ABOUT LEARNING ENERGY
About Learning Energy
Learning Energy is about how we learn to change – which is key to my work…
Learning to cross boundaries
I navigated some big challenges as a young person – and nearly dropped out of formal education several times along the way. But I was curious and blessed with great mentors who helped me follow an inclination to study big boundary-crossing subjects – language and communication, then global religions and belief systems, which I taught for over a decade.
Learning about energy
A lifelong interest in mind-body practices and integrated health led to me to do a PhD as a researcher-practitioner exploring the growth of Tai Chi. This was back when ecological models of wellness that grasp the links between human and planetary health were seen as disruptive. I was involved in alternative medicine research, using practice-based and social scientific approaches.
DR ALEX RYAN
Learning for sustainability
In the university scene around my PhD studies, environmental thinkers and activists were exploring how to drive change for sustainability in terms of the soft power, cultural and political dimensions. Having absorbed this, I started working in higher education teaching and learning, at the moment when learning for sustainability started to spotlight the potential role of universities as social connectors, knowledge brokers and innovators for sustainability. I then started working at sector level to capacity-build for sustainability as core to the academic mission.
Learning about change
Joining a pioneering university sustainability team opened my eyes to more of the realities of leading this change. Initially I was mainstreaming sustainability into learning across diverse courses. Then as a senior leader, aligning the university ‘brainprint’ and ‘footprint’ to seek wider systemic changes and impacts. Our team had stand-out successes and brilliant results, but faced difficulties and pushbacks. Those hard-won insights – into how people and systems respond to sustainability – fired me up to support the journey of more people on this path.
Learning Energy brings these experiences together, to power your learning for change.
LEARNING ENERGY SERVICES
LEARNING FOR SUSTAINABILITY
I support education and training providers to develop impactful sustainability learning for future generations to lead change across societies and professions.
My approach to education innovation has delivered change collaboratively across diverse curricula, with a focus on learner viewpoints and meaningful, evidenced practice standards.
COACHING
My coaching clients tend to be people in purpose-led roles working for fundamental change in society, or navigating complex personal or professional change.
I coach using a holistic and systems lens, to support people or groups to extend their power and refresh their purpose, informed by experience in leadership and mind-body practices.
SUSTAINABILITY MINDSET
I can help to develop, align and mobilise your sustainability strategy by tackling the human and cultural aspects, that often need alternative mindsets and new collaborations.
As an experienced senior leader and strategist, I use learning-based change to get the results that help to lock sustainability into core activities to secure lasting change.
Learning Energy and Tai Chi
WHY TAI CHI
T’ai Chi Ch’uan – better known as Tai Chi – is a Chinese martial art rooted in ideas about change and living systems. It is connected to ancient health and longevity practices found in Chinese medicine.
Tai Chi invites us to cultivate our energy, preserve life and be in harmony with nature. It brings the somatic and health benefits found in all meditation practices and techniques that unify mind and body.
Where Tai Chi brings an extra dimension is its techniques for dealing with our interactional environments and tricky people dynamics.
It offers us ways to train skills through our bodies that create a different impact in how we show up in situations and respond to others.
Learning Energy’s logo uses the Tai Chi diagram to express this ethos.
MY TRAINING
I trained with globally renowned Sifu Dan Docherty, prolific expert, innovator and teacher of Tai Chi. A former South-East Asian Heavyweight Champion, who proved its efficacy as a martial art. Dan was also a serious scholar of martial arts who authored several significant publications on Tai Chi.
Nearly 30 years of practice in all aspects of this incredible art, has led me to teaching, judging at national competitions, researching the science behind its effectiveness, and helping develop training for the first wave of Tai Chi instructors adapting and using the art in health and social care.
How Tai Chi can guide our work
Tai Chi principles run deep in how I think and work with people around issues of balance, energy and soft power.
Techniques from this martial art based in energy cultivation can help people to restore and boost wellbeing, supporting healthier ways of handling stress and pressure.
This is also a practice based in ideas for handling conflict and change, that can help people move smoothly through challenges and use power responsibly.
Ask me how Tai Chi tasters can be used in training and team-building for your people and projects, to add insight, co-operation and creativity that boosts performance.
Contact me
Contact me for a free call