Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ PhotoReading, Memory Optimizer home study versus seminar

I bought the home study course 5 years ago. Started it up, did the dictionary game, didn’t get any of the words close to right, got discouraged and simply stopped moving through the course and lost interest.

I’ve kept the course box in sight for the last 5 years, I think it’s my subconscious telling me there’s value there. And I'm a fan of other LSC programs. Then I recently got an email notifying me of a PR seminar relatively close to us.

Has anyone taken the seminar after first doing or attempting the home study course?

For those who completed the seminar, what kind of results can I reasonably expect to obtain?

I will freely admit that while I'm intrigued by PR, and I believe Paul Scheele knows his stuff, I'm also somewhat skeptical and I wonder if anyone can truly develop this ability.

Anyway, would appreciate some perspective from someone who has been in my shoes.

Some skepticism is healthy but it will help you if you keep an open mind and have a i will wait and see attitude and not come to an decision before giving photoreading a fair and reasonable effort.

An advantage of going to the seminar is having a professional expert in photoreading there to assist you there on the spot.

Sometimes people have unrealistic expectations about photoreading expecting miracles from photoreading and sometimes people confuse what photoreading actually is. Photoreading is not about developing a photographic memory. Photoreading is about using both the other than conscious mind and the conscious mind together with the most effective, efficient techniques. A reasonable expectation would be you will be able to cut down your reading in 1/3rd of the time that it would have taken you with conventional reading.

Also you could also do the home study course after taking the seminar and the home study course could turn out to be a refresher or review course for you. You would probably see things coming together by doing both the seminar and home study course.
Photoread4me

[This message has been edited by Alex K. Viefhaus (edited December 24, 2005).]

The advantage of a Seminar is you get shown how to do it. How to flip pages, How to superread and dip, how to skitter. The others in the class become your learning partners.

Another advantage is when you book a date in a calendar to have someone to teach you you have no excuse to procastinate.

What exactly are you sceptical about?

Alex

I'm skeptical that I will learn tools I will find useful and worth the significant investment of time and money. I’m skeptical I will learn skills I will use on a daily basis. I’m skeptical that one can essentially flip through a book as fast as one can smoothly turn a page and assimilate and recall enough information to make this process worthwhile.

And I'm skeptical that I will have learned these skills and have them in place by the end of the 3 day seminar.

I talked with one of the coaches for Photoreading. He said my expectation should be that at the LEAST I would reduce the time it takes me to assimilate and understand written material by two thirds, probably more. Does the prospect excite and interest me? Yes. Am I skeptical this can be done? Yes. Do I think the brain is possible of such a thing? Yes. All of the above.

I own a small business. I have to read a LOT, both business-type stuff and the technical materials related to the performance of the business itself. The ability to cut by two thirds the time it takes me to understand and assimilate written information would be extremely valuable and I would be willing to pay the tuition and spend a full weekend to do it. But my time is at such a premium right now that for me to take a full weekend out of town to do this means that for almost two weeks I barely see my son.

This had darn well better be worth it and be able to deliver if I'm going to make this kind of investment. My expectation is that I come out of the seminar not with skills that if I practice them and really work on it that in a few weeks or months will make a difference, my expectation would be I would come out of the workshop on Sunday and on Monday I'm photoreading and cutting my reading time by well over half.

I guess I'm saying right now my belief level isn’t at the point where I'm willing to plunk down $1400 and take a full weekend so my wife and I can attend this seminar. That’s a lot of money and a lot of time and this thing had better be able to deliver for it to be worth it.

[This message has been edited by conejo23 (edited December 25, 2005).]

and to reply to photoreading’s post, if I have to take the home study course after the seminar in order for things to ‘come together’, then I'm definitely not interested in the seminar. My expectation is the seminar helps me get it to ‘come together’ right then and there at that weekend.

THAT is my question. For the typical person who attends, works hard, keeps an open mind and goes through the process (and uses paraliminals to assist in the process), where can I reasonably expect to be not 3 months later after doing the home study course, but on the first Monday after the seminar?

I have a question for photoread4me in regards to this comment
"Sometimes people have unrealistic expectations about photoreading expecting miracles from photoreading and sometimes people confuse what photoreading actually is. Photoreading is not about developing a photographic memory. Photoreading is about using both the other than conscious mind and the conscious mind together with the most effective, efficient techniques."

