In 1959, while he was a doctor at the School Health Service, Dr. Francis Lefebure discovered and analyzed the stimulating effect of light on brain functions. His method is based on ‟phosphenes”, the multicolored spots that persist in the dark for 3 minutes after having focused on a strong light source for 30 seconds.

The extraordinary discovery of Dr. Lefebure is that MIXING A THOUGHT WITH A PHOSPHENE TRANSFORMS THE ENERGY OF LIGHT INTO MENTAL ENERGY. Phosphenes stimulate the development of memory, intelligence, attention, creativity and intuition.

The application of the method is easy and even enjoyable: children will spend the same amount of time studying as they normally would, but they will be able to memorize information better and will benefit from a development of cerebral capacities that will remain between the sessions.

Each different school subject has its mode of application: English, History, Geography, etc. In the case of mathematics, thinking will be more structured, and the information related to the question will be better assimilated. Significant progress and results will be observed quickly. Mental arithmetic exercises will become easier. The capacity to appreciate unfamiliar points of view will expand; the ability to formulate ideas for essays will be enhanced.
For the study of a foreign language, phosphenes will help memorizing new words, grammatical structures, and will help acquiring the right accent and intonation.

IN THE CASE OF CHILDREN OF ABOUT TEN YEARS OF AGE, THE IMPROVEMENTS AT SCHOOL CAN OFTEN BE NOTICED WITHIN A MONTH. The child learn faster, remember their lessons easier and are more attentive in class. The effects can be felt from the first session.

In Portugal, Professor Cruz from Lisbon, was commissioned by the government to perfect the educational methods of his country, and performed attention span tests with children, before and after a session of Phosphenic Mixing. It has been confirmed that cerebral capacities are enhanced after each session and that by repeating practice over a few weeks, half an hour a day, the improvement of the children’s attention span persisted between sessions.
Specific problems like DYSORTHOGRAPHIA, DYSLEXIA, STUTTERING, as well as SCHOOL DELAY can be corrected within a few months.

For nearly 40 years, Dr. Lefebure’s book ‟Phosphenic Mixing applied to Education” has helped thousands of children and students to pass their exams, and thus efficiently helps solving failure at school. Given all the problems in the school system today, more and more parents are using Phosphenism, as well as teachers who use the method in their remedial classes with considerable success.

‟Phosphenic Mixing applied to Education” is now in its 17th edition.

A phosphene is produced by focusing, for approximately 20 seconds, on a white ‟natural daylight” light bulb placed at a distance of two to three yards (meters). These short periods of focusing are not at all tiring for the eyes and, on the contrary, constitute an excellent eye exercise. In the dark, the phosphene appears in the form of a patch of changing colors which persists for three minutes.

The colors of the phosphene:

After switching the phosphenic lamp off, you will perceive:
– during the first seconds: a short green phase (sometimes but not always),
– during the 1st minute: a yellow phosphene surrounded by a red border,
– during the 2nd minute: the dominant color of the phosphene is red/pink,
– during the 3rd minute: the phosphene is blue/black

Note: depending on the person, the phosphene applied to education may last 3 to 4 minutes and may disappear during short periods.

Phosphenes are all the subjective sensations of light (according to the French “LITTRE” dictionary).
They correspond to what ophthalmologists call images of retinal persistence, residual images, or after-images.

,Phosphenes constitute a wonderful method for analyzing all actions exerted on the brain. They allow us to determine, with precision, what is favorable or unfavorable for the good functioning of the brain and for the individual as a whole.

When phosphenes are associated with any traditional or modern exercise of personal development, the effects are multiplied in a considerable proportion. Moreover, phosphenes can be used to obtain the development of memory, attention, intelligence, initiative’s spirit and creativity. The method is thus a wonderful educational tool.

Phosphenes constitute a veritable accelerator of mental processes. They allow to exert a direct action on the thoughts, their content, their quality and their organization, then to optimize the results of reflection and all intellectual efforts.

