Eyesight and Vision Improvement

Regenerative Culture Health, Healing & Movement
#1

Hi everyone. I don’t believe anybody else has posted about this, but I felt I could share some experiences I’ve had about repairing my eyesight without invasive surgery or the like. My friend once told me a bit about Teddy Roosevelt, about how he would always carry a spare set of glasses in every jacket he wore. He must have had a dozen pairs, I’m told, but he spent a lot of time outdoors and, with a terrible prescription, didn’t want to be caught off guard. I don’t know if my friend embellished the detail that he felt ashamed over it.

My vision is worse than it could be, and I used to think that only eye surgery could fix this so-called genetic problem. But since last summer my sight has improved drastically. I see so many more stars, the blackboard is a piece of cake, and I can read the time in the lower right at an arm and half’s distance (started at half that). I’ve been following the Bates method, and I’ll elaborate on a few details. I recommend it whole-heartedly.

Dr. William Bates noticed, in the 1920s, that eyesight can be variable (myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism). With a retinoscope, which measures the focal point of the eye, he could discern that tiny changes in “sightedness” can and do occur, an idea generally agreed upon by optometrists today. His breakthrough was to show that given one displacement, perhaps we could incite one more in the same direction, and one more, until the eye can see with clarity.

Many have published and republished his findings. Even online one can find a great wealth of knowledge (though the book I read is called Relearning to See by Thomas Quackenbush). Crucially, to repair vision, Bates advocated letting go of tension in the eye. Simple ways to begin the journey are to focus centrally, to blink more often, to appreciate movement and not try to hold things still, to relax, and to breathe naturally. The eye rests when it moves, and when we blink it jumps around. Children love to move, to rock, to spin; we can learn a lot from this.

To take a personal example, I used to have glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling as a kid. Perhaps somebody else has noticed this. I would stare at one star for as long as I could without blinking, without moving my eyes, and it would become blurrier and blurrier until it almost disappeared, and then I’d blink. I just had to. It’s strange I never drew the correlation myself between staring and blurriness.

The object in the center of our line of sight is always clearer than the object right next to it. Many, myself included, have developed the bad habit of trying to diffuse our vision to take in the whole scene at once, like the world is one giant television screen or windshield. This, too, accounts for a great deal of problems of tension.

If you’re interested in this, I know it sometimes sounds a bit new agey, but I really recommend you give it a look. If you’ve had similar experiences or tested the method yourself, I’d be happy to hear about it. Even if your vision is 20/20, or 20/10, I suggest you experiment with relaxing your eyes, not squinting, and focusing only on the pinprick of the center of your line of sight; you may find that there is no limit to how clear your vision can be.

#2

Keith!

since no one else has responded, I feel compelled to. :slight_smile:

I too have an eyesight training thingy I do. It sounds like you’ve stuck to yours far more rigorously than I have.

In high school I discovered the bates’ method, and have used it off and on ever since. I cured my astigmatism that way!

I do want to offer up a different experience than it sounds like you have. Dr. William Bates refers to the ‘staring and fixed’ eye use of the myopic; I think he incompletely understood this phenomenon. The lack of blinking, without a doubt, constitutes the single biggest factor in my myopia. However, after I started practicing wide-angle vision, aka peripheral vision, aka ninja vision (ok, maybe not), my astigmatism improved and disappeared. This vision I also teach tracking and awareness students to use, the ‘diffused focus’ that wild animals use (just look at a deer - you can tell they have no central focus, their eyes wide and brown, ears swiveling…they only look for movement in the corners of their vision).

So, in my experience, blinking yes, and wide angle vision yes, but staring without blinking, no good!

#3

Just a little story that happened to me recently. I have middle aged eyes and need reading glasses now for close up stuff. I had excellent vision until I was about 45, I’ll be 51 in a couple of weeks.

I just came home from fasting, over on the Blood Indian reserve in Alberta.
Four days no food or water, sweat lodges every day. The morning after I got home I sat down to check my emails and realized that I could see the computer screen perfectly without my glasses!! It was awesome. Within a couple of days of eating, I needed my glasses again though (darn it).
But I found that really interesting and wonder if there is a physiological reason for that or what.

#4

I think hunger pangs can definitely cause a person’s senses to be more … well, sensitive. :slight_smile: It makes sense … it would make finding food easier. I’ve experienced higher sensitivity in reaction to hunger. I would guess it probably results from evolutionary advantage.

#5

[quote=“Willem, post:2, topic:777”]I do want to offer up a different experience than it sounds like you have. Dr. William Bates refers to the ‘staring and fixed’ eye use of the myopic; I think he incompletely understood this phenomenon. The lack of blinking, without a doubt, constitutes the single biggest factor in my myopia. However, after I started practicing wide-angle vision, aka peripheral vision, aka ninja vision (ok, maybe not), my astigmatism improved and disappeared. This vision I also teach tracking and awareness students to use, the ‘diffused focus’ that wild animals use (just look at a deer - you can tell they have no central focus, their eyes wide and brown, ears swiveling…they only look for movement in the corners of their vision).

So, in my experience, blinking yes, and wide angle vision yes, but staring without blinking, no good![/quote]

I’ve thought about this a good bit, and my conclusion is that what’s being discussed is not exactly the same thing.

Bates referred to the fact that physiologically, our eye is made to have a single point of focus, because that’s exactly where the vision is best. Look at a distribution chart of rods (which track movement) and cones (which are responsible for visual acuity and color) (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/rodcone.html) and there’s no questioning that. Because of this, learning, basically, to accept that you can see best only where you are centrally focused is the starting point of good vision.

But in wide-angle vision, we’re not trying to see everything best. We’re trying to get a broader view of things – patterns more than detail. It’s a different mental use of the same physical eye, which doesn’t conflict as long as you don’t try to see everything clearly simultaneously. In fact, it’s relaxing and improves the vision precisely because it breaks normal habits of tension in the periphery.

Bates claims that he knew someone who could read an entire page in seconds and remember every word. His explanation was that the person’s eye literally moved thousands of times in those few seconds in order to see everything clearly! Believe it, or not; but that’s his theory. So awareness of a broad angle of view isn’t contradicted by his concept of central focus.

#6

Interesting idea.

I wonder, too, what happens when we live and/or work inside four walls and our eyes never get a chance, for many many hours or even days, to focus on anything more than about 10 feet away. I slept outside the other night and when I opened my eyes in the morning, my eyes first focused on the top of a tree at least 100 feet away (not a wall or ceiling). It startled me in a really, really good way.

#7

Yeah, I agree, I think it is becuase I am on the computer too much and partially becuase of what you talk about, and partly becuase I am getting no sleep, that my eyes feel constantly strained now a days.