It may seem odd to post on the topic of resistance in early spring, but let’s not forget that the flip side of establishing any new habit involves making a real effort to override old patterns. We can think of resistance as an entrenched furrow that our everyday thoughts have engraved in our mind. We might feel the tug of resistance when the initial impetus of the ‘new’ wears off and our old habit begins to reassert itself.

Really, resistance is a defensive behaviour, which means that our nervous system is trying to keep us safe. In the case of learning to read, resistance in reluctant readers can be related to a fear of the unknown, or a fear of being judged for being wrong.

This is an uncomfortable topic, as we can think of resistance as a potentially self-sabotaging behaviour. If we were ever denied permission to try something new, resistance might simply echo that day in early childhood when the circumstances did not allow us to take the risk, meet the challenge, or simply join in with other children. Our subconscious is powerful and maintains a state of resistance in order to divert our efforts away from trying new things. In fact, we may not even understand why we are so afraid to face our old fears and stories.

In this way, any resistance to new challenges and progressive approaches traps us in our invisible web of amassed ideas - and for the most part these are outdated. For example, one day a child was denied the chance to climb a tree because the family thought it was going to rain and everyone wanted to get home. From the point of view of the child, who was fixated on the challenge and saw the whole family united in their disapproval, ‘having a go’ not just at climbing trees, but at anything, is a bad idea. Years later, the feelings of dread and anxiety that may come up when faced by the ‘unknown’ is disproportionate, but the barrier to ‘having a go’ is undeniable, and that can explain reluctance to read.

It is only when resistance is ‘released’ that the benefits of new behaviours become permanent and lasting change becomes possible. So how can we shift these defensive barriers to learning?

Like many of you, some of my most rewarding and meaningful experiences in teaching have involved releasing children’s resistance, whether to reading, to teamwork, learning as part of a group, or in moving in time with others and with the music.

For me, because of I have been working with the Rhythm for Reading intervention programme, this has happened in a very short timeframe, as part of the process of developing reading fluency. So why does this rhythm-based approach seem to help with resistance, reluctance to read and other defensive patterns?

Rhythm induces a state of flow and people often talk about getting into a ‘rhythm’ or a ‘groove’ as part of their creative process, and also in relation to mundane day-today tasks and different forms of exercise such as running or swimming.

Language processing is also sensitive to rhythmic flow states, for example when we become absorbed by a book or when we write and find that the writing, or the reading start to flow. When the psychologist, Mihalyi Csikszentmilhalyi interviewed his informants about the factors that interfered with optimal states of ease and flow, they described, aspects of our modern day life which included: a sense of unmanageable fear, the pressure to work to deadlines and clock-watching. There was a general tendency towards focusing on the final outcome, rather than the process and they felt that this was really very detrimental.

When people described being blocked in their ability to find flow, which we can think of as a state of resistance - there was a sense of being focused more on the extrinsic rewards and material gain, and even social rewards. In my opinion this really tells us something about the early effects of consumer culture of the 1970s, when this research was taking place. Among the professionals that were interviewed, there was an awareness that distractibility was a growing problem and these people also reported a sense of confusion when they tried to focus their attention.

There is a debate around the effects of screens on the quality of our attention at present, and it is interesting that fifty years ago, these questions were being asked, long before we started to rely on screens in day-to-day life. However, we appear to be making some progress! In Csikszentmilhalyi’s research, the participants described isolation from nature as a big factor in their loss of flow. Thankfully, we are now more aware of the therapeutic value of spending time in nature and the importance of caring for the environment.

By way of a summary, here is a list of the factors that seemed to block flow:

• a sense of unimaginable fear,

• clock watching,

• working to deadlines,

• too little time in nature,

• too much focus on material and social rewards

From this list, it seems to me that day-to-day life, with its deadlines and pressures may not only impede the development of flow states, but also reinforce the experience of resistance. Many of the items on this list pop up in our homes, places of work, schools and classrooms.

As we move forward into the spring of 2025, a fresh look at our everyday lives could help us to find and maintain flow states and make time for opportunities to gently release resistance. Most importantly, in terms of teaching children to read, we must ensure that they are able to move past their resistance. Early intervention is critical because children can only access the curriculum if they are reading well.

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REFERENCE

Csikszentmihalyi: (1975; 2000) Beyond boredom and anxiety: Experiencing flow in work and play, 25th anniversary edition San Francisco, Jossey-Bass Inc.