Of the many people that seem to frequent this forum, few appear to have mastered the system. Photoreading has been around for over 15 years, and there are reportedly thousands of satified customers, some of whom are talked about in the book and on this web page, so why are there not more than a handful of people who tell of using photoreading for everything they go through, and have complete confidence that it is effective? I know that this is terrribly critical, but it is an observation that has been on the back of my mind for awhile. Pete, can you, or anyone else for that matter, clear this up for me? I'd appreciate it.

Tim,

It's interesting how relative it all is. I thought the book was filled w/ success stories. Then when i checked out this DF, i was amazed at how many people commented on PhRing.

Cutting edge stuff takes approximately 20 years to make it to the general public. This means that PhRing has another 5 yrs. to go. I was really surprised to see how many more copies of the book are now in print. Really, it's a huge success by any standard.

This past weekend, i showed a 10 year old child w/ very low self esteem, who really can't read at near grade level AND who goes to a $14,000 yr. private school....how to mind map. It was wonderful & heartening to see a flicker of life come into those beautiful eyes. She said: Gee, i never knew there was so much to me!

I also showed her how i PhR. I explained to her that just b/c she can't read the way the school expects, does NOT mean she's not intelligent. So, Tim, just think about schools, private schools, who charge $14,000 a yr. for elementary school children that are totally unaware of accelerated learning techniques. If even private schools are not using accelerated learning techniques, how can we expect public schools to do so?

All i know is that i am spreading the word & so are others. I hope to start teaching accelerated learning workshops to elementary teachers soon.

Check out the progress of PhRing in another 5 yrs. & you'll be amazed. But, remember it's 20 yrs. for cutting edge stuff.

I forgot:

I certainly will not be attempting to teach PhRing. But, you can be sure, i will encourage teachers to learn PhRing for themselves. I will have my home study course out on a table for them to see: 1) How professional it is put together; & 2) How some of the techniques are easily teachable to their students.

Just taking the home study course for teachers is an eye-opener & very stimulating. I know i was very stimulated & i'm sure i'm just a normal teacher who knows an excellent educational tool when they see one.

How many of the people who have taken the course actually take the time to check the Learning Strategies website and find the Discussion Forum? Of those, how many actually decide to participate rather than just lurk? I bet there are a lot more people out there who feel comfortable calling or writing LS than those comfortable surfing the net.

Margret, besides a sum of 3 years spread throughout my formative years, I was taught in private international schools from Hong Kong, to Japan, to only recently, Brazil. They were(are) all top-notch school, some more than $14k, but you are right, never was I taught in any intellegent manner the processes of accelerative learning. Some teachers made attempts, but either did not have the confidence themselves, or did not think we(or the administration) could handle what they had to offer.

But I was taught the ability to find my own answers, and that is how I came upon the magic of accelerative learning. Like so much of the knowledge I have gathered over the past few years, I still have yet to apply all of the techniques that I know would make school, and life a whole lot easier.

mgrego, good point. So many people are either computer-illiterate or afraid to post on this forum. I'm sure that for every person that posts here, there are half a dozen that read but do not respond.

Enjoy all.

DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT IS CORRECT?!

WHY WOULD ANYONE BE *AFRAID* TO POST?

quote:

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Originally posted by Tim_with_a_T:
[mgrego, good point. So many people are either computer-illiterate or afraid to post on this forum. I'm sure that for every person that posts here, there are half a dozen that read but do not respond.

Enjoy all.[/B]

---

Tim_with_a_T,

Thanks for bringing this up. I had been thinking the same. Couldn't it just be that those who truly master PR simply don't care to see this DF to share their experience? Would you go to a DF where toddlers discuss how to learn to walk or jump on one leg and tell them how you do it?

Having said that I do share your doubts. For one thing PRing is marketed so that expectations are high. And I bet most of us thought we would buy the book and bingo. And it doesn't happen, the jackpot wasn't ours after putting the PR book under our pillow for one night. What a surprise!

I guess your question on how many satisfied customers there are can't be answered. There is no definition for a satisfied customer. I haven't mastered PR yet like Pete. Yet starting PR has helped me going through books faster and it opened a whole new world what with all the connections to NLP, self-mastery, meditation...So, I consider myself a satisfied customer.

