I am shocked to find out that you don't agree with Bates's ideas or not fully. I fully agree with him. I have no reason not to. He has improved thousands of people's vision unless we believe he is lying. I refuse to look for fault as he has done more for my eyesight and mind in the last 7 months than anyone else. I have progressive myopia, which was crossing into the high degrees quite recently. I had nothing else to do for it than the Bates method. And stop making up my own theories, stop trying to find excuses why I wouldn't really have to do the exercises. I just did them. The best I could, which wasn't very good at first. I spent about 40-60 minutes a day. Didn't look for immediate results, just kept doing it and kept adjusting what I did (and still do). I don't look for details, I look for images/situations/surfaces, which relax my mind. I avoid looking at things that lower my vision. After 6 months, my anxiety and other reasons have led me to an optometrist. I was going to give full details of what has happened in there, but in summary, in short, he could not give me an explanation why both my eyes went down a full diopter and the astigmatism disappeared from the left eye. Bates had decades of experience as a doctor, and had done his experiments. He had the expertise, the knowledge. Noone can compete with that. A person would have to finish opthalmology training at a young age, perform all of his experiments, treat thousands and then he/she can say that he/she can now improve on the method.. The best thing we can do is to spread the (unchanged) word and set a good example by improving our own eyes. The only problem with relaxation is that people cannot relax on command. It takes time and practice. That's all. I highly recommend to everyone that they follow his exercises exactly and not someone else's, who have improved nobody's eyesight. It is sad that even people who have succeeded with his methods think there is fault in it. This is terrible news for the method! Today Bates would call visual disorders visual anxiety. That's all it is. Focusing on "bad habits"is misleading. The so-called bad habits have evolved as a result of strain, a person able to remove this strain entirely will have perfect vision in an instant, which proves that it has nothing to do with habits. For example, in myopia, there is nothing wrong with the habits when a person looks at an agreeable distance (near point). So why assume there are bad habits present? Think about this for a bit. Shifting is only demonstration, as everything else. It helps you relax, even if you don't become conscious of it...
I am going to have normal eyesight one day. I will be using the relaxation and imagination methods "only". Please reconsider keeping your new welcome page.
The convulsions was a joke.
I split this from the "new article / site update" thread, because I feel it needed a topic of its own and was out of place. For quite a while I did consider Dr. Bates's material to represent a complete solution. But over time I've found that even people who have studied it and try to do it to the letter are very much confused, whether they will admit or not, because frankly it's vague and simplistic and could be better presented as an instructional guide with the emphasis put heavily on certain things. Bates was right about almost everything, but I feel that it's best not to tell people everything, because they will try to apply it slightly wrong or try to do everything at once. Everything needs to be put in the right context and at the right moment. And I can only forewarn everyone that this website will be moving further in the direction of this approach and I will be reorganizing the forum to emphasize it. I don't expect all Bates purists to be on board with this, but I hope that some will look at it closely enough to give it a good try and see that it makes complete sense and still holds to all the principles of the Bates method, in fact better than any other approach does, even if they aren't explicitly spelled out at first. For example, with movement, I know how people try to apply movement according to a simple instruction of moving the eyes all day long, and they spend months and years with inconsistent results by it, which means that it doesn't work as applied. How movement fits in should only be put into a specific context, with instructions that leave very little room for error. My article is still being revised, but I'm confident it's solidly on the right track.
Dave
Site Administrator
"Half of our funny, heathen lives, we are bent double to gather things we have tossed away." - George Meredith
I second Andrea. I haven't been attending this forum for quite a while and I am shocked to find it has evolved into the worst possible direction, to the point when pure heresy is placed on a front page titled "the Bates method explained". With all due respect to your intention to make the method "easier to understand", what you are suggesting is a recipe for disaster, and directly contrary to the fundamental principles of the Bates method. You must be insane to suggest people with imperfect sight to stare at letters on the test card for hours and try to see details! This will cause pain, tears and lowering of vision, and this is not "normal"! In all his texts Dr. Bates explicitly suggests to avoid looking directly at a letter longer than an instant and instead look at the white space and flash letters with central fixation, imagining the letters are black and distinct, and the openings whiter than the rest of the white space. Good vision is always effortless, details come out all by themselves, instantly, you don't have to "look" for them. In my best effort to make any sense of your writings, they may be only an incredibly wordy and confusing way of suggesting people to imagine perfect sight and practice central fixation. If you insist, at least please stop calling it Bates method, "explained". It is not!
