Episode 114: Barbara Tversky

Systema For Life

This week, a deep dive into human psychology and cognition, with author and esteemed psychologist Barbara Tversky.
Professor Tversky an Emirita Professor of Psychology at Stanford and Columbia Univeristies, and is one of the world's foremost authorities on memory, spatial thinking, creativity, and embodied cognition - all highly relevant themes in Systema practice.
Her book - Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought - posits that spatial thinking is the foundation of all thought, and that how we sense and perceive the world shapes our thought patterns, emotions, and decisions.
Her depth of knoweldge on this subject is staggering, and we were barely able to scratch the surface in this extended, 90-minute discussion. But for unabashed brain/movement/cognition nerds, this is well worth the time.
Here, we touch upon:

• How our actions mould our perceptions of the world
• why spatial thinking and gestures precede language and words
• why people cannot help but mimic and coordinate actions
• how wrestling and complex movement improves math and science scores in kids

Learn more about Barbara Tversky and her reserach here.
Mind in Motion, on Amazon books