Photo reading and speed reading – how to do them, and how to use them within a structure for learning!

I devour books. I am constantly reading. I am looking to absorb the information as quickly as possible. To do this I utilise photo reading and speed reading inside of a larger methodology for learning. Here is how I do it, and along the way, you’ll learn the ‘bare bones’ of photo reading and speed reading too.

Photo reading is very misunderstood. Photo reading does not give the detail yet instead gives the overall context. It will give you the ‘gist’ of a book. I will know where to turn to find the detail. I utilise this to absorb 700+ page detailed degree course texts in under an hour. I don’t get the detail; yet, I get a fantastic broad over-view and generalised information. 

Speed reading provides the detail. It enables you to absorb a great deal of information very quickly and in detail. I cannot understand why this is not taught in schools.

I can explain all the processes I am using here in fine neurological detail. I could talk about the neurological processes for memory storage and retrieval; give understanding as to how we take short term memory into long-term potentiation, and so on. Yet this is just a blog post - the idea here is to give you the ‘bare bones’ to get you up and running and taking in information more quickly than before.

I will start with the structure that I use to learn and absorb the information from a book. I will then go through the process of photo reading followed by the process for speed reading. This is the process that I use to devour degree level texts in very short periods of time, such as this highly recommended text:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Psychology-Science-Behaviour-Richard-Gross/dp/144410831X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369386770&sr=1-1&keywords=psychology+gross

Structure

1. Photo read the book;
2. Speed read marking specific areas for detail reading;
3. Detail read specific areas of interest underlining and annotating, making notes in the margins;
4. Speed read again identifying further areas for detail reading;
5. Detail read this further areas underlining and annotating once more;
6. Utilise my imagination, looking for as many applications as possible to put the knowledge into practice, or see where the knowledge is applicable;
7. Cross reference other areas of learning to understand where I may get serendipity.

 Photo read

1. Read the front and back covers;
2. Read the contents and acknowledgements;
3. Speed read the first and last paragraphs of every chapter;
4. Carry out ‘photo-reading’:
   
   - Defocus eyes (imagine looking at a point several inches beneath the book
   - Align your finger at the centre top of the page
   - Let your eyes (still defocussed) follow just above the tip of your finger as you run your finger down the page. Don’t try and read. Put your tongue on the roof of your mouth behind your teeth to turn off yourself talk. An A4 page should take no more than a couple of seconds.
   - Turn to next page and repeat until the book is complete
   - Carry out mind-mapping exercise from memory (Google ‘mind mapping’ for the process)
   - Carry out a light physical activity for at least 10 minutes

To store this information in your memory repeat this process for three times the first day, once the second day, then once every three days, then once the week after, then once the next month. To retain the information and maintain the quality repeat once every six months or so.

Speed Reading

Turn off sub vocalisation. (Do not ‘read’ the words in your mind.) Place your tongue firmly on the roof of your mouth just behind your teeth;

1. Align your finger under the first line, look at the word just above your finger, and sweep your finger quickly to the right, following the words just above your finger.  You are taking in the ‘image’ of the words and using the finger prevents ‘back-skipping’;
2. Repeat for the next lines all the way down the page and continue.

 (With practice you will learn to not need the tongue or the finger movement. Practice also increases speed. Make sure your practice is ‘deliberate’, ensuring that you get the process right!)

As I have explained, this is just a bare bones blog post. I hope you find it of interest. If you do, please read my other blog posts and let me know what you think! I regularly give workshops and talks on elements of performance, such as the information contained in this blog. I often work with businesses helping them deliver performance, or working with particular psychological approaches to their staff. Should you wish to talk about the services I can offer, and the benefits that I can give please get in touch!

As always with my blog posts, your feedback is appreciated!

This is me at Change Phenomena, the National Hypnotism Conference, explaining photo and speed reading to some of my friends. I also have a nice black eye as a result from heavy kickboxing sparring the day before! (Photo by Paul Friend)

Hypnotherapy, what treatments is it good for - what do the studies say?

On Saturday I attended Change Phenomena – the National Hypnotism Conference. Last year I was a speaker, this year I got to sit in the audience and learn. Some amazing speakers and I learnt some amazing things. The first speaker was my friend Adam Eason, who presented on ‘Evidence Based Practice’, putting forward a strong case for all hypnotherapists to work towards a science based model. I fully agree. 

As part of his brilliant presentation he put forward findings from Wark, David M. “What we can do with hypnosis: a brief note”, American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, July 2008. The ratings used those devised by Chamless and Hollon (1998). This was a systematic review of ‘proper’ peer reviewed scientific studies into the efficacy of hypnotherapy as various treatments. More studies are obviously required, yet, this puts forward a useful list of treatments with proven empirical effectiveness. 

