Don’t be dissuaded if it feels weird at first. It’s just like anything else you are learning for the first time; it takes a while for it to feel normal.
The results you will gain from learning these techniques will far outweigh any discomfort or awkwardness you may feel when you first get started.
Process:
1. Learn the technique.
2. Practice the technique.
3. Practice reading quickly.
4. Create a habit and work on comprehension.
Training Your Eye Muscles
It might surprise you to learn that most people don’t use their eyes to read efficiently. There are usually many unnecessary eye movements, so it’s essential to learn how to train them. When your eyes are looking at the text, they are taking a ‘snapshot’ of the material. When the eye stops at a particular part of a page of writing, it is known as a fixation.
Because when young, we are taught that you need to read from word to word, our eyes are trained to complete too many fixations. This slows your reading speed down and can put up a blockage to stop you from reading any quicker. This is just like taking multiple photographs of blank space.
By stopping your eyes from stopping as often on a page, you will be able to read a lot quicker. You will notice that if your eyes fixate on a word, you can see more with your parafoveal and foveal vision.
The Muscles of the Eye and What They Do
Six muscles are surrounding the eye, and these control the different movements of the eye. Most are attached to a band around the optic nerve. The superior rectus muscle enables the eye to look upwards, and the inferior rectus muscle allows the eye to look downward. The muscle that helps the eye to look toward the nose is the medial rectus muscle, and the last muscle, the lateral rectus muscle, allows the eye to look to the side.
The other two main muscles are the oblique muscles, and these are the
muscles that help the rectus muscles move. They all work together to move your eye in the direction you need. It is the scanning functionality that enables us to look at a larger area and sends vital information to the brain. During this scanning, the eyes move quickly around different points in the visual field to gain the knowledge to send.
The pupil and iris of the eye control how the eye takes pictures; they determine the level of light allowed into the rear of the eye, very similar to a camera shutter. This is why the pupils get more extensive when it is dark and smaller when it is light. The images are sent to the back of the eye to the retina. In the retina, the cells convert the light into electrochemical impulses. These impulses are then sent along the optic nerve to the brain.
Here is an exercise to help you practice your eyemovements:
Exercise 1 - Eye Training
1. Get yourself a book to read - it doesn’t matter whether it is fiction or non-fiction, any book will do.
2. Don’t look at the first word of the line of text; instead, focus on the second word. This will make your first fixation start with the second word on each line.
3. Fixate on the second-to-last word on the line of text. This prevents your eyes from taking a snapshot of the blank space in the margin, which wastes time.
4. Practice this method of reading for two minutes and try as quickly as you are able. Only stop your eyes every two or
three words per line.
Focus and Don’t Reread
Rereading text is not an efficient way of reading, so you want to avoid having to backtrack. Conscious rereading is also referred to as regression, and it is when you stop reading and go back to reread and get a better understanding of what you are reading. Unconscious rereading is when you are fixated on the wrong thing in the text.
Moving your eyes and losing your place on the page is a form of unconscious rereading.
One of the reasons some people have to go back and reread a sentence is because they weren’t focusing on the text. Or, they may have gotten distracted, and their mind has wandered. Thankfully there is a simple exercise to train yourself to stop this practice.
Exercise 2 - Stop Rereading
1. First, get a book and a pen.
2. Using either the pen or your finger to guide you read a section of the book. Some people find it more comfortable with a pen; others are happy to use their fingers.
3. Move the pen or finger at the same speed in a steady motion just beneath the words across the page. Do not look back at the terms once you have read them.
4. As you continue to read, slowly raise the speed of the movement of the pen or finger. Continue to do this until you can only just comprehend a couple of words on each line.
This exercise is not about comprehension; it is about changing the way
that you read. Once the old habits have been changed, you will be reading much faster, and your comprehension will be better than it was before. This exercise helps to train your brain and your eyes to read at a steady speed without having to backtrack and reread.
Interestingly, when reading at a rate of 200 words or less per minute, you are more likely to get bored. But, when you are up to the speed of 1,000 words per minute, it is almost impossible to get bored or zone out because you are focusing intently on the reading. Your eyes are moving faster, and you have to maintain the focus to stay at a faster speed.
Once you have trained your brain that you are not allowed to reread, your focus and concentration become so much more intense. Even just doing these two exercises for five minutes every day for a month, your concentration will improve tremendously. By then, you could be tripling the speed at which you read.
Exercise 3 - Thumb-to-thumb glancing
This is a simple eye movement exercise that is focused on your peripheral vision. The exercise stretches the muscles in the eye, which makes them flexible and much healthier.
1. Either sitting or standing, look directly ahead.
2. Stretch out your arms to the sides and stick your thumbs up.