Oleg K. Wrote:I second Andrea. I haven't been attending this forum for quite a while and I am shocked to find it has evolved into the worst possible direction, to the point when pure heresy is placed on a front page titled "the Bates method explained". With all due respect to your intention to make the method "easier to understand", what you are suggesting is a recipe for disaster, and directly contrary to the fundamental principles of the Bates method. You must be insane to suggest people with imperfect sight to stare at letters on the test card for hours and try to see details! ... In my best effort to make any sense of your writings, they may be only an incredibly wordy and confusing way of suggesting people to imagine perfect sight and practice central fixation. If you insist, at least please stop calling it Bates method, "explained". It is not!
I reject Andrea and Oleg's insistence on the infallibility of Dr. Bates's genius. As I've said before, no endeavor, invention, or idea in human history has gone 100 years without improvement - it smacks of dark and middle ages unenlightenment to believe that the Bates Method is infallible and incapable of improvement. People who assert that it is cannot be interested in reality. Oleg doesn't even bother to give David's writings a close reading, because he never said to stare at individual letters on the Snellen chart - I think he recommends scanning for detail wherever you look, including the background and periphery (I could be wrong though - I'm not a pedant like Andrea & Oleg.)
I have to agree with JMartinC4 there. It's NOT about staring, but about using central fixation along with small shifts.
What I find most interesting about this argument is how the "pure Bates method" and David's new interpretation of it can seem so different to some people. To me, they complement one another. That said, I think that the title "the Bates Method, Explained" might be better renamed "An Interpretation of the Bates Method".
First. Bates Method can't be understood by many people around the world. So explanations must be made. Bates sounds like an Alien for more people, the book was written 80 years ago. The way we speak has changed since then and many are not used to the way he speaks and maybe simply they don't want to try and understand.
Also, societies have changed, way of life has changed, different approaches had to be made.
Look at religions for example. They have lost a great part of their influence over societies the last decades while fighting to keep their "teachings" rock-solid as they where 100 years ago.
Second.
Bates was indeed right, possibly on everything. In anyway, he is true that you can be cured when you are relaxed. Palming has proved it. Everyone has better vision after relaxing a bit. His book is not something "Alien", yo can understand with a little try if you know English and have a digital dictionary available and if you don't know very good English, thats a motivation to learn.
Of course somethings don't work for others, and those who find things that work for them want to inform the others about what worked for them just in case it works for them too. Bates would be proud of that i believe.
Third.
If someone wants to write things he did and found useful, or explain some parts for those who can;t understand the book, where is the problem? The original book is available, for free, in many sites, and anyone interested on it can download it.
The Bates Method is the basis for all these fancy methods about improving eyesight. These "packs" are made by people who want to make money, and some few who think that their ways work better for the people today.
But Bates Method is available for free. And i believe that we have to spread the word about it as much as we can.
Forth.
Having the Method and taking into account what people say on forums or sites is each ones personal mater. You already have the Method or you can have it if you download it. Now how you use it is yours decision. If someone wants to do what someone else says, fine. We are all individual persons, it might actually work for him.
David has many right points and he is right. But also Andrea is.
Stop arguing guys. Divided we Fall. Plus five, minus five, you will find a way in the middle.
This is the problem of this forum, the reason I left it. There are very few people here who really understand the method, but there are lots of others who make up their own theories and insist on having the right for their own opinion. Pretending these opinions are equal in right and value to Dr. Bates discovered principles had been a very harmful and misleading illusion for me.
Dr. Bates was a real genius and he was far ahead of his time. In our days, his time is still to come. So he is not middle-ages of course. What is really middle-ages is our dark ignorance about our own mind, the thing that is supposedly closest to us.
Of course, every person is very different and what works for one may not work for another. That's why the Bates method indeed needs some interpretation and customization. More experienced need to teach the less experienced. Every one needs to develop his own system of tricks that will dodge the mind into doing the right thing. However all these interpretations and customizations should be always strictly based on the fundamental principles Dr. Bates discovered -- central fixation, universal swing, memory and imagination.
Bates method is not a religion "whose teaching need to be kept rock-solid", it's an empirical science derived and refined from thousands of experiments. The only peculiarity is that the object of the science is inside our mind. If you do a wrong thing, it will simply not work, despite your belief in your right for opinion.
It is obvious that many people simply do not understand the language of Dr. Bates, because they are totally unfamiliar with the kind of mental experience he is talking about. This way they come to think that there is something wrong with the method. So they begin inventing their own theories to somehow reconcile Dr. Bates' writings with what they are used to. This is an excusable mistake, I've come through it too. At some point you may even think your theory is very good, even a real ground-breaking discovery! The fact is however that once you occasionally experience true mental relaxation, and try to explain it, you can't help but use the same language that Dr. Bates did. You suddenly realize that the words of Dr. Bates are surprisingly exact and should be understood very literally. Your own theory now turns out flawed to you, and when you remove the flaw, what is left are the concise words of Dr. Bates. There is nothing missing and nothing unnecessary. Almost all cured or almost cured people I've met, talked in the same terms as Dr. Bates. (That's why I was always disappointed, I got nothing new from them ).
