Vertiefungswissen anzeigenVertiefungswissen verbergenMethod of Loci
This technique is as old as ancient democracy: The method of loci, used by Greek and Roman senators to hold their intoxicating speeches in front of the senate. It was proscribed to use any kind of notes, so they were using this brilliant technique to jack up their memory. Rhetorical geniuses like Cicero went through their palaces, gardens and any other kind of locations (Latin: loci) and memorized the order of every single object in their paths.
To remember a speech, they broke it into pieces and created symbols for every single part. Then they put those symbols into the different loci . To recall them they visualized the path and went from one station to another, where they remembered the symbols and translated them back into the speech.
According to Cicero in “De Oratore”, the method of loci was invented by the Greek poet Simonides about 500 BC:
What Simonides did is easy to reproduce, since remembering a route from A to B in its detail has once been part of the survival strategy of mankind. Everyone can try it like this: Close your eyes and remember the objects in your room. You will know exactly where your bed, your sofa, your table and your computer are. Imagine to go outside your room – can you see the corridor and the other rooms? Can you even leave the house and wander through your garden? Maybe you can jump to your workplace and see your office. You just discovered the method of loci!
Why is the method of loci so powerful? On one hand it is using the natural memory for locations. Even if a client has the feeling to easily loose orientation, he/she is able to remember his/her own room in its detail. On the other hand it provides a logical order. The client just has to walk through the room clockwise or counter clockwise and all the objects will be in a specific order.
Call each route to be created with this method a path. It is a track that represents the most easily navigated way between an origin and a destination. Each time it is used, it becomes stronger and grows wider. A memory athlete is using his paths over and over again.
Step 1 – Pick a location
To use this technique, ask the client to choose his/her first location. It can be anywhere he/she like but the client should pick the one he/she know best for the first path. That could be own room, own flat, house or the own workspace. If a client likes, he/she can also create an imaginary path. But it is harder to memorize in the beginning, so it could be better to choose a real location first.
Step 2 – Define the Way-Points
When clients picked first location, they have to define all the objects they want to use as way-points in their path. The way-points will be the stations a client have to pass, each time he/she is memorizing any kind of information with it. The number of way-points will determine the length of the route – and therewith the amount of information client can store on it. One single room can easily include twenty way-points. I suggest that client’s first path should have about 10 stations. If you stick to some rules, the path will become more efficiently. But those rules are just a guideline – you can break them whenever you like. Since every client got a different mind and different affinities, you probably have to bend the rules to make them match client’s personality.
A process description for the client can look like:
- Do imagine your way-points in every detail
- Pick the way-points you first think of – they are in most cases the best
- Keep a certain order of the way you walk your path (i.e. clockwise)
- Use noticeable way-points every 10 steps to create proper segments
- Don’t make your way-points too small (i.e. a pencil)
- Don’t make your way-points too big (i.e. a house)
- Don’t make them to close together
- Don’t make them to far away from each other
- Don’t use similar way-points in the same path
Step 3 – Memorize the Path
Since clients already know the location and finished defining the way-points, it will be very easy to memorize the new path. Ask the client trying to recall it in his/her imagination. If the client miss a few points, ask him/her trying to imagine him-/herself walking through the path and count each and every single way-point on it. Doing that repeatedly the client will strengthen his/her path each time. After a while you can increase the speed dramatically: With a well-trained path client won’t need longer than a split second for each way-point. This process is quick and natural.
Step 4 – Use it!
With the new path Clients are able to associate information like words with every way-point. It will help to remember the correct order and can easily be used over and over again for different purposes. This is because Clients are naturally forgetting their associations after a while, if they will not recapitulate again. This happens in a short period of time and depends on Client’s memory.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_memory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
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