The two most important aspects of pressure-release are precise timing and optimal intensity of the pressure. Precise timing means removing the pressure at the exact moment when the elephant performs the correct action. Optimal intensity means only applying the minimum extent of pressure needed in each case. Often a very light touch is enough. Contrary to common belief, an elephant's skin is sensitive to touch, and a touch comparable to a fly sitting on the skin is often sufficiently annoying for an elephant to hope it to go away. Thus, the removal of such a totally painless pressure is rewarding enough for an elephant to motivate him to learn what to do in order to get the trainer remove the touch.

Persistence is another virtue of a Positive Learning trainer, in addition to precise timing and optimal pressure. If an elephant is not responding to a cue, the trainer just keeps the cue on, if necessary intensifying it by vibrating his fingers or concistently increasing the pressure, with no temporary releases, until the elephant responds. At the moment of the correct response, the pressure is immediately released.

This approach on controlling the elephant through light and precisely timed pressures demonstrates both the similarities and differences of Positive Learning compared to traditional training methods. In many training methods that are in use today in Asia and elsewhere, the basic idea is to use so much force or pain that even an elephant-sized animal will move. In Positive Learning, the results are achieved by rewarding the desired movements with the removal of a pressure that is just annoying enough to motivate the elephant to learn what to do in order to have it removed. Thus, the removal of various light pressures, with enough repetition to solidify these habits in the elephant's mind, becomes the tool with which to control the elephant.

Rewarding

Rewarding correct actions is one way of enforcing them. Caressing the elephant with a hand works well as a reward. Elephants enjoy caressing more than patting, as their natural behaviour also includes caress-like touches by a friendly elephant’s trunk. The forehead is one of the body parts at which elephants often direct the friendly caresses to each other. A caress by the trainer on the forehead is thus a pleasant experience to the elephant.

Food rewards are another way of rewarding. To be effective, the reward needs to arrive exactly at the moment when the elephant performs the correct action. As it often is impossible to give a piece of food exactly then, for example if the elephant is moving or at a distance from the trainer, a commonly used and efficient way is to teach the elephant a specific word or other sound as a signal with the meaning that a food reward is coming soon. Thus, this sound is uttered at the exact moment of the correct action, marking the moment for the elephant so that he will know this particular action was the thing that will make food appear soon, and the reward is then given as soon as it is practically possible.

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If food rewards are used frequently, it is advisable to allocate part of the elephant’s daily food ration as rewards, instead of adding a significant quantity of extra treats on top of the ordinary daily diet. This way the total daily diet of the elephant remains the same. This brings two benefits: firstly, the elephant’s diet does not become nutritionally unbalanced, which is the risk if a large quantity of sugar cane or bananas is added to the ordinary diet, and secondly, the use of food rewards does not incur any extra costs. For example in Nepal, a part of an elephant’s daily diet is more than a hundred bundles called kuchhi, containing rice, salt, and molasses wrapped in grass. In the photo above, a few can be seen in the hand of the trainer. As elephants find them delicious, some part of the daily ration of kuchhi can easily be given as rewards during training.

Food rewards are only used during the initial stages of training each task. After this, food rewards are phased out during the next stages of training. Thus, a trained elephant will not need food rewards during the working day. However, giving an occasional treat for performing an especially difficult task does further improve the reliability of the elephant.

Repetition

Repetition is the bridge from learning to remembering. Once an association between a cue and action has been formed in the elephant’s mind, repeating the cue and action enough many times is a way to have it sink into the elephant’s memory.

In an animal’s mind, when something has been learned but not yet been deeply established in its habits, ending up in a new environment or a new situation may make the animal not sure whether the learned thing applies anymore. Thus, one important aspect of repeating learned tasks is repeating them in different places and different social settings, such as in the presence or absence of crowds of people or many other elephants.

Repetition also is one of the secrets of reliability of elephants at work. Once the response to a particular command - for example stopping immediately whenever the mahout says "rah" - has been rehearsed and repeated a huge number of times, it becomes such a deeply ingrained habit of the elephant that on hearing the command, he will stop without thinking twice regardless of whether the forest behind him is on fire.

