What is Adult Intergenerational Learning?

It is an approach that brings together people from different ages, and can include great opportunities to invite together different gender, and culture groups in an reciprocal partnership to share in learning experiences, knowledge, skills and values. This can be mutually beneficial, with participants from all generations having the opportunity to both teach and learn from each other.

Over the years, I’ve connected and forged wonderful supportive personal and professional relationships within my adult learning experiences across different professions, ages, genders, and culture groups, to name a few from a number of advanced trainings from all over the world. Specifically within our global Post-COVID experiences, I’ve gained a number of insights on adaptive learning within the spectrum of behavioral, emotional, and neurological adult learning adaptation through the trauma lens of survival, integration, and the ongoing healing journey. 

Delving into the "why, what, when, and how" of trauma, especially around PTSD and CPTSD experiences, significantly can affect Adult Intergenerational Learning. A few neurobiological concepts that have been researched and are known worldwide, as well as how these insights can be positively integrated in self-individualization within the adult intergenerational learning experience, leading to self-realization, authenticity, and a sense of meaning:

Subjective adult somatic conditions send information to our brain that extend into experiential learning experiences:

1. Cervical Vertebrae issues can affect blood supply to the head, pituitary gland, scalp, bones of the face, brain, inner/middle ear, sympathetic nervous system. Headache, nervousness, insomnia, head colds, HB pressure, migraines, nervous system dysregulation/shut down, amnesia, chronic tiredness, dizziness.

2. Issues surrounding the Thoracic Spine, can affect our organ systems like the heart, lungs, gallbladder, liver stomach, pancreas, spleen and adrenals, not to mention our kidneys. Affecting learning space with: asthma, breath dysregulation. congestion, shingles, poor circulation, arthritis, stomach issues, indigestion, acid reflux, our spleen has a lowered resistance, allergies, chronic tiredness, skin conditions, etc.

3. Lumbar Spine can affect our intestines, appendix/abdomen, upper/lower legs, sex organs, experiencing constipation, diarrhea, bladder and menstrual troubles, sciatica issues, urination issues, back pain, and poor circulation.

4. Sacrum Spine can affect hip bones/muscles, evacuation in the rectum and anus. Sacroiliac conditions, hemorrhoids, pain from sitting.

1. Trauma Significantly Affects Adult Learning Experiences by impacting the brain's ability to focus, process, and retain new information. Repetitive stress, and or trauma can happen in early childhood developmental, up to adulthood life experiences. The rational of the body's natural survival threat response system is an implicit Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) response (primarily through the Sympathetic Nervous System-SNS) to perceived threats. This often overrides higher-order cognitive functions necessary for effective learning, leading to challenges in behavior, emotional regulation, and memory. The Impact of Trauma on Learning(link) provides valuable insight.

2. Cognitive and Neurological Experiences Impact and Impair Attention and Focus. When the nervous system is activated by explicit/implicit trauma responses, individuals may enter a state of hyperarousal (fight/flight) or hypoarousal (freeze/shutdown/sometimes fawn), making it difficult to sustain attention in a classroom, whether in-person or in virtual spaces. Below are just several physiological effects adapted from the article below that can be experienced and brought into the energetic field of learning spaces to soothe nervous system activation/inflammation: 

• Increased heart rate to pump blood to muscles when the adult student perceives or is experiencing a stress threat response.

• Faster breath rate, increased resting heart rate, and rising blood pressure.

• Tense, braced, or contracted conscious or unconscious muscle experiences.

• Heightened sensory motor systems, eye dryness, excessive eye blinking, or acute hearing loss/sensitivity gain.

• A drop in physical, psychological, and emotional pain perception. Hormonal shifts increasing pain-reducing opioid-like endorphins such as cortisol, oxytocin, Pregnenolone, Testosterone, Estrogen, Progesterone, and Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) may mask the natural nervous system rhythm response, creating high sympathetic charge, shut down, freeze, or fawning experiences.

• A burst of energy to deal with the student's sensory experiences, behavioral, and/or emotional perceived threat experience. 

Learn more about “Trauma, PTSD, and Learning Disabilities: Understanding Their Complex Relationship and Finding Support” (link)

3. Memory Difficulties: Trauma can negatively impact brain structures like the hippocampus and amygdala, which are critical for memory formation and retrieval. This can result in difficulty remembering lessons, vocabulary, or instructional learning. 

4. Reduced Executive Functioning: The prefrontal cortex, responsible for decision-making, planning, and problem-solving, is less active during a trauma response. This can hinder an adult learner's ability to organize thoughts, think abstractly, or plan for the future. 

