Know How It Really Works? The secret of Speed Reading is linking together your eyes, brain and hand. What is so brilliant about that? First, you never use your hand in order to read. If your first-grade teacher saw you reading with your hand on the page, she would take away your gold-star, and today, rap you with her computer-mouse. Second, everyone from 3rd graders to PhDs use their ears to read. They mentally hear all the words they read (subvocalization), as if broadcasted by a sportscaster in their head. The use of your hand holding a RasterMaster, later a pen, and on the Internet, using your cursor, to underline the sentences you read, permits you to read three (3) words at-a-time instead of only one, and to activate your ability to read using your peripheral-vision. Why Bother? Would it give you the competitive-advantage and put your on the Fast-Track for success in school and promotions in your career, if you could read-and-remember three (3) books, articles and reports in the time your peers could hardly finish one? Getting started Major change is almost impossible for 95% of your associates; they consider it an attack on their ego and react defensively. There are only two reasons for us to change: a) Show me the advantages - logically and emotionally to make a change in how I do things. b) Show me the necessity to override my fear and hatred of change in my life. Do You Have to Know Where the Feet Grow From? If you are satisfied with knowing only the headlines, not the copy,the next eight bits of information are not for you. After almost forty years of experience in helping to transmit speed reading to executives and students - we have learned that meaning is everything. If you do not get it - understand why it works - you will not do the grunt work to master this life-enhancing skill. You may have to read this material not once, but three times because it is tough-to- comprehend. Your goal is to be able to explain it to a 12 year old in baby-talk. If you motivate yourself to succeed you will become an expert, and raise your self-esteem and IQ up to 25%. Are you up for the challenge? Your Eyes and Brain 1. Your retina transfers information in the form of ElectroMagnetic radiation (light), - as neural signals to the brain via the Optic Nerve - where the brain decodes the symbols on the page. 2. Rods and Cones (photoreceptors), located in the retina, convert chemical changes of visual pigment (light), into Electrical Impulses located in our nerve cells. These neural signals are transferred to the brain as visual images. 3. We see light with our eyes - we read with our brain. 4. Even though we have a 120 degree field-of-vision, ordinary reading uses only 5 degrees (six-letters wide). 5. We squeeze the words we read within the width of our Foveal Centralis, located in the retina, about 6 letters (one word), wide. This (Foveal-Vision), produces our sharpest, most acute focus. Foveal-Vision is dependent on the Cones (photoreceptors), in our retina. 6. The Rods (the second type of photoreceptors), in the retina allow us to use Peripheral Vision, widening our field-of-vision up to 36 letters - about six-words-wide instead only one. This is the core of speed reading. 7. Vestibulo Ocular Reflex (VOS) controls involuntary eye movements to focus the words on our retina. Fresh Pursuit Tracking (FPT), is a voluntary speed reading technique to focus our peripheral vision on accelerated reading. It is as easy as pie. The Secret, (a secret is something important unknown except by a few), is relaxing your neck muscles and permitting your head to move left-to- right while reading. This permits you to control rate of speed of the words appearing within your retina's Foveal Centralis using your Peripheral- Vision. 8. Ordinary reading - snailing - exclusively depends on our left-hemisphere and uses only our Foveal-Vision. Speed Reading uses both left-brain (linear), skills, and right-brain (pattern recognition), specializations - to permit Peripheral-Vision to enable our wider Eye-Pattern-Movements. Do not sweat it, you are brilliant, and doing it is really easy because you have a tool - RasterMaster, and simple-to-use strategies. Endwords Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. Viktor Frankl, M.D. To avoid criticism, failure and rejection - do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. Elbert Hubbard Success requires: Time-Discipline-Stamina - there aint no free lunch. Gene Seneci See ya, copyright 2006 H.Bernard Wechsler www.speedlearning.org hbw@speedlearning.org |