"so why are there not more than a handful of people who tell of using photoreading for everything they go through, and have complete confidence that it is effective?" - because some give up, some don't care to tell, some don't care to change themselves enough to bring their PR to mastery.

I don't quite agree that the number of books sold simply indicates the success of the contents of the book. I imagine many buy the book because the claims evoke expectations of a speedy success with PR (I did), when it doesn't happen the book is discarded. But it's sold anyway.

I currently teach at a private technical college and got interested in photoreading after hearing success stories at our school.

One instructor improved his computer networking knowledge through photoreading and another person's daughter with vision problems has increased her reading to grade level. In another case, a student who practices photoreading and meditation improved from being an average student to being a very good one and even got a better grade on a standardized exam than the instuctor he studied with.

There are success stories out there. Ever week we have meetings at our college to share photoreading techniques. It really helps to hear ideas from other people.

margaret, yes, I do believe people are "afraid" to post. I find it very pausible that someone would read through a few of these discussions, see a lot of jargon and ideas that they do not understand, and very literally be afraid to share their ideas for fear they will look dumb. Obviously, we know they would not look "dumb," but people have social phobias that boarder on the insane, myself among them.

Happyday, I agree with you perfectly. The novel, "Flowers for Algernon" comes to mind.

When one moves on to a higher plane, others are often left to find the way themselves. Luckily for us, we have giving individuals like Pete to help guide us along our path.

Here is a thought, wont the people who have a problem posting, photoread a couple of books on self confidence then see what happens.

So, Bridget, what can you tell us about your own personal achievements with photoreading? Any helpful suggestions you can give to those struggling learners out there? (me, for one )

Thanks!

Hello Tim,

you wanted some success stories? Well, here's mine. Probably not the kind you were looking for, but success nevertheless.

Prologue: After reading the PR-book, I took the PR-course (with evidence of success) and afterwards fiddled for some time with PR - without success. So I dropped the whole thing.
One and a half year later, I broke my left arm. It was so disturbing, I couldn't get much sleep and for this, I even fell asleep during courses. After this, I forgot about going to the courses, concentrating on getting healthy again.

Main Story:
That year, I had to take a test in computer science and programming, covering the material of three different courses. On one of the subjects, I never went to the course. On one other, I had a little previous knowledge through my professional training.
At the beginning of my learning session,it was Thursday. On Tuesday the next week, the I had to write the test. I did, I passed. I even was better than some of the students who went to every course!
Total study time: 20 hours, spread over four days.

What did I do? On Thursday, I collected some sheets with questions of previous tests on the topics and went through the university library, taking home aobut a dozen books.
On Friday, I read the questions, previewed the books and photoread them. [One of the topics, software engeneering, was and remained total alien to me at this time.]
At Saturday, I invested some hours activating the books on programming in C, mindmapping the language, its concepts and its syntax. For the last questions remaining, I visited a friend who was an is heavily into programming.
On Sunday, I had something other to do and just briefly reviewed the questions, answering some of them.
On Monday afternoon, I activated and learned the topic I was already basically familiar with, something about hardware.
For some reason, this took a lot of time and I was already thinking about cancelling the test the next day - one topic was still missing. But I picked up the first book on software engeneering and, surprise!, the concepts in the book made sense to me! I was totally exited, and during the next four hours I went straight trough all the books and questions on this topic.
Then I got some hours of sleep and went to take this test. At first, I thought I knew nothing - but after playing(!) a little with the questions asked and simply taking brief notes of what little I knew at first, nearly everything came back to me.

So, why did PR suddenly work? In my opinion, I had for the first time a real desire, a real need to use PR. I had a *GOAL*. And since it was a hopeless case anyway, I did not pressure myself very much - I just did it.

Well, this got rather lengthy, but I hope this is the kind of story you wanted to read.

Have fun,

Jens

Hi Jen,

After reading your post I thought about some of my exams last year, in particular the last of my microsoft exam. It was the IIS4 exam. I was very worried about this exam as I had been using the PR to prepare but as the exam approached I still did not feel confident that I knew all I should know for the exam I had PR a couple of text books and a bunch of brain dumps. I passed the exam and thank God as I didn't know how I passed. May be PR worked without me giving it credit?
My idea of success in PR is to have some familiarity of the information when I do the super reading but there is little. I can say that some material I grasp it easier, but there is no dejavu.

