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Pacing Your Eyes

Every other system I have studied teaches you to pace your eyes by waving your hand over the page. This is supposed to make your eyes go faster than normal. This seems to have its roots in Evelyn Wood's story of how she "discovered" speed reading. The legend goes that Wood was reading some book of fiction the usual way, got mad, and tossed the book aside, where it landed in some dirt. Magically, when Wood later picked up the book, she brushed some of the dirt off the page, and suddenly was reading at thousands of words per minute. I have read this story many times in many books, always as a justification of using hand movements to pace the eyes. The traditional telling of the myth omits one important factor; the natural speed readers Wood studied did not use hand pacing. At least none of the naturals I have known pace by hand. Instead Wood and other speed reading teachers accord to hand movements a magical status completely out of proportion with their value for the task of reading.

There are two problems with hand pacing. First, doing any thing at fast speed tends to get in the way of reading. If you have practiced the drills you have already know that it is much easier to read a clause at a moderate speed than it is to read five individual words at fast speed. The second big problem with hand pacing is that it is awkward and uncomfortable. Reading is a physical skill. Coordination of the eye muscles to control focus while you read is a hard enough task. The drills in this system allow you to gain that coordination in a smooth, step-wise fashion. Using the hand to pace the eyes just gets in the way of training the eyes and makes you look ridiculous! The need for hand pacing is eliminated by the counting and by starting at 60 wpm, or even at two seconds per word, 30 wpm, if that is what it takes to train your eyes comfortably. By starting at these slow speeds you practice pacing your eyes, without using your hand.. Varying the speed during a drill is like lifting variable weights. Your eye muscles literally become more coordinated just from doing the drill.