Now I'm having a real hard time criticizing David because of his indisputable authority and his own success with the Bates method. However, with all due respect, I still believe what David is doing in his article is a step in a very wrong direction. When I read this forum, I am baffled with the amount of mistakes and stereotypes people do/have about the Bates method. What we should be doing is correcting common mistakes and go in deeper detail of how to practice the method correctly, but not invent another method, especially such an obvious blunder as looking for details in the blurred letters. It was the first thing I tried as a newbie and I know for sure that it cannot and doesn't work.
I seriously don't know what Oleg is babbling about. He gives no specifics. It's like reading an essay by someone who has a great vocabulary and command of the language but no original insight into the material. A regurgitator. A poser. Someone who wants to be considered an authority without having demonstrated any reason why he should be.
Oleg K. Wrote:This is the problem of this forum, the reason I left it. There are very few people here who really understand the method, but there are lots of others who make up their own theories and insist on having the right for their own opinion. Pretending these opinions are equal in right and value to Dr. Bates discovered principles had been a very harmful and misleading illusion for me. Dr. Bates was a real genius and he was far ahead of his time. In our days, his time is still to come. So he is not middle-ages of course. What is really middle-ages is our dark ignorance about our own mind, the thing that is supposedly closest to us.Of course, every person is very different and what works for one may not work for another. That's why the Bates method indeed needs some interpretation and customization. More experienced need to teach the less experienced. Every one needs to develop his own system of tricks that will dodge the mind into doing the right thing. However all these interpretations and customizations should be always strictly based on the fundamental principles Dr. Bates discovered -- central fixation, universal swing, memory and imagination. Bates method is not a religion "whose teaching need to be kept rock-solid", it's an empirical science derived and refined from thousands of experiments. The only peculiarity is that the object of the science is inside our mind. If you do a wrong thing, it will simply not work, despite your belief in your right for opinion. It is obvious that many people simply do not understand the language of Dr. Bates, because they are totally unfamiliar with the kind of mental experience he is talking about. This way they come to think that there is something wrong with the method. So they begin inventing their own theories to somehow reconcile Dr. Bates' writings with what they are used to. This is an excusable mistake, I've come through it too. At some point you may even think your theory is very good, even a real ground-breaking discovery! The fact is however that once you occasionally experience true mental relaxation, and try to explain it, you can't help but use the same language that Dr. Bates did. You suddenly realize that the words of Dr. Bates are surprisingly exact and should be understood very literally. Your own theory now turns out flawed to you, and when you remove the flaw, what is left are the concise words of Dr. Bates. There is nothing missing and nothing unnecessary. Almost all cured or almost cured people I've met, talked in the same terms as Dr. Bates. (That's why I was always disappointed, I got nothing new from them ). Now I'm having a real hard time criticizing David because of his indisputable authority and his own success with the Bates method. However, with all due respect, I still believe what David is doing in his article is a step in a very wrong direction. When I read this forum, I am baffled with the amount of mistakes and stereotypes people do/have about the Bates method. What we should be doing is correcting common mistakes and go in deeper detail of how to practice the method correctly, but not invent another method, especially such an obvious blunder as looking for details in the blurred letters. It was the first thing I tried as a newbie and I know for sure that it cannot and doesn't work.
I see the importance of not adding to Bates principles any unnecessary new ideas. He truly is the authority on vision. That said, I believe there is never a last word. If something is finished it is, in effect, dead. I want to be a freethinker and as such I have given David's detail-seeking principle a try.
JMartinC4 Wrote:I seriously don't know what Oleg is babbling about. He gives no specifics. It's like reading an essay by someone who has a great vocabulary and command of the language but no original insight into the material. A regurgitator. A poser. Someone who wants to be considered an authority without having demonstrated any reason why he should be.
Calm down, calm down. Now wherever this discussion between "Bates-purists" & "mod-Bates" is going, we wouldn't want it to be personal, would we?
Now, I can't tell who is more correct than the other but what I can tell is that if we don't keep the tone respectful, the forum goes straight to hell.
2fit2spit - why would you choose to try and bully me - the hero - rather than the true bully -Oleg? I don't get you. Are you afraid of him but not of me for some reason? Strange.
Heroes don't accuse others and name-call when they encounter disagreement. Whether I agree with Oleg or not, he doesn't rant. You may sometimes have good content to offer, but your tone makes me not want to listen, to say nothing of painting yourself as the victim when others dare hold different opinions than you do ("Now I know how Dr. Bates felt" you said once!). Can't we all just get along??
What some persons here wrote reminds me of a rap song were the singer said ''I'm an educated fool.'' :-\
Everybody can do better than throwing insults to the other eh? no?
