New strategies for PhotoReaders

Paul Scheele, developer of PhotoReading, got together a panel of PhotoReading experts to discuss
PhotoReading and help you get even more out of your new skill. In the States people can learn
PhotoReading over two weekends for around $600 (£400) plus accommodation and travel costs, so
some of the advice in this document is specific to people who have attended a course.
I thought you would benefit from a transcription of what was said at that panel discussion. Enjoy! –
Chris Payne, LifeTools.

Paul Scheele: So, you’re a PhotoReader? Perhaps you’ve been enjoying the successes you’ve wanted.
Maybe you feel there’s more for you to achieve. Where are you right now in your process, and where
would you like to go?
Welcome to this PhotoReading Support Programme. This report will assist you in making the most
of the PhotoReading Whole Mind System by addressing some of the common issues new PhotoReaders
encounter, in the few months following the PhotoReading course. During this tape a panel of
distinguished PhotoReading instructors join me as we explore a wide range of issues like:
• how to keep developing your skills with the PhotoReading Whole Mind System
• what to do if you feel stuck, unable to active effectively
• what strategies help PhotoReaders gain the most benefit from the system?
• how can you know that the PhotoReading step of the system is working?
...plus much more. Let’s go to the panel discussion now.

I’m Paul Scheele, developer of the PhotoReading Whole Mind System. With me at Learning Strategies
Corporation in Minneapolis is a panel of distinguished PhotoReading instructors. PhotoReading co-
developer, Patricia Danielson, from Accelerated Learning Institute of New England is here from
Boston.

Patricia: Hello. Along with us are Michelle Carrier, Connie Connor, Beth Macey, Robert Sujinski and
Frances Wiggins. Would each of you please introduce yourselves?

I’m Michele Carrier from Accelerated Learning of New York in New York City.

I’m Connie Connor with Just Communications from Portland, Oregon.

I’m Beth Macey from Management Insight in Lincoln, Nebraska.

I’m Robert Sujinski from Skill Shops, Jacksonville, Florida.

I’m Frances Wiggins from River John Training, St Augustine Beach, Florida.

Paul: To support you as a PhotoReader, we’ve brought together experiences of working with thousands
of PhotoReaders worldwide. To get started, what I’d like to do is create a scenario. After the
PhotoReading course a lot of people go back to their usual work culture, their friends, their associates
and family, and I’m wondering, how can someone keep their enthusiasm alive in the face of the
pressures to go back to the old way of doing things?

Patricia: I think one of the most important things is, have a reason to apply the PhotoReading, so use
PhotoReading for something that is meaningful to you in your own life.
Michele: Also, I think it is important to remember that, ultimately this process is for you, and as you
change and grow in your own learning process, you don’t really have to account to anyone. It is
something especially for you.

Robert: It’s also good to revisit why you took the course in the first place, and then notice the changes
that the course has brought about.

Paul Scheele: Okay, so there is a concept of purpose that you are talking about, Robert, to really come
back to the reason why we’re doing it, to sense the internal benefit. Michele, when you’re talking I also
hear something of a sense of confidence that a PhotoReader needs to have in themselves, in their own
process, give themselves space, and, Beth, that’s what you’re saying also, that we need to give some
space to yourself.

Frances: I think it’s also important to be in contact with other people who have had your same
experience, perhaps a support partner.

Beth: One of the things that helped me as I’ve talked with other PhotoReaders is to be aware of some of
the other changes that might be occurring. At first I didn’t notice them and attribute them to
PhotoReading. I started noticing that I was feeling a lot more creative with my job, that I was feeling a
lot more fluid with my problem solving and some other things like that. But it took me a while to notice
that that probably came from the PhotoReading, so I had to stretch to give myself some reinforcement
and some acknowledgement for some different areas than just in reading.

Robert: Yes, I would like to carry forth the noticing part, because sometimes these changes are so subtle
that you are not aware of them; and so journaling it or somehow keeping a record of what the changes
are that can be attributed to these new activities is very important.

