preferred "method" of "causing your brain" to learn chess?

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You must be doing a halfway decent job if one of you caused that kind of reflection by a student.

It would vary from person to person. Personally (if I was less lazy) I would keep statistics of all my defeats in order to find out what was the most frequent cause of my losing a game...

When that weakness has been lessened I'd look for the next thing to improve at... 

it is beyond my ken and my barbie.

good idea!

That's how it goes. First it's surprising and completely unexpected.

After that you usually need to see the idea/pattern a few more times. Playing over games of masters and analyzing your games helps... if you can catch a missed opportunity from one of your games involving something that's made an impression on you in the past you're usually 2/3rds of the way there.

After you've seen the idea in a few situations (hopefully at least one missed opportunity from one of your games) then you start to notice the possibility during play. Finally you try it out yourself... and it usually fails. This is the last step, now you'll start to both see the opportunities and use it correctly.

If you can see a new idea once, and immediately put it to use in your own games you're certainly a prodigy. For the rest of us there's a somewhat prolonged incubation time for the new idea or pattern. Then like Jengaias says, you improve all at once after it hatches (so to speak).

So anyway, that the idea makes an impression like that is good. Save any game or position like that in a notebook or computer file and come back to it now and then. Try to come up with a logical explanation for why it works, or the types of situations you might use such an idea or pattern.

Revisiting it like this is sometimes a reasonable substitute to seeing it in different positions, and after a while you can start seeing it in your own games.

by the way.  a good book for this deep thought about chess improvement is "chess for zebras"

http://www.amazon.com/Chess-Zebras-Thinking-Differently-about/dp/1901983854

and GM Rowson is both a very strong player

and an educated scottish pychologist...

I go over what im studying quickly the first time.  That way i subconsciously absorb (hopefully) some of the material.  Then i go back over it slowly.  

Jengaias is right but in my opinion her/his post fails in one thing.

To emphasize at  how important is to feed your brain with the correct pieces of the puzlle especially when we are talking about kids.

That is not so simple.

Sitting there for hours and trying to solve the problem of the undeveloped Bc8 in your own game is certainly more effecient than just getting the right method by an author when nothing is at stake... So why not let the students play out a position, before the get the approach from the master?

+1 Awesome book!

a few Chess Meta-Study books
(alphabetical by author's last name; information cited is from ABE.com )

1. Inside the Chess Mind: How Players Of All Levels Think About The Game
   Aagaard, Jacob
   Published by Everyman Chess, 2004, ISBN 10: 1857443578 / ISBN 13: 9781857443578
2. Chess Exam and Training Guide: Rate Yourself And Learn How To Improve
   Khmelnitsky, Igor 
   Published by IamCoach.com Publishing, 2004, ISBN 10: 0975476122 / ISBN 13: 9780975476123
3. Chess for Zebras
   Rowson, Jonathan
   Published by Gambit Publications (2003-12-01), ISBN 10: 1901983854 / ISBN 13: 9781901983852
4. The Seven Deadly Chess Sins
   Rowson, Jonathan
   Published by Gambit Publications (2001-03-01), ISBN 10: 1901983366 / ISBN 13: 9781901983364
5. Studying Chess Made Easy
   Soltis, Andrew
   Published by Batsford, 2010, ISBN 10: 1906388679 / ISBN 13: 9781906388676
6. Improve Your Chess Pattern Recognition
   Van De Oudeweetering, Arthur
   Published by New In Chess,Csi (2014-11-07), ISBN 10: 905691538X / ISBN 13: 9789056915384

These books seem to concern more than the topic {better chess}, and address instead the abstract umbrella meta-topic {methods to better learn better chess}. In other words, a major portion of each of these chess books would be about how to use chess books. I don't own any of the list above, so I can't actually vouch for their content; I'm just going by any publishers' or users' blurbs I could gather in a quick troll through Amazon, ABE, BN.com, and similar. 

[double post]

Either way. What's important is you think a little bit about the positions, not just mechanically move the pieces. No long difficult analysis, just stop every few moves and try to see the position with fresh eyes... if it were your game what moves would you consider? Which side do you think is better and why? Which area of the board (kingside, center, or queenside) do you expect each player to play on? With pawn or pieces? Not with deep analysis, but just what are your impressions? Answering them all may only take a minute (then less on subsequent moves because many answers will stay the same only a few moves later).

I like a 3d board for this because my serious games are OTB and also when you have to reach out to make moves it slows you down so it's harder to skip over positions. It also adds a kinesthetic element to the learning.

 Structure is best... if you're fortunate enough to get a trained coach (who is both good at chess and good at teaching) then great. Otherwise it's just epiphany to epiphany... at least this is how it has happened for me. I do use a basic structure though. I break it up into opening, strategy, tactics, endgame, and annotated game collections as the basic areas of study. Then for tools I have visualization, calculation, and analysis (they overlap a lot, but are not the same).

IMO for the beginner to 1500 range, it's good to read at least one book in each of those 5 categories. For tactics I'm thinking of a collection of puzzles.

Right away... but only 5 or so moves, only in main/popular lines, and mostly from experience (playing and seeing games). Don't buy an opening book and memorize dozens of rare lines 10-20 moves deep, that's a waste of time. I do include an opening book in one of my 5, but I think of that as the last one that should be read.

What I prefer is, after every game (everything from tournament length to bullet) you compare the opening to a database or reference book (like MCO). It gives a slow consistent reinforcement of opening moves that are relevant to you.

This
https://www.newinchess.com/The_Complete_Step_by_Step_Method-p-1933.html
is really impressive to me. I think this is a great way for kids to start. Adult beginners too if they don't mind that it may be a bit tedious.

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The method for being a good calculator is definitely different though. For myself I happened to use a system that I later found out has a name: stokyo exercises. Except I was using tactical puzzle positions, and my main focus was improving calculation and visualization.

I'd take a puzzle position and had two basic goals:
1) Find the solution.
2) Find both the best defense and have an answer for all reasonable defensive tries by the opponent.

First of all, I used a book so it was obvious, but don't move the pieces for this exercise (as you might on chess.com tactics trainer). Solve it all from the original position. After you're done calculating what you think is the solution (which should contain what you consider is the best defense) write it down. Now go back and find an answer for all other reasonable tries. Often the first few moves will be the same, your alternate defense may start on the 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc move.

Spend as long as you need to on a position. I often spent 20 or 30 minutes. Sometimes close to an hour. This will not help your tactics, but it helps you be accurate and most importantly, work REALLY hard to find good moves for your OPPONENT that attempt to refute your ideas.

Remember the opponent has 4 basic options: capture (captures an attacking piece), direct defense (adds a defender to the square or piece being attacked), counter attack (you must consider all threats that are equal to or greater than the threat you move created), ignore (you opponent may play a totally unrelated move... this is mostly a test to be sure your last move created a threat that demands a response).

In Tildall's "Improve Your Chess Now" he writes about visualization and I found out I was also unknowingly using the "stepping stone" method when I was doing the stokyo-like exercises. He says to visualize very clearly each move. Most of us can blow past the 1st or 2nd move without really "seeing" it right? We usually think "he captures, I captures, he captures, ok I lose material" instead of stopping at each half move and looking around the board.

Anyway, visualize each new position clearly until you've done enough move to get close to your limit. Usually the position starts to get "fuzzy" i.e. unclear. Stop at that moment and look around the board, find each piece, try to make it really clear. Memorize it. Now do a few more moves. This extends you past your limit. If you have enough time, you can do this as many times as you like.

After you reach your stopping point, and you "see" the future position clearly in your mind's eye, what I like to do is wipe the pieces off the board (I use a 3d board, you can use a digital one if you want). And I set up my memorized position. Did I see it clearly? Did I forget a certain file was open? That a piece was undefended? Seeing it in front of you helps identify errors and is really rewarding when you can verify you were seeing it clearly.

Mostly you need to be able to visualize because in between moves or unique circumstances can invalidate any hard and fast rule.

But there are a few tricks. The one I like the most for a series of captures is noticing that whoever captures first and last captures more... so if your opponent captures first, and you calculate a long line where you completely forgot the material count, but you did capture last, then at least you know you captured the same number of pieces. As long as you weren't capturing a pawn when your opponent was capturing a piece you're usually fine.

If I get confused I usually run through the calculation ignoring the pawn captures... just totally not counting them at all. As I go through the moves I might repeat in my head (he has a knight, he has a knight, he has a knight) then when I get the material back (it's even, it's even, it's even) etc.

In the past when I was confused I would just count for one side, then calculate it again and count for the other. So, you know, a knight is 3, rook is 5, and so on. At the end I'd memorize the number and the count again for the other side.

Axel Smith's "Pump Up Your Rating" is all about the methodologies he used to improve + practical advice. Parts of it you'll likely find interesting, although its target audience is more for 2000 players who want to be titled.

To be simplistic about it, engines give two kinds of advice: practical and impractical.

Practical is a tactic you missed, that isn't ludicrously deep. I had a 1300 rated friend who was upset after a tournament game because Fritz found mate in 12 for him at one point, so he said he "should have won." This is ridiculous of course. You have to take the advice in the context of what's possible for your level. If the evaluation is +5.00 but the position is totally chaotic and both sides are attacking, remember to take it in context.

Another type of practical advice I got from it is having it show me its top 3 choices. So maybe I like Ne7. If Ne7 isn't the first pick, I might tell myself it's just a practical thing. But if Ne7 isn't on the top 3 (and when I play it, it significantly drop the evaluation) then I can investigate. So I'll play Ne7 and have the engine play against me for a few moves. Then I'll go back to Ne7 and have the engine play against itself. All the while asking myself why Ne7 isn't working, and how I might generalize this idea to be useful in more positions. What's important is you engage yourself in the process. Don't just play over an engine line and nod your head in agreement. Test your ideas, and challenge any engine move you don't like.

Sometimes you find a simple logical reason like "I have to defend e4, so the knight should go to f6" or "my biship is on f8, and can't really be developed to g7, so I need to keep that diagonal open." But if the reason Ne7 doesn't work is some absurdly long tactic, or deep idea, just forget about it. e.g. "Ne7 allows white to sacrifice a pawn... and now white's a pawn down for 10+ moves... and it makes no sense to me why white is better."

Anyway, engines can help, but you have to work at it... many times more than you'd have to work if you had a human coach. But they can show you things. Mostly they're useful for showing you tactics that were missed.

Yeah, same with math. You can't just look at your previous work or another person's work and nod your head "yeah, that's how I would have solved it." You have to start with only a problem and a blank piece of paper

About engine use and analysing (your) games.

First I try to analyse the game without a engine. And then with an engine, BUT I hide the engine lines by moving the engine window to the side of the screen, just showing the "green-yellow-red" indicator. Then I stepp through the game. If the light is green, I continue the next move, If it switches to yellow, I comment the move with a "?", and if it goes red I mark the move with a "??".

Then afterwards I move to each ??/?-move and try to understand why it's bad move. Sometime easy, but often very difficult because the move sequence is long and impractical on my level. For every bad move I annotate the move, enter better sidelines etc.