In addition to strengthening the desired associations, repetition provides the trainer with a measurement tool to assess how the learning is proceeding. If an elephant responds to a cue with a correct action, he probably did remember to which action this particular cue was referring, but there is a possibility that it was just good luck. For example, he was not sure whether to walk forward or backward when hearing the word “chhou”, and randomly chose to walk backward, which happened to be the right thing to do. Thus, when assessing whether an elephant has reliably learned something, three successful performances in a row (cue and correct action, cue again and correct action, cue for a third time and again the correct action) can be considered a reliable measurement of the elephant having learned the meaning of this cue.

Associating new signals

Associating new signals to a task an elephant already knows is an efficient way to teach an elephant the meanings of command words. Once the elephant has been trained with pressure-release and/or rewarding to perform a specific action, a word can be introduced and established as a cue for performing that action. To effectively form an association in the elephant’s mind, the new signal needs to be given right before the signal that is already familiar to him. For example, using the traditional training vocabulary of the Tharu language in Nepal: the trainer says "sut", a word that the elephant is supposed to learn, and immediately after this he gives the tactile command that the elephant already knows is the cue for laying down.

It is important to remember that each new signal does need to be specifically associated to the required action before the elephant can be expected to know the meaning of this signal. One of the easiest mistakes to make when training any animal is to unconsciously assume that since you know the meaning of a word, the animal knows it too. Animals don’t, however, understand human languages in the way we do, but instead they need to separately learn to associate each word to the action or object it refers to. The same naturally applies to the tasks the elephants need to perform: even though it is easy to unconsciously assume that since you know what you want the animal to do, the animal also knows what kind of a final outcome you have in mind. However, elephants do not have any intrinsic knowledge about the culture of working elephants that has been created by people. Having been born as an elephant does not make the elephant aware of what kind of tasks people want elephants to perform. Instead, each task needs to be separately trained step by step.

Shaping

Shaping is a process of improving an animal’s response step by step. For example, in the case of talking about real steps, training an elephant to walk forward starts by first rewarding one step, then expecting two steps before rewarding, and then several steps. After this, the elephant is rewarded only when it starts walking on a straight line. Finally, as this works well in one place, the elephant is taken to new places and the straight walk is rehearsed and rewarded there.

Habituation

Habituation is a phenomenon that can be utilized to greatly improve the safety of both elephants and people. Novel situations, such as a new environment or having a saddle on your back for the first time, can be frightening to an animal. This often results in struggling and risky situations. In animal-friendly systems such as the Positive Learning Method, novel things are introduced little by little, so that the animal remains calm and comfortable throughout the process of getting fully used to it. An example is seen in the photo: the first step to getting an elephant used to people riding it is a light touch of a hand, which then is gradually intensified.

Physical and mental comfort during training

Promoting optimal states of mind for learning is an important aspect of skilled training. Training will proceed faster if the trainer makes sure that the elephant is not hungry, thirsty, or afraid of something when entering a training session.

Similarly, the elephant learns faster if the training is carried out in short bouts with rest in between. If young elephants are allowed to be unchained during training, they will show the proper intervals themselves by getting restless when they find it hard to focus anymore and returning to the trainer after having rested enough. In practice, many elephants seem to prefer alternating sessions of about twenty minutes of training and twenty minutes of rest, though there are differences with regard to the age and temperament of the elephant as well as to the task at hand.

The presence of the mother elephant during training is one way of promoting a calm, receptive state of mind in a young elephant. In training methods involving use of pain, the young elephant is separated from the mother during the months of training. This is understandable, as it would be difficult to keep the mother in control while she sees her offspring experiencing pain and fear during training. One of the benefits of animal-friendly training methods such as Positive Learning is that since the trainers do not inflict pain on the young elephant, the mother elephant is able to calmly stand by, as she sees that the youngster is not harmed. The presence of the mother, in turn, reassures the young elephant. This helps it focus all its attention to learning, instead of having part of its attention occupied by feeling nervous.