Essay on Dr W. Jane Bancroft's Suggestopedia Book
 
 

By Balthazaar
 
 

Jane Bancroft's recent book, Suggestopedia and Language Acquisition is a very interesting and enjoyable read. I have wondered, however, about a few points:

* Bancroft makes no mention of the mandala on the book's cover--the design is mentioned by Colin Rose as that of a tonoscope image of the sacred syllable "aum." Ostrander and Schroeder's book, Superlearning 2000, shows it as an "ancient prosperity pattern," but does not tell us how the "ancients" and the tonoscope came up with the same image. Did the ancients observe sand movements on vibrating metal plates as Chladni did, for example, or did they intuit the design independently? Or has Bancroft's book cover designer superimposed a tonoscope image onto a mandala frame? She gives no explanation. Is it a Hindu or Buddhist mandala?

* Bancroft makes no mention whatsoever of Ludger Schiffler's criticism of the 8 second cycle, which I found quite surprising in that he and she are both published by Gordon and Breach and would thus be familiar with each other's works.

* Bancroft implies that the 8 second cycle is drawn from yoga, and was a vital component in Lozanov's earlier version of suggestopedia. Lozanov, as Schiffler says, doesn't mention this in his book. Why has Bancroft, or somebody else, never been able to ascertain, in the years since the fall of communism, the truth about this matter from Lozanov himself--from the horse's mouth, as it were? If the 8 second cycle is as important as she says, why isn't Lozanov advocating it now?

Lozanov has made it clear that suggestopedia is drawn largely from yoga, and studying yogins, but he suggests that brainwave (i.e. brain rhythm) states should not be fetishized as in, say, Silva Mind Control. He also did away with rhythmic breathing as well as the rhythmic/vertical intonation. Bancroft makes much of rhythmic breathing and rhythmic intonation (and the 8 second cycle). Now, Lozanov correctly, I feel, says rhythm is a suggestive means. He does not say rhythmic breathing or rhythmic intonation (or rhythmic breathing and rhythmic intonation combined into a rhythmic 8 second cycle) are suggestive means. He says rhythm is a suggestive means. He also says that the individual suggestive means should not be fetishized/obsessed over, but that they contribute in an inextricably intertwined way to the creation of the whole suggestive setup. He is saying that rhythm, subtly harmonized with the entire suggestive setup, is one of the suggestive means.

Even in Lozanov's description of suggestopedia drawn from yoga, he doesn't suggest that the suggestive means of rhythm is identical with rhythmic breathing; he says rhythm. Which is why he goes into so much detail about the rhythmic movements of the hypnotised woman, and the relation of rhythm to paraconscious functions. He also knew of Maori Chief Kaumatara who used a rhythm stick as a suggestive means to hypermnesia/reserve tapping. It could be, but doesn't have to be, the rhythm of breathing. (We easily remember the words of a pop song without rhythmic breathing or the 8 second cycle.) As Lozanov warned against the fetishization of brainwave rhythms, I feel he does not intend that lung movement rhythms should be fetishized over, as Bancroft seems to do (at least to some degree), either. 

Controlled breathing rhythm may induce relaxation, and harmonize body and mind rhythms, but so will focussing on any one of myriad rhythms:

e.g.

* stroking a kitten
* watching goldfish
* watching flickering (rhythmic) campfire embers, or a yogic candle
* watching a lava lamp
* listening to leaves soughing
* sitting on a swing
* sitting in a rocking chair
* being rocked as a baby or on a boat
* the rhythmic "passi" method of hypnosis
* massage
* watching a flashing light
* listening to a metronome or clock tick or one's own heartbeat
* looking at undulating patterns on a fence as one rides in a train
* listening to and singing hymns
* listening to music in the "mind's ear"

The above list could go on ad infinitum, and it could also include olfactory and gustatory rhythms. There are any number of rhythms, and rhythm can be a suggestive means, but it all depends on the type of rhythm and the way rhythm contributes to the whole suggestive setup. Rhythm, as Lozanov realized, is a component of yoga (as an auto/suggestive technique), but it is not the whole of yoga. Yoga, as Lozanov stated, has a whole concomitant suggestive (including spiritual and cultural) setup that has to be taken into account when observing phenomena of reserve tapping such as hypermnesia. But rhythm itself, as Lozanov, in his genius, isolated it, as a suggestive means, is part of yoga and the reserve tapping.

