The World Memory Champion

Another exciting activity we took part in during our downtime in Skara (yes, even me, I got to stay for this!) was a memory workshop with the two time World Memory Champion Jonas von Essen.

He also has the Swedish record in accurately reciting digits of pi from memory, with 13,208 digits! (The official Guinness World record is 70,000 digits!!)

He talked about how he had found out that anyone really could be a champion, with the right technique and a lot of practise! He practises several hours a day!
It's all about visualising and creating images that you place in your own "memory palace", or along a "memory walk".

He taught us everything about the memory technique he uses, and we got to practise together with him in remembering a shopping list with 30 different items. It was really fun!

We also got to work in teams of two and each got to write down 10 random words for each other, which we then had to use a similar technique to remember. Easy peasy!

Here are the lists Lucas and I wrote for each other: