Interleaving - Learn better

Interleaving is a technique suggested for learning. If you have never heard the term, dig in; it is both fascinating as a methodology and its applicability in living a complete and healthy life.

Interleaving is the process by which you study or learn more than one subject at a time. So take my ten-year-old son. Instead of him studying geography or history separately, both subjects are interwoven together.

He learns about the history of places and everything that happened there. The geography of the place—location, altitude, access, soil conditions, perhaps crops—drives his study of the history of the place.

Another example of interleaving, also used in schools, is using time chunks to learn. So we learn about history through epochs, or time periods. So what does all of this have to do with your health and longevity?

Simple! Your body already functions collectively as a whole. It does not understand the respiratory, circulatory, and digestive systems as separate parts. It does not understand the stress you feel in your life, separate from the stress you feel when you are deficient in nutrients. Your body understood the value of "interleaving" much before humankind came up with the concept.

So if you want to learn to live a long, healthy, and happy life, learn about the way you function across disciplines. You might ask what these are.

Nutrition, physical activity, removing toxicity, ensuring sleep or rest and repair, understanding your breath, and achieving stillness are, in my opinion, the most important. It is all, not some. I meet people regularly who ask for tips—a quick fix to get to the next destination.

Use the concept of interleaving to start understanding how breath affects stillness and how stillness affects nutrition. Use interleaving to understand how sleep affects toxicity and physical activity affects sleep. Your body is a collective. Your knowledge about it should be as well.