Just for the record I bought the home study course in June 2K, started and stopped in July 2K because I needed results alot faster. Started again in Sept 2K after seeing what others posted in this forum.

regards

Will Ho

I purchased the PR self-study pack, after hearing one advertizment on the radio. I think this was rather a foolish thing to do, but I a desperate. I am 28 and would like to graduate before 30, I have been in anout tof school since 94. I am an Eng. major. I love to read, but I am a very slow reader and am overly concerned with the smallest details of every piece of lit. I read. This slows me down and I burn out quikly. I am hopeing PR will help me. I have started to listen to the tapes and read the book. So, far I have noticed a slight improvment in my reading skill, but no sucsess story yet.
Is there anyone else out there who is a slow learner borderline LD, as I beleive I am, who is experimenting with PR?

P.S. I am having difficulty acheiving the "eye-mind" contact and broadening my field of vision. Any suggestions, is there something I am not doing right?

Thomas,
I'm sure Pete will offer up some sound advice.

But, i'd like you to go to: www.braingym.com

Please purchase Brain Gym for children & Brain Gym for teachers. You need to do some repatterning. I am almost 100% sure if you do the very simple exercises, you'll notice real improvement. Paul mentions cross crawling in PhRing, but there's alot more. They have an 800 number & will send you the books right away. In fact i just ordered 2 more books from them today. I promise you that you will not be disappointed in these 2 books. Your brain will be soooo happy

Please make it a point to notice all the other things that are mentioned in the PhRing course. Please learn how to mindmap. This is also mentioned in the PhRing course, but you have to discipline yourself to learn it. It is a fantastic technique.........i mean FANTASTIC. Buy Tony Buzan's Use Both Sides of Your Brain & Make the Most of Your Mind. If you can, buy or study his MindMap Book.

So much valuable info is presented in the PhRing Home Study Course in addition to PhRing. Everyone wants to just read like the wind, like Pete.....but it takes practice. At the same time there's lots of valuable techniques you can be doing simultaneous w/ your practice & learning of PhRing.

You are in college & you like literature---This means you are intelligent. There is a lot of help out there for you. Just keep yourself motivated till you start to enjoy some successes. Just keep in mind that it will eventually snowball for you.

Look at a picture on the wall.

Now look at the whole wall.

Just keep going back & forth between looking at something specific & then looking at everything at the same time.

Dana told me to look at a leaf on a tree & then just look at the whole tree. A soft gaze sees the whole field of vision w/o focusing on 1 particular thing. Take slow deep breaths & relax your shoulders at the same time.

quote:

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Originally posted by thomas:
P.S. I am having difficulty acheiving the "eye-mind" contact and broadening my field of vision. Any suggestions, is there something I am not doing right?

---

To open my field of vision, I would practice a soft focus while driving. I would try to see both side view mirrors while looking straight ahead. Couldn't do it, but my peripheral vision opened up dramatically with the practice.

quote:

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Originally posted by mgrego2:
To open my field of vision, I would practice a soft focus while driving. I would try to see both side view mirrors while looking straight ahead. Couldn't do it, but my peripheral vision opened up dramatically with the practice.

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By practicing and teaching the art of Aikido
a soft focus is necessary to take in your entire opponent especially during multiple attack training in the dojo when there is the possibility of being attacked by 4 or more students simultaneously. I find that a soft focus is quite natural to me seeing that I am in a constant soft focus throughout my waking hours. I even notice that while driving down the interstate while looking further down the road, I'm able to see down the road plus traffic in both side mirrors and rear view mirror at the same time.

Hmmm interesting discussion here.......As for me for some reason, my reading is getting worst and worst. I imagin its because the level of difficulty/technicality of the texts the Engineering curriculum im currently enrolled in is rasing too fast for me to hold my grounds.

As a conventional reader, i can read leisure materials quite quickly compared to other of my friends.

My biggest problem is with comprehension/retention. When reading the HC11 microprocessor manual last night, i found that i have to slow down to an absolute snail pace to comprehend and retent the things i've read. Even at the snail pace, i find myself having to read it over and over again to really make it sink in.

