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+--- Thread: Help please (/showthread.php?tid=2791)
RE: Help please - gekonus - 06-28-2014
When practicing my snellen, which is quite a cheap paper (the letters are a litlle bit grey). I practice it on a wall in my room at the afternoon so that its a bit light. I also do it in the evening, with a pretty good light. I can see a bit of the 20/50 line, its a little bit difficult tho, l guess my acuity is about 20/60 average or maybe 20/70 at the worst case (l see a bit worse using one eye at a time, and my left eye is a bit worse than the right eye) . Btw is it enough to barerly see the 20/50 line to say that you are 20/50? Sounds logical to me since if you will be able to see that line clearly, your vision would be definately 20/30 or so.
Nancy, what l meant was that l thought fixing astig works better with one eye patched at a time, and not with both eyes
Haha, l didnt mean l could practice with one eye when they are both opened, thats impossibe , and of course not from 3 cm
It seemed to me that they adviced practicing the tibetan with both eyes but the other astig charts from a more far distance and with one eye patched at a time
RE: Help please - Aureus - 06-29-2014
(06-28-2014, 09:55 PM)gekonus Wrote: When practicing my snellen, which is quite a cheap paper (the letters are a litlle bit grey). I practice it on a wall in my room at the afternoon so that its a bit light. I also do it in the evening, with a pretty good light. I can see a bit of the 20/50 line, its a little bit difficult tho, l guess my acuity is about 20/60 average or maybe 20/70 at the worst case (l see a bit worse using one eye at a time, and my left eye is a bit worse than the right eye) . Btw is it enough to barerly see the 20/50 line to say that you are 20/50? Sounds logical to me since if you will be able to see that line clearly, your vision would be definately 20/30 or so.
Nancy, what l meant was that l thought fixing astig works better with one eye patched at a time, and not with both eyes
Haha, l didnt mean l could practice with one eye when they are both opened, thats impossibe , and of course not from 3 cm
It seemed to me that they adviced practicing the tibetan with both eyes but the other astig charts from a more far distance and with one eye patched at a time
I found somewhere that if you can read successfully more than half of the letters of one line then it's considered that line is read. To me this doesn't sound very logical. I'll explain why.
1) It was a rsaerch wihch has sohwn taht if you put the rgiht ltetrs at the bgnennig and at the end of the wrods in a snetnace, ppoele wlil raed tehm whituot any porlbem. You can mkae a mses in tihs way in any stenncae yet yuor biarn will put erevytihng in crocret oerdr. Two last sentences of mine showed it. The thing is that after reading not many sentences written this way you get easily tired (as your brain has to work too much), you get tired much easily than if all the letters were in the correct order. So - it's better that they are always in their right order.
Similarly, you can guess or even see some letters in one line and that will make possible for you to read a short text of that size but if they are not ALL SEEN with SATISFACTORY CLARITY then saying you're on that line is unecessary cheating. You can take the fact that you can barely seen some letters as a means of self-motivation to proceed with exercising, that's pretty fine and desirable. But I don't find much reasons for saying "I'm on 20/.. " if you cannot see all the letters.
2) There is the difference between seeing and guessing. Our goal is to see. You can guess some letters or numbers on a chart but our world is not only consisted of black letters printed on white paper. You can guess the letters but there's no point in guessing what is that insect on your table: an ant or mosquito? You have to see it. Is it an insect at all?
Point two: the Tibetan wheel is seen from the distance of 3 cm (an inch to an inch and half). The reason for this is that your eye muscles strech enough. If it's hard for you at the beginning to reach the dots from that distance start with a bigger distance.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How many legs you see? - I think...six. No! Eight! - You think? - Well...eight. I'm sure there are eight legs. - Then it's not an insect. And it's not neither ant nor mosquito. Insects have six legs. The thing in front of you is something else. What else do you see on it? - Uh! Are there maybe six legs?
- Hehe. I don't know. 
RE: Help please - gekonus - 06-29-2014
well then, somewhere around 20/60 I guess.. gotta keep working with that wheel, the snellen chart, and do alot of palmings everyday to improve vision eh? :\
RE: Help please - Aureus - 06-29-2014
(06-29-2014, 06:35 AM)gekonus Wrote: well then, somewhere around 20/60 I guess.. gotta keep working with that wheel, the snellen chart, and do alot of palmings everyday to improve vision eh? :\
I'd include the exercise called sunning as well.