The right rhythm will contribute to the harmonization of mind and body, but that may be as uniquely individual a matter as brainwave indices are. Lozanov warns, correctly, against fetishization of brain rhythms, so he might just as well have warned against fetishization of lung rhythms, heart and pulse rhythms. He uses baroque music rhythm, as a suggestive means, just as the yogin uses rhythmic breathing as part of his ritual (placebo) or the Maori uses his hitting stick ritual (placebo). It is the ritual placebo (the suggestive setup itself) that taps reserves, not the individual suggestive means. Rhythm is the suggestive means in yogic breathing, but it is part of the entire suggestive setup/ritual placebo. It is not lung movement itself that is the suggestive means of rhythm--it is rhythm alone. 

One could equally focus on rhythmic eye-blinking or rhythmic movement of any particular muscle in the body. Mentally focussing on any rhythm of any sort, inside or outside of the body, will automatically influence/suggest internal rhythms. Rhythm will also enter and affect the mind and body via Non-specific Mental Reactivity (N.M.R.), as when we find we have been unconsciously tapping our foot to music or the hum of a machine. Lozanov is correct to assume that a particular sort of rhythm such as baroque music may automatically regulate and harmonize breathing and other body rhythms without any need for artificial and somewhat conscious (S.M.R.) methods of breath control. (The average pupil is not likely to unconsciously automate pranayama breathing methods without extensive training. Interestingly, Schuster had his pupils consciously counting the 8 second cycle while in the passive concert. If they were in "relaxed alert", the "single focus" state of mind, they certainly would not have been able to focus on the music or the data units being presented with full relaxed attention as is the supposed intention of the passive concert. If Schuster found this method worked, it would have been due more to the concert's effect as a ritual placebo than anything else, just as Lozanov's hypnopedia kids still tapped reserves even when the plugs had been pulled out, and they had only the active session before retiring for the evening.)

I agree, within reason, that rhythmic breathing, like any other focussing on rhythm, may contribute to reserve tapping; and contribute to the rhythm-as-a-suggestive-means component of the suggestive setup. I am aware of the need for a good oxygen supply to the brain, too. I remain to be convinced, however, that the 8 second breathing cycle which Jane Bancroft makes so much of in her book is any more important as a suggestive means than any other rhythm.

Suggestopedia is drawn from yoga, but yoga, as Lozanov states, is a suggestive setup rich in ritual (placebos). The yogic breathing Bancroft describes is certainly a suggestive means, but it is only one of the many forms of rhythm that can be harnessed. That is why Lozanov chose baroque music rhythms as suggestive means over other such suggestive means and ritual placebos as mantra intonation, yogic breathing, hypnosis, and the 8 second cycle, etc. He chose a pleasant suggestive means of rhythm suitable for everybody generally, knowing full well that certain individuals could achieve reserve tapping states of suggestibility by any number of rhythmic means such as chanting, recitation, dance, mantra intonation, rhythmic breathing, etc. Again, Lozanov's choice of the suggestive means of intonation, in a pleasant artistic style, rather than a mechanical artificial style, is in keeping with his attempts to create a suggestive setup that will be pleasing and comfortable to most people.

While rhythmic breathing may have been "scientifically" evaluated by some in the U.S. as a key means to reserve tapping in accelerated learning, it would be interesting to know to what extent the researchers' expectancy and the experimental suggestive setup affected such research. Rosenthal suggests that methodology in experiments is often contaminated by bias and expectation.

