Practicing and learning have become my new way of life over the past few months. The Bronze Manual, the first part of the CANTIENICA® training program, includes about 140 exercises, all of which require precise mastery. I train and practice anytime and anywhere, even at the SAC hut when there are no guests around.

It’s a bit like the old days—a trip back in time 40 years: I was in middle school, had my handwritten flashcards with Latin vocabulary on them, and besides studying, I spent every free minute at the dance studio. I juggled Ovid and the moonwalk, Catullus and *Flashdance*. Ever since those early training experiences, I’ve known that for me, all learning happens through movement. And that’s coming in handy now during my CANTIENICA® training.

Once again, I have my little cards that I lay out. I’ve even laminated them so they’ll last longer. When I’ve completed an exercise to my satisfaction, I flip the corresponding card over. As soon as they’re all flipped over, I shuffle them again and start over from the beginning.

I go through a page of the manual, do the exercise, and keep reading. Again and again, I stand up; sometimes I even read the instructions aloud while standing, moving my body rhythmically as I do so. Put it into practice. Keep reading. Always on the move.

Then I put the cards with similar exercises in a stack and go through them one by one. As I do so, I mutter the instructions from the manual to myself. Once I’m satisfied with how I’ve done a stack of exercises, I set it aside. I carry the cards with the exercises I find particularly difficult in my purse or backpack—and continue practicing at the next available opportunity.

At the beginning of my training, I had a set of index cards on the back of which I wrote down everything I needed to keep in mind for each exercise. By now, most of it seems clear to me. So I made new index cards without instructions, listing only the name of the exercise and the page number from the manual.

That’s exactly what I did back then with Latin—I kept writing new sets of flashcards and took the ones with the hardest words with me everywhere I went. There are some things you can’t just learn halfway. Either you dive deep into the subject, or you leave it alone.

It was the same with dancing back then. For several years, I oscillated between the worlds of Jennifer Beals and Michael Jackson and the grammar of ancient Rome. To the tune of “What a Feeling” by Irene Cara, I whirled around the studio that I had set up in an old watch factory hall together with Peggy, a student from the Caribbean who was living with our neighbor at the time.

I was amazed by Ovid’s *Metamorphoses* and tried to transform my movements—I’ll never forget the dancing goths from the “Thriller” video! Or the spectacular group scenes from “Beat It” and “Bad.” Back then, I practiced like crazy just to even halfway imitate Michael Jackson’s contortions.

I had my straight-as-a-stick hair permed and spent days lounging around in skin-tight workout outfits with high-cut hips (shout-out to Jane Fonda), complete with thick leg warmers in the brightest colors.

And now the floor of my room is covered with laminated cards. I did the same thing with my book manuscripts, too. I’ve laid out entire books, page by page, on the living room carpet or in the photo studio—I need to see things spread out in front of me. That’s the only way I can sense what belongs together. What comes at the beginning. What goes in the middle.

I need to be able to feel the rhythm—I arrange some sequences in a staggered pattern. Where is it intense, and where is it calm? I move the cards back and forth on the carpet, constantly trying out new variations.

In between, I bounce around like I used to and enjoy this journey back in time to learning and movement. That’s what’s truly great about my CANTIENICA® training. I’m that fourteen-year-old teenager again, with the naive outlook of those early days and a tremendous determination to learn everything, to practice until I drop. To delve deep, to understand how things fit together, to strive for perfection. No matter what anyone else around me thinks.

What a joy it is to rediscover this ability: to embark on a journey of discovery wholeheartedly and without holding back.