For the last few years I have been learning Portuguese. One might ask, why Portuguese? I’ve practiced the Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira for 27 years. Many of my teachers are from Brasil and Portuguese is their first language. Though they often speak English really well, some things are lost in translation, and, fluency in Portuguese helps one to understand the nuance of what they’re communicating. Music is an important aspect of capoeira; the songs are sung in Portuguese, and they also have layers of meaning. Until I began taking actual classes in the language, I assumed that I was more fluent than I was. I could follow along with some conversations, and have a rudimentary dialogue. But, when confronted with talking for an hour or actually translating text, or following a podcast, I quickly realized how much more there was to learn.
Learning is tiring. Reading a text, absorbing it, taking notes, expanding one’s understanding of a subject, all takes work - energy. The plasticity of the mind that came naturally and with ease, as children and young adults, is still available to a mature adult, but it must be earned. When learning a physical movement pattern there’s the added fatigue of one’s muscles. Rest and recovery are important factors. During sleep, short term memories integrate into long term memory, and, while there is apparently no limit on the amount the long term memory can store, our short term memory is quite limited. When learning a language, the act of writing notes helps us to assimilate new words, and speaking them aloud defines their utility. Patterns, be they language or movement or a new skill, must be encoded, repeated and downloaded into deep memory in order to be stored.
Myelination is the forming of a fatty membrane around axons (a crucial part of a neuron, that carries the electrical signals/action potentials to the next cell.) Myelin acts as an insulating layer allowing signals to move down these paths up to 100x faster than unmyelinated axons. Using a traffic analogy, its the difference between the speed of an alley and an autobahn freeway. Myelination of neural pathways starts in utero and continues into one’s early to mid-twenties. New research shows that, through hard work, repetition and stressing the system we can continue myelinating our neural pathways throughout our lives, into old age.
I am learning to enjoy the frustration of failure, partly because I know that that is where the magic happens. The difficulty and the effort required is part of the forging of new neural pathways and the myelination of the existing ones. Where one puts one’s attention, paired with consistent effort over time leads to growth. Trying hard, and not giving up when the going gets tough, sound like clichés, but they are key factors. As incremental changes can feel barely perceptible, taking notes in a journal or an exercise log can help us to not lose faith in the process. It can feel like a battle or a marathon, but the discomfort is a necessary part of the process.