PhotoReading Steps Review In Detail

1. Prepare: (30s)
Overall Aim: Laid the foundation for the system and to read with power

A. A clear sense of purpose

Aim: To make your body strong, alert and increase conscious-subconscious connection
 Place reading materials in front of you
 Relax by closing your eyes, aware yourself from head to toe, spine is erect, posture is
comfortable and breathing is relaxed
 What is my ultimate application of the material?
 How important is the material?
 What level of detail do I want?
 How much time am I willing to commit right now?

B. Enter the ideal state for reading

Aim: Increase comprehension, retention and recall / increase visual intake
 Use the tangerine technique to fix one unit of attention on a single point
 Hold an imaginary tangerine in your hand
 Experience its weight, colour, texture and smell
 Toss it into other hand and catch it
 Toss the tangerine back and forth between hands
 Catch it in your dominant hand and bring to top back part of your head
 Touch that area gently with your hand
 Imagine it resting there while you bring your arm down and relax your shoulders
 Close your eyes and let it balance on the back of your head
 With your eyes closed, imagine your visual field opening up
 Maintain the relax feeling of alertness as you open your eyes and begin reading at
a rate comfortable for you
OR
 Snap your fingers behind your head
OR
 Imagine a bird sitting on top of your head
OR
 Imagine standing outside of your body and looking over the top of your head
 2. Preview (2 min)
Overall aim:
Familiarize your brain with patterns and to accelerate understanding; to eliminate
redundant and unnecessary reading

A. Look over the material

Aim: get a general idea and structure
 Look through the table of contents
 Quickly scan titles, subtitles, bold type, first and last paragraphs
 Grasp the structure or organization of the book
 Categorize the material into reading type

B. Appraise the value of your purpose

Aim: Use time more efficiently
 Is the material right for your purpose?
 Is it sufficient to meet your needs?

C. Determine to go or not go further

Aim: To find the most important parts you need to know
 Rethink your purpose. Does it need to be modified?

3. PhotoReading (1 page per second / 1 page per 2 seconds)

Overall aim: Process information at a preconscious level and to mentally photograph
pages

A. Prepare to PhotoRead
Aim: to get into state
 Can you spare few minutes to PhotoRead the material in front of you?
 Why do you want to take the time? State the purpose again.
 Be in open posture, comfortable, upright and relaxed
B. Enter the resource level of mind
Aim: Experience a more receptive brain state to access expanded capabilities
 Make yourself comfortable. Lie down at first and sit back comfortable in a chair in
later times.
 Take in a deep breath. Exhale and close your eyes.
 Experience full physical relaxation
 Breath deeply, hold it for a moment
 As you exhale slowly, think of no. ‘3’ and mentally repeat ‘Relax’.
 It’s your physical relaxation and progressively relax the major muscle groups from
head to toe
 Imagine a wave of relaxation flowing throughout the entire body and let each
muscle melt till it’s pleasantly relaxed from tension

 Now, calm your mind. Breath deeply, hold it for a moment

 As you exhale slowly, think of no. ‘2’ and mentally repeat ‘Relax’.
 It’s your mental relaxation and let go of thoughts about past or future, focus on
present
 Let tensions, anxieties or problems float away as you breathe out
 Let peace and tranquility flow into every part as your breathe in

 Take in another deep breath, hold it for a moment and slowly exhale
 Mentally hear the sound of no. ‘1’ and picture a beautiful flower in your mind’s eye
 Imagine yourself in a beautiful, quiet place, aware of te soothing sights, sounds
and feelings you experience. Rest comfortably there for a few moments

 Maintain this state of physical and mental relaxation

C. Affirm your concentration, impact and purpose

Aim: To speed up and support the learning process
 ‘As I PhotoRead, my concentration is absolute.’
 ‘All that I PhotoRead makes a lasting impression on my inner mind and is available to
me’
 ‘I desire the information in this book, (say the book title), to accomplish (restate your
purpose).
 The purpose must be ACHIEVABLE. A poor one is ‘I want to have photographic recall
of everything I PhotoRead.’ A good one is ‘I desire to fully absorb this material and to
speed my application of these techniques and concepts in my life’
D. Enter the PhotoFocus state
Aim: To notice the entire page at once and to modify the method of using the eye
 Let’s play with ‘cocktail weenie effect’
 Find a spot on the wall to look at
 While continuing to look at the spot, hold your hands about 18 inches in front of your
eyes and bring the tips of your index fingers together
 As you gaze at the spot just above the top of your index fingers, notice in your visual
field what’s happening to your index fingers
 Keep your eyes relaxed and don’t worry about bringing anything into sharp focus
 You may notice a ghost image that looks like a 3rd finger

 Fix your gaze on a point comfortably beyond the top of the book
 Notice 4 edges of the book and the white space between the paragraphs while gazing
just over the top of the book at your spot on the wall
 As your eyes are diverging, you’ll see a doubling of the crease between the left-hand
and right-hand pages
 Notice a little rounded strip of a phantom page between -> blip page
 See if you can move your gaze down from over the top of the book. Can you still notice
the ‘blip page’?

