It’s All In The Mind…Does Photo Reading Work?

It was Einstein who said we only use 10% of our brain’s capability, and there have been others who suggest that we don’t even use 10%. Consequently, efforts have been expended in an attempt to help us fill that void with a whole range of techniques designed to maximize out potential as human beings.

Speed-reading, Scanning, Skimming, Photo Reading, are some of the techniques that have been developed over the years to help people to maximise the potential of their minds, and use their brains more efficiently by enabling them to read faster, which is a skill that has obvious benefits.

Photo reading is probably the system that makes the most audacious claims with its suggestion that we can read and store information merely by “looking” at the page in a different way that uses the “whole mind,” rather than the left or right side of our brain which most people use when using conventional reading methods.

The jury seems to be out on the success of photo reading, and that may be because the method requires the use of our subconscious for the system to work. But using the subconscious it must be said is a very sophisticated ability that not everyone can utilise. According to various testimonies, there are various degrees of success with this method, which seems to rely on the ability of the student to “relax” and let their subconscious do all the work.

Those who support photo reading say they have seen remarkable increases in their “reading” ability, and retention of information, but those who say photo reading products are a sham and just don’t work. This would seem to be the crux of the matter – it is all down to the individual.

At the other end of the spectrum, but no less successful is the speed-reading approach which takes a person’s ability to read, and simply seeks to expand on it, and take the student to higher levels of “reading” using a variety of simple-to-learn systems that can be adapted to suit the type of reading matter being viewed. Unlike photo reading success in speed-reading can generally be guaranteed in 99% of all cases as it is a system that can only lead to success.

One of the better speed-reading products on the market however, takes the idea of photo reading, and gives it a more realistic ambience for people to feel comfortable with. Within the specially-designed software program called 7 Speed Reading is a section on Memory which states that using its range of exercises will enhance the ability of students to memorize information to the point of having an ‘almost photographic’ capability to recall what they have read. It is a more realistic method in the sense that people using the 7 Speed Reading formulas have to consciously apply the method, rather than be in a state of near-religious ‘freedom’ of thought to fully photo read pages.

You would probably have to be an Einstein to use the photo reading technique, and achieve perfect results time and again, whereas mere mortals simply have to use their brains, and eyes, in a more normal state of being to successfully read faster using 7 Speed Reading skills. After all, most of us are only human.