Paul: I remember, Robert, that when you first went to the programme, a group of you had got together
between sessions two and three. There was a couple of weeks in between them and, as I remember the
story, there were six of you that were meeting and five of you that had arrived decided that you weren’t
even sure why you were there. You were not even sure that you were going to go back to session three.
Do you remember that?

Robert: Yes, it’s been quite a while ago, but true, there was the let-down that some of the people had
that they were not getting it or were not sure of it, and they reluctantly came to the meeting.
But while we were talking and everyone was sharing all their problems, one person came in late just
bubbling over with enthusiasm with all the changes that had taken place, and it turned the whole group
around and re-framed it into a positive session. Then they shared the positive things that they had
experienced but had not yet noticed, and it changed the whole flavour of the rest of the whole
PhotoReading, and also brought the group together in a very positive sense.

Paul: And I guess when we look at developing our own confidence to be able to face the reading that
faces us, as well as all the people that may want to be bringing us down, it’s good to have a support
network. But if we don’t have that, what is something that I can do as a PhotoReader to build my own
confidence wherever I happen to be?
Frances: I was in a situation where there was no-one near me who had taken PhotoReading at the time
that I had taken it. What I did was set aside an afternoon a week just for myself to revisit some of my
skills.

Patricia: I was in a similar situation where no-one around me was a PhotoReader. I went to the library
and I just started pulling down stacks of books and PhotoReading the books in the library At one point I
thought maybe I should go into these private rooms because people were looking at me strangely as I
was flip-flip-flipping through these massive stacks of books.
Then I started playing around with them, and I started getting more and more information, and I got
more excited when I got the courage up to activate them. At the beginning I was afraid to activate; I was
afraid, if I start activating and it doesn’t work, what do I do next? So I needed to PhotoRead a lot of
books before I got my courage up to start activating.

Paul: When you think about the phone calls you have received as instructors, what are some of the
common issues you find people are dealing with? For example, one that happens that I’ve heard on
occasion is this: someone has previewed the book, they have PhotoRead one or more books and they
want to do syntopic reading and activate what they’ve read.
So they get a sheet of mindmap paper, and they sit down in front of this blank sheet and nothing
comes. They think: “Something’s not working here,” and in frustration they give up right there. What
can a person do to activate what they’ve read?

Frances: I think what’s really easy to forget is that the way to activate is to be in a state of being
receptive, and to remember that the information is going to be returned in a different way from normal,
regular reading. So I remind people when they call to put themselves in a relaxed state.

Paul: So what are the best ways for a person like the one I was describing, who has taken PhotoReading,
they’ve got three or four books, they preview and PhotoRead the books, they get out a mind map...
what’s the next step?
Sometimes we talk in the course about four levels of comprehension, and what activation can do is
build those four levels of comprehension. The first level being awareness, the second level familiarity,
the third knowledge and the fourth expertise. How would you recommend a person moving through
those levels of comprehension?

Patricia: Awareness is much of what you originally get when you preview the book. You are aware of
what the book is going to be talking about. When you are coming back to the book after PhotoReading,
the PhotoReading has caused a physiological change in your brain.
So now you’ve got tracks in there that you didn’t have before. Which means what’s going to happen
next is, when you Superread through the book the first time through, go really, really fast with the
outcome of not getting knowledge, not getting information, but getting awareness of the general layout
of the book.
What is the author talking about in the beginning part of the book? What do they seem to be talking
about in the middle? What do they seem to be talking about in the end? How do they close it up? So
you’re not necessarily gathering information to remember; you’re gathering exposure to information to
be able to start categorising the topics and subjects that are being talking about. That way you are
creating a kind of context in order for you to be able to build information into.

Michele: Most of the people who I find are having activation problems after the course are having
problems in relation to school or to work, to stressful situations, and they are forgetting to get
themselves into a state of relaxed neutral alertness. At the same time, as Patricia said, they have
expectations that are unreasonable for the material.
So I encourage people first of all to remember what their purpose is; to think about what their goal is
for that session, but what their purpose is beyond that particular goal. What do they need to know this
information for? Chunk up. Think about the meaning of it. Get relaxed and then begin the activation
process.

