Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ PhotoReading, Memory Optimizer New technique!

Hello everyone!

first things, first! I must say, people on this board are amazing. I am just very delighted to have the privilege to read these posts. Everyone is very encouraging and responsive to everyone elses questions or comments and the sincerity of an individual's experience streams out.

I have been playing around with photoreading for some time now and the first time I tried it was about 9 years ago when I moved to the US and I was interested in improving my learning skills. I wanted to read books and be able to apply. As such I started reading books about the mind. Not too many but the first few ones in english included tony buzan's mind mapping and then also paul's book. and then eventually the einstein factor, etc.

After I tried photoreading about 9 years ago, I gave it up right after the first 5 months! I called the on-site consultants who helped me with the technique, etc. but it didn't seem to make any difference, so I stopped.

I returned to it again now. Why? I don't know. back then I was able to see the blip page, and do all the necessary steps and yet I was not getting any value out of the whole process.

Now, I am back to this. What have I done?! I have played so much even to explore different techniques for reading with photoreading that I wanted to share and get some insights from fellow photoreaders.

Reading fiction: I thought about this some time, because by definition the previewing of the book, looking through the index etc, should help us move along the book, etc. I wasn't sure how my inner mind could truely guide me in reading a fiction book effectively. What have I done to remedy this? Well, I am playing with a technique that requires me to photoread each page (actually two pages) just before I actually read the pages. I then continue with this technique through the book and I am trying to see if there are any noticable differences. I read fiction books truely for the love of reading fiction, not because I have a particular purpose of getting information out of them. granted there are times when I read the backcover and say it would be nice to know how the experience of xyz has influenced his or her behaviour, but in general, fiction is just fiction. Should I photoread in this way? Would it be beneficial? could it even be beneficial? has anyone ever played around with different techniques that have helped him or her read different genres of books? What would be the noticable difference, since after all, you do not really apply it to anything in particular?

Anyway, I would be delighted to hear back some insights from you!

By the way, I am a student in new haven, ct, and was wondering if anyone is living here or New York, or somewhere around that area and is interested in having some tea or coffee to talk about his or her experience with photoreading?!

Hope to hear from you soon!

Hi andromeda,

< a brief answer for now >

GREAT that you returned to PR
- I think that it is an amazing system!!

It's clearly one big step in using the endless possibilities & resources that each of us carry within us.

I remember noticing one thing while I was trying out the PR steps:
I somehow managed to create some amount of worrying thoughts in my head (will this system work for me? will I see the results of my PRing? etc.)
and when I had a shorter material (a very thin book, or a bunch of pages in a report)
and the contents of it was not very important to me,
I ended up doing the PR steps (preview, PR, SuperRead) in an efficient way:
I got good results (clarity of the structure of the text, I also gained answers to the questions I had in my mind, or otherwise which simply needed to be solved),
and all I had done was that I had been FAST and didn't worry about whether I learn the information contents of the text or not
a bit careless attitude (enough to fool my worrying mode)
To me the best results come with not spending too many minutes especially while SuperReading and/or skittering, not letting my eyes get lazy or slow, i.e. I needed to gain more trust in the system (even though I originally trusted it).

Mari
dedicated this year to Play with PR

Most noticeable effects are usually that -
1. You read faster.
2. That you are picking up more on the subtle details and more clues in mystery books.
3. You fly through the boring bits easier and somehow know whenyou need to really slow down to savour the details

I know when I had re-read a novel that I had read for the second time some 6 months prior. It took me 10 hours the second time to regular read I really enjoyed the book so I applied Photoreading to enjoy it again. This was great I read the book in about 2 hours (same lenght as a movie and had more detail). What surprised me though was that I noticed clues that I missed (a key sentence here and there) on my twice through regular reading. They were ah huh clues too.

Alex

I just got to read your responses and wanted to thank you very much!

I probably wasn't very clear in my description of what I was actually doing when I am doing the alternate PR and actual read. So let me describe it again and see if there is any thoughts on this.