The Bates method is only common sense. If someone who haven't treated other with vision problems successfully for more than 30 years says he have The Answer to a problem, it is probably because he did as Bates called: Adapting the method intelligently to his case. Everybody will find some things that can improve his/her sight during the process and while it may have worked for that person, it might not work for other. I read the page that David wrote and while it is probably not complete for someone who is very strained and had vision problems for many years, it is enough to ''get the picture'' of what the Bates method is about. In fact there is nothing new in what he wrote, it is just a typical Snellen test card practice. That said, what he wrote might be enough for someone to get back normal sight or better. As Bates said, when he had a more difficult case, he often had to use more of his methods to get results with the patient and in these cases, I recommend that you read his original book, Perfect Sight Without Glasses.
Stay calm and relaxed. Then you won't cry that you make no progress...
Have a nice day of improvements!
-Alexandre
JMartinC4 Wrote:...why would you choose to try and bully me - the hero - rather than the true bully -Oleg? I don't get you. Are you afraid of him but not of me for some reason?
"Bully me" - look who's talking. And what are you bothering me about, huh? For asking you to be respectful? I DON'T GET YOU.
I agree Nancy. Oleg doesn't mince words, that's for sure, but what he said wasn't out of bounds. I suspect he's not going to popular with many people here, but attempting to win friends shouldn't be the object of this forum. We should be here to help ourselves, and each other, to better sight. I hope we can all leave the pejoritive words out of what we write, and be able to distinguish when people are attacking us and when we just perceive the attack because the person disagrees (even strongly) with what we've said.
What I think Bates got right was his basic theory that mental strain = tense eye muscles = poor vision habits = poor vision. I believe, as he did, and as others here have said, that mental strain is the ultimate cause of the problem and that dealing with the mental strain is the best method of improving vision. I have a slight issue with the idea that the Bates method is about correct vision habits. I hope I don't sound like a pedant, but I think that's misleading. It's about mental relaxation. It's this which relieves the tense eye muscles, which lead to better vision habits ... which lead to better vision.
I can notice a real reluctance by many people to accept this proposition. They prefer to talk instead about vision habits and relieving strain on the eyes, but they don't talk about the problem at its source. The problem is that they're tackling the problem from the reverse end. For example, centralizing and nose penciling are two 'vision habits'. Both are good techniques but they won't work unless you're relaxed first. I'm not against good vision habits, but I am if they're not built upon a firm basis. That basis, I feel, can only be establish in most cases through the regular practice of sun treatment, palming, shifting, swinging, etc. in the way Bates described it. All that boring Bates stuff we all know, but seemingly don't want to actually practice for a variety of probably psychological reasons. It may have been Robert Lichtman who said that the problem with the Bates method is just that it works too well. It's such a direct route to improved vision that people find it difficult to emotionally cope with. I don't think improved vision, at least in the short term, is all roses by any means. Emotions can become a lot more intense; the good ones as well as the bad ones, and difficult childhood memories may resurface. So it's easy to see why people avoid the obvious.
It's not that I'm attempting to align myself with any particular 'camp' here. I can see the issue from both sides. I sometimes get the feeling that those in the 'pure Bates' side see him as completely infallible. It's true that he was probably one of the great geniuses of the 20th century, but like all geniuses he make some pretty spectacular mistakes. What about his theory of accommodation? Or his suggestion that the first step to improving vision was to discard your glasses permanently? And yet it well known that when children are first fitted with glasses, myopia often starts to level off - something that could never happen if glasses must always have a negative effect on eyesight.
However, I do not feel these criticisms have any bearing Bate's main propositions or his methods of treatment at all. I appreciate what David is trying to do with this website; I just believe his approach was right the first time. Along with Dave's writings, as well as Tom Q's, and Robert Lichtman's, I was encouraged to go back to Bate's original words and give them the proper attention they deserved. And I'm really glad I did.
I want to end by quoting one of Oleg's paragraphs in case anyone missed it. I fully agree with every word:
Quote:It is obvious that many people simply do not understand the language of Dr. Bates, because they are totally unfamiliar with the kind of mental experience he is talking about. This way they come to think that there is something wrong with the method. So they begin inventing their own theories to somehow reconcile Dr. Bates' writings with what they are used to. This is an excusable mistake, I've come through it too. At some point you may even think your theory is very good, even a real ground-breaking discovery! The fact is however that once you occasionally experience true mental relaxation, and try to explain it, you can't help but use the same language that Dr. Bates did. You suddenly realize that the words of Dr. Bates are surprisingly exact and should be understood very literally. Your own theory now turns out flawed to you, and when you remove the flaw, what is left are the concise words of Dr. Bates. There is nothing missing and nothing unnecessary. Almost all cured or almost cured people I've met, talked in the same terms as Dr. Bates. (That's why I was always disappointed, I got nothing new from them ).
).
