Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0410: Hypnosis, sleeplearning, and other nonsense

Episode Date: October 2, 2015

Marie asks about using hypnosis for better memory. I talk about hypnosis, sleeplearning, meditation, and what is or isn’t nonsense. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Master of Memory 410. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Marie submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com Marie says, Hi Timothy, what do you think about using hypnosis for better memory? Do you have any experience with it, and second, I would do some serious research before getting into it or committing to it.

Now, let me qualify that and go a little bit deeper into this by saying I do believe in the benefits of practices such as meditation and mindfulness and really doing things that will practice helping you to focus, to work on the things that you're wanting to work on at the particular moment that you're working on them as opposed to going all over the place. So things like meditation and perhaps to an extent hypnosis, things that bring your mind to the present moment and help you to basically everything that you're doing with your brain, because your brain's obviously a very powerful thing, you want your brain to be working on the things that you want your brain to be working on. And so practices like meditation and things related to that, when they're not completely bogus, are actually shown to be helpful in helping you to focus and in improving your creativity and your ability to get the things done and to put basically the mental horsepower into the things that you want to be working on at the time. So the short answer there is do your research and make sure that whatever it is that you're signing up for, whatever it is that you're deciding to start

practicing is something that is shown to get real good results. And to give a slightly longer answer, one thing that I can say no to is sleep learning, for example. Some people will talk about sleep learning and will sell it and will do all kinds of scammy things with it, whereas there's absolutely no research that it's in any way possible to absorb information to learn things while you're not conscious. The only studies that have in any way really supported anything related to sleep learning have basically just proven, and this is just at the time of what I'm saying right here, have just basically shown that we do respond to stimuli in our sleep. That is to say, our minds are not completely dead when we're asleep.

Something that's interesting, just as sort of a ramble while I'm thinking about it, is the idea of lucid dreaming, which is practicing something in your sleep on purpose while you're dreaming. But that is completely within your sleep on purpose while you're dreaming. But that is completely within your mind. That's reinforcing things that you already have in your mind and not really absorbing new information from the outside. You're asleep. So at the time of this podcast episode, it's currently considered pretty silly and at least not scientifically supported the idea that you can learn new things in your sleep, and particularly the idea that you can learn things better when you're asleep than when you're awake. And the reason for that longer answer is just to say that almost everybody out there who's selling some sort of scammy information product about sleep learning or something like that

is completely not supported by current science. But again, my short answer and the one that you should stick with rather than my rant is just do your research and make sure that whatever it is, is supported by real studies that get real results. Make sure that you can actually find real shown results. And I don't want to close the door on any particular technique. I just want to tell you how things are, the way that things seem to be right now, and the basic general principle that you should know what you're doing and not sign up for

something that just one person is saying works. I hope that idea is acceptable for you, Marie. And for everyone listening, what do you want to learn? The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question and I'll talk to you again soon.