1. Warm up exercise for Soft-Focusing:

a) First use your left-hand, and then your right hand, to make six-inch wide Air-(imaginary), Infinity-Symbols - in space. Time spent: sixty-seconds.

b) Now close your eyes and mentally-visualize producing a narrow Infinity- Symbol descending down a lined-page. Time spent: sixty-seconds.

c) Be aware of your Eye-Movement Patterns going left-to-right, and right-to- left in your Field-of-Vision.

d) Take your RasterMaster or Pen and practice going down a page, the width of a sentence, using the Z for Zorro strategy. Time spent: sixty-seconds.

A soft-focus consists of three-elements:

One, focus your eyes on the upper-half of the letters of the words in each sentence. It is easier on your retina and increases your reading speed up to 35%.

Second, peer Indirectly at the words of the sentences, as if your eyes are binoculars; snailers focus on one-word-at-a-time, as if their eyes are reading sentences through a microscope.

Third, mentally divide (separate), each sentence into three clauses of about three-words each. Now use your RasterMaster or Pen to underline each sentence into three parcels of about three-words each. Continue practicing Triple-Chunking the sentences for two-pages.

A Hard Focus

To really understand Soft-Focus is to compare it to a Hard-Focus. When we are reading one-word-at-a-time, watching TV, playing a Video Games, and using our Word-Processor, we engage our narrow-vision called Hard-Focus.

It is also called Tunnel-Vision, like a horse with blinders, used to eliminate what is lateral left and lateral right. When communicating we narrow-focus on the eyes of the other party to the conversation.

Hard-focus is seeing in a narrow spectrum, while Soft-Focus is relaxing the muscles of our eyes, and those of our face, neck and shoulders. Remember that snailing uses a Hard-Focus, and speed reading requires a Soft-Focus.

Underling With Your Pacer:Practicing your Pacer strategies changes how your brain functions in reading.

Reprogramming your brain (through daily practice), causes the structures of comprehension to enlarge from one-word wide, to up to six-words in width. It permits you to permanently triple your reading speed.

a) Your Pacer undermines the snailing strategies of regressions, losing your place on the page and rereading sentences up to ten-times per page.

b) It reduces subvocalization (mentally hearing each word), as you read up to 66%; improve memory about 50%.

c) The Pacer causes your eyes to chunk (group), words of the sentences, instead of focusing on one-word-at-a-time. Speed is improved up to 33% by chunking with a Soft-Focus, when we consistently use Peripheral-Vision.

d) Vestibulo-Ocular-Reflex (Fresh Pursuit Tracking), is moving your eyes-and-head to obtain the sharpest, most acute vision.

e) It helps your eye to focus on the upper-half of the letters of the words, using a soft-focus.

f) Do not be concerned with following the laser-trace or the underlining movements of the Pen or Cursor because the eye-follows-a-moving-object. It goes on auto-pilot with peripheral-vision.

g) It is instinctual (hardwired), for our eyes to be Motion-Detectors, and causes our reading to speed-up. Your eyes play the game of catch-up with the trace-marks of your RasterMaster, Pen, and Cursor.

Key Point: Your moving-hand automatically manipulates the Pacer to move at about 2.5 times fast then your normal (random eye-movements).

h) Practice Pacing twice-as-fast as you can mentally-echo the words on the page. At 650 words per minute, subvocalization is not silenced, but is reduced by up to 66% because you can speak no more than maximum of 200 words per minute.

Endwords

Some students believe that these warm-up exercises are a waste-of-time.

First, they are required for only 21 days, after that your eye-movement-patterns enter auto-pilot as habits.

Second, please remember that you have programmed yourself into snailing by daily reinforcement; you use only about six-degrees of your one-hundred-and-twenty degrees of available field-of-vision.

Snailing use six-degrees to read one-word-at-a-time, while Speed Reading employes up to thirty-six degrees, about six-words in each chunk. If you choose to have the competitive-edge over your peers, and live in the Fast-Lane in your career, we recommend owning the skill of reading three books, articles and reports in the time others can hardly complete one.

With use, you will find your comfort-zone with one-strategy of speed reading. Remember, speed reading uses all of your left-brain reading skills we call snailing, in addition to your right-brain speed reading strategies. It is not a question of ignoring horizontal, lineal reading, it is combined with vertical, visual techniques called speed reading.

Practice is your secret weapon - use-it-or-lose-it. Each time you triple-chunk a sentence you are create an engram (memory-trace), that excites your speed reading neuropathways. After 21 days, you create a long-term habit, and speed reading becomes your norm, and snailing is out-dated.

You do not become a speed reader by thinking about it or just mastering the scientific and technical details. It is not an intellectual exercise, anymore than you can learn to drive a car by reading a book.

How do you get to Speed Reading nirvana? Practice, more practice, and then the Aha moment of personal insight has done it for 2 million others.