Shift your mental focus/attention to your worse eye while swinging or shifting or palming or performing any of the Bates methods. Look into various distances while maintaining the worse eye dominance. Ignore the additional blur; it should clear up. When your attention slips back to the better eye, reassert the worse eye again. See how long you can keep it there. This helps unify the visual system. Your better eye is bullying the worse eye. Or vice versa.

_________________
nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=1420
rbs2.com/SilvNitr.pdf
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocular_dominance
lowingerpaul.com/second%20sight.html
Biofdbk: picasaweb.google.com/JMCCAC
AsLtRayIsBent/SoVisSystmIsInclind
WorseEyeDominanceIsAbnormal.KnowTruth=SetFree

About the video camera analogy, I've noticed when doing chart work and practicing looking at details, that sometimes the size of the entire chart changes briefly. It has gotten both larger and smaller on separate occasions, as if a setting in my brain is trying to adjust itself. I find this fascinating.

_________________
Nancy
2012: 20/45 on average, no glasses except for night driving
2001: 2/200, -10 hard contacts with -1.75 cylinder
Vision & dreams blog: http://dreamersight.wordpress.com/
Vision & dreams website: http://dreamersight.com/

@JMartinC4: Sounds promising. I'll give it a try and experiment with it and see how it goes.

@Nancy: I've had that feeling a few times as well. Interestingly enough, the first time I got that feeling was in a dream two weeks ago (about). The only fragment of that dream that I remember was the part where I looked at a chart on the wall (not a Snellen; a World map or something) and I LITERALLY zoomed in and could see a smaller, but clearer field of vision. When I woke up, I was pretty freaked out, but it got me to thinking about that whole analogy that I wrote about before. Sometimes, I think that my brain is trying to tell me something...

Well, since lenses change the perception of both distance and size, more so if they're strong, it makes sense that the brain would try to re-learn how to perceive naturally and correctly.

_________________
Nancy
2012: 20/45 on average, no glasses except for night driving
2001: 2/200, -10 hard contacts with -1.75 cylinder
Vision & dreams blog: http://dreamersight.wordpress.com/
Vision & dreams website: http://dreamersight.com/

@Nancy: Yeah, the whole learning and relearning thing is sort of difficult to sort out for me. I mean, how do you know if you're really relearning? What if you're learning something totally different? What if you never did know? For me, it's a psychological war, fought out every single day. I'll win some day...



1. I think I'm onto something with the idea of motion. It might already be dead-obvious to most of the people in these forums, but it wasn't so simple to me until I thought about it today. Motion essentially allows your eyes to get a smooth transition to the next object you're focusing on. I realized that one of my problems is that I tend to "skip" from point to point rather than "slide". Pretty much, I see the two points but nothing in between. I'll see if I can fix that.

2. Can't tell if my vision's going anywhere. I should get back to the traditional swinging and palming routine. I kind of digressed from that for the past few weeks.

1. Got back to swinging. I love it ! I just need to find the time to do it on a daily basis. I don't know how much it's helping my vision, but it certainly reduces stress and sort of "clears my mind". It's a nice feeling...

2. Tried out the "looking at details" thing that David talked about in his thread. I'm having problems with objects further away since I can hardly make them out, let alone see a detail, but I'll ignore those for now and content myself with the fact that I want to look at the details. With objects closer to my face, I can focus on details, but it takes a lot of discipline to remember that I'm looking for details. I need to find some time to just sit down and do nothing but look for details. I've already found out a bunch of stuff that I normally never would have considered. It's amazing how many details I miss every day with the way I use my eyes.

You wrote

Just my opinion, but I wouldn't spin my wheels on this too much. To my what really matters is that I can see better now than I could last year. Whether it's learning to see for the first time, because as soon as I was born and opened my eyes someone slapped me (or whatever the reason), or I'm re-learning what I used to know very well how to do, at least I'm learning!

_________________
Nancy
2012: 20/45 on average, no glasses except for night driving
2001: 2/200, -10 hard contacts with -1.75 cylinder
Vision & dreams blog: http://dreamersight.wordpress.com/
Vision & dreams website: http://dreamersight.com/

Has anybody ever asked the question of where to obtain a retinoscope?

Wouldn't that be something to own one? ebay? craigslist? bates- shop?

@Nancy: I see what you're getting at. I guess I don't have enough experience to answer all of my questions yet. Still, I think it helps when I ask myself questions and question things I believe in. Then, when I am able to back those beliefs up with evidence or observations, I'll be sure in what I believe in.

@Mzero: Sorry, I didn't quite understand your comment there. If you're implying that I'm asking too many questions, you're probably right. However, I think there's a difference between questioning and doubting. I don't doubt the Bates method, but to learn as much as I can about it, I like to question parts of it and try to figure out the "why" of it.

they're expensive.

How much do they cost ?

around 800$. would be nice to have one though. they're the shit . biofeedback for the eyes and maybe the mind.

body, spirit, and so on.

Been a while... I think I've learned a bit more about myself

1. It turns out that I've been trying too hard to see things that I can't see. That strains my eyes, which in turn makes it harder to see. I've got to break this habit before any of the exercises will do me any good.

2. I find that the best way to relax is to try different exercises for different intervals of time, one after the next. For example, I might palm for five minutes, swing for ten, focus on details for five, swing for five more, etc. By going back and forth between the exercises, I can actually do them for much longer than I normally would and since I'm more interested, I actually become more relaxed.

3. I don't like the Snellen chart much. For some reason, whenever I try to read it, my tendency is to force myself to see it and that strains my eyes even if it does make the letter(s) momentarily sharper. In fact, I can tell when I am "truly relaxed", because this is when I can read it without much strain. At least I can apply the "Snellen Strain Test" now!

1. Observation: One of the main reasons I strain is because of I tell myself that I NEED to see what I'm looking at. If I instead tell myself to calm down and practice good habits, the image usually clears up slightly. Another problem is the misconception that I can fix my vision in a day. Obviously, I don't consciously believe that and I know it will take months, if not years, to get a signficant improvement, but sometimes, especially when an exercise is going well and my eyes feel good, I subconsciously feel that it's just so easy that I can get it done all at once, which instantly undoes the improvement I just achieved. I've got to work on that...

2. The detail-searching is going well. I can tell when I do it "right" and when I do it "wrong" based on the level of strain I get. My goal is to do it so often that it becomes second-nature. I first have to consistently do it "right" though.

3. I finally get the whole "awareness" thing and relieving strain simply by acknowledging that it's there. I can't believe I never noticed all the strain I have! It's all about regularly checking for this strain and eliminating as much of it as possible.

4. Yesterday, I was able to see as well as 6/40 during what I call "peak hours", the period of the day in which the sun is brightest and therefore, the time of day when the Snellen chart is easiest to read. This was a result of the detail-searching in combination with sunning. I doubt I'll have that kind of time (2 hrs) again, but I'll spend what time I have on vision improvement.

I did quite a bit of reading up on many of the Bates method exercises on these forums and other websites. I suddenly feel mroe inspired to try all of these again in a different light. I know it sounds weird, but it seems that every time I try something and fail, all I have to do is read the same text on these websites in order to remotivate myself into trying it again. I guess it's a trial-and-error process.

Stuff I would like to try (again):
1. Palming/Imagination - I never did get the hang of this, but I would like to try it again with more imagination and less thinking about how long I've palmed for.
2. Sunning - This is one of the few exercises that has netted a noticeable effect. The only problem is that I don't generally have the opportunity to do it in bright sunlight. (By the way, some of the members who mentioned that they look directly at the sun really spooked me.)
3. Memory - I just thought that the correlation between memory, imagination, and sight was very interesting. I'm still wondering what I can do with this.
4. Shifting

Goals:
1. Be able to read or do computer work without significant eye strain. It's still VERY inconsistent for me; sometimes I don't feel any, but sometimes it's pretty bad.
2. Show improvement in vision. I will be going to the optometrist at some time over the next month, and while I realize that optometrist measurements don't always reflect visual acuity improvement, I'd like to at least not have my vision be worse than they were before. It means nothing to me what the optometrist says, but to my parents, it's a big deal.

Observation:
It seems that my eyes are most relaxed when I least realize it. Unfortunately, I can't take note of anything specific that I do since I'm not aware of it. The paradox of vision.