5. 3 MEMORY KALEIDOSCOPE
Memory Kaleidoscope is an exercise that may be helpful to utilise all our five sense and therefore make the remembering connection more powerful.
Take any item and experience every single one of your five senses.
E.g. Horse:
Can you see the horse? (in colour => see below Rainbow exercise)
Can you hear the horse? Maybe the clacking of the hoofs.
Touch: How does the mane feel like? Important: If you have never touched a horse, imagine you think it could feel. Your brain cannot distinguish between real information and vividly imagined information. Important here for us: you simply make the connection stronger and therefore easier to recall.
Taste: feed the horse some sugar. How does the sugar taste?
Smell: come on, do you really need some hint here? However, joking aside: smell is very powerful indeed as it bypasses a kind of censor in the brain and goes directly to older parts of the brain. Using the sense of smell makes really powerful memories. Just think back when you got perfume for Christmas? Or you changed the diaper of your child for the first time. You know what I am talking about.
To sum up:
Instead of only one hook (seeing the item that you want to remember) we are using 5 hooks and therefore increase the chances of recall.
You don’t have to use all five senses all the time; however if you feel you want to make the connection stronger, here is a tool to do so.
You can take any item to practice this exercise. It may be a bit unusual the first few times, but soon you see the benefit of this exercise.
Practice the memory kaleidoscope: it is good fun.
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