Eye exercises

[TimOR]

Hi Tribe,
About a year ago I had both my daughters eyes checked. Tara my oldest was fine but Dana had a slight difference in vision between eyes.
About two weeks ago Dana started saying that she needed to go to the eye doctor. My wife took her there today and when tested she was found to have an immense difference between both eyes. one could read the top line of the chart, the other eye could only read the bottom.
I heard someone quite a while ago( didn't pay attention then due to my own vision being ok) talking about eye exercises to keep your eyes healthy and prevent deterioration.
Has anyone here used any of these techniques and had positive results ?
Can anyone suggest a reliable/proven source ?
I may just be in shock and grasping at straws.
Thanks,

[vyapada]

Check out this article by Coach Sonnon, I haven't tested eye performance results, but I can feel changes in my mood from doing eye exercises - releasing tension etc.

http://www.circularstrengthmag.com/35/sonnon5.html

[TimOR]

Thanks Chris,
Thats excellent, just the sort of material I'm after.

[s a fossett]

you can also google the bates method.

[Jay76]

The bates method is good. Nutrition is good too. Plenty of Fat and Vitman A from Meat, ex. egg yolks. Beta Cartone from Carrots, make sure to eat Veg, carrots with plenty of Butter is important. Supplments= Cod liver oil. Eat plenty of tomotes, blueberries, butter ( www.grasslandbeef.com) Free range organic eggs are important.

Myself have bad eyes. Severe near sightness and I was born with catoracts. My left eye overall has the best vison. Basically my left eye takes over most of the vison. So if I damage my left eye I would be "legally blind" so to speak, thats how much my left eye takes over. I can see out of my right, but its weaker. The doctors when I was a kid tried the old patch over the eye over my stronger eye, to make my weaker eye work more, but did not work much.

My mother had bad nutrition while she was pregnant and also I had bad nutriton growing up. People underestimate the importance of full recovery for women that have given birth. It takes the womans body 2-3 years to fulley recovery from the birth and sometimes even years if thier nutrition is very poor.

Ones eyes are so important. That area of the brain is the largest and also the eyes are the 2nd behind the brain to require the most oxgyen to be healthy. Hope this helps..

[rawmark]

The muscles of the eye require exercise too. Any muscle that is not exercised will atropy. There are free exercises for the eye on http://www.naturaleyecare.com. Lots of great information as well.

Peace,

Mark Gailmor

[Ryan Murdock]

Check out this article by Coach Sonnon from CST Magazine 3.5 called Eye Disease Remission (http://www.circularstrengthmag.com/35/sonnon5.html)

It deals with is recovery from Thygeson's Disease, a rare condition involving inflammation of the cornea. Doctors said that the condition usually lasts 2 to 5 years, and in some cases up to 30 years!

Coach Sonnon crafted a program based around Warrior Wellness and some other exercises and supplements, and successfully cleared himself of this condition over the course of a few months. The article outlines the program that he developed.

Nothing beats tried and true methods!

Best of luck!

[TimOR]

Thanks S A, Jason, Mark and Ryan,
We've got glasses for her now as the optometrist said we had to have them to prevent her eye getting worse. We have also put together an exercise program which she is doing everyday. Hopefully she might recover some, were working hard to make sure she doesn't lose anymore.
Thanks again for all your help,

[phil-n]

As a licensed optician, I think I can add some pertinent advice to this topic. Any of these "eye exercises" mentioned can only hope to slightly alleviate the need for corrective lenses. Basically, most people who need glasses or contact lenses have slight physical disformities - the eye chamber itself is either too long or too short, which means that light will be focused at a point other than optimal. Most people can't overcome this through any kind of vision therapy, only corrective lenses will fix the problem. This does not make you "more dependant " on corrective lenses, as some will argue. If this theory is followed to it's end, no one would ever need glasses or contacts - working the muscles harder should only make them stronger, right? Wrong - you can't overcome the physical limitations. The people and infomercials that tell you otherwise can only say that you may "reduce your need' for glasses, which is another way of saying that you will still need them. Please do not be fooled by this kind of thought. Take the proper vitamins, use proper UV protection, and hope that this keeps your eyes healthy throughout your life. Don't confuse good ocular health with wearing glasses or contacts. It's not the same thing. Thank you.

