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Do you believe you have no talent for languages?

I have met many people who thought exactly that.

My suspicion is that the problem is not talent, but your own brain.

Your brain doesn’t want you to change. Its primary function is to save energy so you can survive. To do that, it seeks a state of «energy peace» – the so-called comfort zone – and makes you ‘addicted’ to it. If you step out of it, your brain perceives it as a threat. The solution is not to force it to learn, but to create the conditions for it to do what it evolved for: adapt to save energy. The result will be learning.

At over sixty I am putting this idea to the test again, currently learning Chinese, Russian, Greek and the unicycle simultaneously from scratch.

MoviLinguas is the laboratory for these experiments. Here, the story of the Valqui Method was born, which is based on 5 simple principles:

1) The brain primarily wants to save energy.
2) To achieve this, it makes you «addicted» to your comfort zone.
3) If it learns something new, it is to save energy.
In languages, by training fluency, you create a new comfort zone.
5) Persistence signals to the brain that it has no choice but to adapt.

The Valqui Method creates the conditions that make your learning inevitable.

Don’t ask yourself if you have talent; simply give your brain those conditions.

LEARNING IS OFTEN INVISIBLE

A large part of learning happens unconsciously. That’s why progress early on often goes unnoticed, and many give up. Yet the brain keeps working tirelessly, even when the results are not yet visible.

LEARNING THROUGH PLAY

The most important things in life were learned playfully: walking, running, speaking or dealing with others. As adults we nevertheless believe that learning must mean boredom, rote memorization and fear of making mistakes.

LEARNING MEANS SAVING ENERGY

The brain learns to save energy. That is the true engine of learning, not willpower or simply wanting to learn. If a demand persists long enough, the brain adapts to handle it with less effort.

It’s not willpower. You just need persistence.

The goal is not to transform yourself in one day. You must make progress, no matter how small your steps.

Understanding how the brain works gives you the key to learn any skill —whether improving your technique in a sport or learning a new language.

Here I document my experiences as I learn Chinese, Russian and Greek from scratch, as well as my unicycle adventure following the same method.

With these experiments I want to put my hypothesis to the test:

The brain makes you ‘addicted’ to your comfort zone. Therefore, if you want to learn something new, start with minimal but constant steps, so your ‘addiction’ accepts them and does not boycott you.

Because the brain does not distinguish between a language and a sport: it only seeks to reach a new «energetic peace.»