Paul: Yes, but what if a person is sitting down and they are Superreading and Dipping, and they still
don’t feel like they are getting it? I have heard some instructors say, “Well, you have to encounter your
barriers, you have to go deeper inside yourself.”
Well, how about the business person who says, “Look, I just want to increase my speed and
comprehension. I did the previewing, I did the PhotoReading. I’m not sure that the PhotoReading did
anything for me. Now I’m SuperReading and Dipping, and I don’t feel that it’s coming together. What
do I have to do in order to get where I need to, in order to get to my goal?”

Connie: Well, I think that a lot of people when they do the SuperReading and Dipping do it passively.
In other words, they read the book from beginning to end and they hope that something is going to settle
in. I think we have to stress the active part of it: that you do the mind probing, that you ask yourself,
“What is it I want from the information?”
Continually, as you are Superreading and Dipping, ask yourself questions and look for the answers to
those questions. You know, many times in that whole PhotoReading process we try to separate the steps,
and I think that is a real mistake. It takes the whole system to work together, and in the activation we
sometimes have to go back and re-establish our purpose, and continually do that as we are working with
the material.

Michele: I also think it’s important for a person to really think about what they do want from the
material. Do they really want to increase their comprehension and their speed? What does it mean to
become a more efficient reader, a more efficient absorber and synthesiser and outputter of information?
And do they really want that? This can get in the way.

Frances: Yes, I think that sometimes a sense of urgency works the same way as if someone is trying to
learn stress-management skills, and the harder they try, the less results they get. So I think if a person
has “I’ve just got to get it, I’ve just got to get it” that’s a real interference.

Paul: OK, so what do you do? Here is a person who really needs this technology to be working
effectively back on the job or in school. Their mindset is one of traditional education, that if there’s no
pain, there’s no gain, and they are told “Try really hard and you’ll succeed.” And now we’re saying that
that is exactly the thing that’s going to get in the way. What is a person to do?

Patricia: I think one of the things that’s left out is that people don’t give acknowledgement when they
get even one thing. They have a black-and-white, all-or-nothing attitude towards their approach, and
they are expecting that the first Superread is supposed to give them everything that they need.
And in truth if you think of playing your brain like an instrument, you’ll never attend any sort of
performance where the musicians don’t tune up first. They get the instruments vibrating and filled with
music before they start playing. So for me, when I approach a book, in a sense I’m going to use a book
to help tune up my mind, and the first time through is really, really fast.
I’m not attempting to create the music yet, but I’m attempting to tune up my mind so that the music
can then be created. And if I take a lot of time, it’s as if I’m spending the entire performance time doing
the warm-up, instead of using the warm-up for its purpose, which is, go through the book really, really
fast, get a teeny bit here and there, play a few notes, get a teeny bit of information, and acknowledge
that each bit of that information is a part of the warm- up.

Beth: I think a lot of the anxiety about getting started is much like taking tests. We all remember how
difficult it was to take tests in school, we had test anxiety. I think there is activation anxiety which is
similar.
So I really encourage people to give themselves permission to do a really messy mind map, then go
back and make it pretty later. Just start by doing something. Getting something down in black and white
or colour helps; and after that you can add to it and start seeing the pattern; but you have to start some
place, it doesn’t even matter where.
So you can start doing the SuperReading and Dipping, getting something down on a mind map – and
have a starting point. It relieves that sense of anxiety so you can go forward and add to it and always
correct it later if you feel like you need to.

Robert: Yes, and let the natural environment pick up on it as well. If you have a meeting to go to, you
can do the same exercise that we did with the group discussion document on whatever the meeting is
about. No-one else has to know how you’ve prepared, but it’s a wonderful way actually to get into the
real world without the stress of having been on display, and it works out very nicely. You will be
amazed to discover the effectiveness.