5. Difficulty with New Information: Because the brain prioritizes safety, it diverts energy away from "higher-order functions" like learning, making it challenging to acquire new skills or process complex information. 

6. Behavioral and Emotional Manifestations In The Adult Learning Environment. The effects of trauma can manifest in various ways that may be misinterpreted as disinterest or defiance: 

• Hypervigilance and Anxiety: Learners might be easily startled or constantly "on guard" for perceived threats, making them highly sensitive to an instructor's tone of voice, body language, or sudden noises.

• Nervous System Dysregulation: Students may exhibit a range of emotional responses that seem inappropriate to the situation, such as sudden outbursts of anger, crying, or emotional numbness.

• Avoidance and Withdrawal: Learners might avoid specific activities, refuse to work with peers, miss classes, or generally disengage from the learning process to protect themselves from perceived risk or re-traumatization.

• Low Self-Individualization, Self-Esteem, and/or Self-Confidence: Adults with a history of trauma may struggle with poor self-perception and a fear of failure or rejection, making them hesitant to take academic risks, ask questions, or try new things that may lead to adaptive learning experiences.

• Student or Teacher/Instructor May Have Limited Trauma Informed or Neurobiological Explicit/Implicit Responses. Which can be a difficult challenge to navigate around, using your own trauma informed neurobiological capacity will serve and support your experience until you can provide request for support, or give your experiences in oral or written form. Remember, we cannot control the teaching space, we can only witness it and do what we can to resource ourselves for additional adaptive learning experiences, or withdraw from the training/learning space. Take this experience for personal reflection and introspection and how your nervous system may be supported to integrate this experience. This may provide a great asset to learn more how to resource and support adaptive learning experiences.

• Cliques, Bullying, Peer Pressure, Aggressive Behavior in the Adult Learning Space: It is often stated that bullying is a “group process,” and many researchers and policymakers share the belief that interventions against bullying should be targeted at the peer-group level rather than at individual bullies and victims. A survey by the American Osteopathic Association showed that 31% of individuals in the U.S. reported experiencing bullying as an adult and 43% reported that bullying seems to have become more accepted in recent years (AOA).Other prior studies have found similar rates (read more at Psychology Today -link). How to create your individual resources around aggressive behavior in learning spaces:

  • Acknowledge and Name It Without Bitterness: Feeling left out is human, but personalizing it leads to more frustration. Recognize that people form closer bonds naturally, and it’s not always conscious.

  • Communicate Openly: If you feel excluded, an option is to feel safe enough to express it calmly and without accusations. “I noticed some decisions are being made separately—can we align on how we approach this as a team?”

  • Create Space for Inclusion: If you’re in the “inner circle,” make an effort to support introspective reflection and loop others in. Inclusion isn’t about losing closeness—it’s about ensuring everyone feels heard and valued in a safe enough and invitational peer experience. Focus on building genuine connections rather than forcing inclusion where it doesn’t feel right.

  • Stay Professional and Healthfully Detached: In professional spaces, not every relationship will be personal. Keep interactions professional, and focus rather than the social dynamics.

Learn more how “How Trauma Affects Brain Development and Function” (link) 

7. Creating a Supportive Environment. Adult learners can mitigate these challenges through trauma-informed practices that foster a sense of self-safety, self-trustworthiness, and self-empowerment: 

• Establish Predictability: Prepare your learning and studying routines/procedures ahead of time, especially around elements that trigger nervous system activation within the learning space experience. This may help support a more secure and predictable learning experience.

• Promote Regulation: Have individual nervous system resources readily available, such as present-moment mindful activities, short movement breaks/posture shifting, or breath practices to help you stay present and provide your nervous system rhythm a gentle resource wedge to interrupt unpleasant activation.

• Foster Connection With Classmates: Something as simple as providing opportunities for positive peer interaction, like offering gratitude for student exploration in class, can help combat feelings of isolation and support trust-building. After all, all experiences are data, and there are really no mistakes, only intelligence around all types of learning—even those experiences which may activate individual nervous systems.

• Encourage "Agency Through Voice and Choice": Offering individual introspection space for yourself and classmates to share different options in assignments or activities can help restore a sense of control and autonomy that trauma often diminishes. Many times, introspection can provide us insight into our own pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant nervous system experiences in the learning space, especially if the classroom has an intergenerational learning culture to it. 

By understanding the profound impact of trauma on the physiological aspects of our amazing brain, we can support the adult student experience within intergenerational learning spaces, adopting an empathetic, trauma-informed approach that supports all learners across their academic journey.

Author: Viana Mora, CIAYT, SEP, RSME/T, EYT500/YACEP, MHPS