Would you like to have 4 hours of intensive coaching in Power Learning and Speed Reading for your teenagers with Richard and Lulama?

ITS FOR TEENS …  That is:  13 – 19 years old

They desperately need to know what I wish I had known when I was at school and Varsity, i.e.:

* How to study
* how to concentrate
* How to remember
* Tips on Tony Buzan’s Mind Mapping®, dumping, exam planning, and much more!

A seriously cool and fun session. Typical feedback is: “I actually learned a lot!”

I’m offering the session mainly as added value for parents who have attended the Thinking Skills workshop previously.

As you know, we believe learning should and can be fun. So we will have a lively conversation with those attending.  We’ll show them how to get through masses of textbooks in the shortest possible time so the have more time for the important things in life.

We’ll also cover: (Run this past the family at supper tonight!)

• How to take better notes and become teachers pet for the quality of your projects.

• How to manage study and homework time better.

• How to organise your thoughts onto paper better.

• Learn how your memory works – be noted for your brain power.

• Practice mnemonic techniques to recall names and lists.

• How to boost recall of a study session to find more time for life.

• How to turn on the mind/body chemistry of the “Aha!” response with meditation.

• Be inspired by your brain function and latent power.

• How to improve your success by use of breaks.

• How to turn on your motivation centre and banish put-off itis.

• Google The ultimate knowledge resource!

Venue: Houghton TM Centre.
Date:   Saturday 24 March 1 – 5 pm. or by appointment for your family only.
Cost:    R997 pp for 1 – 4.  But for 5 or more on a public session  697 pp inc VAT.

HOW TO BOOK: Its easy! Just use the contact form above right

OR  the form BELOW:

Time Management Tool

Time management has always been a problem of mine. I don’t know whether it’s because I have a lifestyle (call that a job) that means lots of interruptions. or whether its because, like you, I have lots of interests.

At the end of the day do you find that you ended up not achieving that which you set out to do? You got hooked into all kinds of stuff despite having had a do-list, either as a proper list or as a mind map? So you search for time management tips.

Enter Sonia Simone. She’s a blogger, like me, but much more professional. And here is a little idea you could use from her.

Get hold of a timer. Something that can count down for an hour.

Decide what you want to do that day, the core issues, and of course, write it down. Thats another tip, by the way, from the great Jim Rohn: “Never start the day until it is finished on paper.”

Then pick the issue you want to handle.

Set the timer to count down for 50 minutes and get cracking. At the end of the 50 minutes, IRRESPECTIVE of where you’ve got to. STOP. Take a goof-off break for 10 minutes.

Then start again.

It’s absolutely amazing, it works.

The first time I tried it you can’t believe how tidy the office got before I hit the button. Classic procrastination behavior. It seems my brain knew that I was not going to allow myself to be interrupted for the 50 minutes and that I was going to concentrate. And I did.

Try it.

P.S. The reason its important to take the break is that its known to improve creativity. You have ideas in the break that you can use during your next work session. Its called the Remeniscence Effect. And the reason you break, irrrespective of where you are up to, is because studies suggest that your recall may be better when you get interrupted. Its called the Ziegarnik Effect after Bluma Ziegarnik, a Soviet psychologist who passed in 1988. Its the kind of stuff we talk about in my workshops when we got on to time management tips.

My Thinking Skills workshops discuss the brain and how to use it to read faster and accelerate learning.

human brain

The human brain has often been described as the most complex and refined physical structure in the known universe. Did you know that nerve impulses travel at up to 240 km an hour? The brain uses the same amount of power as a 10 W light bulb. I reckon that during meditation it probably uses even less. Holding many times more information than any encyclopaedia it uses 20% of the oxygen in the bloodstream, despite making up only only 20% of body mass.

Apparently the brain is even more active at night than during the day. That doesn’t surprise anyone that’s been using a computer at night. Did you know that this practice is really really not recommended? Like what I’m doing right now. Ayurveda says using a computer at night creates deep-seated Kapha imbalances that are hard to treat.

People with high IQs are supposed to dream more than others… And did you know that braincells – neurons – continue to grow throughout life? These building blocks of the brain were thought to be not capable of regeneration after destruction by substances such as alcohol in the bloodstream. Nowadays brain cells are thought to be capable of being regrown from scratch. The evidence, obviously, is to be found in animal studies.

There are many types of neurons and data transmission rates along these differs. Although you can have a headache it turns out the brain itself does not have pain receptors. So it’s the tissues, nerves and blood vessels surrounding the brain that have pain receptors and can give you the headache. Like the rest of the body most of the brain is water. And it’s not necessarily grey, more likely to look like oatmeal porridge, squishy, pink and jellylike.

