Many times now I feel a sort of lightness or freedom on my walks due to the apparent improving situation. I wasn’t concerned about my inability to “rack focus” like a camera, but I appreciate the confirmation that my eyes are functioning (relatively) normally. I think my ability to quickly shift focus will improve. I’ll continue to practice on my walks and whenever else I think to do it.

This a good time for me. Several important visual concepts are coming together–Central Fixation among them–and the combined understanding helps a lot. It’s important to the way I think and learn that I have a conceptual basis for what I’m attempting. The concepts you discuss and teach are very helpful, and at this point I have real hope of improvement after 35 years (ugh!) of thinking I was doomed. Too good!

Also, in line with your advice, I feel less affected by “labels and conditions” related to whatever’s happening with my vision. I have a spiritual view of health and healing, and your recent comments help push that Awareness forward. Thanks, and I’ll let you know if anything truly “eventful” happens.

Tom

Tom, 2 comments. First, anything which you enjoy seeing, like the bare branches on your vision walks, will help your visual channel. You are teaching your eyes and brain that it’s fun to see well, so they’ll want to do more of that. 🙂

Second, the human eye is designed to see only a single point at a time. (Go reread the central fixation article.) People with very good vision may think they’re seeing near and far objects “at the same time”, when they’re really focusing on one, then shifting to the other and focusing on that, then shifting again and focusing there, so rapidly they’re not aware of it being separate actions. Part of vision improvement consists of automatic shifting and focusing naturally getting quicker.

I’m really ENJOYING it, and (fingers crossed) it REALLY does seem to be improving my vision. Instead of my eyes feeling “tight or hard or rigid” at times they feel remarkably FREE or maybe LOOSE – as though their swiveling effortlessly, bathed in some very light lubricant. The best way I can describe it…ha!.

One limitation I find, and this is not a bad thing: So far I am NOT able to expand my DEPTH OF FIELD as can be done with a camera . Adjusting the camera’s Aperture can bring a short or long depth of field into focus (so an object in the foreground and background can BOTH be in focus). So far I’m not able to do that at all. I’ve tried, but find I can only bring ONE object at ONE distance into “focus” (sort of, ha!) at a time. Perhaps that’s normal for the human eye…

In any case, I’m making progress. THANK YOU, NANCY!

Great! The teacher in me loves it when someone takes what I say and applies it to improve his own situation. Once I realized how lacking my own awareness of depth was, and started focusing more on it, the world came alive. It was like I’d been living in a 2D Flatland before. 🙂 Vision improvement really did open up a new world for me.

Wonderful, Tom! And yes, that fleeting glimpse of clarity is such a tease, which evaporates immediately if we chase it. I think one of my biggest lessons in vision improvement is to just let the view be as it is and see/accept it that way, without trying to wrestle it into greater clarity. Yes, keep noticing, and appreciating. And thanks for the comment!

I’m an artist, so my vision anomaly has been causing me a lot of trouble. One thing I’ve noticed since beginning my vision improvement quest is that I tend to NOT actually LOOK at things, just as you describe in the linked article.

Per your recommendations, I take “vision walks” frequently. TODAY I’ll give special emphasis to DEPTH PERCEPTION and FIELD OF VIEW – just like Fstops and aperture in a camera. I think you’ve given me/us yet another very helpful insight. Thanks.

I’m finding the concept of “Open Focus” ala Jacob Lieberman (recommended by David Kiesling) to be very helpful. I tend to “stare a hole in” whatever my focus happens to be, and developing the awareness to replace that with an intentional “soft gaze” that takes in the entire scene seems to be helping a lot.

On a related note (and this may sound like nonsense), when I perform Dr Bates’ “Long Swing” I swear I can see everything CLEARLY(!!!) but of course it’s all flowing past and I cannot actually focus on any of it. Still, I have the very strong impression that edges are sharp and colors are intense. It gives me real hope.

I think my eyes learned to suppress the saccade movements, and I think both The Long Swing and Open Focus encourage the natural saccade movement. I hope and pray that with time and awareness my eyes will “loosen up” and return to their natural, God-intended saccade movements.

Thanks, Nancy, for your very helpful insights and encouragement.

I do not know if it is related since I changed more habits e.g. my diet, so this is not a good experiment to base conclusions on. But if someone used be really confident but lost that confidence as a child and is myopic, then he should maybe consider trying Bates’ method of NVI because that might have been what helped me recover emotionally.