E. Maintain a steady state while flipping pages

Aim: To maintain overall effectiveness
 If tempted to bring the printed page into hard focus again, place the imaginary
tangerine on the back of your head and notice the blip page again
 Keep your breathing deep and even
 Chant to the rhythm of the turning pages to occupy your conscious mind
 Remain in an open posture with feet rested on the floor and legs uncrossed
 Keep breathing deep and even
 Turn pages in a steady rhythm, 1 page every second or two. See every 2-page
spread with ‘soft eyes’
 If you can’t notice the blip page, notice the 4 corners of book, white space on the
pages and an imaginary ‘X’ connecting the 4 corners
 Chant to your rhythm of your turning pages, take 1 flip for each syllable of the
following chant as you mentally repeat:
 ‘Re-lax… Re-lax… 4-3-2-1… Re-lax…Re-lax… Keep the state…See the page…’
 Let the missing pages go as you can always come back to them again
 Continue the chant to the rhythm and let your conscious mind following the words
of chant
 Let go of distracting thoughts by bringing your conscious mind gently back to the
activity at hand
 F. Close the process with a sense of mastery
Aim: To get ready enough for activation
Close the session by making the following affirmations
 ‘I acknowledge the feelings I’ve received from this book, and…’
 ‘I release this information for my body and mind to process.’
 ‘I am curious as to how many ways my mind and body can demonstrate that this
information is available to me’
Imagine a bridge between your conscious and inner mind. Let go and relax even more

4. Postview
Overall aim: To build meaningful categories, recognize patterns and locate core
concepts
A. Survey the material
Aim: To explore the structure in greater depth
 Look at
 Text on front and back covers
 Copyright date
 Index
 1st and last pages of a book or 1st and last paragraphs in shorter documents
 Text printed in bold or italic type including headings and subheadings
 Boxes, figures, charts or graphics
 Previews, summaries or reviews
 If timeliness is an issue, review cover text and copyright dates

B. Find trigger words (2 min)

Aim: To get ready enough for activation and to increase long-term retention; to develop
curiosity
 Trigger words are keywords with high visibility, repeatedly used terms central to
the book
 Glance down the text of a page every 20 pages or so as you flip through the book
and notice what words catch your attention OR look for words followed by the most
apge numbers in a index
 Write a list of 20 to 25 trigger words for books and make a mental note of 5 to
10 trigger words for an article

C. Formulate questions
Aim: To increase commitment to reading and energize the whole mind for achievements
 Write any questions down related to the trigger words
 Don’t read for answers yet, notice your urge to focus on the particulars instead, and
let the urge go
  Hold back from diving into details to strengthen your motivation

5. Activate
Overall aim:
To restimulate new neural connections and bring information into conscious awareness;
to find text relevant to purpose

Types of activation:
Manual: Use the actual text as a re-stimulation
Spontaneous: Sudden and unexpected, like a creative insight from dreams

Increasing levels of comprehension:

Awareness -> Familiarity -> Knowledge -> Expertise
A. Let it incubate (10 min – 24 hours)
Aim: Let activation cue up the associations constructed
 Wait for at least 10 to 20 min for the subconscious mind to process information
 If you can afford a sleep cycle, dreams are created to generate solutions to gnawing
problems you face, connecting your current thoughts to a vast network of associated
prior knowledge

B. Review questions
Aim: Further decide the most important questions; initiate comprehension.
 Review questions created in postview
 From the curiosity created, you may create general or specific questions:
 General
 What is important to you in the book/article/report?
 What are the main points and what could help you?
 Specific
What do I need to know to perform well on the next test, to write my report?
Decide which questions are the most important
 Hold a relevant question in mind, write it on paper or discuss with another person to
initiate a search through the vast database
 Be genuinely curious and confident that answers can come

