Yãy hã mĩy: Imitating Being to Transcend Oneself as Being

Pau de Fita, Living Thread, and Decolonial Neuroscience for the Digital Era

From the Body to the Brain Bee: Decolonial Neuroscience for Latin American Teenagers

Maybe we need to begin before the word “play.”

Before calling something a game, dance, sport, ritual, physical education, or folklore, there were bodies learning from other bodies.

A child watched a grandfather.
A granddaughter imitated a grandmother.
A boy tried to repeat the gesture of an animal.
A girl learned a song by watching the body of the one who sang.
A group ran, spun, fell, laughed, returned.
The whole territory was teaching.

Modern school often separated everything: body on one side, mind on the other; science on one side, spirituality on the other; childhood on one side, ancestry on the other. But many original peoples of the Americas never organized the world this way.

Here we arrive at one of the fundamental concepts of BrainLatam2026:

Yãy hã mĩy — imitating being to transcend oneself as Being.

This formulation is our BrainLatam2026 reading, not a closed literal translation. In the UFMG exhibition Mundos Indígenas, the concept yãy hã mĩy appears as one of the worlds presented by Indigenous curators, including the Tikmũ’ũn/Maxakali world; the exhibition also invites us to encounter these worlds without rushed translation or reducing them to comparison with our already familiar reality.

In our language:

to imitate is not to copy.
To imitate is to enter another way of being and return transformed to one’s own body.

Imitating is not obeying

Colonization often taught that imitation means repeating without thinking. Copying the model. Obeying the master. Following the correct form.

But when we look at Yãy hã mĩy, imitation gains another depth.

A child who imitates an animal is not merely “pretending.”
They are experimenting with posture, breathing, attention, rhythm, strength, silence, direction, and presence.

A young person who learns a song is not only memorizing sound.
They are entering a collective memory.

A granddaughter who plays with her grandmother is not merely passing time.
She is receiving a way of perceiving the world.

This is the difference between dead imitation and living imitation.

Dead imitation wants to form followers.
Living imitation forms presence.

Against spirituality outside the body

Decolonial Neuroscience does not need to deny spirituality. On the contrary. It needs to prevent spirituality from being torn away from the body, territory, and concrete life.

When spirituality stays outside the body, it can become guilt, fear, obedience, or distant promise. When it returns to the body, it appears as breathing, rhythm, singing, ground, circle, care, gesture, dream, memory, and belonging.

The exhibition Mundos Indígenas reminds us that Indigenous worlds involve human existences and other existences — plants, animals, and spirits — with whom people effectively coexist. It also states that these worlds teach us to coexist, interact with respect, and accept that there are other ways of organizing reality.

So the question is not: “is this play or spirituality?”

The deeper question is:

what kind of body does this practice form?
What kind of attention does it cultivate?
What kind of territory does it make us feel?
What kind of person does it help to be born?

Ancestral games as laboratories of body-territory

When we look at the games and play practices of the original peoples of the Americas, we begin to see that playing was never just “passing time.”

In 2025, the Museum of Indigenous Cultures published Do museu à escola, tecendo diálogos: Brincadeiras Indígenas, a teaching resource for educators created with Indigenous and non-Indigenous teams, knowledge keepers, and Indigenous interns. The MCI itself emphasizes that the material does not offer absolute truths and recommends listening, dialogue with elders, and care so Indigenous practices are not reproduced without context.

This care is central.

We do not want to transform ancestral practices into “fun activities” disconnected from their peoples.
We do not want to remove ritual, song, toy, or gesture from its territory and sell it as a classroom dynamic.
We want to learn how to listen.

String figures, for example, reveal a small school of refined APUS: hand, eye, memory, waiting, sequence, and story. In our previous base text, this practice appeared as a form of Jiwasa on a minimal scale: two people regulating attention, gesture, and time together.

In Guatemala, Grupo Sotz’il Jay published Etz’anem, a study on traditional Maya Kaqchikel games and toys, presented as a contribution to playful pedagogy and to the knowledge systems of original peoples.

Peteca can also be read as body-territory in motion: shared attention, eye-hand coordination, rhythm, laterality, waiting, and response to the other. It is not only about striking an object. It is about keeping something alive in the air.

And maybe this is a good image for Jiwasa:

an attention that continues only when someone responds.

Capoeira: the Afro-Brazilian roda as a laboratory of the Southern Hemisphere

Capoeira is not the only bodily laboratory of the continent, but it is a strong example of a Southern Hemisphere intelligence: body, rhythm, circle, music, ancestry, defense, play, improvisation, and belonging.

In the roda, nobody learns alone.

