It’s common to think of learning as activity, movement, growth, and change. The word “learn” is a verb, after all. But I have come to believe that down time is necessary to allow learning to sink in and become part of us.
This summer I took classes in djembe drumming, for fun and relaxation. Learning the rhythms was hard, and it didn’t come easy to me. Near the end of the course, after about ten lessons, we were practicing a complex rhythm that I was having a lot of trouble with. Something shifted in my brain and suddenly I knew I had it! It was an amazing feeling – one minute I was struggling and the next minute I was playing the rhythm.
It felt like pure joy to have learned it and to be able to play it properly. But it didn’t come easy, and it didn’t come right away. I had to plug away at it over a period of weeks. I had to give my brain a rest between lessons and practices.