Don't set up unrealistic goals. It seems that only lucky basterds can improve a lot very quickly. Usually improvement is slow. One can expect one line down every three months or so.
And don't guess your vision acuity. Measure it. Both eyes separately indoors and outdoors. You need to know where you are now and where you are three weeks or three months later. But don't be obsessed too much with measuring. There's no point in measuring it every day. The range of 15-30 days is just fine. Also, small daily fluctuations are normal.
Of course, if you look at the same Snellen chart every day, you'll know every day where you are with your vision.
RE: Help please - gekonus - 06-29-2014
Yeah Im doing sunning every day or once in 2 days, for only a few minutes tho.. Seems like Palming and Sunning are the most effective exercises for myopia
I started doing eye exercises about a month ago, or a bit more (I started out without knowing about sunning nor palming for a long period. Started with eye rolls, figure of eights, zooming, shifting close and far).
I started using the tibetan wheel just recently and I really feel the eye muscles ( I hope Im not damaging them)
there might be a difference in my vision by now, cause as far as I remember I used to see a little bit blurry with my -1 0.5Cyl glasses, but right now I can see the 20/15 line with them...
But I guess its just gonna take a lot of time to get it back to 20/20 without glasses, gotta be dedicated and motivated everyday (You sometimes lose the will to keep doing the exercises since you think its impossible).
By the way, have you been doing the exercises that Im doing right now? Have you got your vision fixed? If so what was your acuity in the beginning and what is it now?
By the way, is there anything to do when one eye is worse than the other? if you practice both eyes together, will the weaker eye improve too?
RE: Help please - Aureus - 06-29-2014
Whatever your visual challenge is, don't stick only to a certain number of exercises 'prescribed' for it. Do your own experiments here and there, bring in something new - that'll keep you exercising and what's also important you'll know more and more about how your eye function and what they need.
I was diagnosed astigmatism (sphere + 0.5 and cylinder +0.5) and in February I started with RE - 20/32 and LE - 20/37.5.
Four and half months later I'm at RE - 20/25 and LE - 20/29 but I haven't check the amount of dioptres now. Probably some of the figures are 0.25 dioptres lower but they can be the same as before. It's possible to increase visual acuity a bit and stay with the same dioptres.
But every refractive error causes a bunch of sub-problems we call symptoms. I can remember at least ten symptoms I had. I've been working and working and now all of them are lower to a certain (and different) extent.
So, it's not all about vision acuity.
When I have all that in mind in my case I modestly conclude so far I got rid off one third of the problem.
I would exercise the weaker eye more. As your weaker eye is progressing you may be pleasently surprised that your stronger eye is going stronger and stronger even without much exercising.
RE: Help please - Nancy - 06-29-2014
About having one eye with weaker sight , I just talked about this with a student last week. One simple suggestion is to see if you can "lead" with your weaker eye. Cover your strong eye and look across the street -- does it feel weird? Or look into the top of a narrow bottle with the weak eye instead of the strong eye which I'm sure you would usually use. How does that feel? Is the weak eye overwhelmed, or resentful that it has to do the work of seeing without the strong eye's help? There's no right or wrong answer -- you're just gathering information, learning about yourself and your vision. I agree about practicing with the weak eye more.
RE: Help please - gekonus - 06-29-2014
Four and a half months to get rid of astig and improve by 0.25? That is hell of a long time.. l hope it will take me
Iess time to improve..
And you meant like, do more shifts and practice snellen more with my weaker eye?
RE: Help please - Aureus - 06-30-2014
(06-29-2014, 09:33 PM)gekonus Wrote: Four and a half months to get rid of astig and improve by 0.25? That is hell of a long time.. l hope it will take me
Iess time to improve..
And you meant like, do more shifts and practice snellen more with my weaker eye?
If you are not prepared for hell of a long time to improve just a bit, then I'm afraid you'll give up even before you start with some serious work.
Improvement within the range 20/40 to 20/20 is, as I could see in my case and having had read the stories of some other people takes a continuous hard work.
Do everything more with your weaker eye. And do more in general.
