In this course of contemplative practices, the it has opened up my eyes to different kind of learning, and how effective or ineffective they can be, for example I was able to connect to most of the practices on a full scale and about one of them not so much. The best contemplative practices were the ones with the tangible items like the raisins and cocoa, these you were able to expand your brain from lecture to your own thoughts while being guided by the professor, and there is where you were able to interpret your own thoughts and ideas while connecting them to the things your just learned, for example with the cocoa, as we tasted the cocoa and the bitterness of it we were able to recall the African Farmers who had never tasted chocolate before, and on the other hand of tasting the chocolate you could distinguish the process of what it takes to make that a bitter cocoa into a sweet chocolate. Same goes for the raisins and how you could sense the rehydration of them turning back into grapes in your mouth. Now as for some of the contemplative practices that did not work as well for me were the ones without the intangible items, for example the one with water and how it flows through life, it was hard to get into that zone of fully immersing myself into the practice, but if there were maybe sounds of rushing water in the background then it could set a state of Zen in a sense, but what these have in common are the outside factors that affect the learning, without these it would not make it a contemplative practice but rather just a lecture.
