Circus Skills & Juggling
For many years now some of our Junior School students have chosen to stay back after school to participate in the after school activity of ‘Circus Skills’ and it is worth considering some of the benefits that are now being attributed to activities like this and specifically the benefits that are associated with learning new skills that involve balance co-ordination, timing and collaboration.
One skill that seems to be getting far more recognition now in scholarly journals is learning the art of juggling. It is not a pass time taken up by the majority of people, and yet it seems to have so many hidden benefits that we could take advantage of, ranging from physical to psychological.
Learning to juggle is a great way to develop the skills of a resilient learner. Learning to juggle is quite easy in theory but much harder in practice – meaning that it comes with a fair share of failure and as educators we recognise that failure is natural and essential to learning.
To juggle successfully you need coordination, resilience, timing, discipline and to keep tweaking a method until it finally works. Using juggling to develop these areas can be very useful if transferred to other types of learning. Juggling is also an activity that can be differentiated so that the challenges and skills can keep being developed.
In ‘Circus Skills’ we often start with juggling silks and then progress to three balls or sacks but even in our small group there are opportunities to develop these skills to juggle, rings, juggling pins and for the very brave juggling knives which always seems to be a showcase at our ‘Starburst’ performances.
A fairly simple list of benefits that have been attributed to learning to juggle are:
- Brain growth
- Body comfort
- Stress relief
- Focus retention
- Coordination boosting
- Being interesting
- Improved learning
- Creative meditation
As well as these general observations there is a lot of scientific research supporting this simple learning opportunity as being something of great value. Scientists and psychologists have been able to use brain scanning techniques to measure how the brain changes after regular juggling.
Draganski and team (2004) scanned the brains of 24 people, split them into two groups and taught half to juggle. After three months of practice their brains were scanned again and they found that grey matter had expanded in the brains of jugglers in the mid-temporal region (senses and memory) and the left posterior intraparietal sulcus (motor co-ordination and visual attention). Interestingly, after three months without juggling these expansions were reduced. This suggests that practice of a skill develops areas of our brain but that if we don’t use it, we could lose it.
Driemeyer (2004) and team followed this up to explore how long it takes for changes to take place. In their study the same grey matter expansions were found as early as seven days after learning to juggle, and once again reduced after participants stopped practicing. The quality of juggling performance had no impact on the size of brain changes, indicating that simply learning something new is what changes the brain.
Scholz (2009) and team found that juggling changes white matter too. After six weeks of juggling practice, participants had increased grey matter but also grew more white matter in a part of the parietal lobe (compared to a group who did not learn to juggle). This area of the brain is involved in connecting what we see to how we move. This happened for all jugglers, even if they could not juggle well yet. Scholz suggests that simply learning a new skill is good for the brain, even if it is not mastered.
Nakahara et al (2007) investigated the effects of juggling on women with anxiety. Patients who were undergoing six months of conventional anxiety treatment were split into two groups. Over three months half completed additional juggling sessions for 10 minutes a day and half did not. At the end of the six-month period, both groups had a reduction in anxiety but the juggling group scored significantly lower on standard tests of anxiety and depression than those in the non juggling group. The authors believe this may work in a similar way to eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) therapies or may be because of its similarities to exercise meditation and yoga.
In addition to all these wonderful benefits, we find that juggling is great fun. It’s an interesting physical skill that is a great way to finish your day here at The McDonald College or just another way get the creative juices flowing.
During Term 4 we will continue with our Junior School ‘Circus Skills’ after school activity and we have decided to hold one open skills session for parents and friends on Tuesday November 12 from 3.30 till 4.30 where you are all invited to come and learn the basic skills of juggling from one of our Junior School students.
And for those who have mastered the juggling skills? Well, there are always more challenges. Maybe the next article will explore the benefits of learning diablos, stilt walking, slack line, wobble boards or devil sticks…all these and more just waiting for our Junior School students to step up to the challenge.
Peter Slattery
Director of Junior School