My purpose for using the PR system is because I expect miracles. Im a junior in a college and I dont have good grades. Im scared Im going to fail out of college.
The miracles that I expect from the PR system are the following: I want to be able to learn and comprehend materials quickly.
I want homework to be a breeze for me. Im tired of taking hours and hours to do one homework assignment. It frustrates the hell out of me. Im tired of failing my tests it makes me feel dumb as a heck, specially when i know for a fact that everyone else around me is getting excellent grades. Im tired of listening to professors speak and being confused when they are giving lectures. Im tired of usually being the only student that spends the most of her time in professor's office hours. I basically have no life because I can't grasp things quickly enough. AM I am expecting too much from photoreading????

ANd yes i took the seminar about 3 weeks ago.Pr seemed to work for one book that I was PRing for the seminar along with the other students but can it work for the things that I have just mentioned. Of course Im going to mention what I just wrote above to my PR coach, ( because I haven't mentioned this to her yet in this way)but I couldn't resist the temptation to ask a question on this thread first.

CD

dcromagirl; "My purpose for using the PR system is because I expect miracles. Im a junior in a college and I dont have good grades. Im scared Im going to fail out of college.
The miracles that I expect from the PR system are the following: I want to be able to learn and comprehend materials quickly.
I want homework to be a breeze for me. Im tired of taking hours and hours to do one homework assignment. It frustrates the hell out of me. Im tired of failing my tests it makes me feel dumb as a heck, specially when i know for a fact that everyone else around me is getting excellent grades. Im tired of listening to professors speak and being confused when they are giving lectures. Im tired of usually being the only student that spends the most of her time in professor's office hours. I basically have no life because I can't grasp things quickly enough. AM I am expecting too much from photoreading????"

Yes you are expecting too much from photoreading. Years ago i remember watching a photoreading video by Pete Bissonette the president of learning strategies corporation and one of the things that he said that would stop people from receiving the benefits of photoreading is someone expecting a miracle from photoreading. I would say if you had a textbook for a school normally with conventional reading that textbook would take you anywhere from 50 to 100 hours to learn it. With photoreading you probably could learn the same textbook in 20 to 30 hours instead of 50 to 100 hours.

"The miracles that I expect from the PR system are the following: I want to be able to learn and comprehend materials quickly." I would not consider that an unreasonable expectation. Photoreading will help you learn things more quickly and accelerate learning and make learning easier because you will have information operating on both the other than conscious level when you photoread and the conscious level when you conscious activate the material. But you got to have a purpose photoreading will not work without a purpose. If you try to activate a book that you photoread and you have no purpose it won't work.

"Im a junior in a college and I dont have good grades. Im scared Im going to fail out of college" Fear and stress will interfere with learning. Fear and stress becomes a distraction and instead of focusing on the task at hand learning you get attention focusing on failure instead of learning. That is why entering the relaxed accelerated state is taught in photoreading classes because Paul Scheele understands that for learning to take place you need to be in the optimal state for the learning to take place.

"Im tired of taking hours and hours to do one homework assignment. It frustrates the hell out of me. Im tired of failing my tests it makes me feel dumb as a heck, specially when i know for a fact that everyone else around me is getting excellent grades. Im tired of listening to professors speak and being confused when they are giving lectures. Im tired of usually being the only student that spends the most of her time in professor's office hours. I basically have no life because I can't grasp things quickly enough"

It shouldn't be that way. You should and need to have a life outside of school. There are people succeeding in school and they don't spend their whole life doing it. They may have a full time job and go to school and succeed or they may be parents taking take of children plus going to school and succeeding. If they can succeed you can too.

I think it all comes down to techniques. The processes you are currently using are not working for you. You definitely got feedback on that that they are not working for you. The good news is that you can change what is not working for you now and replace it with techniques that will help you to succeed in school.

I strongly recommend that you send Alex a email and go over with her the current processes you are using now, how you study, how you take notes.
Photoread4me

Conejo23; "and to reply to photoreading’s post, if I have to take the home study course after the seminar in order for things to ‘come together’, then I'm definitely not interested in the seminar. My expectation is the seminar helps me get it to ‘come together’ right then and there at that weekend."

