Brain Food: Languages, Poetry, Songs, Theatrical Plays, Sacred Prayers, ….

 

An immense wealth of world culture awaits us! Anyone with the desire and necessary discipline can inherit beautiful languages, poetry, sacred writings, songs, dances, theatrical works, and more. This type of wealth is not exclusive; it is a shared global heritage. It doesn't diminish when more people "possess" it; in fact, it grows richer as more people engage with it.

While material wealth has clear and immediate benefits, one might ask: "What do I gain from cultural wealth? I can't use it to buy a car, a home, or groceries!" Maslow's hierarchy of needs and desires, as well as yoga philosophy's concept of chakras, classify our needs from basic survival to higher-level enlightenment. Enlightenment-based desires help us seek our life's purpose, accept life's ups and downs, and eventually embrace our own mortality. The world's cultural heritage nourishes these higher-level needs and desires.

Reading or hearing a great piece of poetry is joyful, but memorizing and reciting it while walking in a garden or in nature elevates that joy to another level. Consider being served a meal by a world-renowned chef: if you rapidly swallow each bite without savoring it, the food will taste good, but more pleasure comes from taking the time to savor each morsel. Memorizing poetry offers similar pleasure as savoring food does.

Acquiring the cultural wealth of our world benefits us in three ways:

1. It provides a fun challenge to our brain as we build new neural connections needed to learn something new, exercising our brain just as we exercise our body.

2. It creates a sympathetic connection to a new culture, opening us to meeting new people and traveling to new places.

3. Sacred writings and poetry offer a broad worldview, allowing us to become wiser.

Memorizing poetry and songs, sacred texts, and theatrical plays requires repeatedly hearing or reading, and then articulating the content. It can take dozens of "listen-speak-repeat" cycles to memorize a verse or a new language sentence. Encore!!! language learning app provides tools to make this task easier.

Here's how to memorize a piece of poetry using Encore!!! (the same method applies to any content):

1. Break the poem into smaller pieces, such as one or two verses.

2. Add an explanation, translation, or transliteration for each piece if desired.

3. Use the MyEntry function to create a new entry with the text, explanation, translation, or transliteration.

4. Record the audio for each verse or use your mobile device's Text to Voice function.

5. Create a playlist from the content and customize it by choosing the number of repetitions for each verse and the pause between repetitions.

6. Play the playlist and use the "listen-articulate-repeat" method to gradually memorize the entire poem.

It typically takes about forty or fifty repetitions to memorize each verse. With Encore!!!, you can play the playlist while working out or walking, and in about an hour, you could memorize a short poem of 8-10 verses. A longer poem with 40-50 verses might take a month or more, but it will provide lifelong pleasure and a great sense of accomplishment.

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