Hi
Quite often the question comes up, whether the reading of books should be avoided, because it is supposed to be the major cause of short-sightedness.
Since Bates said in his book, that reading fine print is favourable for the eyes (it can only be reead with relaxed eyes), I reduced the size of the print in my laptop to 50% to read an e-book and found it really much less straining.
I tried to find out, where exactly is the difference in reading bigger or smaller print and it seems to me that in small print, I really perceive the printed word as such, whereas, in bigger print, I don't really 'see' the printed word itself - instead I 'read' the meaning transmitted by it, I 'abstract' more easily from the 'image' of printed word to the 'meaning' of the word.

When I realized this, the idea came up to me, that maybe the reason, why reading leads to 'wrong seeing habits' is the fact, that it 'stimulates' not to really notice what is there, but to 'abstract' a 'theoretical meaning', seeing in 'categories of interpretetion'. So for example instead of noticing the details of a beautiful flower, a gardener will 'recognize' is at a 'rose', and 'see', that it needs to be watered and treated...
And maybe reading 'reinforces this 'tendency of abstraction', seeing without noticing what really is there, in all visible details, but 'seeing' the idea, that comes up in my mind with all my knowledge I have about the real fact.
I'm not sure, whether I could explain clearly enough what I mean to say, but maybe someone else has had similar ideas or experiences and may help to clarify this thought.

Nini, I want to think about this more, and am about to leave for several hours so may write more later. What occurs to me now is that good vision is taking in both the details and the big picture or meaning. Maybe people who have tendencies toward visual problems get stuck in one or the other, when we need to easily and constantly switch back and forth between both. Maybe this has something to do with right and left brain function? Just my thoughts at the moment.

_________________
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/

A myope with -8 diopter prescription wrote in Bates forum many months ago that she doesn't use glasses to read on the computer. And she rubbed it in by saying it is easier for her to read smaller font than large. I thought it/she didn't sound right...maybe from too much caffeine or something. My wife has similar prescription and she can't read anything without her glasses. So I asked the lady for more details, what font and what distance she reads. She replied font 12 and 14in distance...sounds normal. It didn't make sense to me. A week or so later, I was reading some text on the internet, it happened to be small. After a while I noticed my vision got extremely sharp. I didn't realize I can read small print in a manner of seeing that was so unfamiliar to me. This is what members here emphasize...look at details and use central fixation. The realization of seeing smaller better than bigger opened my eyes into a new reality.

My 10yo daughter has strabismus (intermittent exotropia) which is the reason I found this site. Clark told me David cured his naturally, unlike through surgery as eye doctors normally do. Her ophthalmologist and optometrist both ordered that she needs to wear her glasses (-3.5D) all the time because it stimulates convergence, and is important for exotropia. One aspect of her strabismus intrigues me. Her eyes would misalign when she reads on the computer but her eyes stay straight when she watches movies on the computer. As Nini and Nancy discuss above, there are different aspects of reading...really seeing the printed word itself and abstracting. I think my daughter does too much of the latter and very little of the former. Watching children shows likely require very little abstraction and a lot more seeing. Perhaps reading smaller text would help. It's important to be able to see well and abstract though.

Hello,
First of all if eyesight is challanged then you can in general use it as a bio-feedback advice to improve the eye sight. That is why I see reading as an oppertunity to improve eyesight. I think Bates also has said that reading in dark light might be beneficial for vision because you are forced to relax in order to be able to read effortlessly. However it is of course not a good advice if you do not master natural visual habits.

I immediately understand your thinking and why it is easier to read fineprint after having read your post. It is because vision is very much mental. The brain have already prepared and programmed how to interpret things and how to look at things in a sequential way, everything is prepared and stored in the subconscious memory. So the interpretation of the words when reading is just a matter of an enable and disable function of already prepared interpretation sequences in the mind. The programming of the mind maybe is object oriented , the programming wants to treat things as objects. The mind has already stored the words (as objects) visually in advance so it can regognize them really fast, and so you can read fast. If you read each character one by one on the other hand the object oriented programming doesn't work mentally that much anylonger and instead you have to build objects out of the characters afterwards (in real time) which consumes a lot of time, you get stuck in reading, the reading gets slow as a consequence, and there will be lots of strain due to this.

What I immediately realize is that the white space between the words is really imortant to be aware of when reading, but the white space should not be causing the eyes to lock. The eyes should just hoover over inbetween the words in a smooth way.
Something also says to me that as reading is mental, then effortless reading is something you can train and learn. It is a matter of learning to identify the words and simultaneously move the eyes dynamically in a smooth way.
However I think there are personal differences when it comes to understanding what you read. If you don't understand what you read in a fast way then it will be harder to keep the reading effortless, but one way to handle this is to read when you are not tired, for instance it is much easier to read in the morning compared to in the evening, although many people read very late and strain there eyes.
For instance if you study you shall wake up early and do your home work in the morning instead of late in the evening. Also the Bates method actually improves your thinking such that you think more efficient and thus faster, might be a connection there.

I'm a little bit confused. What is the ideal way of reading? By screening your eyeballs across the lines of text or to lock on every word, just like in the shifting, but using words as "details" we should lock on?