The berimbau regulates.
The clapping regulates.
The song regulates.
The master regulates.
The partner regulates.
The group regulates.

This is Jiwasa.

And it is also executive function in motion: waiting, inhibiting impulse, changing strategy, remembering sequences, adjusting force, reading the other, deciding in real time.

A 2022 randomized study with children aged 8 to 13 investigated the effects of capoeira on executive functions and found improvement in eye-hand coordination, as well as a positive association between improvement in executive functions and the number of classes attended. Another study with preschool children found a modest positive impact on inhibitory control, with stronger effects in some socially vulnerable groups.

Capoeira helps us say:

the body also thinks.
The circle also teaches.
Culture is also a laboratory.

The Pau de Fita of community life

Now we can open a new image without abandoning the ancestral axis.

Pau de Fita is a traditional dance in which participants move around a central pole holding colorful ribbons that become woven together through collective movement. The National Center for Folklore and Popular Culture describes pau-de-fita as a paired dance of Portuguese origin, performed around a pole with multicolored ribbons. Ciência Hoje das Crianças also presents pau-de-fitas as a ribbon dance brought by Portuguese and Spanish people, adapted in Brazil, and known by regional names such as dança de fitas, dança da trança, and dança do mastro.

In the BrainLatam2026 reading, each ribbon can represent a Tensional Self.

One thread is the body that wants to play.
Another is curiosity.
Another is fear.
Another is hurry.
Another is the desire to belong.
Another is anger.
Another is the memory of the grandmother.
Another is the desire to be seen.
Another is one’s own question.
Another is the algorithm calling.

Community life is this pau de fita.

If each thread pulls alone, the dance becomes a knot.
If the circle finds rhythm, the threads form a design.

We can think of dEUS as the conductor of this inner circle: not a fixed ego commanding everything, but an intelligence that perceives which Tensional Self should lead at each moment, which one needs to wait, which one needs to breathe, which one needs to be heard, and which one cannot govern alone.

Living Thread and Jaguar of Light: public folklore for the digital era

This is where the Legend of the Living Thread can enter.

Not as an invented ancient tradition.
Not as fake folklore.
But as a public, secular, conscious creation for digital childhood.

The idea is simple:

each child is born with living threads.
Each thread is a force of the body.
The community helps weave these threads.
Technology cannot be the only dancer in the circle.

The Jaguar of Light represents screens, games, social media, notifications, and AI. It is not simply evil. It can also teach, connect, translate, and expand worlds. But when it arrives before the body is formed, it can pull all the threads toward itself.

The child stops feeling their own rhythm.
The teenager confuses personal desire with recommendation.
The question becomes a ready-made answer.
The body becomes a spectator.
The Living Thread becomes a captured thread.

Yvirá, the journal of the UNESCO Chair in Science for Education, highlights that screen use in early childhood exposes children to fast and intense stimuli, different from the sensory-motor and social experiences of the real world; it also defends intersectoral public policies for digital education, rights protection, professional training, and the creation of safe community spaces for play.

The Science for Childhood Center also points out that excessive exposure to screens tends to replace play, interaction, and adult presence, affecting language, emotional bonds, emotional regulation, and social skills in early childhood.

That is why, before connected AI, we need Unplugged AI.

A child holds a ribbon.
A teenager names a Tensional Self.
The circle turns.
The group notices when the weave has become a knot.
The question reorganizes the movement.
The community helps each thread find its place.

The Hummingbird of the Question can appear only as the voice of the circle:

Who is pulling the thread now?
The body or the screen?
The question or the ready-made answer?
The circle or the feed?
The community or the algorithm?

This is the urgent part.

The State must recognize that educating in the digital era is not only about connecting schools, distributing screens, or teaching AI commands. UNESCO guidance on generative AI states that governments need to implement immediate actions, plan long-term policies, and develop human capacities to ensure a human-centered vision of these technologies; UNESCO also warns about data protection, ethical validation, and age-appropriate use.

We need new public folklores.

Not to replace ancestral cultures.
Not to erase existing traditions.
Not to invent artificial “ancestry.”

But to responsibly create new community games that prepare babies, children, and adolescents for digital adulthood.

The Living Thread can be this: a new game inspired by Pau de Fita, string figures, peteca, capoeira, Maya Kaqchikel games, and the original pedagogies of the body.

A game to learn that:

every thread needs a body.
every body needs a circle.
every circle needs a question.
every technology needs a limit.

The question we can take to the Brain Bee

If a teenager reads this text and becomes interested in neuroscience, we already have a scientific question:

what changes in the brain, body, and attention when a child learns through bodily imitation, circle, song, game, territory, and Unplugged AI?

