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EVERY day, the written word assaults us, demanding to be read. Newspapers pile up; magazines and brochures beg for attention; documents summon us from in-trays; novels languish unopened beside beds; e-mail and web pages glare from computer screens.

Americans have a name for it. "Information anxiety" is a recognised syndrome in the US.

And, if your in-tray towers over your desk, if you nod knowingly when someone mentions a book or public figure you have never heard of, and if you are overwhelmed with too many decisions to be made in too little time, then you are afflicted.

The 12 men and women who gathered last year in a room above an art gallery in central London were all chronic sufferers. Among them was an investment banker, a TV executive, a venture capitalist and a technological designer.

The cure? Go live up a mountain, or, perhaps more feasibly, learn the secrets of whole brain reading, a course that has been introduced recently to Britain by MindWorks (UK).

On average, adults read at a paltry 250 words per minute and retain only 10 per cent of what they have read after 36 hours. That is a retention rate of just six minutes out of every hour.

The reason, according to Mr Ken Shear of MindWorks, is that most of us read using only the left hemisphere of the brain, which tackles words in an analytical, literal and linear fashion.

Our right hemispheres, by contrast, are concerned with symbolic and spatial understanding, and comprehend metaphorical and intuitive meaning.

When the two work together, it becomes possible to read and understand text at incredible speed.

The whole brain reading method taught by Mr Shear requires a cerebral turnaround. Train the right hemisphere to do some of the work, and rates of thousands of words per minute become possible, coupled with improved comprehension and retention.

At such speeds, you could polish off the bedside books in a single evening.

Whole brain reading evolved from work carried out by US neuroscientist Diane Alexander while she was researching brain-injured children in California during the 1980s.

Children who had suffered left-hemisphere injuries, which deprived them of speech, were able to shift the verbal function to the right hemisphere and learn to speak again. Some of these children then began to read at phenomenally high speeds, using the right hemisphere.

Years of research followed, and Ms Alexander ultimately developed a method of teaching this skill, which she uses in the US with groups of learners ranging from disadvantaged children to senior company executives. Her business partner, Mr Shear, teaches it in the UK.

Most of us read slowly and ineffectively because our eye roams around the page. It not only tries to study every word, but also darts about, revisiting any that are unfamiliar or particularly enticing, tracing a zigzag pattern over the text.

At the same time, we "say" the words in our heads, which slows us down even more.

The object of the whole brain reading course is to train the eye to follow new and disciplined routes through the print, and establish neural pathways between left and right hemispheres so that the two can work together in interpreting and analysing what the eye picks up.

"Think of it as brain aerobics," said Mr Shear to the group of would-be speed readers assembled for a one-day introductory course. He tossed a life-size orange rubber brain meditatively from hand to hand.

"Learn to relax into a receptive state, and the information on the page will be able to flow into the brain."

First, we tested our normal reading rate. Most were stuck on the UK average of about 250 words per minute, with just one coming in at 320 wpm.

"By the end of the day, you'll all be reading at 600 wpm," Mr Shear promised. A polite but sceptical silence was palpable.

The method hinges on developing eye, finger and brain coordination, and using a wider range of peripheral vision. In the first stage of learning, the finger follows the print line for line, and eye tracks finger without hesitation, deviation or repetition.

As reading speed increases, the eye learns to de-focus deliberately from individual words and follow the finger as it snakes through the text. Ultimately, said Mr Shear, it is possible just to touch the centre of the page and absorb its content.

Time for our first attempt. Our fingers traced the lines, eyes following obediently, while Mr Shear timed us. The result was an across-the-board 450 wpm, with 90-100 per cent comprehension. It was easy.

For the rest of the day, we interspersed timed readings with games and activities designed to convince us of the brain's amazing capabilities. Shifting existing belief systems about what is and is not possible is half the battle.

For example, we saw for ourselves how the brain can simultaneously make different interpretations of black and white patterns on a page, which is, after all, what print is.

We tested ourselves to see how far our peripheral vision extended, and took it in turns to demonstrate how much information the brain can digest in a second.

By 4 pm, we were ready to go for broke. We had learned to increase retention by mapping the information we were reading using the right hemisphere's preferred language of colours and symbols alongside words.

In the final test, we all read easily at 600 wpm, still with 90-100 per cent comprehension. At that speed, you could read and understand this article in two minutes. And even that is slow by whole brain reading standards.

Sitting in on the course was Ms Ann Haine, who took the complete three-day programme six months ago and is now training to deliver it to others.

She believes the technique works: "There's nothing magic about it; it is a skill which you have to practise in order to improve."

How fast can she read? "I don't know the speed, but last week I read a 200-page book and wrote a report on it in a morning."

With practice, speed definitely does build up. The next night, I whipped through 30 densely-packed pages of The Woman in White in less than 20 minutes, at a speed of about 650 wpm. Reading and, more importantly, understanding at that speed, is exhilarating.

The next step is to sign up for the two optional follow-on days to the course, where speeds of 3,000 wpm and more have been clocked. Now what could that do for your in-tray?

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