There are a ton of other fascinating facts about the brain and body to be found in this incredible blog by Eric Allen Bell. The web is saturated with this post and very good stuff it is.

For more on the brain and how to use it – contact us using the form on the right. We run regular Thinking Skill workshops to boost your productivity and accelerate your learning.

Thinking Skills Training is about the brain. But how do you use it to accelerate learning and improve memory? Did you know these ten amazing facts about brain and body?

1. The Brain. The average human brain has about 100 billion nerve cells. This is ten-fold the estimate of twenty years ago. I guess statistical techniques have improved–or we are getting brainier. And nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as over 270 km per hour.

2. Sneezing. Have you ever tried sneezing with your eyes open? It’s supposed to be impossible. When you sneeze, apparently all your bodily functions stop, even your heart. Wow.

3. The Eyes. Look at your left eye in the mirror. Now switch your gaze to the right eye. Did you see you eyes move? The brain’s video circuitry must suppress the blur like that you see when you leave your video camera on and film a blur of sky and shoes. If you go blind in one eye you only lose about one fifth of your vision but all your sense of depth.

4. The Tongue and Speech. It takes the interaction of 72 different muscles to produce human speech. Relative to size, the strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.

5. Hair. An average human scalp has 100,000 hairs. OK, I’m below average.

6. Spinal Nerves. The most sensitive cluster of nerves is at the base of the spine. I guess that’s why injuries to the base of the spine are so problematic.

Find the rest of these fascinating irrelevant facts here. And now for some great first-aid tips – the full story is here

7. Painless Injections. Ask to be shown exactly where the needle is going to go. Then squeeze near the spot and you’ll feel it less. Just make a circle with your thumb and forefinger and push down a few seconds before the shot. Apparently, this movement fools nearby nerves, making the injection feel more like a gentle prod. Wow. I can’t wait for my next injection!

8. Relief from Hiccups. Hiccups can be literally a pain. Try this: Take a very deep breath and hold it for about 10 seconds. And then, without exhaling, breathe in more air and hold for another 5 seconds. Then, one more time, breathe in as much air as you can, hold for 5 seconds, and breath out—hopefully no more hiccups.

9. Throat Tickles and sore throats Cure. Tickle something else…your ear to relieve a tickle in the back of your throat. Touching the area around your ear creates a reflex in the throat that eases the annoyance. Terrible Tea made from a little ginger powder, cinnamon and cloves, in the proportion 5-2-1 is an old Ayurveda remedy that gives serious relief. And if you have a sore throat, try gargling with a tea made of hot water and a teaspoon of turmeric.

10. Stuffy Nose Cleared. Your body has a natural mechanism to unclog your nose. Just push your tongue against the roof of your mouth, then press between your eyebrows with a finger. Keep it up for about 20 seconds and your sinuses could start to drain. I’d like to hear your feedback on this. Failing relief, try your local Ayurveda Products (Pretoria)  – or Google for the New Zealand supplier if you are in Australia – for an inexpensive herbal preparation called MA 251. It’s an absolutely astounding remedy from Maharishi Ayurveda, and no side-effects.

More about this celebrated and unusual personal development workshop here. Now how about leaving a comment below? We’d love to hear your wierdest tip.

Accelerated learning and study needs sleep! Beat insomia with theses tips gathered from personal experience and sources like Dr Mercola. Getting enough good quality sleep is crucial in keeping your edge – for study work or any other demanding activity.

Two factors affecting insomnia are light and temperature.

Melatonin considerations suggest you sleep in a dark room and don’t turn on the light when you go to the bathroom in the night.

Also, turn off your TV, computer, iPad and any other light emitting technologies at least an hour prior to bed time.

If you have to use a light, try a so-called “low blue” light bulbs in your bedroom and bathroom. These emit an amber light that will not suppress melatonin production.

Studies suggest ideal bedroom temperature is around 15°. Keeping your room cooler or hotter can lead to restless sleep. Scientists believe a cooler bedroom may therefore be most conducive to sleep, since it mimics your body’s natural temperature drop.

Checking your bedroom for electro-magnetic fields (EMFs) is a good idea, as these too can disrupt your pineal gland’s production of melatonin, and may have other negative effects as well. Move alarm clocks and other electrical devices away from your head. Keep them as far away from your bed as possible, preferably at least a metre.

Also avoid keeping cell phones and portable phone bases on your night stand. Keep cell phone chargers should be kept at least four feet away from your bed, while portable phone bases and wireless routers should be kept as far away from your bedroom as possible. Avoid running electrical cords underneath your bed.

Beware of what’s on the other side of your bedroom wall, and under the floor. Avoid sleeping with your head against a wall that has electric meters, circuit breaker panels, televisions or stereos, for example, on the other side. All of these are source of magnetic fields that you should sleep at least four feet away from to limit dangerous exposure.

Avoid sleeping pills!

Aside from being pathetically ineffective, sleeping pills also come with a slew of detrimental and potentially dangerous side effects.

Most people do not realize that certain sleeping pills — those containing Benadryl – can have a half life of about 18 hours. So, if you take them every night, you’re basically sedated for a large portion of the day as well! Not surprisingly, they’re associated with cognitive deficits in the morning.

Light exercise, eating the evening meal early, enjoyable relaxing activity like reading all help good sleep. Transcendental Meditation is a great help.

Good night!!!

Teachers

“The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach.” Paulo Freire (1921-1997)

It is true that one of the best ways to learn is to teach.

It gives us a better understanding of the material from the ground up.

If we can take something complicated and distill it down so that someone else can learn it, we are mastering the concept ourselves.

We are asked questions – questions we might never have thought of on our own.  In finding the answers, we learn more about the concept, and about ourselves.  So the students become the teachers as well.  We are all teachers, just as we are all students

At Thinking Skills we have always used adult learning or active learning principles to guide the workshop process. And we cover a great deal of practical how-to and where to go for help. With choosing a meditation technique for example. That may be why the sessions attract such consistently great feedback:

A brilliant light hearted, but extremely serious course.
Richard, Standard Bank, Johannesburg

I found the course to be totally enjoyable. Prior to attending I felt that I had zero creativity, limited problem solving ability, too slow comprehension of reading matter and far too long summaries. This course has been a tremendous confidence booster – I now know that I have creative ability, quicker reading and comprhension and improved approach to problem solving. Many thanks for a course that I can use everyday, from today.
Agatha, AECI, Modderfontein

Exceptional course because I go away with more skill in my repertoire – very valuable. Richard is an energetic course leader – professional language, dress and articulation.
Frek, Iscor, Pretoria

The presenter is the best I have come across in my entire life.
Malcolm, M.S. & A, Krugersdorp

This is the best course I have ever been on. (Most educational).
Danie, Richards Bay Coal Terminal, Richards Bay

Excellent course – met and exceeded my expectations. Fun, stimulating and thought provoking! Thanks Richard for “unlocking” my mind!
Andre, Old Mutual, Cape Town

For the first time ever, I was never bored. Excellent course. Will certainly recommend it.
Nasir, AECI, Modderfontein

A wonderful course. I will recommend it highly to friends and colleages. I feel very positive about the rest of my life and have so many new facts/ideas and ways of improving all aspects of my work and personal life. Thanks Richard.
Debbie, Old Mutual, Cape Town

Fantastic. Not often does a seminar cover the practical application of information with immediate results.
Douglas, Caltex, Cape Town

If your lifestyle includes this-it can trigger problems with concentration, anxiety, tiredness, confusion, depression dizziness and…

On a prescription? Answer YES to any of the following questions you could be in danger…

• Do you take herbs, vitamins and all any over-the-counter products?
• Do you have to take medicine more than once a day?
• Do you suffer from arthritis?
• Do you use different pharmacies to fulfil your prescription?
• Do you have poor eyesight or hearing?
• Do you live alone?
• Do you sometimes forget to take your medication?

If you answered yes to ANY question—horrors—you are at risk of a thing called polypharmacy—and the nasty, dangerous side-effects of multiple drug combinations, which include lack of concentration, anxiety, tiredness, confusion, weakness, constipation, depression, tremors, excitability, rashes to name just a few.

During my Ph.D. research I was astonished at the amount of pharmaceuticals people were consuming. A few years later someone on the Thinking Skills seminar told me he had a friend in Pretoria who specialized in drug side-effects. When I heard that it was my second warning that people take too much stuff. Today I got my third warning and I’m passing it straight on to you.

I think you might do yourself a big favor and have a peek at this post, particularly if you are a woman. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/06/07/women-beware–there-are-nearly-1000-drugs-in-the-pipeline-targeted-for-you.aspx

The bottom line is that drugs really should be viewed as a last resort. Most health conditions can be fixed by lifestyle changes, unless the precursors have been in place for 30 years. Doctor Mercola tells us that some examples of health problems that don’t need drug interventions are: diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, and insomnia.

There is in fact an enormous scientific literature showing that these very things respond well to Transcendental Meditation.

So, as I said on the workshop,

• Get enough rest
• Take regular exercise
• Eat “God made” foods i.e. high quality, delicious, unprocessed, organic (if possible) foods
• Get plenty of joy in your lifestyle (another GREAT list of lifestyle ideas here seriously one of the best I’ve seen)
• And of course,  pay attention to your inner life.

Now go and have a look at Dr Mercola’s  blog.

Keep learning!

