Let’s do a small, simple demonstration to prove how your memory becomes more powerful after combining vivid imagery, multi-sensory activity, and physicality. We are going to do an example exercise which involves using your own body as place to store memories.

Step 1

Take your right hand, and gently touch your Head, Left Eye (don’t touch your eyeball), Nose, Mouth, Neck, Chest, Stomach, Left hand, Left Knee, and then your Left Foot. Notice the direction, that we are going from your head toward toward your foot.

Step 2

After you have touched those 10 spots, you may wish to read these aloud and use your imagination to imagine these wacky experiences, one-by-one: 

• You get wacked over the head by a newspaper. Ouch!
• You have a light bulb sticking out of your left eye.
• You sneeze and a miniature airplane comes flying out of your nose.
• You eat a personal computer for breakfast, you take the first bite by careful sticking the monitor into your mouth.
• You feel a painful prick on the back of your neck and notice that somebody just gave you a vaccine shot in your neck.
• You have a tiny car driving around on your chest.
• Your stomach is making a ticking noise like a clock and when you look down you see an hour and minute hand sticking out of your belly button.
• In your left hand you grab a red phone and dial the emergency number.
• Your left knee is frozen like a block of ice and it feels very cold.
• You step back with your left foot and crush a camera that was on the floor.

Step 3

Now, can you go through and remember the wacky experiences?  If helpful, use these prompts to remember what happened:

• Your head
• Left Eye
• Nose
• Mouth
• Neck
• Chest
• Stomach
• Left hand
• Left Knee
• Left Foot

Conclusion

Hopefully as you went through each body part, it was fairly easy to remember the wacky association we made.  If not, sometimes it takes some practice and that is ok.

What we just did is turn 10 of our body parts into a type of Memory Palace.  This technique has been used for centuries and it is still used today by anyone from students to memory champions to medical doctors.

At each item, we associated one of the world’s top 10 modern inventions that has changed the world according to the National Geographic magazine:  

Now you are more intimately aware of 10 great inventions that have changed the world.

What did you think of this approach to memorizing a list?