Hi Gavino. Patrick Bateman referred me to your MMP posts from another thread where I had sought help with my learning requirements. As a complete newbie to Memory Palaces I want to be very sure that I plan carefully and appropriately before committing.
Seems to me your nesting idea might be what I need so as to progressively add information directly related to basic facts, but with my current level of understanding I couldn’t tackle the construction of such a Massive Memory Palace at the moment. I think I need some more basic understanding of creating and using memory palaces before I tackle something like that (suggestions for reading material with detailed examples most welcome).
I hope you won’t mind if I give an example of exactly what it is I need to do and hopefully you can advise me on the suitability of the MMP method.
This is related to the theoretical (as opposed to physical practice) aspects of a Japanese martial art which has similar learning requirements to acupuncture. To give you an idea of the sort of information I need to commit to memory, here is a typical question/response from the oral part of my exam:
Q. Describe the important features of the Bladder meridian.
A. Bladder is the 7th meridian and contains 67 points. It starts at the inner corner of the eye and ends at the corner of the nail on the lateral side of the small toe. [trace path] Element: water; Polarity: yang; Striking Action: grasping; Stance: crane; Colours: blue & black; Diurnal Cycle: 3pm-5pm.
We are supposed to provide the information in exactly that order, for which I have the mnemonic EPSSCD = element polarity striking-action stance colours diurnal-cycle. I need to answer as above for each of the 12 meridians. Meridian number, number of points, start and end locations are automatic responses which I don’t need to have a mnemonic for. [trace path] means I have to finger draw the path of the meridian on a human subject. I couldn’t come up with a better way than rote memorisation for that, drawing them over and over again on images of body blanks, so I don’t need to address the actual path in the memory Palace.
Now this is the important bit as far as planning is concerned…
As it stands, none of that is very difficult to handle, but what’s got me concerned is being able to seamlessly add more and more information about each meridian as time goes by. A very important consideration is that I can in the future add new factoids that are directly related to the base item (meridian). By that I mean there will come a time when I’ll have to add other items of information such as: Sound: chu; Vertebrae: L5; and other data that I don’t even know about yet, all directly related to the Meridian.
After reading your posts on MMP it occurred to me that the 12 meridians could each be an entrance to a micro-palace where the related EPSSCD etc information would be stored.
But with no previous experience of memory palaces I don’t really have any idea how to go about this, or even if it’s a useful way to approach my requirements.
Any advice most gratefully received.
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