It’s an interesting question because we often assume learning begins at the moment instruction begins. That you will find your seat, flip to the correct slide, and graciously receive new knowledge. That is Fantasy! By the time someone walks into a classroom, logs into a course, or sits down for a coaching conversation, the opportunities to drive learning readiness are long passed. Either something has made that person receptive to change, or their boss made them come. You’ll never know!

Last year I completed 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training at Sundara, in Brunswick ME. If you knew me before, you know that I was not preparing for a career change . I enrolled because I wanted to improve my own health and wellbeing, and because I was curious.

What I didn’t expect was to find myself thinking so often about graduate school. I’m glad I kept those textbooks.

Years earlier, while completing my Master’s in Organizational Learning & Development at Suffolk University, I had spent a great deal of time studying adult learning theory. As the yoga training progressed, I kept recognizing familiar patterns. The language was different, and unlike any learning environment I’ve found in the Corporate World. Learners were encouraged to experiment rather than perform. Reflection was valued alongside practice. Community mattered. Most importantly we each took on the burden of co-creating an environment where vulnerability was accepted, and expected.

I also became aware of something else.

Many of my classmates seemed to be navigating significant transitions in their lives. Some were changing careers. Others were recovering from personal loss or searching for a new direction. Whatever brought them there, very few appeared to have enrolled simply because they wanted another shiny certification. We each landed on those mats because something made us open to learning, and because we believed this experience might help us navigate whatever came next.

That observation has stayed with me.

In corporate learning, we usually presume readiness, or perhaps simply anticipate resistance. We begin with organizational need, right? The business requires a new capability, so we develop training intended to produce a measurable outcome.

By the time the first training session is scheduled, the organization has often spent months understanding the problem. Front line employees are just beginning that journey. Everyone is on a different timeline, yet we ask the least empowered people in the organization to make the largest knowledge leap.

It’s an entirely ordinary and reasonable way to approach organizational change. It’s also one that predictably makes learning feel like something being done to people rather than with them.

Sundara’s Yoga Teacher Training operated from a different assumption. Before asking participants to learn, it devoted substantial effort to creating the conditions under which learning could occur. I don’t currently teach yoga, and I don’t view the experience as a departure from my professional life. If anything, it reinforced that being around people who are learning is exactly what I need from my work.

How do we create the conditions necessary for a reasonable adult to learn?