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+--- Thread: Tension around eyes (/showthread.php?tid=85)
Tension around eyes - RoyFokker - 04-30-2006
Today when I woke up I felt alot of tension in the muscles around my eyes. Especially the right side.
Is this a good sign, a sign that progress is being made? Does this mean tension is being releasesd or increased?
Re: Tension around eyes - chris hansen - 05-01-2006
RoyFokker Wrote:Today when I woke up I felt alot of tension in the muscles around my eyes. Especially the right side.
Is this aÃâàgood sign, a sign that progress is being made? Does this mean tension is being releasesd or increased?
My guess is that tension that was released during the day is coming back while you're asleep.
I used to have that a lot. I recently realized how much tension I have in my face when I go to bed at night. If I'm careful to relax before I fall asleep, it's much better in the morning.
Try spending 30 minutes or so sitting with your eyes closed. Don't worry about your eyes, just relax all the muscles in your face. Let your neck muscles lengthen, let your cheeks droop, let all your tension melt away. You can use a thermometer to measure your level of relaxation by holding it against the palm of your hand. 93 degrees is pretty relaxed, 97 degrees is really relaxed.
Re: Tension around eyes - bjsilva - 05-01-2006
RoyFokker Wrote:Today when I woke up I felt alot of tension in the muscles around my eyes. Especially the right side.
Is this aÃâàgood sign, a sign that progress is being made? Does this mean tension is being releasesd or increased?
It is also possible that you became aware of tension that already existed. I would surmise that this is usually the case for someone just starting to figure things out. It's harder to distinguish between "new" tension and existing tension when you're first learning to feel it.
Re: Tension around eyes - RoyFokker - 05-02-2006
When I go many days without wearing my glasses and then I wear them for a work day, I notice alot of tension around my eye muscles when I take off the glasses(usually accompanied by a tension headache and nausea). I cannot figure out if it is tension being released from taking off the glasses, or tension being created from wearing them in the first place after so many days without them. I have a feeling it is tension being released from taking them off.
The tension is very disconcerting it is hard to relax when you feel intense tension around your eye muscles, especially if it causes a headache and nausea.
Re: Tension around eyes - chris hansen - 05-02-2006
RoyFokker Wrote:The tension is very disconcerting it is hard to relax when you feel intense tension around your eye muscles, especially if it causes a headache and nausea.
I'm not an expert but, based on my own experience, I might cautiously suggest that the nausea and headache could be a sign of progress.
Eyesight is affected by your emotions and when your eyesight improves it can bring up the emotional baggage that's associated with it. That's the part that Bates didn't seem to talk much about. I've had some uncomfortable times with the exercises. One episode was truly frightening and left me shaken for days but anxiety and nausea commonly accompany my vision improvements.
Hopefully someone with more experience can post their thoughts.
Re: Tension around eyes - RoyFokker - 05-06-2006
For some reason last night I feel asleep on my right side with much of weight on my right eye socket. When I woke up there was intense pain in the muscles around my right eye socket, so intense I could not watch tv or use the computer. All I could think about the was this intense pain, I could not do much else the pain always crept back to remind me it was there. It got so unbearable I felt like crying but I could not. It just generally broke me down psychologically. My initial attempts at palming were unsuccessful, I had trouble to relax with all the pain, I could not visualize a black dot at all, but I did feel a pulsing of the muscles in my right socket when I palmed. Eventually I palmed and instead of focusing on a black dot I tried to relax myself and my eye muscles, this did have effect and it relieved the strain while palming. After palming for a few minutes I tried to sleep on the couch while palming. When I woke up the pain was gone.
I have never read in any book about the pain associated with the Bates method. It seems Bates and authors like Quackenbush are eerily silent about some of the painful effects of trying to improve one's vision.
Re: Tension around eyes - David - 05-06-2006
Roy,
One thing that would interest me is whether you noticed that there was anything, any small thing at all, that happened to relieve or lessen the pain while it was hurting, or whether there was anything in particular that seemed to exaberate the pain. It does sound like the pressure on your eye was the obvious cause.
You know, it reminds me of an article Bates wrote about writer's cramp. His patients suffering from it sometimes said strange things like how it was worse in the morning after the hand hadn't been used all night, or it actually wasn't as bad after they had continued writing a good while through the pain. So after some observation, it turned out that in every case he came across, whether the patients initially denied that they did this or not until they had someone observe them, the patient had been sleeping with their hand under their head. Basically it was the nightly pressure on their hand that was to blame that made it ache when later being used for writing, not just writing per se.
Dave