CONCENTRATION CAN IMPROVE YOUR MEMORY

Articles In This Section:

· CONCENTRATION IN YOGA

· YOGA TEACHES DIFFERENT BEFINNINGS

· YOU'VE GOT TO EMPTY YOUR MIND OF ALL FOR YOGA

· VALUE OF CONCENTRATION BEFORE SLEEP

· HIGHLY TRAINED YOGA

· CONCENTRATION CAN IMPROVE YOUR MEMORY

· YOGA HELPS WITH EMOTIONAL AND INTELLECTUAL

Intense concentration can improve memory, since lack of it is largely a matter of inability to focus on anything long enough or with sufficient interest, for it to make a lasting impression. A simple exercise which does not even require the traditional Yoga pose is to select a few cards out of a pack, lay them face down in front of you, then jot down the value and suit of each. With practice you will be able to increase the number of cards you are able to remember at one time until finally you will accurately recall the entire pack in the order in which you put them down.

An auxiliary exercise which may be practiced profitably at odd moments is to make yourself consciously aware of what you see as you walk down a street or enter a room. Rather than proceed in your usual state of semi-consciousness, try making a point of assimilating as many impressions as possible. Afterwards try just as systematically to recall as many as you can after you have reached your destination. This, by the way, is a good preliminary to the more formal, and more difficult, practice of sitting with the eyes closed and systematically making yourself remember everything you did during the previous day. You will probably be amazed at first at how many details actually escape you. In time, however, you will learn to marshal your thoughts until yesterday's events pass clearly in review before your mind's eye like a series of motion picture stills projected on a screen. Remember, do not be tempted to pick and choose, shrugging off certain memories as too trivial and inconsequential to merit notice. They doubtless are, in themselves, but it isn't their intrinsic importance with which you are concerned for the moment. Remember you are now engaged in a training process intended to develop your ability to control not just your memory, but those thoughts which are important to you.

A final exercise in concentration, and the most difficult of all for reasons which are self-evident, is to spend a few minutes nightly reviewing the day's happenings and scrutinizing your own behavior directly before you fall asleep. The difficulty here is not that your tired mind will be tempted to wander. A far more serious stumbling block is the simple fact that honest self-analysis is seldom pleasant. In the course of any one day we all do many things which we would just as soon not remember. Consequently we shy away from them, sometimes burying them so determinedly that it takes a professional analyst to force us to face up to them. The problem then is to make your nightly self-examination honest without being morbid. You need neither berate nor excuse yourself but just honestly admit your own faults for the purpose of not repeating them. Learn to do this, and you will really be making progress. There are few areas where your new powers of concentration will help you more. For, once you learn to stay with this kind of self-examination long enough to reach realistic conclusions, you will be well on the way to true self-knowledge.