C. Super read and dip (20-30 min)

Aim: To go to written materials and actively move through the text to uncover answers
 What do you want to know from the text you’re exploring?
 Where in the text can you go to find it?
 Turn to sections of the text that attract you in some way, based on your purpose and
important questions
 Clues include chapter titles or subheadings carrying relevant information
Super read (10 min)
 Super read by rapidly moving your eyes down the centre of each page looking for
meaning in the chosen section
 With a soft, open gaze, your eyes move more smoothly down the text
 As you continue experimenting with noticing more, your visual field opens up to see
more words in the centre of the column or page
 The moment you open your visual awareness, your gaze for the text in front of you
becomes softer, permitting you to relax and notice whatever catching attention,
whatever sentences or paragraphs attract you as being more important

Dip (10 min)

 You dip by reading a sentence or two until you’ve received what you want
 Follow your intuitive signals as your hands may just open the book to the exact page
 Where is the sentence or paragraph that sums up the essential point of this
document?
 How much of this text is relevant to your purpose?
 Do you want to continue reading this or go to another source?
 Let go of the worry or irrelevant materials due to years of schooling
 With a firm purpose, you brain has a natural ability to bring you to the needed
information
 Only 4-11% of the text carries the essential meaning

Best way to dip

 Limit dipping to a paragraph or two at a time for articles and a page or two for book
 Lock into your mind your purpose and the title/subtitle or materials
 Relax your face and eyes and lightly focus to move your gaze across the upper half of
each sentence
 Move across each line in a single smooth movement
 Look for meaning units e.g. phrases
 Read for thoughts, feelings and ideas rather than words

Search for the train of thought

 Go into places where the value is greatest
 More clues occur in the upper half of alphabet than in the lower half
 More cues for meaning show up in topic sentences and also first and last paragraphs
 Look at the structure and determine the author’s scheme

After super reading and dipping, you sense structure, retrieve essential information,
categorize in a meaningful way and build a mental summary.
Skittering as an alternative to dipping (10-20 min)
 For PhotoReaders having a strong preference for analytical thinking
 It achieves very fast and surprisingly accurate understanding of lengthy material
that’s informative or instructional in nature
 It’s used to cover an entire text or section of a book as well as between areas you
super read.
 Possible combinations: ‘super read + dip’ / ‘super read + skitter’ / ‘skitter’
 Skittering over all words lets your brain capture the important ones and feel secure in
passing over the rest of them

Steps of skittering
 Read the 1st sentence (topic sentence) of the graph you’re going to skitter
 Move your eyes in a rapid pattern over all words in the paragraph except those in the
1st and last sentence
 Notice words that seem to support the premise in the 1st sentence.
 Eye movement can follow zigzag from top to bottom or bottom to top; a circular
pattern clockwise or counterclockwise and move from the centre out or from edges
into the center. It helps augment or add to the main concept in a paragraph
 If meaning of paragraph remains unclear, read the last sentence.
 Continue through each succeeding paragraph until you near the end of the reading
selection

D. Create a mind map

Aim: To promote long-term retention and helps synthesize information
 Use sheets of paper larger than standard paper / horizontal standard paper for more
space
 Put the core concept in the center
 Write supporting concepts on connecting lines radiating from center
 Use key terms only, often trigger words in postview, in 3 words or less
 Include visual elements, e.g. cartoons, images, symbols, icons, etc.
 Add colour. E.g. red leading to step 1 and blue leading to step 2
 Mindmaps are highly individual and represent your unique experience
 If you mind map a book, keep the mind map in the book. Whenever you revisit the mind
map, the content of the book will flood back with more richness
E. Rapid read
Aim: To reach highly flexible reading speeds and get something more from the text
 Move swiftly through the text, taking as much time as you need, from start to finish
of section/chapter/book
 Depending on complexity, prior knowledge and importance of a particular passage, vary
your speed
 Zip past when you’ve read the paragraph or page during other steps / come across
simplistic, redundant, understood information / materials unimportant to your purpose.
 Rapid read slower when the text contains unfamiliar information / sense complex
information / recognize an extremely important passage
 KEEP MOVING and never pause on complex phrases
 Stay in a relaxed, alert state and keep extracting information – automatically discover
clues that answer questions you stuck previously.

Difference between rapid read and super read

 Rapid read is to proceed straight through the text from beginning to end of an
important chapter or the entire book
 Super reading is to seek out sections of the text you’re attached to and zips lightly
down the centre of the page to locate answers
 Rapid read might involve slowing down to a more conventional reading speed while
super reading means maintaining a brisk speed and dipping into the text when a
possible answer is located, without any order
 Rapid reading is not always necessary