15/08/2026
Life hack for learning from a tea blending session
One of the things I love the most about hosting the Nauteas Fine Tea ā¢ London tea blending experiences is the diversity of people who take part.
At one of our latest tea blending sessions, we had the pleasure of sharing tea with a neuroplasticity expert.
As it often happens, the conversation veered from tea to how our brain changes through our lives and how we can help ourselves develop new skills and habits in adulthood.
Hereās my (paraphrased) summary of what I learnt:
- When weāre born our brain possesses the maximum number of neurones it will ever have. As we grow older, the connections we donāt use get pruned back and cleared away, and the ones we do use get strengthened.
- The brain stays plastic in adulthood, but it becomes much more selective. After the mid twenties it needs a stronger signal that something matters before it rewires, such as genuine interest, attention and repetition.
- There is a life hack to it - exercise. Exercising shortly before you learn something increases your brainās capacity to absorb it, and the window is roughly the hour afterwards.
And, as someone else rightly pointed out, the older you get, the less you care what anyone makes of your beginner attempts. So you are more likely to openly practice (which turns out to be most of the battle).