Technique:
1) I photoread (PR) two pages (which I can do now effortlessly any time I want). it is two pages because each page opposes the other just like in a regular book.

2) I then *immediately* - without! flipping through the entire book - super read (speed read) and dip at those same two pages. It allows me to do both - photoread to build neurological networks and at the same time (!) activate the content to a conscious understanding. Thus, it feels not like I have just seen a few pages while PRing, but actually soaking in the information through PR and then consciously allowing it to stream into an understanding.

So this is more acurate. Tell me what you think. I like using this technique and I want to know if others have tried it and seen any immediate benefits! What do you think?!

I find it faster to photoread the whole book first. You are usually in the best photoreading / photofocus state about 12 pages into a book so switching in and out of photofocus is rather redundant. It seems little better than the constant left brain right brain switching that is required by regular reading. Which is in fact what slows us down. Seeing the inner mind barely has time to process this information and present it to the conscious mind and the fact that getting into the photoreading state also takes time to switch; it sounds rather like switching on and off a light switch.

Alex

thanks for your reply!

i am not sure why, but i am able to get into the photofocus with a snap whenever i want. i am even now playing around by panning across different parts of the pages, yet still hold the photofocus.
so i am a bit confused now, since you say that the best photofocus is achieved after about 12 pages. am i then not really in photofocus, even though i see it exactly the same way, whether i am on page 1 or after page 20?....

i simply thought that this technique might be a tool for those that would like to activate their reading immediately and thereby seeing and feeling immediate results. sometimes people feel unsure whether they truly understood it, but now u cannot only understand but see the picture in your mind and truly formulate the neurological networks. what does everyone think about this? tks!

The 12 pages or so is for the appropriate brainwave functioning. It just seems to be more appropriate to remain in the mental flow for photoreading and mental flow for superreading rather than constantly switching.

I actually overlooked one of the more profound reasons to first photoread a book and allowing it to incubate. It has to do with the skill of predicting.

The explaination is rather lenghty so I will write it up and post it later.

Alex

tks... i look forward to reading it!!!

As I said the explaination was going to be rather lenghty it turned out to be 4 pages.

So now I try and give a summarised version.

Research has shown that proficient readers use the art of predicting/guessing what is going to happen next. They use the authors inferences, guess at sequences and make connections with what they already know. They predict what comes next and use further/continued reading to verify and adjust what they find out. This active process actually aids learning in proficient readers.

Slow readers and readers who experience difficulty never learnt this skill. It seems it is poorly taught in school and the skill is somehow stumbled upon by proficient readers.

I figure, that if someone keeps repeating the Photoreading steps over and over they would stumble onto prediction because the inner mind connection starts developing ways of putting the Photoread information into the conscious mind. (If the individual can remain open to learning and not block the information through impatience and frustration). The advantage is that the whole book has been placed into the inner mind thus predictions grow to be more and more accurate. Naturally The speed at which this skill develops will depend on how willing the new student of photoreading is apply "each of the steps as outlined in the course". Using them repeatedly as given until confident results have been achieved before looking for ways to shortcut the system. To kick in the prediction process you ask yourself mind probing questions.

It is one heck of an advantage having the information already in the mind. The accuracy for predicting increases dramatically. I've never found myself wrong on the insight that the book had no information of interest to me nor the insight that further activation was required.

It does boil down to 2 factors.
1. that all the information is put into your mind first (like a download onto the computer).
2. You ask yourself questions to allow it to come to your conscious mind (like a control find on the computer).

Alex

thanks for the great insights, alex!

i was wondering, i heard that 90% of what we read is actually "filler" and only 10% is content conveying a message. is this true and if so, is this partly what could explain the reason photoreading works, because it really breaks down what we need to get out of a book and cuts away "clutter".

i just asked this in some other post, but just in case it doesn't get read, i was also wondering if it is indeed possible to have immediate activation/*understanding* of things that we just read. I have read this on a couple of occasions now and I wonder how much practice it takes to get to this level/ability? i photoread and have no idea what i just read....