Hi Joanne. I’m not an eye doctor so can’t prescribe glasses, and I tend toward the Bates philosophy of “less is more”, reducing or eliminating your prescription, and doing without correction as much as you can without straining. Your eyes will always do their best to see through the glasses you put in front of them, whether they’re too strong or not, and you may suffer a lot of eyestrain if the glasses aren’t suitable for you. My non-doctor opinion is that your eyes are trying to adjust to the new glasses, and this is the best they can do. Oh and please be aware of how you talk about your vision (“beyond horrible”) since your eyes are listening! 🙂 Good luck finding easier more relaxed sight.

Clark, hi. Simplistically, I think someone can strain doing anything, including looking at Magic Eye pictures or something like the Three Cups. My unproven guess is that the people who have trouble with these techniques are the ones who strain while using them, and the ones who succeed have learned how to relax while looking at them.

Very interesting about the red and blue circles. I’ll have to try that myself. Yes, what you focus on you see more of — buy a sliver car and suddenly you see silver cars everywhere. It also makes me think of eye witnesses being at the same scene and “seeing” radically different events. The mind is a huge player in vision. It’s not just a mechanical process of the eyes.

It’s a tough one to figure sometimes; Although I have met people and myself that developed problems from the Magic Eye 3-D pictures, and only the Bates Method alone would fix the problem for me; the Behavioral Optometrists, Ophthalmologists, ‘if you can find a good one’ have success curing Strabismus with a specific type of the 3-D. I have met 2 mothers, there children and one man so far that have been cured of Strabismus form the Optometrist using the 3-D. But is a specific way, different for each case. This is the problem Natural Vision teachers have; most eye doctors hide everything from us. Bates taught a interesting method in the Feb., 1929 Better Eyesight Magazine Issue. Seeing double candles… I have been re-reading, re-reading to get the exact procedure in my mind and compare to the eye docs, other teachers. Will then place it all along with other stuff in a strabismus pdf. Janet and Carina Goodrich teach the 3-D but it wont work right for me from anyone’s books. I stay away form it now and vision is ok.

One thing I did like; In Martin Sussman’s Cambridge Institute for Better Vision book there’s a 3-D exercise (which I also no longer recommend after my experience with others) but it is interesting. Its done with 2 circles. I colored in the two circles; one read, the other blue. When I tried the 3-D thing in the past; when you get the 3rd circle, ‘an illusion of the 2 peripheral circles appearing to be in the central field’ by merging the 2 peripheral field circles; it seems to flash back and forth between red and blue, BUT; if you think red; only red appears. If you think blue, only blue appears. Weird huh? Try to figure why? Is it one brain hemisphere being dominant for the moment? The left and right sides of each eyes retina go to, cross to the left, right hemispheres. Both eyes see the peripheral red and blue circles. What is the mind?, visual system suppressing or dominating to make only the one color your thinking about appear? How do both eyes see only one side of the peripheral field; the side the color you are thinking about. IS that whats happening? how?
Clark