Personal Message

Personal message to my readers: I will be moving in the next week to a new location so this blog won't be updated for about a week.

I also want to tell you that I am practicing distant vision and I am glad to report that I see some results. I will be working on refining this technique and will let you know how it goes.

What is Far and Close?

Another important point to remember is to realize that far and close are subjective and not absolutes. They are different for people with impaired vision. 10 inches is considered close distance for normal or presbyopic person. If I can’t see clearly at 10 inches, is 10 inches far? In order for me to strain to see close the book should be very, very close to my eyes, uncomfortably close. I don’t want to do it because I am convinced that there is something going for near-point stress theory and I don’t want to make my lens thicker than it is. I want to make it flatter and the only way to do it is to look at the distance.

So What Is It: Fine Print or Horizon?

Dr. Bates says that straining to read fine print alleviates myopia and causes or worsens hyperopia. Accordingly, straining to see distant objects causes or aggravates myopia and alleviates hypemetropia. But then he mentions that reading fine print in dim light is especially beneficial for presbiopia, which is a form of hyperopia. So it naturally follows that looking at the distance should be beneficial for myopia. And in my experience it is. Curiously enough, Bates himself never mentions it as a possible cure. Could it be because he himself suffered from presbiopia?

It's curious that it's the opposite of the theory but I think I know the reason. Here it is. People with myopia don’t strain to see close. They automatically relax. Besides, they became nearsighted by looking at the close object for hours on end. Remember that vision is mostly mental. The opposite is true for people with hypemetropia: they strain to see close and automatically relax when looking at the distance. So myopic people can’t strain when looking at the close but they can relax when they look at the distance.

What Can You Do if You Have High Myopia

Ah, my favourite subject. You’ve practiced Bates, you’ve tried just about everything you could find out about it but still see no progress. So what can be done for high degrees of nearsightedness?

I found out that 3 things work really well for me. Mind you, none of them gives me perfect vision but I can feel some degree of improvement and even control. The thing to do is to develop the abilities to control flashes of good vision. If you can do that, the rest is easy.

So, the first thing is swinging. I like to swing as I noticed it let go of tension immediately. It does not improve vision but I can often get rid of eye ache if I happen to have one.

The second thing is sun treatment. I noticed that my vision is always better in bright sunlight. I can even read at distances longer than usual.

The third one is my own discovery. It is the opposite of what Dr. Bates recommends but I can’t help it. It is the only technique that when I perform it I notice some improvement of vision.

It is looking at the distant object. Yes, just looking in the distance, preferably while your eyes are relaxed. I am somehow convinced that if we could spend a few hours a day looking at the distance, out vision would improve dramatically. Pity no one has tried it. Notice I say hours. Measly 10 or 30 minutes are not going to do it.

Just imagine… instead of spending your time in front of computer monitor you consciously spend your time looking at the distant objects. Vast landscapes with distant mountain would be the best. Sailors are famous for having good vision.

What to Do if You Have Headaches

Do you have a headache when you read or perform some other close work? I mean headaches caused by incorrect visual habits only, not pathological or psychological headaches. But suppose you’ve noticed that every time you do the homework at your house using a lamp, you quite often have a headache. Here’s what you can do to eliminate it.

Check you light first. Sometimes the reason for you head and eye ache is that the light is too bright and the glare from the white pages cause great strain for the eyes. Get yourself a dimmer light. (I won’t even talk about fluorescent light, I assume you are using incandescent light bulbs)

Adjust the distance. Maintain good posture, do not bend forward. Do not try to read at a maximum possible distance if you have good eyesight, just be sure to glance from the window or around the room now and then.

Read fine print. One of the amazing discoveries of Dr. Bates is that fine print is actually beneficial for the eyes while large print is a menace. The reason is that it’s easier for normal eye to shift around small objects (like small letters) than it is around big letters. Remember that what seems to us as the smooth process of vision is actually part shifting from point to point of the object and partly interpretation by the brain.

Read fine print at candlelight for 10 minutes in a darkened room. My guess is that if you have headaches doing close work you are somewhat hyperopic. Reading at candlelight with relaxed eyes helps to alleviate mental tension and visual problems, especially hyperopia

When you write, don’t look at the stuff that you’ve already written. Instead, follow the tip of your pen.

How to Use Computer

If you spend lots of time on computer you might have noticed that you vision has deteriorated. Though my guess is that you spend too much time at the computer because your vision has deteriorated. Anyway, it’s beyond the point. Most people lose their eyesight when they go to school and that is because they spend hours doing the work at the close distance. So near-point stress undoubtedly plays part here.

So what can be done to prevent it? There are some simple things you can do to alleviate near-point stress. It goes not just for computer work but also for reading, writing and other close range activity.