Michele: Listening to Beth, I was thinking that one of the first pieces of advice I give to people who are
stuck is, “Let go, go with the flow, and be open to your own failure.” There’s nothing like being willing
to fail in order to create success. That looseness and relaxed-ness that comes with it is the most powerful
medicine I know.

Paul: One of the things we might want to consider is: what is the downside of succeeding? I mean,
maybe some of us have some barriers around “What if this really does work?”

Michele: When you were talking about the downside of success, Paul, that is what I was getting at when
I said:“What is it that you really want?” I have had people tell me they are not using the process
because: “What would happen? I would become too good if I used the process.” Or,: “Gee this stuff is
scary. There are no more excuses.”
I encourage these people to repeat the course and to work on those issues while they are in the class. I
have seen them repeat and end up becoming very, very successful. I have seen one fellow who said to
me, “Gee, if I used the process I would become too good.” He has almost finished college now and he
was someone who was really stuck in his life, and the stuckness in his life was transferring to the
process.

Paul: I remember working with a woman myself who was convinced that she was no good as a student.
She took the PhotoReading programme, went to Community College and finished a two-year degree.
She was so excited about her confidence at that that she went into a four-year degree at the University.
She called me up this summer to say, “I am graduating with my Masters Degree. Will you come to
the graduation ceremony? And, by the way Paul, I want you to know you had a big role to play in this,
because when I started all this I didn’t believe in myself.”
Beth: I have had several people who have had that experience and then their fear is that their existence
in their social system is based on however they were. So in order to incorporate these skills and be
really successful, it may disrupt family relationships or relationships with spouses or significant others.
They have some real concerns about this. How much success can they tolerate and still be able to
keep their friendships and personal relationships intact?

Paul: So, is that a reality? Do people have to worry? The thing that I would like to think about is, you
all have had lots of PhotoReading graduates who have been so pleased with the experience and have
really integrated the concepts into their life. What are some of the things they are doing?

Patricia: I think there is a common thread of this enormous curiosity about the world and
experimentally; not exactly a mad scientist, but they go and they see a book and say “Ooh, what would
happen if...” and they usually change the system to match themselves.
It’s like they feel really willing to break all the rules that they learned in the PhotoReading class. So
that’s one of common threads I see in people who have really integrated it.

Frances: Yes, one of the benefits people frequently report to me is improved inter-personal
relationships.
My theory is that’s because of increased awareness of their environment. Perhaps they are noticing
signals from other people and then can communicate more appropriately. I’ve had other reports too:
better piano playing, better sports performance, better games playing. I’m sure some of you could add to
that.

Michele: Yes, I actually get more phone calls from people who just want to share the experiences they
have had – they are so excited. Generally, people are playing with the process, doing something really
whacky, something silly, having fun, just trying to see what will happen. They end up getting huge
benefits. So the really successful people seem to be playing.

Next Speaker: I have a group of people who have taken my training over a period of time who all work
in the same organisation. They did the training one at a time, but they all made a commitment to take
this back into their work environment.
Now they don’t PhotoRead necessarily with all their peers, but they have taken the curiosity and the
sense of joyfulness and the sense of exploration. Their work environment is just immeasurably different;
the amount of energy they feel for work, the amount of commitment, the amount of pay-off for their
clients – these are all people in health care – so the patients they serve have had an immeasurable benefit
by their caretakers having taken the course.

Robert: Yes, maybe to pick up on that a little bit, I think the frame that we set on the course of play,
because many times you can make work a little more playful, which certainly reduces the tension and
makes it much more enjoyable. I think that, if nothing else, carrying this idea forth will make a big
difference, not only in your productivity but also in your reduction of stress and the positive way you
look at your job.

