COACH AXEL TABERNILLA

INTERNATIONAL MASTER OF MEMORY (IMM)

 Extreme Memory Power
Super Memory Workshop

“Imagination is more important than knowledge... “

– Albert Einstein
“All learning is based on memory.”—Harry Lorayne

Congratulations!
You are about to embark on a journey of self-discovery
that will show you how to develop your memory’s full potential
and how to use it effectively in your daily life. You already have
in you, right now, the ability to have a perfect, instant-recall,
phenomenal memory just waiting to be released. We are able
to say this since we were once like you. We have trained our
memory so much so that we dared to compete in the world’s
most prestigious memory competition, the World Memory
Championship. And our goal joining such an event is to show
to the world that Filipinos are at par with world’s best minds
when it comes to memory and to show that anyone can
develop and train their memory and mental functioning in such
a way that they will find success in any field, especially in this
day and age.

A good memory is truly important for anyone to

possess. Your memory of faces, names, facts, information,
dates, events, circumstances and other things concerning your
everyday life is the measure of your ability to prevail in today’s
fast-paced, information-dependent society. With a good
memory, you don’t have to fear forgetting/misplacing important

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stuffs and you can overcome mental barriers that hinder you
from achieving success in your career, love life, and personal
life.

When you can learn anything you need to know to

become successful at anything you cared about, having a
powerful memory will make all things possible. Summing it up,
there is no learning without memory.

Before anything else, it is vital that we gauge the level of

your memory. It will give us a baseline data that we can later
use as a comparison to the vast improvement that you can
make after going through our Rapid Learning and
Supermemory Workshop..

Try to memorize in 5 minutes…

1 4 1 5 9 2 6 5 3 5 8 9
7 9 3 2 3 8 4 6 2 6 4 3
3 8 3 2 7 9 5 0 2 8 8 4
1 9 7 1 6 9 3 9 9 3 7 5
1 0 5 8 2 0 9 7 4 9 4 4
Now, turn to page 4 and recall them.

Again, try to memorize in 5 minutes…

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 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1
0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1
1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1
0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
Turn to page 5 to recall…

Let’s memorize random words in 5 minutes

RUSHES CASHEW TALKATIVE BEAGLE BUGS
PILLOW FUNGI BACCHUS CHARM PARIS
JURASSIC CALCIUM CAUCUS JANG GEUM GENESIS
BARBARIC CRUST FOUL LION ICON
AROMA SHUTTER CRUMBLED IFUGAO SULU
TEQUILA VINTAGE PNEUMONIA COUP D’ETAT BARLEY
Recall in page 5.
Random numbers recall: ____

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Binary numbers recall: ___

Random words recall: ____

This concludes our baseline test. Please record your results for
a later comparison. Thank you!
Random Numbers _________
Random Words _________
Binary Numbers _________

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 Learning How to Learn

“In a changing world that is constantly changing, there is no

one subject or set of e rest of your life. The most important
skill to acquire now is learning how to learn.”
- John Naisbitt

The most successful person is usually the one with

the best information.

“The new illiterate in this generation are those people who don’t know
how to learn!”
- Alvin Toffler

How Your Learning Style Affects Your Use of Mnemonics

The way in which people learn affects the sort of

mnemonics they should consider using their dominant learning
style to store information.

The three main learning styles are:

· visual
· auditory
· kinesthetic
No-one uses one of the styles exclusively, and there is
usually significant overlap in learning styles.

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Visual Learners – Visual learners relate most effectively to
written information, notes, diagrams and pictures. Typically
they will be unhappy with a presentation where they are unable
to take detailed notes - to an extent information does not exist
for a visual learner unless it has been seen written down. This
is why some visual learners will take notes even when they
have printed course notes on the desk in front of them. Visual
learners will tend to be most effective in written
communication, symbol manipulation etc. Visual learners make
up around 65% of the population.

Auditory Learners – Auditory learners relate most effectively to

the spoken word. They will tend to listen to a lecture, and then
take notes afterwards, or rely on printed notes. Often
information written down will have little meaning until it has
been heard - it may help auditory learners to read written
information out loud. Auditory learners may be sophisticated
speakers, and may specialize effectively in subjects like law or
politics. Auditory learners make up about 30% of the
population.

Kinesthetic Learners – Kinesthetic Learners learn effectively

through touch and movement and space, and learn skills by
imitation and practice. Predominantly kinesthetic learners can
appear slow, in that information is normally not presented in a
style that suits their learning methods. Kinesthetic learners
make up around 5% of the population.

