Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Why Doesn’t Bates Method Work?

Strange title? What I mean is that not everyone who has tried Bates method succeeded in restoring their eyesight back to normal. In this post I’d like to explore some possible reasons.

If you have read the Bates book you were probably surprised at the high success rate that this doctor had. And they were all achieved by the masterful suggestion to a patient. No doubt Dr. Bates had a powerful though probably not an overwhelming personality. And he knew exactly what suggestion a particular patient would be most responsive to. In a way, that is the ideal doctor: he realizes that the patient cures himself and his role is just to help them, to nudge them in the right direction.

The problem with modern people is simply an information overload. We hear so much stuff and try to learn so many different things at once. Most of these things are useless and have mo particular value but sometimes we have to sift though junk in order to find gold.

Another reason is that there are too many scams. I can’t even tell you how many rip-off of Bates method are out there on internet with their fake testimonials and etc. People become skeptical.

And another reason connected to the first one is the wrong mental attitude. We “try” so many things. Well, people who try lots of thing usually end up mastering nothing.

When Bates were doing his work the only alternative to correct vision were glasses. Even contact lenses were not around. Now we have laser correction that is so appealing (instant fix, never mind the terrible risk factor associated with it), all this new-age stuff (chanting mantra, affirmation like “my vision is getting better and better”, visualizing yourself seeing everything clearly), pinhole glasses (they don’t work by the way), contacts that you wear while you sleep (it reshapes the cornea of your eyeball but it only lasts a day), convex (“plus”) glasses method (some people reported success with this method), pranic healing. These are just from the top of my head, there are probably more techniques out there.

None of them is perfect.

Bates method was a true revelation to his patients. His book might be a revelation to a few other people though like I said due to information overload I don’t think so. But some success stories are due to Bates method.

Unfortunately due to official medicine rejection of this method it’s hard to track a progress of real people who reported success. I personally know one person to whom, I am happy to say, I introduced Bates method and he removed his restriction on his driver’s license. Granted, his prescription was low, but I still consider it a great success. He never realized that it could be done.

1 comment:

Thomas Wold said...

Nicely done, Alice.

I really appreciate your honesty and your careful research--and your "giving credit where credit is due" attitude.

Keep up the good work!