Paul: Some people may not be really used to playing either. The notion of play, although it’s addressed
quite a bit in the PhotoReading course, for some it’s still some kind of an abstract term.
What does it really mean to go back to work and play with the Whole Mind System? What are some
of the things that people are doing and noticing? How do they get it started? For example, if they are
stalled out, how do you get started?
Beth: I’ve made a real point in my work environment just to use more colour. I couldn’t possibly take
my Kooshball in today, but I could make flip charts that are more colourful, or I could have meetings
that have a little soft music in the background – to start developing an accelerated-learning environment.
I have people who have never heard of PhotoReading, and I don’t talk about it, who come to me and
say, “I am amazed at how effective our meeting just was. What happened?” So I think I see people
getting the benefit, even though they haven’t taken the course. They start to open up and ‘feel’ in the
workplace, because I think what I encourage is for people to have sensory stimulation through colour,
through soft music, through other kinds of things that make the environment more friendly.

Paul: So a good first step, to become more active with the materials we have to be reading, is to take
more control over the actual environment that’s around me. To be able to loosen up in other areas of my
life actually becomes a metaphor for approaching written materials differently.
For me the course isn’t really about the technique; it’s not about just PhotoReading, or it’s not about
SuperReading and Dipping to activate what I have PhotoRead.
For me it’s a complete approach to the way in which I learn. It’s a complete approach to gathering
the information I need and the meaning I need from written materials in the time that I have. So when I
encounter a barrier, what my mind is doing is saying, “How can I get around this?”.
One of the things I’ve noticed in the most successful graduates of the PhotoReading programme is
that that’s what they are manifesting in their life, be it a problem at the workplace, a situation in their
family. Immediately what their mind comes to when it hits a barrier or a block is “What’s next? What
can I do now?” They notice it and they start generating new responses.

Connie: And that’s from the playful standpoint, and it develops a curiosity, Paul. Because when we have
curiosity, things become interesting to us, and we do find other ways, and they become challenges
instead of problems that we want to run away from.
I think it has a lot to do with people developing their focus. In order to complete a task, you have to
have focus. When you start going, “I hate it,” and you run all those tapes in your head about, “I hate it, I
can’t stand it, I don’t believe I’m working in something like this,” you start paying more attention.
You are dividing your interests and your focus. You are giving a lot of focus to all of the tapes you
are running in your head, and then you are also saying, “I have to get the task done too.” What’s best is
just to clear out your mind and do one thing at a time. You can’t start reviewing your task and doing the
task at the very same time. What happens is the task drops out.

Paul: So I’m really hearing two messages from you as a group. One is that in general what we need to
do is become less focused, more playful, seeing options. And when it comes time to actually making
progress on a particular area, become even more focused, more purposeful, really get oriented.

Pat: I think the idea of being able to change your focus, both by being more directive for details and also
being more playful, has a lot to do with gaining perspective when you are entering into your task.
One of the perspectives that is often forgotten about when people are activating is the idea of: “How
in the world do I get to the point where I can talk about this. Where I can reference the author? Where I
can be using my language skills as well as my logic?”
If you go back to the time when you were a child, language and logic were two intelligences that
came later on. Author Don Campbell reinforces this idea: if you are going to learn something really
well, it’s got to be coded inside you in at least three different intelligences, at the minimum.
 Most of us, when we get into activating, go directly to trying to be able to talk about it. We go
directly to trying to be able to logic it – and we forget about thinking about the information from the
book using other intelligences, such as drawing pictures and using our spatial intelligence.
I worked with someone who didn’t speak English that well and they had a difficult time actually
reading the English words.They drew pictures and I made a little clay object based on our preview.
Then after we made the pictures they didn’t look like they made a lot of sense until she started talking
about them.
When she began to describe her pictures and describe the clay object that I had made, she then
covered the entire article, all of its major points, and even gave supporting evidence which came from
the article based on her talking about her pictures. So she was unable to get it into language until she
had first processed it through spatial intelligence.

Paul: So the beginning of activation isn’t sitting down and waiting for recall like we do with normal
reading. It’s exploring images and feelings. Those are the openings, those are the way, as you have
talked about it, Frances, how the mind’s gate swings open.

