Better vision by perceiving what you see
http://blog.iblindness.org/2011-09/better-vision-perceiving-see/

Here's another way of thinking about what I wrote about in my last entry, as far as how you think about what you're looking at, and how your attention behaves in moving around.

There are two ways to think about how blurry the image is.

A - Be frustrated with how blurry it is, and hope that in a quick moment you'll be able to do something to clear it up. Every time you look for or towards another detail, you're hoping it will be clearer. You're waiting for all this nonsense to be done with so you can finally see it, because you don't see it unless you see it clearly. It's a waste of time looking at or studying anything or trying to discern any meaning from what you're seeing unless it's clearer. You "hold out" on perceiving until someday when you'll be able to see clearly. You treat your eyes as something you have to trick or push into focusing correctly. You disavow any personal responsibility, in this moment, for the situation, blaming it on your eyes or brain for being messed up due to only your past mistakes or experiences.

or B - With each detail or piece of blur you look at, you pay attention to what you do perceive, even if it's confusing and unfocused. You're thankful for each thing you look at, and every time you shift your attention even a little bit, to a nearby point, what you're looking at is a little different, even if it's just because you're paying attention to a different part of it more, and with every slightly change you're thankful for the whole new data set you get to perceive. Every shift, every blink, means a whole new picture. You want to look at more and more things, and look at more and more parts of those things, because you know the more you perceive, the better you see, and then the more still you perceive, and so on in a continual feedback process of your vision improving. You treat vision as an active and busy process of perceiving.

So which way makes the most sense? This is what the idea of "accepting the blur", a concept that some vision improvement teachers have shared, is all about. Are you going to fight against what you perceive, or are you going to take what you can get and fully immerse yourself in using it to accomplish your goal? Your vision represents the way you perceive, or the way you treat the information that you get.

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Webmaster of http://www.iblindness.org

"I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things." - Benjamin Franklin

A very clear description -- thank you. Moving to a different point, in the blind (!) hope that it will somehow magically be clearer than the one I look at first, is a pervasive habit I'm starting to break, but first I had to be aware I was doing it! You are doing some really good work with this writing.

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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/

Thank you David!

Another great post, thank you.
I was wondering if you ever though about making videos about Bates.
I think you could show a lots more with the videos.

I'm camera shy, but I'll do videos hopefully at some point. It has crossed my mind a few times, and I have had ideas on some things that would be better explained with a series of pictures at least.

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Webmaster of http://www.iblindness.org

"I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things." - Benjamin Franklin

I was thinking that creating some animations would also work.
For example to show how to look at stuff , we could animate and show points where the eye is looking at with some pointer and then quickly move that pointer a little to show shifting and so on. Your explanations on blog are great, but for some people visualization would work better.

Great post, David. Reinforces what I have been noticing.

If you want to direct some animation, I would execute it and make it look purdy. Animation is what I do.

http://ottobulut.com/work/animation/

Seriously. I'd love to.

Nice work Otto!

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see my vision diary blog: http://sorrisi.wordpress.com

Start: 5/200
After 8 months: 20/50
now, 5/10, 10/20, still improving and loving it

Great post, David. Really useful. It seems to be looking at it from another angle. A different view of the same thing perhaps? Great insight on the whole 'approach' thing. I had begun to think along these lines but when you see it laid outl like that i'ts strong stuff. I'm going to think about, and perhaps try out, a couple of things and come back to report.

By the way, I'd heard about the loving the blur thing but I had understaood it to mean something rather different, insofar as I understood it all. This makes much more sense. I'll go back and have another look. Perhaps it'll be clearer this time round.

I think I would have a hard time explaining what I want done. It's going to simulate aspects of normal vision, or how to move from blur into a sharp image. I've had some ideas, but I need to think about it more. I think what I would need to do is create a bunch of modified images, like a flip-book animation, to establish what it should look like, and then just take it a step further into a smooth animation.

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Webmaster of http://www.iblindness.org

"I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things." - Benjamin Franklin

It would be very rewarding to see an animation,but for now thanks for your effort, David.

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"The fundamental reason, both for poor memory and poor eyesight in school children, in short, is our irrational and unnatural educational system." - William Bates