Richard

Stress is opposed to health and longevity and we talk about stress management on the Thinking Skills workshop. So I read about it and try to do all the right things. Have you come across a website called mercola.com? Dr Mercola makes a lot of sense.

Here, for example is a list of his stress managent lifestyle ideas you may find interesting. Its from an article titled 4 Diet Mistakes that Age You. It complements our discussion on the Thinking Skills workshop.

The Anti-Aging Lifestyle

Of all the healthy lifestyle strategies I know of that can have a significant impact on your longevity, normalizing your insulin and leptin levels is probably the most important. There is no question that this is an absolute necessity if you want to slow down your aging process, and that means modifying your diet to avoid excessive amounts of fructose, grains, and other pro-inflammatory ingredients like trans fats.

That said, longevity is the result of an overall healthy lifestyle, so in addition to the four cornerstones just mentioned, these additional strategies can further help you stay young and vibrant, longer:

• Learn how to effectively cope with stress – Stress has a direct impact on inflammation, which in turn underlies many of the chronic diseases that kill people prematurely every day, so developing effective coping mechanisms is a major longevity-promoting factor.Meditation, prayer, physical activity and exercise are all viable options that can help you maintain emotional and mental equilibrium.
• Optimize Your Vitamin D Levels to between 60 and 80 ng/ml.
• Animal based omega-3 fats – Correcting the ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fats is a strong factor in helping people live longer. This typically means increasing your intake of animal based omega-3 fats, such as krill oil, while decreasing your intake of damaged omega-6 fats (think trans fats).
• Get most of your antioxidants from foods –Good sources include blueberries, cranberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, cherries, beans, and artichokes.
• Get your resveratrol naturally – Because resveratrol appears to be so effective at warding off many diseases associated with aging, it is often referred to as a “fountain of youth” that can extend lifespan. Good sources of naturally-occurring resveratrol include whole grape skins and seeds, raspberries and mulberries.
• Use coconut oil – Another excellent anti-aging food is coconut oil, known to reduce your risk of heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease, and lower your cholesterol, among other things.
• Naturally increase your glutathione levels with high quality whey protein concentrate – Another exciting anti-aging discovery is related to the process of slowing down telomere shortening, as discussed in more detail in this previous article. There’s some evidence that this can be done nutritionally, by consuming high quality whey protein.
• Avoid as many chemicals, toxins, and pollutants as possible – This includes tossing out your toxic household cleaners, soaps, personal hygiene products, air fresheners, bug sprays, lawn pesticides, and insecticides, just to name a few, and replacing them with non-toxic alternatives.
• Avoid prescription drugs – Pharmaceutical drugs kill thousands of people prematurely every year – as an expected side effect of the action of the drug. And, if you adhere to a healthy lifestyle, you most likely will never need any of them in the first place.

So these ideas complement the stress management and lifestyle advice you will receive on the Thinking Skills workshop.

Keep thinking creatively!

Richard

–

Richard Broome PhD

Thinking Skills Training

+27 11 483 0685 (vm 24/7)

082 889 3160

click here for Next SA workshops

• Start with the end in mind. Get your syllabus. Study it. Get out your study notes and checkout the headings and sub-headings. You don’t have time to read everything in total detail, so make sure you get an early picture of the whole syllabus and use that overview to pick out the key areas that always come up.
• Spot. Spot. Spot. Get old papers. Figure out what always comes up. Go for that first. Early in the year.
• Take a sheet of paper for each subject. List the main topics and sub-topics down the page.
• Better still – make a mind map for each subject. Personalise each area by using your own codes such as “easy”, “interesting”, hard”, “need help with this” and “eeeek!” etc
• Plan. Plan. Plan. Build in revision time EVERY DAY for stuff covered that day. Then review it again tomorrow, and again next week, and a month later. Then finally just before the test or exam.
• Mind maps are fantastic for making summaries that are memorable and help you to get your head around stuff. They even make cool wall hangings – so you surround yourself with the stuff you’re working with. That way you never forget.
• Be proactive. You MUST look over the textbook version of your next lecture or lesson BEFORE the lecture. This means you’ll have to pester the lecturer for what they plan to cover next. Don’t worry – he/she won’t see you as a nuisance – they welcome students who come forward like this.
• Read cool books like Tony Buzan’s Mind Map book. Finkel’s Brain Booster.
• Get free mindmap preview software by searching google for freemind or Buzan’s iMap.
• Improve your mind with Transcendental Meditation – it’s proven to help you concentrate.
• Prefer baroque music over heavy metal or industrial goth for your study times.
• Get enough exercise.Take frequent breaks
• Eat only fantastic food – organic is best.

For the younger student:

Call about our occasional 4 hour PowerLearning ® courses in Houghton fro teens. 1pm – 5 pm,Call 011 483 0685 for details. Checkout this brochure for more info