The Mind Palace Memory Technique
The mind palace memory technique is a memory system that enables the person using it to memorize massive amounts of information. 2,000 years ago in Cicero’s writings ‘Rhetorica ad Herennium’ he detailed how to create a memory palace. In these 2,000 year old writings the Roman statesman, author and philosopher describes one of the first memory training teachers Simonedes.
Simonides of Ceos was a Greek lyric poet, born at Ioulis on Ceos.
In 477 B.C. Simonedes was delivering one of his poems for a banquet and upon completion of reciting the poem he was called outside. During this time outside the roof collapsed and killed everyone. Simonedes was then called upon to identify the bodies because he knew where everyone was sitting.
This event led to the creation of the Mind Palace memory technique by Simonedes. Just as Simonedes remembered the names of everyone in the room based on where they were sitting the ideas is that you can remember anything if you visualize it in a location in a room.
In order to perfect this Mind Palace memory technique you would number pieces of furniture in your home and then familiarize yourself with these items and their corresponding numbers. The key to mastering this technique is to number 5 pieces of furniture in each room and this will aide in learning the numbers more rapidly because anyone can count by 5’s.
Once you have your home numbered then you have created your first mind palace.
Creating at least 20 locations in your mind palace and no more than 10 items in each room will enable you to keep the images clean and separate in your memory.
When Cicero described the Mind Palace technique 2,000 years ago he detailed how these locations could be outdoors as well. Mark Twain the author of Huckleberry Finn was fascinated by memory techniques and he used locations outdoors on his farm to memorize history dates with his children.
If you were to attend the World Memory Championships you would find mental athletes using the technique to memorize names, numbers and decks of cards. These highly trained memory athletes know their palaces very well and haver substitute images for numbers, card, names and every item in the tournament and then it becomes a race to who can imagine the images in their mind palace faster.
Memory courses have been created to help the average person learn the mind palace techniques and one of these courses is the Black Belt Memory course created by 2 Time USA Memory Champion and memory training expert, Ron White. You can get the Black Belt Memory course here https://memorycourse.brainathlete.com/memorytips
Here is a detailed article on mastering this system https://memorise.org/memory-training/memory-mind-palace