Frances: Yes, earlier I mentioned that this information is not activated in the way that it would be if you
had been reading. One way I like to think about it is that there’s a swinging gate between the other-than-
conscious mind and the conscious mind. One way to keep that gate open or swinging is imaging, as
Patricia has mentioned.
Some people have told me they have very good luck with PhotoReading a book and sleeping on it
overnight. The next day they just create a video in their mind’s eye of what was in the book.
Another way, and one that I think sometimes people forget to include in the process, is affirmations.
We have learned affirmations before and after the PhotoReading process, and I think sometimes they
can be inserted in the Prepare state also. We’ve talked about relaxation, how important that is. Another
way to keep that gate open is paying attention to dreaming.

Michele: For people who are really comfortable with the process and want more in terms of activating
all seven intelligences and their senses, I encourage them to create theme days or theme weeks.
So they may be reading a lot of books around a subject and then they may go to restaurants that
relate, or listen to the music from that period of time or go to museums, and just imagine that they are
characters and move throughout their life as if they are that character. So that they are activating all
their intelligences at the same time – but in their life. It’s great for stimulating creativity.
I encourage students to create what I call ‘theme semesters’ so that, in different departments, they
may be taking subjects that always relate around a common purpose.

Patricia: One of the activities that we’ve been starting to play around in the PhotoReading class – which
the earlier classes didn’t have – comes from a man named Win Wenger. It’s called ‘image streaming’
and it’s the act of closing your eyes and imagining yourself in a really beautiful scene and taking a walk,
and then describing it out loud.
The important key thing here is that you do talk it out loud. Talk out your walk and go for about five
or ten minutes, describing what it is to walk in a really beautiful place; things you see, hear, feel, smell,
taste – as many senses as you can in that description.
What Wenger has found in studies is that, for every 80 minutes that you do the image streaming, tests
have shown that you increase one IQ point. In a sense, what you are doing is stimulating the imaging
capability of your brain and the languaging capability simultaneously. You are creating new neural
pathways between the two.
 Then later on, the fact that you’ve now got those new connections means that, when you do start to
activate, it’s like you’ve created highways through your brain. Information is then going to transfer
from image to language at an increased speed too. So I recommend you play around with image
streaming, perhaps with a partner.

Beth: I want to add on to what Patricia was saying. I’ve had people practice with the image streaming
and have really good successes. On one of my courses someone said, “I’ve heard about walking the talk
– it sounds like image streaming should be called ‘talking your walk’.”

Paul: If we could just take the PhotoReading component out of the Whole Mind System and look at that
as an individual part of the programme – an individual thing that we could develop some proficiency
with – how long should someone expect it should take to develop proficiency with PhotoReading?

Michele: I think it very much varies on the person. Some people are going to become proficient almost
immediately; others are going to take longer, depending on their approach, depending on what they
bring with them to the course, how willing they are to shift paradigms. And I think people should feel
okay about it taking different amounts of time.

Paul: Okay. Part of it might be what our definition is. Is it a skill we can develop or is it something
we’re just born with?

Patricia: Well, we can also call PhotoReading “photoexposure,” in a sense that as a child you were
exposed to the world around you, and it wasn’t a skill for you to develop. You were just brought into a
nursery room and everything happened around you.
PhotoReading is a similar kind of category. It’s not a skill to develop. Maybe flipping pages is,
maybe chanting is, maybe having a tangerine is. Nut the ability for you to have the exposure be a
stimulus to your brain is an ability that you are born with.
So in terms of getting comfortable with PhotoReading, my experience is you would have to flip
pages with somewhere between 50 and 100 books for enough experience to make PhotoReading pretty
much second nature.

Paul: I think that a lot of people want to know that if I’m going to take the time to practice it, I’m going
to get better at it. Am I going to be able to get better at PhotoReading by doing PhotoReading, by
actually flipping those pages in front of my eyes?

Beth: My experience has been that people feel a lot more comfortable after a period of time in just how
to use their eyes, just finding the PhotoFocus state. That in itself is something that we have an innate
capacity to do, but we don’t normally do it consciously.
So with, as Patricia was saying, doing lots of books, it starts becoming easier and easier to enter that
PhotoFocus state and the confidence then goes up. So I have found that just that capacity to easily get
into the PhotoFocus state is a very important part of feeling the confidence.

Patricia: I think the feedback on whether or not the exposure has done anything is depending upon how
mindful you are about your way of functioning in the world after you have been doing a lot of
PhotoReading. Do you give space for anything to be a part of the response, or do you limit it to only
one thing? I’m supposed to have this response.
If you create a really tight box for the response from PhotoReading to occur inside, you don’t give
any room at all for any of the other kind of creative thinking, attitudinal shifts, ability to relax, those
kinds of effects that come post-PhotoReading. So, become more mindful and permissive of your own
environment after PhotoReading.

Robert: Even extend it to just bringing it into your natural world, when walking and getting into a soft-
focus state, and noticing all the things you see that you may not have noticed before. I think that’s
another important point too.

Paul: A lot of the effects of PhotoReading are then going to show up in, perhaps, the periphery of my
experience. They are going to show up in improvements in a lot of different areas, perhaps in meetings,
having PhotoRead prior to the meeting; a greater sense of confidence, a sense of relaxation; perhaps I’m
more attuned to where people are coming from as a result of that.
It might be hard for me as a PhotoReader to say, “Oh I know that the reason I performed so much
better was because of having PhotoRead just ahead of time.” If the only concrete evidence is that I’m
recalling more of what I’ve PhotoRead, that might not be fair.
So as Patricia is saying, we need to take off some of the barriers around which these benefits can
show up, and therefore also remove some of the barriers to allowing it to show up in my life.

Patricia: It’s like giving room for fuzziness. There is a new computer science that’s been coming out in
the last few years called ‘fuzzy logic’ in that it allows for shades of grey in computing systems.
Within three years, after applying fuzzy logic to control systems in elevators, and insulin devices that
automatically administer insulin, there is a $2-3 billion industry that has resulted out of allowing for
shades of grey, where classically in our society we have usually had an all-or-nothing kind of
perspective.

Paul: When reading, most of us have kind of an all-or-nothing thinking. That’s one of the reasons we
use a perfectionist script during the course. We think, “I’ve got to have it all or I don’t have it at all,”
and perhaps a lot of us are looking for the same kind of concrete evidence that PhotoReading is going to
pay me back in all or nothing. So, what are some of the ways that I can notice how PhotoReading is
working?

Frances: I’ve found it helpful to suggest to people that they do an evening review just before going off
to sleep. That they be a non-critical observer of themselves during the day, and just notice what has
occurred during the day. If they wanted to do a test period, they might try PhotoReading for a week and
doing an evening review each evening of that week. Then take a week off and do an evening review,
and notice what the differences are.

Connie: I have to have a giggle here because, in a lot of my classes, after people PhotoRead, I
sometimes like to explain it this way: say you take a book that you read today that you have read two or
even 10 years ago, and contrast the speed at which you read that book today, as opposed to when you
read it the first time, or how you read things the first time. Almost everybody will say, “Well, I whipped
right through it. I read it a whole lot faster.”
And other class members notice that, after people PhotoRead, that other people’s speed have
increased while the person doing the PhotoReading doesn’t even notice it. So I think we have to just be
aware of what’s going on. I mean, people doubled or tripled or quadrupled their speed just by
PhotoReading because they’ve been there before, and they don’t even realise it until someone points it
out to them.
Paul: So if we keep perspective, we can say that the PhotoReading step alone has value to a person’s
regular reading if they did nothing else. What I often here is people saying, “Well, I got a lot out of the
previewing, I got a lot out of the SuperReading and Dipping” – they’ll call it skimming and scanning –
“but you know, I’m not sure that the PhotoReading part of it works,” and yet what I hear you all saying
is that there’s plenty of evidence that you can pay attention to that indicates something is occurring.