I am not saying that you have to take both the seminar and the personal learning course for things to come together i am saying that if you did do both the seminar and the personal learning course you would see things come together you would definitely understand things in the personal learning course because you had attend the seminar instead of a person who did not attend the seminar and did the personal learning course only.

"My expectation is the seminar helps me get it to ‘come together’ right then and there at that weekend.
THAT is my question. For the typical person who attends, works hard, keeps an open mind and goes through the process (and uses paraliminals to assist in the process), where can I reasonably expect to be not 3 months later after doing the home study course, but on the first Monday after the seminar?

Do you see where you mentioned about working hard? That's part of the paradymn. That goes against photoreading. Well if i work hard and keep working hard this will work. My perception is that you are putting a lot of pressure on yourself that this had better work. As i said earlier people sometimes have unreasonable expectations about photoreading. Your question about where can you reasonably expect to be after the monday of the seminar depends on many factors. It depends on your background, whether you think this is possible to work, how you well you learn the techniques. But if you come from the position of i have to have this it must work you set yourself up for problems because you need to be relaxed, accelerated learning state not too intense.
Photoread4me

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Originally posted by conejo23:
I'm skeptical that I will learn tools I will find useful and worth the significant investment of time and money.

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That's what you spend the weekend learning. Not only the what to do and how to do it. You actually have to do it during the class.

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I’m skeptical I will learn skills I will use on a daily basis.

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You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

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I’m skeptical that one can essentially flip through a book as fast as one can smoothly turn a page and assimilate and recall enough information to make this process worthwhile.

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You will be taught how to flip the pages, how to look at the book as you flip the pages to allow you mind to do what it can do naturally. Yuo'll be taught how to bring the information to conscious awareness and method that will allow you to have better recall of the information you've made conscious than you get with tradtional reading. Can one do it? Yes. What's more many have done it.

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And I'm skeptical that I will have learned these skills and have them in place by the end of the 3 day seminar.

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That's why the seminar is 2.5 days not just one. we have to show you it can be done and slowly get you to let go of your security blanket of scepticism.

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I talked with one of the coaches for Photoreading. He said my expectation should be that at the LEAST I would reduce the time it takes me to assimilate and understand written material by two thirds, probably more. Does the prospect excite and interest me? Yes. Am I skeptical this can be done? Yes. Do I think the brain is possible of such a thing? Yes. All of the above.

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I've had people's jaws dropping when they realised how much information they obtained from a book in as little as 10 minutes. Or the amount of information they got from a 2 page A4 article in 2 minutes which they mind mapped. They mind mapped and talked about it afterwards. In one of my one-on-one classes I invited my student to glance at the article to pull out more informtion as she was talking. She spoke continuously for 3-minutes and could have kept going. I said do you realise you were activating while you were talking? You had to superread and dip to get information while still talking. You knew where to look. For her that was an insight.

She had the home study course and did it from beginning to end. Was more successful with the Seminar. I think she would have got it with another go or two with the home study course. It's just plain easier when you get to watch someone show you how to flip the pages. Have someone play with you at finding the blip page. Work with others while you play at activation and form mind probing questions.

Come Monday you know how to PhotoRead. How to apply it. And have the skills to get your reading done in 1/3rd the time and better. We cannot force you to do it. Any more than paying for a gym membership will guarantee you'll use it.

Alex

thanks Alex. I should’ve worded that one paragraph differently. I’m not skeptical about consistently using these skills should I find myself in possession of them. I’m somewhat skeptical about developing the skills themselves, ones that will be so valuable and natural to use that I will want to use them daily to replace my current method of information assimilation.

That’s what I meant. I’m pretty good about follow through once I am ‘sold’ on something.

For example, I posted a thread re paraliminals, trying to gather more ‘real-world’ experience from others regarding them before investing in the library. Now that I have the library, a day has not gone by where I haven’t listened to at least one, and I've recommended them to many people.

If photoreading is real and can make a meaningful impact on my daily life, then not only will I enthusiastically photo read regularly, I will have my staff go through the training as well and this would become our new paradigm of information assimilation.

And I appreciate the other poster asking if she’s being unrealistic. I agree her expectations sound unrealistic. Mine are pretty straightforward. Help me take some written material that would ‘normally’ take me (let’s use these numbers as an example) 10 hours to work through with 30% retention, and help me be able to process it in 2-3 hours with 50% or better retention.

If PR can do that, I'll be a very big fan.