The Bates Method is often interpreted as a system of eye exercises. The notion is that it's about strengthening, toning, stretching, or otherwise improving the physical conditioning of muscles surrounding or in the eyes. But this work is oriented around the relief of mental strain that causes wrong use of the eyes. It's not about exercise in the physical sense, but a practicing of relaxation. It has to do with the mental control of seeing, where the underlying problems lie. Even "shifting," a principle of relaxed seeing and something that may be practiced in certain ways, is not meant as a physical exercise; it has to do with relaxed movement, which the eyes themselves are already quite capable of.

This is sometimes just a matter of semantics ("stress" and "strain" and "tension" are sometimes used interchangeably), but the concept is important nonetheless. A stressful situation doesn't cause you to suffer. It's just some outside force that challenges your ability to handle such a situation without inducing harm to yourself. This is illustrated by the variety of ways different people (especially in different cultures) handle a given situation in completely different ways. We can strain as a reaction to stress and have all sorts of bodily problems (such as vision problems), but that reaction isn't caused by the stress itself. It's caused by us. People with vision problems chronically strain in some or all situations without even requiring any outside stress. The unconscious decision to distort, blur, or otherwise impair our vision isn't necessary.

The idea that an effort is required to accomplish anything might seem to make the most sense. Our culture promotes the "no pain, no gain" mentality that encourages us equate effort with pain and find a way to suffer in trying to accomplish anything. Here, it doesn't work that way. Further complicating things, the tensions associated with mental strain are generally inaccessible to direct conscious control, or even conscious awaerness if it's chronic enough. You think you're relaxed, but you're in fact only as relaxed as you know how to be. Certainly there should be an alert interest in what is out there, but as far as focusing it should be passive, simply taking in what comes to it. All effort to see, all straining to see, needs to be ceased.

Memory is only perfect when you're relaxed. Making an effort to bring up a visual memory, or any other kind of memory, is just as wrong as an effort to see, for memory only works well passively. By efforts you might be able to form a vague picture in your mind, but it will always be lacking, just as the sight can be improved partially and temporarily by straining but can't be brought to normal in that way. A perfect memory is a feature of a mind perfectly relaxed and can't exist otherwise. Bates likened it to the steam gauge of an engine (1); the gauge is only an indicator and has nothing to do with the means whereby a change takes place. The usefulness of memory in the Bates Method lies in the fact that when you are able to remember something perfectly, you must necessarily have relaxed first, since the efficiency of the mind is impaired so much by strain. You may not consciously know how to relax, but if you know how to remember something perfectly, that'll do it. By continuing the memory of it, you're continuing the practice of relaxation.

This has to do with the same principles as memory, the blackness of the visual field being like a steam gauge. If, while looking at your visual field with your eyes closed (or by paying no attention to the field, or by whatever means you choose), you manage to relax, causing it to appear blacker, great. But trying it can also lead to strain. If you try to make the various blobs of color that you may see with your eyes closed disappear, you're likely to just be straining more. The relaxation comes first, before the blackness, not after.

The principle of central fixation refers to the ability to see the point regarded better than anything else around it, whether immediately next to it or a good distance away. Central fixation is an expansive awareness, not a narrowing of it. A lack of central fixation includes the central point of focus being larger than it should and also the field of total awareness being narrowed. Central fixation is how the mind works when at rest, with a central point of awareness surrounded by a field of increasing vagueness. The central point of attention moves rapidly, taking in a lot, faster than you can be conscious of. This only occurs to its greatest degree when your eyes are relaxed, in which case you can't even feel the movement. You can still see an entire large object in this way, or think you do; It may appear all clear at once, but much of it is only your memory of having seen various parts of it clearly an instant before. Things are still somewhat clear a little outside of your center of sight, providing the illusion of normal sight that things can be seen clearly all at once. On the other hand, if you're straining, you may hold your eyes in a fixed position and make efforts to see an entire object (large or small) clearly, without allowing your eyes to move and take in what they can without interference.

Central fixation is the result of seeing in a passive way, letting things come into focus instead of making an effort to bring them into focus. When you allow yourself to do that, central fixation merely describes the natural way of seeing, the easiest possible way of seeing. There's no need to worry about seeing too much of your visual field clearly, because you can't do it. Either the image seen will be blurry over a large area, or it will consist of one part clearest at a time. One of many things that can be practiced is noticing details. You can make conscious or unconscious efforts to do it, and cause yourself discomfort, but when you stop all effort, there is no danger of losing central fixation. It's the natural state, not something that must be maintained. It isn't something that's practiced and then which you take a rest from. It's rest in itself. If it's tiring and you need a rest after doing it, it isn't central fixation at all.

Bates's theory of accommodation (the mechanism by which the eye adjusts to see a near object) is a common target for critics. While I myself believe he is probably at least partly correct about the matter, the exact workings of the eye is of no consequence in the practice and experience of the Bates Method. It may be good to forget about the eyes altogether, however evasive that may sound to the physically-minded. Rather than the basis of the Bates Method being formed by a scientific model, the basis is formed by readily observable principles that make up the art of seeing. It's experiential, not theoretical. Aldous Huxley noted that seeing is an art and does not rise or fall under any particular physiological explanation. Kevin Wooding, a Bates teacher in Oxford, put it well when he said, "Every argument against the method misses the essential parts of it - the principles of good eye use, and understanding good eye use is better experienced than theorized," and "it's in the practice and experience of the Bates Method which makes it instantly clear that the orthodox theory has to be wrong." The conventional way of treating vision tends to disregard the mental side of seeing and assumes that in the absence of disease the visual system is always in perfect working order, apparently being different from every other part of the body in that respect.

Surprisingly, Bates found that most people strain when they sleep (2). Those with imperfect sight strain while asleep to a greater degree than when they are awake, and even those with perfect sight usually strain while asleep as well. It is obviously possible not to, but only relaxation during sleep doesn't really help encourage a chronically tense person to maintain relaxation during conscious hours, if additional practice isn't put in during the day. Everybody relaxes now and then, so it's just a matter of learning to stay relaxed while actively doing things.

This is important not just for clarification on Dr. Bates's definitions. Thinking of the swing as something we do conceals a major aspect of the Bates method. The illusion of oppositional movement is the swing, not what you do to produce it. Turn left, and everything appears to swing to the right. Turn right, and everything appears to swing to the left. The point of the swing is noticing the illusion of movement and letting it continue. The point is not in moving your eyes per se.