* I do not pretend to have read all the pioneers in hypnotism, but I have read Charles Baudouin's Suggestion and Autosuggestion and am inclined to feel that Lozanov has taken Baudouin's hopes for suggestion in education and carried them one step further. Incidentally, Baudouin, in the 1920s, was well aware of the "aum" rhythm as a focussing device to aid concert pseudopassiveness, infantilisation and suggestibility, too, although he did not use quite the same terminology as Lozanov.

* Like Ludger Schiffler, I feel a little uneasy with Ostrander and Schroeder's writing style, which is rather a sensational style of writing. They are rather prone to describe suggestopedia in the "goldrush" style that Lozanov cautions against.

I hope the reader might find my comments of interest. I would love to hear Lozanov himself make a pronouncement about the 8 second cycle, since he is the "inventor" of suggestopedia, after all. Colin Rose makes no mention of the 8 second cycle but, like Lozanov, suggests that baroque music alone will regulate and harmonise body and mind rhythms. I would be much reassured  to hear Lozanov's own personal account of this matter.

Despite my grievances with Bancroft's emphasis on the 8 second cycle, I enjoyed her book immensely. This excellent work will be added  to my library of books on suggestology and suggestopedy, and I will be referring to it often, I am sure. 
 
 

Afterword:

Since writing the above essay, I have read Peter Kline's The Everyday Genius. He says in the book that Lozanov said he did never use or advocate the 8 second cycle as promulgated by Ostrander and Schroeder's Superlearning. Lozanov thought of it, apparently, but did never use it. If this is correct, it would appear that Ostrander and Schroeder got it wrong, and so did many others who took the very mechanistic 8 second cycle theory of suggestion as gospel.

The message/suggestion is the medium; the how suggestion is delivered. It all depends on the suggestive setup which includes the personality of the teacher. If the teacher does not truly believe in the reserve capacities of the human personality, and few teachers really do, the suggestive setup will be an impoverished one. Unless pupils are convinced of their reserve capacities, there will be no reserve tapping. This is why not all teachers are yet cut out to be suggestopedagogues and why not all "experiments" testing suggestopedia succeed in tapping reserves. Lozanov's method works on the principle of suggestion, and the successful suggestive setup makes use of the suggestive means, but those means mustn't be fetishized or oversimplified. Suggestion is not the suggestive means, but how those means are subtly employed to convey ideas.

Nor should intonation alone, or any other artificial, mechanistic and formulaic combinations of the suggestive means, such as emphasis on the 8 second cycle with its rhythmic intonation, or yogic breathing combined with the 8 second cycle rhythmic intonation, be seen as the magical road to reserve tapping. As Lozanov says, it is a subtle (i.e., non-specific) blending of all the suggestive means that creates a successful and harmonious suggestive setup that will allow reserve tapping; not artificial blending.
 
 

  Recommended reading:
 

• Bancroft, W. Jane  (1999) Suggestopedia and Language Acquisition. New York: Gordon and Breach. 
• Baudouin, Charles (1920) Suggestion and Autosuggestion.London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
• Kline, Peter (1988) The Everyday Genius. U.S.A.: Great Ocean Publishers, Inc.
• Lozanov, Georgi (1978) Suggestology and outlines of Suggestopedy. New York: Gordon and Breach.
• Ostrander, S., Schroeder, L., and Ostrander, N. (1980) Superlearning.New York: Dell.
• Ostrander, S., Schroeder, L., and Ostrander, N. (1994) Superlearning 2000. New York: Delacorte Press.
• Rose, Colin (1985) Accelerated Learning. Great Britain: Accelerated Learning Systems Ltd.
• Schiffler, Ludger (1992) Suggestopedic Methods and Applications. New York: Gordon and Breach.
• Schuster, D.H., and Gritton, C.E. (1986) Suggestive-accelerative learning techniques. New York: Gordon and Breach.

Go to my page on: Rhythm and Memory

Go to: Kaz Hagiwara's veritable goldmine of useful suggestopedy websites.