First, if at all possible, choose your place near the window. Make sure that you are positioned in a way that lets you look through it. When you read a book glance through this window for a few seconds. Do it at least once per every page or for every paragraph. It is very good for the eyes. I noticed that my eyes do not get tired when I practice this kind of reading. For computer work you would probably have to use an alarm clock or some pop-up reminder. Do what it takes, it’s very well worth it.

Take a break every hour or half an hour. Even 3-5 minutes of conscious relaxing will do a lot for your eyes. People waste so much time on their computers anyway that this break should be taken seriously as it will benefit your eyes as well as the rest of the body. You can do some simple physical exercises during it too.

Every 10 minutes glance through the window or around the room. Develop this habit.

Techniques for Improving Your Eyesight

So let’s get to the actual techniques of natural vision improvement. By now if you read my previous post you understand that there is no “mechanical” technique or exercise that will help you to restore vision if you do it regularly. If there is one, we are not aware of it. What we can do though, is practice certain techniques that were reported to alleviate tension and thus improve vision. It follows that other techniques of vision improvement can be developed, some of them might work specifically for you and no one else.

Here are the basic principles of treatment presented by Dr. Bates:

Palming. Palming is covering your eyes with your palms in a way that excludes all the light. Palming is very tricky as it is useless if you don’t have the right mental approach to it. First it calms down the nerves but on the other hand you might start thinking unpleasant thought while palming. You might want to try a combination of palming and yogic breathing (pranayama).

Swinging. Swinging is very useful as it is close to a regular physical exercise, it is excellent for the flexibility of spine as well as your eyes. The idea is to “let your eyes go”, do not try to see anything, in fact, you should strive to achieve illusion that everything is completely blurred due to the movement. And your swing does not have to be fast, go with your intuition. I found out that the best speed is medium.

Sun treatment. Sunning, as it popularly became known, is exposing your closed eyelids to the direct rays of sun. It is very relaxing but again, try to relax your mind. The good thing about sunning that unlike palming it almost forces you to relax mentally as well as physically.

Shifting. Shifting is the closest thing that comes to physical exercises for the eyes. It is also the main habit of good vision. Shifting can be practiced on the eye chart or on any other object. You look at one side of the letter than to the other and notice that the letter moved to the direction opposite of you glance. So you shift your glance to the left of the letter than to the right and so forth, from top to bottom and so on. The quicker you can do it and the smaller the letter you can do it on, the better the vision. People with good vision shift all the time unconsciously.

Central fixation. That is when the part of the object regarded directly is seen best. It is so because the retina has macula lutea or the area of the highest sensitivity. By shifting the eye with high speed we get the perception of the whole object. In fact shifting is so fast that people with good vision think they regard the whole object all at once when in fact the eye shifts from one part of the object to the other and it does that quicker than the brain has time to record the impression and make a perception of the object as a whole.

People with bad vision, on the other hand, do try to see the whole object all at once. It is, of course, impossible, but their retina loses sensitivity and their shifting becomes slow. The thing to do, then, is practice the correct visual habits of shifting and central fixation.

Blinking vs. Winking

Dr. Agarwal put a big stress on correct blinking, more so than Bates. In fact he used to demonstrate to his patients the difference between the two. Myopic people tend to wink, they do it unconsciously because the act of winking flattens the eyeball or the cornea and they seem to experience a slightly better vision. But winking also strains the muscles. Develop the habit of blinking instead.

Blinking should be very light and effortless. Think of a butterfly waving its wings. This image should cause you to blink correctly at least for a few moments.

Illusions of Normal Sight

Here is the excerpt from Yoga of Perfect Sight by Dr. R. S. Agarwal:

1. When the sight shifts from side to side of a letter, the letter appears to move in the opposite direction. This is Swinging.

2. The letter regarded appears clearest. This is central Fixation.

3. The white center of a letter appears whiter. This is Imagination.

These three characteristics are called normal illusions of the normal eye which are reduced or absent in the defective eye. So to improve the vision it is necessary to develop the normal illusions.

Shifting and swinging are one of the basic principles of treatment. You can perform long swing with your whole body or short swing: the shorter the swing, the better the vision. Remember, the normal eye shifts unconsciously so people with defective vision have to consciously develop this habit.

Central fixation is also something that normal eye does unconsciously. I also noticed that you can’t really practice central fixation, it is a symptom rather than a cause of good vision. But what one can practice is looking at the objects and regard part looking directly at best. For example when looking at a portrait, look at one eye first, then shift to the other eye, than nose and mouth. Than sweep your eye over hair. Do not try to see the whole picture at once. Central fixation always goes hand in hand with shifting.

Imagination is the ability to see a part of the letter regarded directly at the blackest. It is very useful for developing good vision. In fact, one of the most remarkable, one can say miraculous cures in Dr. Bates’ practice is about a doctor who became cured in a very short time just by imagining that the letters on a chart were as black as ink. He was able to do it and his vision became perfect. It remained so years later.