Phosphenes were at the origin of all the discoveries made by Doctor LEFEBURE.

Phosphenes are primarily made up of movements and rhythms. Movement and rhythms comprise the very definition of energy. That energy corresponds to cerebral rhythms. Phosphenes are the amplified reflection of our brain functions. They show us very precisely how our brain works: the rhythmic functioning of its two hemispheres. Attention, memory and reflection depend on the regularity of the cerebral oscillation.

Reading with phosphenes is done with the eyes open; the phosphene can be perceived just as well with the eyes closed as with the eyes open.

You need to equip yourself with two lamps, one with a special ‟daylight” bulb for doing phosphenes, and the other one, a simple desk lamp, for lighting the text because at the beginning the phosphene will be very intense and can hamper reading.

When a student is reading during the presence of the phosphene, the main ideas are better grasped, including the main and secondary ideas. The meaning of the text as a whole is understood better. The overall structure of the text is assimilated better and the student is able to identify its various components much easier. In the course of time, and on the condition that they read their lessons every day using phosphenes, students will notice that they learn faster and retain information better. Significant results are shown in marks at school and teachers are surprised by the improvement in grades.
The results are quite striking when children work with phosphenes.

Teachers who use the phosphenic method in remedial courses at school tell us that the parents are the first to be surprised by the results obtained, and the progress made is so obvious that they ‟stay astounded”.

Many people like to read under the sun, which enlightened their books.

Usually, when you read in a room, the light is indirect or too far from the text, or perhaps even too weak for allowing the production of a phosphene, whereas the reflection of solar light on a book produces a phosphene by its reflection on the white page.

At a very young age, Dr. LEFEBURE made the following observation:

‟Up until the age of 12, I was a dunce at school and I suffered from it very much. It was to such a point that when I was 11 years old, my teacher wanted to definitively expel me from high school and I was able to stay only thanks to the energetic intervention of my grandmother. But, when I was twelve, after the Easter holidays, I suddenly became a good student in a way that was so unexpected that my classmates carried me in triumph around the schoolyard. Later on, I was always among the best students in sciences.

So, what happened during these famous Easter holidays? We had moved. Before, I was living in an apartment where there never was any sun. The new apartment was magnificently bright and I acquired the habit of studying often with the sun‘s light shining on the book, although some people claimed that I would hurt my eyes. But, that was not so. And quite to the contrary, it was from that moment on that I became a good pupil. I believe that this event is a kind of foreshadowing of my researches on phosphenes.”

We understand a text better and remember it better if it is strongly lit. If this is done with a light bulb, we must be careful that it is set in a deep metal reflector, to avoid the rays shining directly in the eyes. If it is the sun that lights our text, we need to turn our back three-quarters to it so that only the book receives the light.

‟Afterwards, I was always among the best in sciences, and I was among the first in the P.C.N. (Physics, Chemistry, Natural Sciences), in the preparatory year in Medicine, even though there were more than four hundred candidates in this session and I was among the youngest (17 years old).”

Not everybody is lucky enough to live in a very sunny region, so for stimulating the phosphenic functions while studying we can advantageously use Dr. LEFEBURE‘s lamp by placing it close enough and slightly above the book or the text, in such a way as not to be hampered by the lamp‘s bulb. What interests us here, is taking advantage of the reflection of the light on the pages and therefore constantly creating phosphenes without having to worry about it. Then we read normally. The only difference is a much better lighting of the text. But what a difference it makes!

However, be careful, it is not because one lives in a sunny region that one will be necessarily more intelligent and succeed better in studies. Because it is all just a question of context. DOING PHOSPHENES ALONE DEVELOPS NOTHING or nearly nothing. It is only the combination of thoughts with phosphenes (their mixing) that allows the development of memory and attention. It is quite obvious that, in a sunny region, it is easier to practice this ‟mixing”, even involuntarily.