Patricia: There’s enough evidence out there in the studies now that suggest that the stimulus received
from PhotoReading is actually contributing to your intellect and your capabilities; so that even if you’ve
been PhotoReading only the dictionary or something else, you may in fact find with other reading
material, even though you’ve not PhotoRead it, your response to it comes faster.
Your base reading rate even increases on books which you’ve never PhotoRead. Why is that? It’s
because you have more networks now involved in the reading process than you’ve had previously,
because of the mere fact that you’ve exposed yourself to so much.

Beth: I think that we could find a metaphor in where to look for the results of the PhotoReading
successfulness just by the process. When we PhotoRead we are using our peripheral vision as a part of
our apparatus to PhotoRead, and maybe we need to look on the periphery of our experience to find the
results of it. So maybe the process of PhotoReading is also a hint of where to look for the evidence.

Michele: I also encourage people to do something so simple as just comparing the new style with the old
style. I know that, even after I was an experienced PhotoReader and getting huge benefits, every so
often I’d panic, and I’d go “Oh my God, what am I doing?” and I’d go back and test myself once, then
my confidence would rise back up again. So I would encourage you, if you don’t feel like you’re getting
it, if you are not sure you’re getting it, compare.

Paul: As we move into concluding what we’ve been talking about, I’m reflecting on everything we’ve
covered. We’ve talked about the person who’s getting results from the programme, who’s integrating it
into their life. We’ve talked about the true believer, who’s absolutely sure that it can work, and they’re
waiting, and we’ve also talked about the person who may be a little bit side-tracked, who might not be
on it, might not be getting the results they want.
There seems to be some hints for everybody in how they could progress. So, if you could summarise
by saying something you would recommend in closing for anybody who is a graduate of the programme
or a new PhotoReader, what would it be?

Frances: I’d say, “Keep in touch with one of us or with someone who was in your group.”

Beth: I recommend that people keep their own big mindmap of guidelines for effective learning, and
that as they PhotoRead new books and have new experiences, that they continue to add to their own
mindmap, their own sense of internal guidelines that can assist them so that they continue their own
process of evolution as learners.

Robert: One of the resources that I think sometimes is neglected or not used to its fullest extent is the
PlayBook itself; and I would say that some of the graduates go back and look through some of the
materials that’s found in the back of the PlayBook. I think that’s probably most useful, and sometimes
it’s overlooked.

Patricia: Experiment and explore. And I keep using the theory of multiple intelligence as, kind of, my
theory of guiding principle in my experimentations: what would happen if I tried this? What would
happen if I tried that? Then I experiment within a context of having lots and lots of books in my
environment. Either I go to the library and I play, or I go to people’s houses and I check out their books,
or I just play with my own.

Paul: For me, it’s creating a sense of balance, not only having a place for my own confusion to occur
and ways to take action, but to realise how important it is for me to have a purpose, a compelling reason
to have these five books in front of me.

Connie: I think it goes back to what we stress in the course all about NOPS – just Notice it, Own it, Play
with it and Stay with it. It all has to do with being very curious and not forcing the issue. And it has to
do with those internal tape systems that we have, and when a person says, “How can I possibly start
controlling that? I’m trying,” one of my recommendations is the Paraliminal tapes for straightening the
right kinds of messages we’re sending ourselves. Because sometimes it’s really hard to do that just by
ourselves.

Michele: I really agree with Connie about the NOPS, and if we think back to the rules that we begin the
Workshop with, remembering to play and participate, and notice and accept the feedback from one’s
own process, as well as to keep an open mind. When you are shifting paradigms, when something new
is happening, expect the unexpected.
I also encourage people to remember not to compare themselves to others, and not to compare
themselves to themselves, but to just let happen what’s going to happen, and accept each little bit, each
little piece as it happens. Watch it build and revel in watching your own little successes grow into great
and larger successes.

Paul: Thank you for listening. I hope you have gained useful ideas to enhance your PhotoReading skills.
You might choose to listen to this tape as many as sixteen times over the next few weeks, to receive the
full benefit this recording can offer. Please feel free to call us any time. We’d love to hear about your
successes.

For more information on PhotoReading, please visit the LifeTools site at http://www.lifetools.com