The learning curve is immensely steep. If this photoreading system could offer me the slightest bit of reliefe, i truely think it would be worth spending sometime to master.

[This message has been edited by Elmo9 (edited January 16, 2001).]

By the way, what would be total mastery?

Would it be a state where you can activate the meterial as you photoread?

Tim,

You asked for some personal examples...and mine have only been small but I'm still encouraged. When I was first reading the PR book, I followed the recommended steps and after a few times through, I photoread it. Then I proceeded to read it in a normal way. When I got to page 86, they talked about setting the stage for reading by relaxing your mind, etc. At that point, I stopped to think - why hadn't they mentioned using relaxing music. So I looked up music in the index and found that they talked about it on page 87. My mind must have known that, even though I was not consciously aware of it.

Another example was a puzzle I had been working on for several months. It's a puzzle of nine square cards with pictures of cats on them that you have to match up. I tried to write a computer program to solve this puzzle, but since there are over a billion possibilities and I don't have a supercomputer, I figured the program would have taken several months to run. One day I got totally frustrated with the whole thing and shuffled the cards and jokingly asked the universe to help me. Then I laid down the cards, made one or two adjustments, and guess what? The puzzle was solved!! I was amazed. I think my subconscious brain had been working on the puzzle all along.

Ok, I still have a lot of work to do...I don't even come close with the dictionary game which I do about once a week. But I have gone through more books and magazines and been more relaxed about all the reading I have to do lately. When I'm reading a book the normal way, my eyes just naturally go into photofocus and sometimes I have to concentrate to keep them focused normally.

And I find that just photoreading a book relaxes me, so it's something that I really enjoy. I haven't quite figured that one out yet. I figure if this really does work, it's going to be great (!) so I've got to keep on trying.

Well, even though the photoreading course did not go as I expected (I found myself not doing the course, and it took me a few weeks to complete it!), I have had some success even though I haven't, I feel, gotten to that 'conscious competence' stage of Photoreading.

Otherwise, I have had some great success. Before an english exam, I photoread all the required text books (several times) and did a bit of scanning and dipping and mind mapping. This was a particularly difficult test since you needed to apply a literary theory to a book that we had previously studied. Anyway, on the phone to my friend the night before, many, many ideas started flowing into my mind -- so much so that on the day of the test I just wrote the things that I discussed (activated?). While I did not feel that anything that I wrote was good -- I thought after the test "oh no, I stuffed that up again...I didn't explain anything at all..etc." -- I received high marks (88% and 90%) for the two essays, which is equivalent to an A (and subsequently an A in the course).

There are other instances that I used for photoreading: I employed the syntopic reading strategy to many different types of essays; some dealing with philosophy, others english literature, and even a 'creative' one for sociology. I received A's for all of them, including a 100% for two of them. I even shocked myself with the good marks. I found that after photoreading some texts, I started writing in the same 'style' as the authors I had photoread. This only became more apparent as I re-read some of my essays AFTER I had handed them in (and each essay seems to betray a distinct style of its own).

This year, I am going to integrate PRing into my life. I bought the course last year, got a bit discouraged with the 'blip' page and activation, but decided to use it for the essays since it seemed the easiest way out. I'm glad I did, and just now wonder how much time and effort others need to put in to accomplish the same (or less) results. Also, remember that in the earlier part of the year, I was getting some B's, even a C in similar subjects. I had started using photoreading a little bit at the end of the first semester, but I don't think I got really working yet.

That's all. Back to those tapes.