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 Test Your Best and Worst of Times
“We all have times when we think more effectively, and times
when we should not be thinking at all.”- Daniel Cohen

The purpose of this exercise is to help you sharpen your

sense of what time of day you learn best. Answer true or false
to each question:
I dislike getting up in the morning. ___________
I dislike going to sleep at night. ___________
I wish I could sleep all morning. ___________
I stay awake for a long time after I get into bed. ___________
I feel wide awake only after 10:00 in the morning.
___________
If I stay up late at night, I get too sleepy to remember anything.
__________
I usually feel a low after lunch. _________
When I have a task requiring concentration, I like to get up
early in the morning to do it. ________
I’d rather do those tasks requiring concentration in the
afternoon. __________
I usually start the tasks that require the most concentration
after dinner. _______
I could stay up all night. _________
I wish I didn’t have to go to work before noon. _________
I like going to work in the morning. _______
I can remember things best when I concentrate on them:
in the morning. _________
at lunchtime. __________

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 in the afternoon. _________
before dinner. _________
after dinner. _________
late at night. _________

Supermemory

“Memory is the mother of all wisdom.” – Aeschylus

Memory has long been used as a measure of

intelligence, but what really distinguishes individuals who can
memorize thousands of digits from those who cannot? Just
practice.
The good news is that no matter what your age or level
of academic experience, you too can dramatically improve
your memory by following some sound, tried and simple
principles. Just practice.

By improving the memory, you will also improve the following:

 Systematizing  Mentoring
 Analysis  Observation
 Listening  Creativity
 Verbal presentation  Decision-making
 Imagination  Perception
 Management  Interpretation
 Innovation  Problem solving
 Synthesis

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It also has very practical applications....

 Names and faces

 Directions
 Spellings
 Countries and capitals
 Foreign Language
 Remember your past
 Elements
 Develop your declarative memory
 Mental games (chess)
 Read faster and remember more
 Telephone numbers
 Speeches and presentations
 Remember telephone conversations
 Playing cards and multiple decks of cards

“Everybody is born with a good memory; then most people are

trained how to use it badly.”

– Ben Pridmore GMM, World Memory Champion

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 Teachability and Willingness to change index
Teachability
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Willingness to change
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Landscape of the Mind

“We do not know one millionth of one percent about anything.”

– Thomas Alva Edison

Left vs. Right

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 Left vs. Right – The human brain is bifurcated down
the middle into two parts, popularly known as the left brain and
right brain respectively. It is connected by a network of 300
million neurons called the corpus callosum which shuttles
information back and forth between the two halves of the brain.
It is generally accepted that each side have separate functions,
one differing from the other. The left side commonly labeled as
the “academic” side where logic, words, numbers, sequence
and analysis is performed while the right side are principally
concerned with the “creative” activities such as imagination,
rhymes, rhythm, music, painting and daydreaming, as well as
“abstract” ideas such love, beauty, and loyalty. However,
research shows that the relationship between the two is much
more complex, but to put it simply, left brain focuses more
details, while the right brain sees the bigger picture.

Even though one is dominant than the other in certain

activities, they are both involved in almost all thinking. Our
understanding of such process will help us gain an insight on
how we process information for learning. Some people who
are deemed to be “left brained” would prefer a slow step-by-
step process of building information or what experts call
“linear” type of learning. On the other hand, “right brained”
individuals would prefer to see the “bigger picture” or to have
an overview; or a “global” type of learning.

When listening to music, our left brain attends to the

words, while the right brain processes the melody. At the same
time the limbic system is triggered, in other words, the whole

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brain is involved. That is why when words are combined with
music or images or said with emotion the easier and faster we
learn. A vital fact used in our Rapid Learning System.

The Whole Brain – our brain, as diverse in function and

parts as it is, functions as a unit. It also functions differently in
every individual. No two individuals process information exactly
alike. It is as unique as our fingerprints.

The Art of Memory

“Oblivion is the dark page, whereon Memory writes her light-

beam characters, and makes them legible.” – Thomas Carlyle,
1833

We have seen how the brain is divided into two

hemispheres – the left brain, which processes logic and
language; and the right brain, which processes the creative
side of ourselves. Memory, in so far as at requires logical
organization, is in large measure a left-brain activity – in this
respect you might think of memory as applied science. But
memory is also an art, because the information receive
through our sense can be made memorable through creative
use of our imagination. This combination of logical and creative
thought links the networks of the entire brain together, like
bridges over a river, making our minds more efficient at
creating, storing and retrieving every kind of memory.

