Looking for details and in details - some thoughts

[mrcactoos]

First of all, sorry for my English. It's not my native language. I'm improving, but it's not good as it should be yet

I'm new to this forum. I have read a lot about Bates method and I'm interested about David's method.
One of the reasons is that, when I first read about his method, I was really, really engaged in understanding it.
It seemed very rational. So I went outside and practiced a lot. I tried to watch whole enviroment with very big
interest and attention. I have an astigmatism - my contrast and sharpness got better. I had feeling that things are
even overcontrasted. My eyes felt relaxed and moist. I didn't do a test on the snellen. I mostly test my vision in
dark places with bright things (lanterns, diodes). I watch the distortions and artifacts in my vision (ghosting,
halos, etc.), how i see prices in the market.

I have practiced short palming during a day and shifting on the snellen test card, but the main thing, was the true
belief that the things David describes must work.
When the things got better, I had a strange feeling in my eyes. They were tense. I had feeling they work different.
I wanted often to look 'far away' (without focus, everything is blurry then, you don't move your eyes). I hadn't
this feeling so often in past.

For experimental purposes i stopped training and was back in bad vision habits. And the difference come out again.
Weak contrast, artifacts, etc.

I have started again but without any committment at all. I thought "It worked then, it work now - simple". Not that
simple. It doesn't work again.
This revealed me that you must truly believe, read about it often, practice it with interest and sincerely want to
see things.

Now, I'm thinking how to enyoy looking at details. How to get interested in it. I'm analizying how I look at things
and how my girlfriend (with healthly eyes) look at things:

- she almost always notice a little hair in the food (rice with chicken, salad). This might be funny, but I never
see this small things. I always just look at rice. There is nothing interesting. Never see a hair.

- she has a sweater with some pattern. I have never looked at this pattern. When I looked at this pattern and the
details of it, there were bunch of things I have never noticed, I was just surprised (flowers, chains etc.). Never
paid attention to it. I knew she a has gray sweater, nothing more

- on my street is a farmacy with logo similar to the Unilever logo (google it in graphics, i can't post links and images).
This logo is there for three or more years. It consist of shapes. I didn't know that there are things like a heart, snake, letter or
leaf! Never paid attention to it.

I'm a type of a man who when walk on the street, think about job, what want to do tomorrow, what did today but never
watch, think and analyze the environment.

You must enyoy it. Now I'm thinking about games/activities that can help you with that:

- Everyone of you has a PC. Hidden Object games can help you look at details (google for BigFishGames and Hidden Object category). You must look for small objects. The bad thing is - no depth

- Maybe you have a lumberroom. Take someone with good vision and play a Hidden Object in real. He/she pick some object and you must find it. Make some objectives, rewards. You can do it when you walk or whatever.

- Talk with your girlfriend, husband or some close friend about seeing. How is he seeing? What he see? To what details is
he paying attention? Try to interest him/her with this topic. The other person with good vision can help you better
understand this process.

Test him/her. If you walk and notice some detail, ask him/her about this detail. Did he/she noticed it? He/she should do test you very often. This can help you to look at details, look for details with deep interest and without thinking about your eyes.

When I said to my girlfriend about farmacy logo and her sweater she was very surprised that i didn't noticed it. For her it is impossible to not pay close attention to that details.

What do you think about this?

[lakeivan]

Mrcactoos,

First of all, your English is very good, much better than my Polish.

I have very similar experiences. I almost feel as if my near-sighted old way of looking at the world is very verbal and intellectual; as soon as I have seen enough to know what the name of an object is, I don't look any further. It is as if I am thinking "I know what that is, it is the letter "A," or "that is a plate of rice," or "that is the pharmacy sign," but then I don't see any more details inside of the object.

David's method has taught me to examine "the details of the details." Whenever I look at something, I become interested in how it is textured, or shaded, or if it has different areas of color inside of it.

He has also taught me to look at text the way that a person who designs fonts would look at the letter forms. I have a 45 minute commute on the subway every day to my job, and I do a lot of my vision training while sitting on the train. Most of what I look at are advertisements, so there is a lot of text, in every possible style and color. Now I look at each individual letter form: does it have serifs? Does it imitate a brushstroke? Is it italic? Does it have a drop shadow effect? Is it curvy or straight? The advertisements are of course very boring to read, but the design of the typefaces is very interesting to look at, and it makes my distance vision better every day.

My spouse also has excellent distance vision. He confirms that his normal way of seeing is to constantly examine all the details of the scene.

David F.

[David]

Thanks for sharing. It is encouraging to me that a number of people are saying that this type of thing is helpful, or a missing piece in what they were doing before. To me the most important test of an idea of vision improvement is asking, "Is this what a person with normal vision does?".

If you look at how you have to learn other types of skills, to really get good at it you have to intensely concentrate on what you're doing and think of nothing else, involving your body and mind completely. This is a natural inclination. Anyone knows that to best learn something they need to focus themselves in this way. And vision has to be treated as a learned skill by people who never learned it or have lost their way for too long. The idea that vision can just "snap back" into perfect functioning if a person relaxes enough (or moves his eyes enough, or whatever) is enticing, and the idea is encouraged by moments of clear vision that seem to come out of nowhere. Such a moment is like a great moment in a sport or game where you seem to be killing it, but it's a matter of lucky circumstances and finding yourself doing things in a way that you aren't totally conscious of, and when you try to repeat it your conscious method is invalid and fails, and you don't have the advantage of someone whose habits are aligned with the right way to do it.

When you look at a sweater without seeing the parts of the pattern, or a forest without noticing the individual trees, you aren't actually looking at anything. It's a wonder we can see at all when we aren't actually looking at any details, and that the visual system allows such severe abuse and neglect with very little negative response in the form of blurry vision.

[FIAT2LUX]

As for consistency in practice, and willingness to improve, those are two invaluable skills in the process of getting better eyesight. Particularly to ingrain good habits when using your eyes. An example for me, is that I need to notice the details of what I'm reading and stay relaxed, or else I artificially induce temporary astigmatism.