Whilst EnergyPods themselves may not directly enhance learning, they do provide an opportunity to explore the relationship between relaxation, reflective learning and on napping and improved retention.  There is some evidence to show that information retention is enhanced by napping immediately after complex learning, and this technique has also been investigated by sports psychologists as a way of mapping successful shots or game strategies in practice sessions onto actual performance.   Many great scientists, mathematicians, artists, musicians and world leaders have cited daydreaming and full dreaming as the state of mind they were in when their best ideas, discoveries or solutions come to them.

Why not try using an EnergyPod for a nap after reading, practicing or trying to understand difficult and complex information, or try to use a similar relaxation session to think over your complex work to try to come up with new perspectives and understanding?  Try some of the techniques below:

Visualisation and Self-Modelling and other learning enhancers

• Try thinking of situations where you have been successful and learnt positive things about yourself or your performance
• Reflect on issues that went wrong and consider strategies that you would employ to resolve them now if you had the chance
• Think about what you learnt in your early years in a subject and add your current learning to problems you experienced then
• Think about the performance of other people whose skills you admire, what is it you admire, try to imagine yourself performing in the same way, try to think in the same way.
• Read a complex text before you relax and try to re-think it using pictures, thinking of it as a film or story, or imagine yourself as the discoverer,  a main actor or character.  Try to make imaginative links between it and other things you have read or experienced.
• Try some meditation techniques that you have learnt.

Relaxation Resources

If the trial period is successful, we will investigate production of learning and relaxation resources. 

If you have any ideas or suggestions of resources we can source, or suggestions for content we can produce, please feed them back here. 

Department use

If you are a Department and would like to produce learning or podcasts for use in the Pod, or enquire about block booking, please contact Jeremy Ireland in the Department of Chemistry.