concept assimilation

7.1. Concept: Assimilation — Transcript (English)

Summary:

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Transcript

Welcome to the Assimilation segment of the Baseworks Primer course.

As we mentioned in the previous segment, Assimilation is a type of practice that we often add at the end of a Baseworks practice session.

Similar to how Ignition is not a warmup, the Assimilation is not a cool down.

And if you feel like you need a cool down after completing a Baseworks practice session, this is a great point of self reflection and it means that you need to pay more attention to Intensity Modification next time.

So what is the Assimilation for in Baseworks?

These practices usually include some breathing exercises and stillness.

Relaxation is a part of it, but it’s not the primary purpose of the Assimilation.

The word Assimilation refers to the absorption or processing of any experience, both visceral and psychological.

We don’t do Baseworks simply to elevate your heart rate and engage your muscles, Rather, we do it with a goal to notice something or learn something, and therefore, we want to do whatever we can to stimulate the consolidation of this learning process.

Studies show that brief periods of quiet, wakeful rest improve retention and performance in both motor and cognitive skill learning.

And even if you’re not consciously thinking about the movements you’ve been doing before, rest promotes spontaneous neural reactivation in the background and reduces cognitive interference, allowing the brain to process and integrate new information.

It works better if your attention and intention stay focused on your body, but ultimately if you mind wanders or sometimes you fall asleep, that’s also fine, especially if the Assimilation is the only time when you can be still and not actively engaged in any task.

But ideally we would like you to use the time of stillness during the Assimilation to practice noticing sensations in your body.

So basically, adding an Assimilation practice at the end of a practice session is a practical evidence-based strategy to enhance learning outcomes.

But of course, the relaxation aspect is also important, and it’s worth mentioning the effect on autonomic flexibility.

So autonomic flexibility is the capacity of the autonomic nervous system to adaptively regulate heart rate, blood pressure, and other physiological functions in response to various demands.

A healthy autonomic nervous system activates the sympathetic nervous system during stress or exercise and efficiently shifts to parasympathetic nervous system dominance during recovery to restore homeostasis.

This autonomic flexibility is often measured with metrics like HRV, which is heart rate variability, and HRR, which is heart rate recovery.

And you want your HRV to be higher and your HRR faster or lower.

And studies show that brief stillness after motor physical activity, accelerates HRR, and with regular incorporation increases HRV.

Supine rest, slow diaphragmatic breathing and mindfulness practices like body scans, seem to be most effective.

So we do incorporate all these in our Assimilations.

And what’s unique in Baseworks, and we’re going to discuss this in detail in the key points lesson, is that we have a special technique to use traction to decompress the neck during the supine rest. that you might experience when you go for massage or physiotherapy, but in Baseworks you can do it yourself.

And also for seated practices, we’re being very particular about how you sit.

So the seated Assimilation practice also feeds into improving posture, body awareness, and builds foundational skills for mindfulness practices.

And of course similar to how the Ignition marks the beginning of the practice, the Assimilation marks the end of a time.

It is an important function for building habits, establishing a routine and so on.

So these were some general comments about the role and function of the Assimilation practices.

And in the next two key points lessons, we will look at the details of how we sit and how we breathe when performing a simple breathing exercise that we call Expand Cycle in Baseworks.

Let’s move on to our key points.