When land has been subject to a long drought, you might think that a big downpour would be a salve — a way to replenish the dry earth in one fell swoop.
But that’s not how it works.
When the land has been dry for a long time, the soil hardens and becomes compacted and hydrophobic — literally meaning “afraid of water.” When a rain comes fast and heavy, the water runs off the land instead of soaking in.
The ground is so hard that it is unable to absorb the water quickly enough.
Slow, steady, rain penetrates much better than a big deluge.
This phenomenon maps to the body and brain as well.
A severely dehydrated body responds better to a slow IV drip of fluids than to rapidly chugging water. After a period of dehydration, the system can’t absorb so much water at once.
This also maps to how we learn or take in information. No matter how “thirsty” you are to acquire knowledge, your brain can only absorb so much information at once.
Too much input too fast creates overload. The information skims the surface instead of integrating into the soil of your embodied knowledge base.
If you truly want to know something in an embodied, integrated way then slow, repeated exposure is more effective than frantic intensity.
Flooding the system doesn’t mean more will sink in.
In fact, it’s more likely to short-circuit your wires, creating a power outage.
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