[pookaboy]

I couldn't help but post on this topic. Up until I had LASIK done to my eyes, I was one of those who wore glasses. After one of my bosses got it done and had successful results I had it done too. Best $1398 I ever spent! My eyesight was so bad that I couldn't read the top line on the eye charts, and now I can read 20/10 line on the eye-chart! The best thing about this is that now that I can see everything in such a fine detail I really appreciate it a whole lot more, especially after about 30 years of blurry vision and reliance on glasses or contacts. If you can get it done I suggest you do it, just so you don't have to wear glasses again. You never know how beautiful things are until you can really see it! I think it is amazing that I can make the shapes of leaves way up in trees with my eyesight now. It doesn't get any better than that, and now I know what I was missing.

Coach Sonnon spoke about wrestling with a blind person and how they interpreted their environment sensorally. He also mentioned about peripheral/foveal vision. I came across a site that goes really indepth into that process and also talks about the Samurai, Musashi, who used to cross his eyes and use his peripheral vision to fight and was undefeated. These people have done some phenomenal studies about it and also do what is called "Nightwalking". Nightwalking basically trains you how to use and trust your peripheral vision by walking at night in lowlight situations using a small focal glowing point about 6-9 inches in front of your face that you focus your eyes on while you walk. Here's the website's address to the page that talks about it:
NightWalking (http://www.navaching.com/hawkeen/nwalk.html)
When I was in the Army as an Infantryman, I never realized that I was doing this, but during night operations we would go through some very dense forest in Germany. I unconsciously developed this habit and never really knew it. My glasses were essentially superfluous because my peripheral vision was taking in all the information and helping me navigate across rough terrain in the dark. Very interesting stuff. Just another little amazing nugget of information about how your body can do amazing things when trained or exposed to an environment that engenders it.
Tom "I can see clearly now" Loyd

[Arluk]

Phil,

I've heard this before from an optician who I went to, and I'm not trying to argue, I just want to know in the opinion of an optician. What is the possibility that the deformations you speak of are caused by muscular imbalance and or cranial holding patterns? Such as, movements or alignments of the cranial plates being directly or indirectly inhibited and thus creating differentiations in the shape of the occular cavities?

I've been wondering for a long time now and I don't feel like when I've had the chance to ask an eye doc that took the time to even think about the possibility.

I won't hide that I don't agree with you per se. I'm not one to believe strongly in anything if I can help it, this leads me to questioning everything. I'll be the first to admit that I am not formaly educated in the intracasies of sight and seeing. I am however searching for any explanation of how the eye is not affected by its surrounding structures, or of how these effects could be nominalized by the design of the ocular structures. It just seems to me that there must be some influences. As you say these exercise programs can help, so there must be something to it, even if not statistically valid.

[Coach Bentz]

I'll just put a couple cents out there on this. Part of the attraction for me of Coach Sonnon's material is due to trouble with applying the Bates method. I was able to knock about a quarter of my prescription off using those methods, but I would always run into a wall.

The first time I tried it, in '96 or so, I got the improvement, then suddenly found myself feeling like I hadnt felt since I was a kid (i.e. miserable, emotinally) I was in management at the time and under enough stress as it was, and had no tools to deal with any of it, but I found by accident that putting on the stronger lenses made the feelings go away.

I abandoned the treatment for a long time after that! But I would come back to it every so often when my prescription numbers would start to drift upwards and corrective lenses startd to give me headaches or something. But I never made massive progress.

This June, I decided to do Bates work more fully, and worked up the courage to go without corrective lenses for a year (My life is arranged such that I can get away with that, but it's still a pain in the butt, especially with facial recognition) I mean, I'm gonna make this whole sabbatical about working Bates' methods to the fullest, right?

Wrong! I've only been able to do it piecemeal. For a while I would sungaze (eyes open and closed) and do the palming, but not work with the chart. Or I'd hang the chart up and get all pissed off at it after a couple days and leave it along for a while. It was only yesterday that I hung the thing back up on the wall again. And the same thing came back to me, looking at that thing for more than a few minutes draws me into some sort of emotional frenzy. I can feel my breath changing, my gut tighten up, the anxiety building just looking at it (hell, just remembering looking at it is doing it right now!)

It certainly begs the question... is there something you don't want to see, Brian? There do seem to be significant gaps in my memory.

I've always had a hard time understanding the kind of relaxation that Bates was talking about as being necessary for permanent cure of eyesight. I could never palm and see the inky blackness he wrote about. I could palm and feel my insides, though, and they were anything but relaxed.

Coach Sonnon wrote enough in Body Flow about Fear-Reactivity, though, to make me consider that there might be something powerful there. If there were a way to release that physical/emotional tension through movement, at least I can conceptualize and implement that a little more easily than perhaps pure Bates method. Then do the Bates method without so much interference?

