I think the title of the first chapter “It’s as difficult as …breathing” in The Third Ear is a metaphor.

Is it difficult to breathe?

Of course not, it is natural, it is innate, it is an instinct, maybe the moment we were born, the first breath with the outside world, there will be some difficulties, need some strength to help us breathe smoothly, so we cried aloud and finished our own breathing.

Similarly, the new language may be difficult to learn at first, and it takes time to explore, but as long as we are willing to take that step and break the psychological barrier, we will find that learning a foreign language is really not as difficult as we imagined.

Since we can speak our mother tongue naturally, it means that we have a natural language learning talent.