A BrainLatam2026 study could compare experiences such as:

individual play without interaction;
play in pairs, such as string figures;
collective play in a circle;
capoeira with music, improvisation, and belonging;
Pau de Fita with naming of Tensional Selves;
digital activity without shared body.

We could observe inhibitory control, shared attention, working memory, motor coordination, bodily synchronization, sense of belonging, and return to calm after error.

In a multimodal laboratory, we could use EEG, fNIRS, eye-tracking, respiration, HRV/RMSSD, GSR, EMG, and video analysis to study attention, autonomic regulation, bodily effort, social synchrony, and co-regulation.

The BrainLatam2026 hypothesis would be:

ancestral practices and new public folklores of imitation, circle, and territory may support executive functions because they do not train the isolated brain: they train the body in relation.

DREX Cidadão: bodily culture as public policy

If these practices form attention, belonging, memory, body, and community, then they cannot be treated merely as “complementary culture.”

They are human infrastructure.

A school that offers capoeira, circle games, research on Indigenous games, dialogue with knowledge keepers, simple materials, bodily time, and respect for territory is not merely offering an activity.

It is offering Zone 2.
It is offering Jiwasa.
It is offering APUS.
It is offering protection against early digital capture.
It is offering belonging.

In our model, DREX Cidadão appears as a metaphor for public metabolism: each child needs social energy to learn. This energy includes food, school, technology, and science, but also body, culture, ancestry, territory, and play.

Without this, education becomes disembodied.

And disembodied education may produce performance, but not necessarily presence.

Closing: the living threads of community

Yãy hã mĩy gives us a key.

To transcend is not to abandon the body.
It is not to escape the world.
It is not to obey a distant authority.

To transcend can mean returning to the body with more world inside.

The child imitates the animal and returns more attentive.
Imitates the song and returns more belonging.
Imitates the grandmother’s gesture and returns more ancient.
Imitates the circle and returns more collective.
Imitates the ginga and returns more capable of responding without breaking.
Imitates the algorithm to understand its limits.
Imitates the Pau de Fita to perceive that no Tensional Self should govern alone.

Latin America does not need to import all its learning models.

We have living archives in the body.

Before the Brain Bee, there is the body.
Before neuroscience, there is play.
Before performance, there is the circle.
Before explanation, there is living imitation.
Before AI, there is the question.

And maybe the central image is this:

Living Threads weave the pattern on the Pau de Fita of community life.

A protected childhood is not a childhood without technology.
It is a childhood that enters technology with body, question, circle, and belonging.

References used

UFMG / Espaço do Conhecimento. Mundos Indígenas — reference for Indigenous worlds, Tikmũ’ũn/Maxakali, Yãy hã mĩy, and body-territory.
https://www.ufmg.br/espacodoconhecimento/exposicoes/mundosindigenas/

Museu das Culturas Indígenas. Do museu à escola, tecendo diálogos: Brincadeiras Indígenas, 2025 — reference for Indigenous games, Indigenous authorship, pedagogical care, listening to elders, and teacher training.
https://museudasculturasindigenas.org.br/boletim-educadores/boletim-10-do-museu-a-escola-tecendo-dialogos-brincadeiras-indigenas/

Centro Nacional de Folclore e Cultura Popular. Pau-de-fita — reference for the dance with pole and multicolored ribbons.
https://antigo.cnfcp.gov.br/tesauro/00001755.htm

Ciência Hoje das Crianças. Pau-de-fitas — reference for the ribbon dance, its adaptation in Brazil, and its regional names.
https://chc.org.br/artigo/pau-de-fitas/

UNESCO. Guidance for generative AI in education and research, 2023 — reference for generative AI, public policy, data protection, age-appropriate use, and a human-centered approach.
https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/guidance-generative-ai-education-and-research

UNICEF. Early childhood development — reference for early childhood, brain development, responsive care, and play.
https://www.unicef.org/early-childhood-development

Yvirá / UNESCO Chair in Science for Education. A primeira infância na era digital — reference for screens, face-to-face interactions, play, child development, and public policy.
https://yvira.org/artigo/a-primeira-infancia-na-era-digital/

Núcleo Ciência Pela Infância. Proteção à primeira infância entre telas e mídias digitais, 2025 — reference for risks of early/excessive screen use and the need for policies to protect digital childhood.
https://ncpi.org.br/publicacao/protecao-a-primeira-infancia-entre-telas-e-midias-digitais/

BrainLatam2026 base text from this conversation. Yãy hã mĩy: Imitar Ser Para Transcender-se Ser — base essay on capoeira, ancestral games, APUS, Tekoha, Jiwasa, and DREX Cidadão.