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 How Memory Works

Concentration
“The true art of memory is the art of attention.” – Samuel
Johnson

Many of us don’t realize it, but we tend sabotage the

memory process unconsciously through the simple act of not
paying attention, focusing, concentrating or incorporating keen
observation skills that are the essential building blocks for
improving your memory. It is one of the biggest enemies to
perfect recall occurring within the first few seconds of our
attempt to memorize. To concentrate is to notice what we see,
to listen to what we hear, to feel what we touch, to savour what
we taste and smell, and to be mindful of what we think.

Have you ever listened to someone talk, read an article,

or listened to a lecture and then realized several seconds or
minutes later that you have absolutely no idea what the
information was about? Yes, this no doubt happens to many of
us. However, you can change this habit by simply teaching
yourself to pay attention to the details in every conversation,
book, lecture or piece of information that you come across.

The secret of concentration when formally memorizing

is to focus fully on the information that we are being told or the
experience that we are having, while at the same time allowing
your brain to make appropriate associations. The crucial thing
here is focus. We might think that we are able to concentrate
on more than one thing at one, like reading while watching TV

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and eating. However, scientifically, such split focus is
impossible. If we are trying to do two things at once, our
attention flips back and forth at lightning speed between the
two, and we concentrate fully on neither.
When memorizing, it is important to focus on the items
without allowing external stimuli to influence your memorization
at all. The mind is capable of 100 percent concentration.

To practice concentration, begin by paying attention to

the larger picture, the purpose of the information and seeing it
as an organized piece of knowledge in your mind (somewhat
like a study matrix / mind map). You can also practice by
testing your observation skills of details within your house,
office or bedroom. Simply, take 30 seconds to look around
your room at all the details, colors, furniture and other visuals.
Next, close your eyes and recall from memory where
everything is located, including colors, placement and all the
other vivid details. Finally, open your eyes and check to see
how accurate your memory was. You can also do this with
photographs, and it is strongly suggested you perform this
exercise within an environment that you are not very familiar
with.

Another way to train your mind to become fully attentive

is to meditate. This enables you to slow your brain waves to a
state of full concentration. In the following list are other
exercises that can improve our concentration.
 Solitude
 Speed Calculation

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  The Two-Minute Focus
 Counting words or letters of paragraphs
 Word hunt

“Just as eating against one’s will is injurious to health, so study

without liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it
takes in.”

– Leonardo da Vinci
Solitude

Close your eyes, settle into a comfortable posture,

And spend a few minutes relaxing your body.

Begin by letting your body become loose and limp.

Allow you weight to sink
And your muscles to relax

Spend a while just paying attention to how your body feels.

Focus on your physical sensations,
In your arms, shoulders, back, head, stomach, and legs,
as well as inside you chest, abdomen, and hips.

Then slowly shift your attention to your breath.

Focus on the sensation of air
passing through your nostrils.

As you inhale and exhale, allow your breathing

to become calmer and even more even.
Don’t try to force your breath.
Just allow it to be natural and fluid.

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 Each time a distracting thought passes through your mind,
use it as a reminder
to return your attention to your body.
Gently lead the focus of your mind back to your sensations.

Allow yourself to let go completely

and to sink deeply into the warm feeling of relaxation.
Re-circulate your sensations back into your sensations.

Become so quiet inside

that you can feel
your heart beat
throughout you body.

As your attention become clearer with each breath,

turn it into relaxing specific parts of your body.

Begin by mentally picturing your face.

Visualize your eyes, nouth, cheeks, and jaw.
Form a vivid mental image of each part
becoming more relaxed as you gaze on it.

As you turn your attention to these parts of your face,

you may discover the presence of subtle tensions.
Simply allow the tensions to dissipate
through the visualization.

When your face is thoroughly relaxed,

move on to your ears, neck,
shoulders, arms, and fingers.

Visualize each part becoming looser and more relaxed.

The clearer your picture, the more deeply you relax.

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 Continue visualizing the rest of your body:
Your chest, back, stomach, legs, knees, and toes.
Remember, there is no need to rush,
just let yourself enjoy
the experience of touring your body.

Once you finish picturing your toes,

visualize your entire body
as a relaxed, sentient statue.
Immerse yourself in the sensations
of full relaxation.

Just let go.

Put your manual down,

take ten or fifteen minutes,
and loosen up your body,
inside and out.