Ken

My name is Jorge I´m from Mexico; I consider myself a beginner PRer, because I´ve been using the system just few months ago. The main reason for which decided to learn how to use the system, was to prepare my certification exams as a ENT doctor; so I bought the book, then the personal learning course; took the semminar in Mexico and finally took the semminar with Paul Scheele last november as I recall. I´ve been practicing almost every day, repracticing listening the course cassettes and paraliminals also (dream play, memory supercharger, personal genius, etc.) and I can tell you I had some success after the last semminar, but only with spontaneus activation with non technical books, but self enhancement or nonfiction books. From there on my success with activation declined dramatically. Because I decided to question my mind about my medical book that I already PRed and did activation and rapid reading, I chalenge my self with some self assesment test (entering the accelerated learning state; and PR the test before start answering) on the topics of my professional boards and I flunked; when I repeated the boards without any preparation of the PR whole mind system (but different topics) my grades improved a little, and the correct answers were those that I recall been reading with the old fashion way (consciously).
I´m sure that the system works and I´m probably doing something wrong (very), but I don´t know what; at this very moment I´m feeling some sort of frustration, because my test it´s only 2 weeks from today, and all the effort it seems to have been gone to the garbage; and I wonder if had been better to work with the system of PR for a less risky occasion, and to have prepared my exam in the traditional way at this moment I don´t have the answer it´s just that I´m little bit desperado.
I would appreciate any comments, by the way I already read the subject "work on all kind of material", went through the DF about activation and well so far not good.
Jorge

[This message has been edited by sixtos (edited January 17, 2001).]

Jorge - Have you activated material until it gelled, as discussed in the article?

Hi Jorge,

I received an eMail yesterday from some beginning PhotoReader, asking for some advice - he too has a pressing exam to take.
I know that you are not a total beginner, but perhaps this will help you to spark your own solution (I leave out the name of the asker):

Hi,

first: thanks for your trust in my opinion.
second: PhotoReading is easy. Out there's a technique called SQ3R (Survey - Question - Rewiew - Read - Recite) which resembles a lot the PR-System. This technique has quite a tradition, is conventional and even taught at universities. So, even if you have a PR-block, the other steps should work, perhaps with a little modification.

1. Take a book (or a chapter of a book), Preview/Survey it for Key-Words, special graphics, tables, headlines etc. Take some notes on this, perhaps in a list, perhaps in a MindMap.

2. Ask Questions to the book: Ask for definitions, connections, whys, wheres, whos - whatever you think is important about the material. A list of official questions can help, but let your curiosity guide you.

3. PhotoRead. With your questions at hand, you should have no problem to state a specific goal for your PR.

4. Review the book (the chapter). Look for answers to your questions. You can do this by MindProbing, SuperReading & Dipping, any combination of this or something completely new. Part One of Activation.

5. Read the book (chapter) again for answers to still open questions. You can additionally use RapidReading or normal reading. Part Two of Activation.

6. Recite the answers. Are they satifying? Do you feel competent to answer your questions? Any new questions?

Repeat as long as you need to answer your questions - the initial ones and the new ones. You can include the PR-Step in your repition if you like. If you are working chapter for chapter, you will need the PR-Step.
If you want to do this chapter by chapter, you could first do one sequence on the whole book to get an overall feeling for the material and its location.
You do not need to cling to the sequence of the chapters. Well, it's your time, your book, your mind. Choose any sequence of chapters that feels right for you.

Well, as you see, I just included the PR-Step in this time-honored technique, so it should work, even if PR itself doesn't. And the few additional minutes do not hurt. Stick to this sequence and stop wondering about the PR-System. Just work, stay alert and be active in your way to learn your stuff.

For me, it was important to take notes: make lists and tables, scribble some graphics, mindmap, record any ideas on tape. Whatever works best for me and the material. Well, I even take my dictaphone out for a walk and after some time try to give a spoken summary for a specific topic or pretending to hold a lecture on it. In this way, I can let my thoughts and memories flow, revealing any gaps in my knowledge.
With my notes, I tried to develop a structure of all this material, a structure which made sense to me, whether it was in the books or not.

One other thing I used once to stay motivated: I pretended, I was a student in the year 2225, preparing for a homework on information archaeology. As a SF-fan, this worked fine with me. It helped to take the immediate pressure out of the task.

Regards,

Jens


P.S.: Paul Scheele posted something on the discussion board about a learning schedule/rhtythm. But as far as I can remember it was stuff out of the PR-book or the course.

Yes; I always use the sleep period to incubate and sometimes I do activate the chapters about one week apart, some of the books I PRed almost 5 times. I still go for the PR system, it has to work.

Thak you very much Jens, I will do what you suggested step by step, really thank you very much.
I´ll let you know what happened

I just photoread for the first time. I am so excited. It was a lot of fun.

This has been an interesting thread of posts. It's taking a long time to load, so let's close it off. Feel free to continue it in a new topic.