Hypnotherapy as Empirically-Supported Treatments:

"Specific" empirically supported treatments:

• Anxiety and asthma attack
• Headaches and migraines

"Effective" empiracally supported treatments:

• Cancer pain
• Distress during surgery
• Surgery pain (adult)
• Surgery pain (child)
• Weight reduction

"Possible" empirically supported treatments

• Acute pain (adult)
• Acute pain (children)
• Anorexia
• Anxiety about public speaking
• Anxiety about taking a test
• Asthma
• Bed wetting
• Bulimia
• Chemotherapy distress
• Cystic fibrosis
• Depression
• Duodenal ulcer relapse
• Fibromyalgia
• Haemorrhage
• High blood pressure
• Hip and knee osteoarthritis pain
• Insomnia (primary)
• Irritable bowel syndrome
• Nausea and hyperemesis
• Obstetrics Apgar score
• Obstetrics pain
• Smoking cessation
• Trauma recovery
• Wart removal

 I hope you found this interesting – it presents some good scientific evidence as to the effectiveness and efficacy of hypnotherapy with particular treatments. 

Also speaking at Change Phenomena was Steve Murray. Steve is a Consultant Cardiologist and utilises hypnotherapy in his work with his clients. An important quote from Steve was “My dream – hypnotherapists attached to every cardiology unit.” When medical practitioners speak in this way you know that hypnosis has its place in helping people to become better. 

As thanks to Adam for his presentation, and also providing us with the list of references to support each of the treatments above, please take a look at his latest book Hypnosis for Running. I was lucky enough to write the foreword, and find the contents of the book invaluable in my day to day running. Please take a look!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hypnosis-Running-Training-Maximise-Performance/dp/0957566700/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369048151&sr=1-3&keywords=adam+eason

What is hypnosis?

‘Hypnosis’ is very much misunderstood, even by many hypnotists and hypnotherapists. There are many myths that persist. This blog post addresses a difficult question to answer – what is hypnosis?

Hypnosis is not trance, is not sleep, it doesn’t need eyes closed, nor is it relaxation of either mind or body. Hypnosis can occur with each of these yet is not dependent on any. There is no definite state of hypnosis that can be shown neurologically. Basically, neurologically hypnosis is not a ‘state’. Hypnosis is not about different ‘brain wave’ states such as ‘alpha’ brain wave patterns.

So what is ‘hypnosis’? It defines a process and a result. I recently quizzed many of my leading peers in what they consider to be their definition of hypnosis. The definitions were discussed, dismissed, added to and evolved.

There is a very simple definition of hypnosis that can be written in very simple form, and should suffice for most people:

 “Hypnosis is when your imagination is guided so that it becomes your reality.”

If you are looking at getting a little deeper, I love this all-encompassing definition of hypnosis from the brilliant hypnotist Anthony Jacquin. I follow the definition with my further definitions (my breakdown, not Anthony's) of the component parts, for better understanding and clarity.

"Hypnosis is a social construct that causes the cognitive processes of automatic imagination. Hypnotic responses are defined by their subjective sensation of automaticity or involuntariness, because they lack the knowledge or feeling of intention."

“Social construct” – two or more people interact (or for self-hypnosis two or more parts of our personality) to construct hypnosis both as process and product.

“Cognitive processes” – the brain functions with cognitive processes, we ‘think’. (Note – all thinking is guided by the unconscious with ‘consciousness’ being a commentary on these unconscious processes’)

“Automatic” – autonomic, it happens apparently ‘outside of our control’. This is however a bit of a paradox as technically all of our conscious thoughts and actions are actually unconsciously driven before we rationalise them as them consciousness

“Imagination” – our unconscious is our imagination, we perceive our version of reality, all of our internal representations are imagined, etc.

“Automatic imagination” – the imagination is guided automatically at the suggestion of another – the other person (or personality) – automatically becoming their ‘reality’ with a disconnection between conscious control and unconscious actions.

“Hypnotic responses” – phenomena, sensory perception changes and thought pattern changes. Incidentally we can have the ability to produce every phenomena ourselves without hypnosis, the phenomena exist in daily life, yet here they happen at the suggestion of the hypnotist

“Subjective sensation of automaticity/involuntariness” – the subject believes it happens out of their control; it just appears to ‘happen’ to them, either as normal or extra-normal, yet still something that they can’t control

“Lack the knowledge or feeling of intention” – the subject is not able to access the knowledge as to what they are creating inside their mind nor the intention of meaning to do so.

I would love for people to pick apart all of this blog, ask questions, explain why elements may be wrong – I want this definition to evolve. Please contribute, and feel free to contact me at gary@garyturner.co.uk should you have any questions or points you’d wish to discuss.

Developments in Eye Movement Interventions for Therapists

This blog post will be of interest to the hypnotists, therapists, psychologists, and NLPers amongst us. I love to develop and test, explore and learn, especially in respect to interventions that I utilise. This blog post will share some of my discoveries and learning in respect to using eye movement interventions. This post is not to be read for writing skills – instead for the ideas contained within!