“When we learn to relax the body, breath, and mind, the body
becomes healthy, the mind becomes clear, and our awareness
becomes balanced.”
- Tarthang Tulku, Buddist teacher

Speed Calculation
Calculation is a tried and tested way to condition your
mind. According to Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, author of the best
selling book Train Your Brain More, the best way to stimulate
the brain is to perform simple mental calculations quickly, and

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to read books aloud. These were clearly seen the brain scans
of subject doing these exercises. Plato also understood the
value of exercising calculation muscles when he wrote in The
Republic, “Those who are by nature good at calculation are, as
one might say, naturally sharp in every other study, and those
who are slow at it, if they are educated and exercised in this
study, nevertheless improve and become sharper than they
were.”
The following exercises are designed not only to
stimulate your brain but also boosts your concentration; that if
you lose your attention, you lose your place in the calculation.
You should know exactly where your mind left off, so you can
return and try to sustain your concentration for longer. These
encourage persistence. You can perform the exercises silently
or aloud, as fast as you can. This makes it ideal for long rides
on a jeep or in the train.

Recite the following series:

Easy - Up by 1: 1, 2, 3, 4, ...,100
Down by 1: 100, 99, 98, 97, ..., 1
Up by 3: 3, 6, 9, 12, ..., 99
Down by 3: 99, 96, 93, 90, ..., 3
Up by N, Down by N

Medium – Double ascending series

Up by 2,3: 2-3, 4-6. 6-9, 8-12, ..., 66-99
Down by 2,3: 66-99, 64-96, 62-93, 60-90, ..., 2-3
UP by N,N, Down by N,N

Hard – Triple alternating series:

Down by 2, up by 4, down by 3:
100-4-99, 98-8-96, 96-12-93, ..., 52-100-28

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 The Two-Minute Focus

The Two-Minute Focus is one of the best exercises to

train concentration. You may find out, as you go along, that the
exercise soon becomes harder. This is due to your increased
discernment of your own attention. You know exactly when you
are losing focus. You become more critical and demand of
yourself a higher degree of mental clarity. After a couple of
weeks of steady practice, about five or ten minutes a day,
you’ll feel a remarkable improvement in your attention. You’ll
be able to concentrate longer, your mind clearer, and it will be
easier to focus.
“The essential achievement of the free will is to attend to a
difficult object and hold it fast before the mind.” – William
James

Two-Minute Focus

Sit in front of a clock or a watch

that has a sweep second hand.

Relax for a few moments,

collect your attention,
and when you’re ready,
place your attention on the motion
of the second hand.

For two minutes,

focus awareness
on the movement of the second hand
as if nothing else in the universe existed.

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 If you lose the thread of concentration
by thinking about something else,
or just by spacing out,
stop,
collect your attention,
and start again.

Try to keep you concentration

for two solid minutes

Start now.
“ A quiet mind cureth all.” – Robert Burton, 17c.
Philosopher

Association
“You can remember any new piece of information if it is
associated to something you already know or remember in
some ridiculous way” – Harry Lorayne

Association is a key principle in developing a brilliant

memory. It is an extremely efficient way of assimilating
information through the linking of an unknown quantity to
something that is already known. It is a mental link between
two disparate items. This method is so easy and simple to do
since it takes advantage of the natural process of our brain in
storing information. We do it all the time.

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Basic Association
In training our memory, we will use the term association
in the following manner. It is to merge two distinct images into
one extraordinary image. The following exercises will allow us
to improve the way we associate, to make it faster, and to
make it our habit. Although we can and will suggest
associations to you, your own associations are much better as
they reflect the way in which your mind works.
Things can be associated by:
· being placed on top of the associated object
· crashing or penetrating into each other
· mergeing together
· wrapping around each other
· rotating around each other or dancing together
· being the same colour, smell, shape, or feeling · etc.
Let’s try with the following pairs of words:
Banana and Sandwhich
Volleyball and Eggpie
Brain and Computer
Hammer and Gorilla
Umbrella and Waterfalls
Telephone and Hot Air Balloon
Train and Bikini
Vampire and Fire Extinguisher
Boxer and Lollipop
Magician and Madonna
Anaconda and Yellow Submarine

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RECALL
Fire Extinguisher
Magician
Umbrella
Eggpie
Computer
Banana
Train
Anaconda
Boxer
Hot air balloon
Gorilla

Let’s try with the following trios:

Ice Fish Cloth
Napkin Grass Brick
Man Slippery Carriage
Animal Cherish Spaghetti
Need Bright Tree
Jar Cold Baby
Head Clay Burn
Teeth Smoke Teacher
Cliff Screen Barney
Hospital Rainbow Camera
Faint Hug Skateboard
Barber Sugar Scissors

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RECALL: fill in the blanks
Ice
Grass
Carriage
Animal
Need
Baby
Burn
Teeth
Screen
Rainbow
Faint
Scissors

