What he says makes a lot of sense to me. "Straining" your eyes means a misuse of your eyes that generally screws up the system. You can think of the "primary strain" as the misuse of your eyes that's ultimately causing your vision problems in every moment. In reaction to the blur or other disorders that result from it, you might do something with your eyes in order to see just a little bit better. This you can think of as the "secondary strain". You see a little better by doing it, but eventually it just causes your vision to get worse and worse. One exaggerated example of the secondary strain is tightly narrowing your eyes to improve your vision a little. It feels bad, and in the long run it's destructive. It doesn't have to be as exaggerated as that - it might be just something subtle that you do with your eyes to get rid of double images or blur.
The confusion lies in how you read all this stuff about relaxing your eyes, so you do it, and your vision gets worse, so you conclude one of a few things: 1. The idea of relaxing improving vision is wrong, 2. You weren't doing it right or don't understand what relaxing means, or 3. Relaxing doesn't help in your special individual case. The thing is, it's only the first step. Once you release the secondary strain, which usually can be done consciously once you realize that you're tensing your eyes, your vision gets worse, and your eyes might still feel tense (but not as bad as before), but other than that, you actually feel a little more at ease.
Once you do that, then you can go about doing exercises like shifting with benefit because you aren't trying to constantly "fix" the image by doing that thing with your eyes, whatever it is you do. You also do not fix your vision by forcing exercises onto your eyes until they shape up. All you're doing with the exercises is subtly getting used to using your eyes (more) correctly, looking at one point at a time without straining at it, and the more you do it, the more your visual system will fall into the groove, do what it was made to do, and self-correct any additional vision problems.
Dave
Site Administrator
"Half of our funny, heathen lives, we are bent double to gather things we have tossed away." - George Meredith
Would you say that once you release the secondary strain/tension, the primary tension becomes a lot more noticeable?
For me, although I can see better, I'm also more aware of an underlying tension....it's that kind of tension that causes me on looking at someone to tense my eyes so as to not show how I really feel (I think).
That was deep dave.That pretty much sums up the bates method.Becoming self-aware of how you strain or use effort to see and correcting the visual center of the brain with the help of the bates method so it can work normally again.
footballman, I would say that once you release the secondary strain, the primary strain becomes more accessible. The primary has to do with how you use your eyes and the effect it has on them and isn't as susceptible to just "relaxing" for a moment as we say. It's only fully noticeable once you've had moments of perfect vision and notice the difference in how your eyes and the rest of your body feels.
roger, you could call it that.
Dave
Site Administrator
"Half of our funny, heathen lives, we are bent double to gather things we have tossed away." - George Meredith
so dave what your saying is at first shifting should be done slow and subtly until your visual system adjusts and then when the visual system picks up you can speed it up?
so dave what your saying is at first shifting should be done slow and subtly until your visual system adjusts and then when the visual system picks up you can speed it up?
onamission Wrote:so dave what your saying is at first shifting should be done slow and subtly until your visual system adjusts and then when the visual system picks up you can speed it up?
I don't understand where you're getting that from in what I said. If you could point me to it, I'll try to clarify.
Dave
Site Administrator
"Half of our funny, heathen lives, we are bent double to gather things we have tossed away." - George Meredith
"All you're doing with the exercises is subtly getting used to using your eyes (more) correctly, looking at one point at a time without straining at it, and the more you do it, the more your visual system will fall into the groove, do what it was made to do, and self-correct any additional vision problems."
I was guessing you was talking about all the excersises including shifting
Well there I'm just describing what you're doing with the exercises. Not at first or later, but at any time.
From what Bates wrote, he seemed to usually have patients start with palming. Eyes closed, sitting inactive. It's a simple way to get people to calm down, and when they open their eyes they'll be less apt to strain to see, at least for a moment, if they succeeded in calming down. Back then the idea of meditation was almost completely unknown to Western culture. Nowadays we can take it further than palming and focus on calming our mind. Not that we understand it better, but more of us are aware of the experiential reality of the idea of calming the mind and the usefulness of things like focusing on breath and philosophical concepts that can help orient and direct us.
Dave
Site Administrator
"Half of our funny, heathen lives, we are bent double to gather things we have tossed away." - George Meredith
When I first work with people, I have them sit with their eyes closed, not palming, and practice shifting, central fixation, etc with their kinesthetic sense. In other words, shift from a finger to a toe. This is pretty easy for most and gives them a sense of what is expected visually. After about 30 minutes of various eyes closed things, I'll explain flashing and have them flash their eyes open. Usually there is a noticeable improvement in acuity, and flashing is a terrific for learning to recognize how the strain returns and causes vision to blur.
The idea of releasing the secondary strain first, which Bates refers to when he talks about "making vision worse", is that as long as you are using the secondary strain for internal support it is illogical to think you will relax the primary strain. In other words, without releasing the secondary strain everything else you do will be in vain.
