What is it important - why should you care about how you pay Attention?

When you choose to cause yourself to zero-in on one idea and eliminate the distractions around you, you are exercising your volition - will and mind. The key element of thinking is paying Attention.

There are a dozen different ways to pay attention. You are going to learn two (2) of them. We care because learning and memory start with training your attention skills. Yes, the dozen are brain strategies and each has its own neural pathway.

Seeing

You have three ways to see: foveally (sharp but very narrow); macula (wider for reading); peripherally (widest). To triple your reading speed and double your memory we teach adults and kids how to adapt their peripheral (side) vision for reading. It is not natural and certainly not taught in school but it offers you the competitive-edge and a position in the fast-lane in school and your career.

Peripheral Vision

The weird part of peripheral vision (36 letters wide) is that it helps eliminate Subvocalization (self-talk), which slows your reading to a snail while it deletes chronic stress.

What a deal - you 3x your reading speed and 2x your memory, destroy your wandering mind and its stream-of-consciousness, and wipe out the stress of headaches and anxiety when you discover how to activate your peripheral vision. It covers 180 degrees horizontally and 130 degrees vertically.

Profound Statement: peripheral vision is not just lateral-left and lateral-right (sides) 180 degrees, but above and below your direct point of focus up to 130 degrees.

Yes, it matters because with each eye-fixation-pause using your peripheral vision - you read groups-of-words (up to an entire sentence) instead of just one-word, standard for your peers. It absolutely gives you the competitive-edge for exams and career promotions because you are plain smarter and have more knowledge than others.

Key Facts

Peripheral vision consists of the Rods (photoreceptors) transferring to your brain for imaging (seeing) and assembled by your Optic Nerve. The macula (snailing-reading) not speed reading uses its own photoreceptors - Cones. Rods create right-brain neural pathways (pattern recognition), while Cones create left-brain neural pathways of data (facts) assembling and analysis. Creativity and imagination including intuition are creatures of our right-brain and their use of our retinal Rods.

Sensory Skills produce Mental Abilities

This is going to be easy - our three major senses are Seeing (S), Hearing (H) and Touching (T). Run them together with our strategies and you become a genius because your peers only use one of them at a time for information-processing.

Get this: two major Attention-States are External (outside of you) and Internal (Inside of you). Easy, right? Our two major focal systems are Narrow and Wide. The secret is: homo sapiens use Narrow (N) focusing 98% of the time and it causes Chronic Stress.

Narrow Focusing

When you read a paper-book, surf the net on your computer, watch TV, play video- games, and see a theatrical movie - you use Narrow (stress causing) focusing. When you speak and listen to others you look them in the eye and use a Narrow Focus.

Prolonged use of your computer causes Dry-Eye, squinting, headaches and mental chronic stress. Think of your average day and the 16 hours of Beta (cycles per second) brainwave rhythm. They are 98% in Narrow Focus.

Wide Focusing

Consciously switching your focus to a Wide seeing for just two-minutes a day changes how you think, feel and behave in your relationships, learning and the function of your long-term memory. It improves your life in school by helping to raise your grades and test scores up to 48%, and add to your personal productivity at work by up to 38%.

Add to this, Wide Seeing links to your Parasympathetic Nervous System (acetylcholine) and moves your brain from Beta to Alpha cycles per second brainwave rhythm. You act better because you are relaxed and motivated.

In Alpha you learn faster and put information into long-term memory. Know what? You improve the physical performance of your immune systems, organs, glands and neuropeptides. You improve your mental skills through a firewall, and your body by relaxing and helping your heart, pulmonary system and blood circulation.

Exercise #1

S-I-W stands for Seeing-Internal-Wide. Please sit down, hands on your knees, relax, and close your eyes. Take a deep (diaphragmatic) breath and as you slowly exhale create an image on the movie screen of your mind.

Mentally picture the ocean at the beach. See this scene through your Inner-Eye and feel the beauty of the sunshine overhead, the roar of the ocean and the fun of being with people your enjoy.

You job is to make this image as Wide as the horizon. See through the Edges of your eyes (lateral left and lateral right); engage your 180 degree horizontal vision. Simulaneously see above-and-below (130 degrees vertically) as well as side-to-side.

Now open your eyes and take a deep breath and as you slowly exhale, see this Beach Scene again as widely as possible. Feel the sun and wide, smile at being with your family and friends. Focus your mental imagery extreme-left and extreme-right, above (sky) and below (sand).

Do it a second-time. Deep breath, exhale and see and feel your relaxing Beach Scene as widely as possible.

Do it a third-time. The entire exercise takes only two-minutes and improves your mind and body for a minimum of four-hours.

Exercise #2

S-E-W stands for Seeing-External-Wide.

Close your eyes, get comfortable, take a deep breath and slowly exhale. See in your minds-eye the office or classroom you are sitting in now. See it from ceiling to floor, from side to side, and everything within it.

Wait - here is the secret of success: without moving your eyes or focal-point. Yes, with your eyes closed. Now open your eyes and take a deep breath and slowly exhale; maintain a steady stare ahead and keep your eyes fixed in front. See Wide (horizontally and vertically) without moving your eyes or focus.

Do it a second-time. Deep-breath, feel the scene externally (on your skin), and see widely, without any eye-movements. You see through the Edges (corners) of your eyes, not centering - while going-wide.

Do it a third-time exactly the same way - breath - and see above and below, and side-to-side. This exercise require two-minutes and can lead to massive positive reactions to your information processing and sensory skills.

Endwords

Two-minutes daily of either of these two exercises will improve your mental-skills for learning and memory up to 38-48%. Go for it and discover your latent talents and gifts.

See ya, copyright © 2007 hbw@speedlearning.org www.speedlearning.org