But how do you create a “memorable” image? You have

probably heard the advice of using more than one sense to
make a strong image. Stronger images using all the senses if
possible provide more ways for the image can be associated
and later recalled.
Use all of your senses when developing an image:
 Vision – What does it look like? Colour? Brightness?
What can you see?
 Hearing – What does it sound like?
 Smell – What is the smell? Perfume? Pungent?
Chemical?
 Taste – Describe the taste sensation

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  Touch – What does it feel like? Textures?
Movement and action enhances memory. Make your images
alive and moving as if they were scenes from a movie.
Association. What you are trying to remember should be
associated with something you already know. Typically, this
known item is a peg in your number system, or a location on
an imaginary journey, or joining two pieces of information such
as a the name of a country and its capital.
Sexuality. We all have a good memory and wild imagination
when it comes to sex, so use it! You don’t have to tell anyone
that you used strong sexual imagery to remember something.
Humor. The more ridiculous, absurb, funny and surreal you
make your images, the more memorable they will become.
Humour puts your mind into a playful state making you more
creative and open to new possibilities.
Imagination. The images you create in your mind can be as
fantastic and wild as you like. Unlike a big-budget Hollywood
film, you can create blockbuster images in your memory, and
can be set anywhere in the universe.
Number. Numbering adds details, order and sequence to your
images. When visualising something, imagine a large quantity,
hundreds, maybe thousands!
Substituting a more meaningful image for an ordinary or
boring image makes a stronger memory. Use a different but
associated image to aid recall of meaningless words. For
example, in remembering the countries of the world, I used the
word Bratwurst (a type of meat) to help me remember
Bratislava.

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Color - Use all the colours of the rainbow to colour your image
Don’t make your associations in black and white – make them
full technicolor.
Order (or Sequence). When items are memorized in a
sequence, you can recall the items by taking a mental journey
through this sequence.
Positive. Make your images positive and pleasant. We are
better at recalling happy images while negative memories are
usually suppressed. When your images are bright and positive
you will enjoy the experience of recalling them.
Exaggeration. As far as possible, exaggerate everything in
your images. Exaggerate the size, action, colours, sounds and
quantities.

Why Memory Doesn't Work!

Another reason for memory getting apparently worse is
that outside academia information tends not to be as clearly
structured as it is in education. The clear presentation and
organization of a good lesson or training course provides a
structure that is almost a mnemonic in its own right. Where
information drifts in as isolated facts, it will normally be
forgotten simply because it is not actively fitted into a
mnemonic.
Again, as people grow up they are trained out of
spontaneous, imaginative behavior: most peoples' jobs depend
on them being predictable and reliable far more than on them
being imaginative. An important feature of memory, though, is
the imagination that allows you to construct the strong
mnemonic links between things to be remembered and the

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cues for their recall. Of course be reliable, but keep your
imagination fresh at the same time!
So memory in most people does get worse with age, but
only because it is allowed to. By continuing your education
throughout your life, by cultivating your mind and keeping it
open to new experience, by actively fitting facts into clear and
flexible frameworks, and by keeping your imagination working,
your memory can get better and better as you get older.
Doing this not only gives you a better memory: think
how many times you have heard this message in connection
with other self-improvement methods! An important thing to
realize is that different people learn in different ways. The way
in which people learn is often a factor determining the subjects
they choose to study, instructors they relate to, and careers
chosen in life.

Using Mnemonics to Learn More Effectively

When you are creating a mnemonic, e.g. an image or story to

remember a telephone number, the following things can be
used to make the mnemonic more memorable:

• Use positive, pleasant images. The brain often blocks out

unpleasant ones.
• Exaggerate the size of important parts of the image
• Use humor (perhaps linked with point 2)! Funny or peculiar
things are easier to remember than normal ones.
• Similarly rude or sexual rhymes are very difficult to forget!

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• Symbols (e.g. red traffic lights, pointing fingers, etc.) can be
used in mnemonics.
• Vivid, colorful images are easier to remember than drab
ones.
• Use all the senses to code information or dress up an image.
Remember that your mnemonic can contain sounds, smells,
tastes, touch, movements and feelings as well as pictures.
• Bringing three dimensions and movement to an image makes
it more vivid. Movement can be used either to maintain the
flow of association, or can help to remember actions.
• Locate similar mnemonics in different places with
backgrounds of those places. This will help to keep similar
images distinct and unconfused. The important thing is that the
mnemonic should clearly relate to the thing being
remembered, and that it should be vivid enough to be clearly
remembered whenever you think about it

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 NOTES

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 NOTES

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