RE: Help please - gekonus - 06-30-2014
But l am working hard everyday.. l do palmings, sunning, tibetan snellen and eye movements, and l might do a bit long swings .. The thing is that this whole subject is very complex and lm afraid l am not on the right track to succeed..
RE: Help please - arocarty - 07-01-2014
(06-30-2014, 08:55 PM)gekonus Wrote: But l am working hard everyday.. l do palmings, sunning, tibetan snellen and eye movements, and l might do a bit long swings .. The thing is that this whole subject is very complex and lm afraid l am not on the right track to succeed..
You're really going about this the wrong way; hard work is for the birds, Bates is very simple, people just make it complex and laborious. Don't ask yourself what do I need to do more of. Instead, you should be asking yourself what do I need to do LESS OF? When you discover that, you will find what brings relief to your poor sight and visual imagination. Time is also not really a variable in the equation either, those with the highest levels can relieve it 'as quick as a thought' as Bates witnessed countless times. It's only a factor inasmuch as it takes to develop the mental awareness of what you're doing wrong, and then the mental discipline to make it stick. And that varies with every individual. Ignore the timetable of anyone else, and walk towards your own path of relief. Otherwise you will just make yourself more anxious, and make the whole process the opposite of what it is meant to be, by infusing more effort and strain into it.
RE: Help please - gekonus - 07-01-2014
Correct me if Im wrong but, these eye exercises are meant to "Trick" your mind and eyes into relaxation and also strenghten the muscles (Astigmatism).
So basically you HAVE to do them, cause otherwise you will not be able to achieve that relaxation..
You know, I can feel that eye strain, the feeling of some kind of a tension that you just want to release with your hands, but its impossible to release that tension just by not thinking about it, or trying to avoid bad habits (computer, squinting, not blinking etc).. It feels to me like something from the inside that I cant really figure out how to solve it.. That is why I think sometimes these exercises may help.. in one way or another
Am I right about that? :p
RE: Help please - arocarty - 07-01-2014
(07-01-2014, 05:15 AM)gekonus Wrote: Correct me if Im wrong but, these eye exercises are meant to "Trick" your mind and eyes into relaxation and also strenghten the muscles (Astigmatism).
So basically you HAVE to do them, cause otherwise you will not be able to achieve that relaxation..
You know, I can feel that eye strain, the feeling of some kind of a tension that you just want to release with your hands, but its impossible to release that tension just by not thinking about it, or trying to avoid bad habits (computer, squinting, not blinking etc).. It feels to me like something from the inside that I cant really figure out how to solve it.. That is why I think sometimes these exercises may help.. in one way or another
Am I right about that? :p
I would not call it 'tricking' your mind and eyes, although learning to do some of the techniques can be 'tricky,' in the sense that it's largely counter-intuitive. Yes, you have to intervene and take some action, and those actions (or techniques) are an indirect way to achieve some influence over what is mostly an unconscious effort and strain. We don't have direct access to it, but by providing the right conditions that promote release of abnormal tension (overacting muscles), we can indirectly improve vision, which is directly tied to those overacting muscles. Astigmatism, is just more of the same overacting muscle action, but innervated more asymmetrically. Exercises will not achieve much in helping them to stop overacting, they need to contract less. This is a good magazine regarding astigmatism, and shows how variable it can be from individual to individual:
http://www.central-fixation.com/better-eyesight-magazine/better-eyesight-1930-01.php
The real trick is to learn how to do the techniques without effort, without trying to directly influence vision. Even the slightest amount can prevent it from being effective. So how you approach what you actually 'do,' can make a big difference in what you are able to achieve,
RE: Help please - gekonus - 07-01-2014
Learning how to do the techniques without effort requires a GREAT effort, haha :\
To learn how to relax is alot more difficult than just do physical exercises... I just gotta think how am I supposed to release this stupid unconscious effort that I brought on myself thanks to years over years playing the computer for 10 hours a day with barerly any break -_-
RE: Help please - gekonus - 07-02-2014
Well.. I wanted to thank you all for your help! I get the idea.. it is all about relaxation .. I just hope I will make it.. its gonnna be a tough way to release this unconcious strain and it sometimes feel like a fairy tale for me to achieve..
I am not gonna give up tho, just gotta try to relax and not try to "see" things..