Post by Ken on May 26, 2008 21:53:21 GMT -5
I refer you to my first Mental Exercise input of April 25. I have reviewed the progress of some of the participants. I see that there is a strong temptation during the course of the exercise to interrupt the mantra in order for the reading matter to register its meaning. This temptation must be resisted!!!! The purpose of the exercise is to create new or broadened neural pathways to cognition. The mantra blocks the normal pathways and the attempt to understand what you are reading forces the creation of new ones. When this happens, the annoying compulsions, whether they be finger or face picking, nail biting, whatever, stop. I recommend that the mantra be a simple sentence of five words and the reading matter simple. Children’s stories are good.
Once the compulsion stops, it is necessary to do maintenance. You do the mental exercise every other day the second week and once or twice the third. Then as needed if you feel the compulsion returning.
For those few for whom the simple mantra does not work, I recommend the far more difficult mental exercise of counting backward while you are reading. The counting must continue uninterrupted. I recently watched one of these participants perform this backward counting exercise. She would stop frequently, unable to find the next lower number and sometimes miss one or two numbers during the recitation. The reason for this was that she was struggling to understand what she was reading. I told her that the counting took priority over the reading, that the understanding would come naturally. We did make some progress. This particular participant did not have any annoying compulsion. She just wanted to increase her reading speed and be better able to process incoming information. The exercise does that.
I encourage all of you to do the exercise. It costs nothing but a little time and the results will make it worthwhile by a factor of one hundred.
Please, please, let me know how you are doing, either by a post to this site or a personal e-mail to kenn100@yahoo.com.
Thank you.
Once the compulsion stops, it is necessary to do maintenance. You do the mental exercise every other day the second week and once or twice the third. Then as needed if you feel the compulsion returning.
For those few for whom the simple mantra does not work, I recommend the far more difficult mental exercise of counting backward while you are reading. The counting must continue uninterrupted. I recently watched one of these participants perform this backward counting exercise. She would stop frequently, unable to find the next lower number and sometimes miss one or two numbers during the recitation. The reason for this was that she was struggling to understand what she was reading. I told her that the counting took priority over the reading, that the understanding would come naturally. We did make some progress. This particular participant did not have any annoying compulsion. She just wanted to increase her reading speed and be better able to process incoming information. The exercise does that.
I encourage all of you to do the exercise. It costs nothing but a little time and the results will make it worthwhile by a factor of one hundred.
Please, please, let me know how you are doing, either by a post to this site or a personal e-mail to kenn100@yahoo.com.
Thank you.
Should I try the counting for a better challenge?