of the face. It prepares the body to act in a specific, pre-determined way every time. If we don’t manage it can hijack us. It happens to everyone, to react quickly in a situation in a way that we don’t really want, sometimes with anger, sometimes accepting something we don’t really want. We require a lot of energy to recognize and stop it; energy that is often missing at the end of the day or during longer stressful periods.
But do not despair! You have the power to learn how to diminish its destructive impact, working through the body. If you practice enough, this new way of centering our conditioned tendency can be available at any energy and stress level.
Our moods are critical to our relationships , ways of doing, range of emotions and to our own success and sense of fulfillment. Contrary to what we often believe, moods don’t catch us. We can shape our moods. Moods being a sort of longer term emotions occur in the whole body- not just in the mind. We can have an impact on our mood through logic and narratives, but we can do it much more effectively through the body.
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Supports the recognition of ‘the self’, builds the capability to diminish the impact of others and external benchmarks.
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Helps to build health and balance physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.
The LaFOL Institute approach
- Through rational, logical thinking has capability for deeper analysis, planning, anticipation of consequences and many others. The weakness of this type is comparatively slow speed and high energy consumption.
- One can have an influence on what is called automatic reactions, however not through logic and understanding. The limbic system which is responsible for this type of reactions doesn’t understand the language of logic. As it sends out the signals to various organs and systems, it also receives and understands such signals from the body. So, we can influence our automatic reactions but through the posture, movement and breath.
Automatic reactions. They are a big part of our daily activities and behaviours. Here we have:
– reactions under stress, like fight or flight reaction and ways of reacting under pressure
– emotions ,which regardless of whether we feel them or not, are built in biologically into our bodies as responses to some events and push us towards a specific way of reacting (from latin: emovere means moving to) . If we are not aware of them we react according to the push and only afterwards we often rationalize it.
– more or less automatic, conditioned ways of doing and behaving, like the way we interact with others, our dominant moods, communication, taking challenges, general approach towards life, and many others.
- Human being doesn’t have a direct influence on autonomous reactions that are critical for survival and basic functioning, like functions of the spleen, kidneys, heart, blood circulation, etc.
Sometimes if our reaction is needed, a specific signal is formed, that can be recognized consciously, like a sensation of cold, or indigestion.
Integrated approach to human development gives the opportunity to reach and influence not only what is fully conscious. It allows the influence of what is more or less automatic including behaviors that are sometimes believed to be our unchangeable character traits.
These automatic way of doing and reacting become even stronger in stress situations, in the periods full of different pressures and fatigue.
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through the understanding, language and memory
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through work on emotions and moods that predispose to limited number of behaviors
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through the body, reaching dominant, conditioned, automatic reactions developed during lifetime
The LaFOL concept and methodology is based on
the approach and experience of the Strozzi Institute embodied leadership , ontological development and coaching of Newfield Network, 20 years of own leadership experience and medical background and experience
- Ontological Philosophy (read more)
- Somatics (read more)
- Recent scientific publications in biology, medicine, neurobiology, nutrition, and others (read more)
- Ayurveda tradition / concept (read more)
- Personal leadership experience having had many years of experience working with the people and with teams (read more)