Lazy 8’s to recover memories

Most of you will have heard of the “Lazy 8’s”? This is an eye movement pattern, the source of which I believe comes from Steve Andreas and developed in Eye Movement Integration (EMI), EMIplus, and Integrated Eye Movement Therapy. If you are a therapist and would like to know an amazing set of tools and methodologies then I really urge you in getting appropriate training in one (or all!) of these.

I utilise eye movement works as my ‘intervention of choice’ commonly when working with trauma and PTSD. The British Army psychologists and psychiatrists use the more archaic Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) with PTSD, which has been the subject of numerous clinical trials that clearly identifying its efficiency.

(Note: The Army also utilises Cognitive Behavioural Therapy with PTSD. Source: Officer in charge of the Army Medical Corps.)

I first saw the lazy 8’s in use by Andrew Austin on one of his IEMT Practitioner trainings. He utilises the technique as part of a highly efficient identity updating process.

I then saw Nigel Hetherington on one of his YouTube videos. He was utilising lazy 8’s to gain a resource state with his subject. He moves his finger in the wide figure of 8, and his client follows the movement with his eyes, with his eyes moving right to their peripheries. Whilst the fingers moved, the subject was invited to think of times when he was happy, laughing, in a state of joy, and as the process continued more and more memories pop into the subject’s mind and his body reacts in kind. In a very short space of time the subject is bubbling with happiness!

I practiced and now utilise the same quite often with my fight clients to get them ‘up’ for training. Any resource state can be produced using this method.

I also spent time wondering how it works. What follows is the best I have come up with – so far. Hopefully the readers of this blog will be able to contribute more to this.

As a student of cognitive linguistics I full understand that the words we use have a deeper structure beneath. As we speak, hear, or read the words meaning is attached to the sound or the squiggle on the page. We have learned this meaning through our life’s experience.

In the process above the words “happy”, “laughing” and “joy” were all used to refer to experiences of the subject. So each time the words were spoken to him, his mind would search for the reference experiences that match. As the thoughts popped into his head and the emotions attached flashed into his limbic system, his body starts to respond to the feelings. The more memories that flash up the stronger the feeling grows.

Then there is the eye movement itself. There is the classic rule of neurology – what fires together wires together. When we have an experience the eyes are moving around during that experience – and therefore get ‘coded in’ with the memory. So as we’re moving the eyes, whilst holding the thoughts of finding ‘happy’, ‘laughing’ and ‘joy’ the eye movements help us to connect to appropriate memories. The stronger the emotions the more relevance the eye movements have in finding the reference experiences, they start coming thick and fast, and the feeling begins to really intensify.

In short the eye movements help us to trigger memories relating to the context we hold in mind.

 I was recently working with a 16 year old helping her with her studies, installing new strategies to help her learn and retain information more quickly, speed reading, amongst much more. I was using the principles of cognitive interviewing to help her remember first the structure, and then the detail of a previous lesson.

(Of course, any memory is only a construct and recalls also relies on that memory being there in the first place! You can’t call something up that hasn’t been laid down.)

Teaching her the strategy of cognitive interviewing to access the memory together with association to provide recall was quite quick. Yet suddenly an idea popped into my head – what would happen if we used the Lazy 8’s?

We quickly got the order of the lesson, and wrote the order in single words chronologically. I then started the lazy 8’s, started to slowly say the words in order, and the memories started coming thick and fast! After about 45 seconds the lesson memory was in detail, and my client reported that the images and memories were sharp. Yes, there were still gaps, yet this is most likely to be an attention element – the memory has to be laid down in the first place in order for it to be recalled. The details were there, she had a big smile on her face as she could remember all the detail.

I’m now starting to wonder where we can use lazy 8’s in the future. The eye movement pattern helps us to access memories. Andy Austin demonstrates it nicely with his identity upgrading element to IEMT. Nigel Hetherington in building his resource states as part of EMIplus. I’ve suggested a further use here for recalling details. I wonder, what other applications can you think of, already know, or find? Would be great if you could give feedback!

Adding Focus to Eye Movements

Further to the above, EMI plus and IEMT work in a ‘flat’ plain. I’ve been adding depth, working to 9 points of a cube, which adds eye focus to the eye movements. I’m starting to notice patterns of calibration from doing this – including adding distance to the submodalities of the client’s experience.

I’ve spoken of this with Nigel Hetherington too, and he is also starting to experiment with this of his own accord. I feel it is worth putting out there to those who utilise eye movement work with their clients to see what you notice, what calibrations, what effects. Please report back, and share your discoveries!

Mixing Eye Movements With Somatic Therapies

Further still, I have been mixing somatic approaches at the same time as the eye movement work. Using my adapted version of Ruden’s Havening process I have been obliterating severe emotion from traumatic events far quicker. Again, I’m putting this out to get therapists thinking, and also to get feedback – let me know again what you notice, what calibrations, what effects. Please give feedback!