| The list |
|
|
| |
1 |
Football |
| |
2 |
Snoopy |
| |
3 |
Door |
| |
4 |
Telephone |
| |
5 |
Rabbit |
| |
6 |
Shoe |
| |
7 |
Pen |
| |
8 |
Dog |
| |
9 |
House |
| |
10 |
Magazine |
| |
11 |
Headphones |
| |
12 |
Torch |
| The House |
|
|
| |
|
Of
course, your own house or apartment will have its own
characteristics and you should
modify the exercise to match your own house - For this
exercise you can visualise arriving home and making your
way to your
bedroom.
Along the way we need twelve familiar places to which
we can link our twelve list items |
| |
1 |
The front drive (Or front
garden) |
| |
2 |
The front door |
| |
3 |
In the front porch |
| |
4 |
In the hallway |
| |
5 |
At the bottom of the stairs
(On the bottom step, maybe) |
| |
6 |
On the stairs |
| |
7 |
At the top of the stairs |
| |
8 |
The upstairs landing |
| |
9 |
The bedroom doorway |
| |
10 |
Inside the bedroom door |
| |
11 |
Beside the bed |
| |
12 |
In the bed |
| |
|
This seems a fairly logical
progression and a fairly natural sequence - If you're not
going to use this example then visualise your own home and
jot down the twelve places on a piece of paper. The Roman
practitioners of this technique called each place a locus.
As you can see from the list here, once you get beyond
a requirement for about ten places (unless, of course you
live in a substantial home!) you can start to struggle
to find a natural and memorable sequence of places.
Anyway, now quickly run through your loci in
your mind to ensure you really do know where you're going. |
| Memorise the list |
|
|
| |
|
Now the easy bit: Memorising
the list |
 |
Football |
In your mind, imagine you
are coming up the drive kicking a huge (twenty
feet across, at least!) football. See some detail on the
ball, those black octagons are they, amongst the white
one. It weighs almost nothing and it's bouncing around
all over the place. As you kick it it bounces against the
. . . |
 |
Snoopy |
Front door of
your house. As it hits the front door it swings open and
Snoopy looks out, rather cross at your antics with the football,
it seems. He snarls and has huge, slavering teeth but then
smiles and beckons you to come inside . . . |
 |
Door |
The porch.
When you get into the porch Snoopy has turned into the door
leading into your house: Swinging there in the doorframe,
flat like a door but with his big, doggy nose sticking out
at you there isn't much room inside the porch. So you give
the Snoopy door a push and it opens onto your . . . |
 |
Telephone |
Hallway.To
get across the hallway to the stairs you have to climb over
a huge telephone (Your 'phone in the hallway has mutated
into a great, inflatable telephone that almost fills the
hallway, from wall to wall and floor to ceiling - You have
to squeeze around and over it to the stairs. This should
all be seeming very bizarre.) As you reach . . . |
 |
Rabbit |
The bottom of the
stairs, a big (human-sized) fluffy rabbit is standing
on the bottom step and he reaches out, grabs your hand
and helps you past the last of the telephone obstacle.
You stand beside him on the bottom stair and he pushes
you into a huge shoe that is . . . |
 |
Shoe |
On the stairs,
about half way up. It's a great big brown, leather shore
with a black sole and, for some reason, it has black laces,
too. You sit in the big shoe, like a driver in an old-fashioned
racing
car but holding onto the black laces like reins on a horse
as
it
propels
itself
up the
stairs to . . . |
 |
Pen |
The top of the stairs.
As the shoe reaches the top it stops with a jolt as the nib
of a huge, silver fountain pen digs into the toes at the
front of the shoe. Ink starts to gush out of the fountain
pen and spread all across the . . . |
 |
Dog |
Upstairs landing.
The ink stain starts to look like a dog: It's a big, vicious
dog that starts to emerge from the dog-like stain to become
a real dog that grabs the pen in its mouth and runs across
the landing to your . . . |
 |
House |
Bedroom doorway.
As it reaches the bedroom door the dog stops running and
starts to draw a picture of a kennel
on the door, telling you "Its not your bedroom anymore it
my HOUSE!" and singing "I'm in the doghouse and so are you!"
You push past the dog, knocking the pen from his paw and
stop . . . |
 |
Magazine |
Inside the bedroom
door. You'd
expected to find your bedroom but, instead, there is a magazine
with the pages flipping past in the breeze showing pictures
of your bedroom instead. The wind that's blowing the pages
of the magazine is making a loud howling noise.As soon
as you see a picture of your bed you jump into the
picture
and
stand . . . |
 |
Headphones |
Beside your bed.
You reach down to the bedside cabinet and pull out a pair
of headphones, which you put on your head. The howling of
the wind is quiet now you have the headphones on and, as
soft music lulls you, the light begins to fade and you jump . . . |
 |
Torch |
Into the bed.
It is dark now you're in bed. So you get out your torch (from
under the pillow, from your pocket? Who knows?) and shine
it around the room. It is immensely bright, like a searchlight,
and the room beyond its beam is jet black. You check that
everything is alright - the dog has
gone back to the top of the stairs and the wind isn't blowing
everything around the room - before you go off to sleep. |
| |
|
The end. |
| |
|
Run through the sequence again
in your mind.
Do you remember the list? |
| Now try this one |
|
|
|
|
 |
| |
 |
Back to the first page on
memory techniques |
| |
 |
Next page: The Roman Room
and The Journey |
| |
|
|
