Coloring in the Emotional Language of Place

Making educational places more inviting to learners is a key aspect of Invitational Theory. Thispaper introduces a simple technique for sensitizing learners and instructors to how their environmentaffects their feelings and ability to learn. It describes a learning exercise that may beused to assess, evaluate and transform places, to promote either calm reflection or creative energyas well as some experience based on three years of application in a college-level Geographycourse. The approach, founded in the S!mkhya–Yoga conception of the three modes of materialnature, asks learners detect the roles of Sattva (peace, harmony, tranquility, awareness), Rajas(energy, action, creativity, destructiveness) and Tamas (inert, veiled, ignorance) workingtogether in their habitat and to think about how this balance may be adjusted to positive effect.Learners found the approach novel but many welcomed this new way of envisioning their world.