Dunno if this makes any sense, it's kinda late and I'm fried, and a lot of this is very recent thought, only starting to gel. I wasn't going to write anything about it at all until I had some kind of progress to report... but perhaps somebody might find this useful.

For those more interested in such things, you can find an electronic copy of Bates' original work on http://iblindness.org/books/ Emily Lierman has a book there too, she was Bates' assistant. I understand that you want to read the original work, called Perfect Eyesight without Glasses. The revised version, called "Better Eyesight without Glasses" I have heard has been modified, removing some of his more controversial methods like sungazing with eyes open. Other interesting books are "Take off your Glasses and See" by Jacob Liberman, and Robert Michael Kaplan (who was the first author I'd read to talk about the emotional connection to reduced eyesight)

Brian

[Arluk]

If you want complete relaxation and a prime headspace to work on yourself? Find or build a float chamber. I built one right after I got in the first time, they are an amazing tool. Search around on the web for a description. Basically a meditation chamber as free from stimuli of any kind as you can get. No sound, no light, no gravity, no temperature gradient just you with yourself and nothing else.

[chris hansen]

... And the same thing came back to me, looking at that thing for more than a few minutes draws me into some sort of emotional frenzy. I can feel my breath changing, my gut tighten up, the anxiety building just looking at it (hell, just remembering looking at it is doing it right now!)

It certainly begs the question... is there something you don't want to see, Brian? There do seem to be significant gaps in my memory.

Brian

I'm not an expert by any means but I've heard that, as people progress with their vision programs, it's very common to have strong emotional experiences.

[Coach Bentz]

[quote=pouncingfox]
I'm not an expert by any means but I've heard that, as people progress with their vision programs, it's very common to have strong emotional experiences.

Sometimes I wonder if it depends on how and why the vision collapsed in the first place. Someone who's eyesight deteriorates as a teen/adult (as in college, if they strain under the classload) may have a different experience than someone who loses their vision at a younger age.

In my own case, I was about 8. I can remember suddenly not being able to read the blackboard, and straining to try to see it, which probably didn't help. I'd been using video games and computers, and being on my can for hours at a time, for 2-3 years at that point, but the more I look at it, I don't think they were the real problem either. They were more like intellectual and entertaining distractions. I came to realize recently that at the same time, I was also beginning to withdraw from the world I was learning about, couldn't believe and didn't understand or feel like I fit in at all. Having no other means of processing those feelings, I just squashed it all down inside (which I have come to learn is a family thing!).

I feel like what's happening now is that, without the stabilizing crutch of wearing glasses/contacts all the time, and working on mobility & flexibility, some of these things that I buried are coming back up to be dealt with. Many times I'm not so successful with that, but... even the failures have value if sometimes only to reveal a larger pattern in my behavior. It's all good feedback.

Brian

[chris hansen]

I feel like what's happening now is that, without the stabilizing crutch of wearing glasses/contacts all the time, and working on mobility & flexibility, some of these things that I buried are coming back up to be dealt with. Many times I'm not so successful with that, but... even the failures have value if sometimes only to reveal a larger pattern in my behavior. It's all good feedback.

Brian

That sounds reasonable from what I've heard. I've only recently started looking into the subject so I still have a lot to learn but it sounds like emotional issues are often involved in blurry vision. As you recover your vision these issues can come up again.

[chris hansen]

I've been working with the Bates material for about a month now and it's been an exciting and painful process.

I've noticed definite improvements in my vision. Nothing huge, just baby steps, but noticeable. I've been wearing a reduced prescription of glasses to work and there's some nameplates, signs and calendars that I use as references and I can read them better than I used to. Yesterday, while I was in a waiting room, I was looking at this sign that I couldn't really read and it suddenly came into focus and I could read it. The biggest improvement has been in some of the other qualities. My whole world is more three-dimensional than it used to be. Colors are brighter and more vivid and I see in sharper contrast. Exciting indeed!

It has also been rather painful. When I was working with the eye chart, I could feel tension build up in my jaw, ears, sinuses, throat, etc. Then I start to feel anxiety and fear in my stomach. The clearer the chart gets, the worse I feel until I finally break down and cry like a baby. My throat was so tight I thought I would pull a muscle, it was really intense. This happened three times in less than a week. Even when I walk around at work noticing how 3-D things are, I feel tension building in my face and I start to feel nervous.

I heard that you can have a strong emotional response as you progress but I wasn't prepared for anything like this. As hard as it is though it has always been followed by an improvement in my vision. The desire to rid myself of glasses is so strong that I will probably continue pursuing this but I think it's going to be a difficult time.