hey guys, just wanted to ask, how many times do i exercise my eyes per day and how long do i palm for, i dont think anyone on these forums restored their eyesight yet.
How do you know that no one on these forums has restored his/her eyesight yet? I believe that if you look under Success Stories, you'll find a number of people who have successfully attained 20/20 or better, although to be fair, quite a few of them were posted in the earlier years of these forums. Why you would bring that help in a post asking for help, I don't know.
I haven't come anywhere close to restoring my eyesight yet, but I will say this. If you think that just doing exercises X number of times a day for Y days will get you to 20/20 vision, you have much to understand. If it was that easy, why are we all still here on these forums? The truth is that if it was something as simple as, say, swinging five hundred times a day for five hundred days, it would really be a matter of whether we had enough willpower to do it. Unfortunately, it's not like that and there's more than motivation involved.
The "short answer" to your question is that you need to exercise your eyes as many times as you can throughout the day, but the key isn't in the exercise but in the relaxation that you should be getting from the exercise. You must break the habit of strain that is ingrained in your subconscious and the only way to do that is by practicing good vision habits until the good habits have replaced the bad ones.
Depends on what exercises.
My Bates teacher Thomas Quackenbush says; Relaxation, shifting, central fixation, avoiding tension in the neck, avoiding short tense breathing are to be applied as automatic habits, occuring all the time. No effort.
I practice Davids looking at details instructions in my spare time, then it just occurs on its own.
Switching close and far; close and far swings, bead string, Palming, Long Swing, Eyechaert practice ... as needed.
If your vision is clear: your eyes are doing the right thing.
If blurry: check if you are staring, (stiff, tense eyes, eye immobility, diffusion - not using central fixation) bad posture, diet, stress... Neck and shoulder tension?
I can say proudly say that I have restored my eyesight to 98% of what is said to be 20/20, if that answers your doubts.
And regarding the times you need to exercise your eyes, the number is 0.
Pikachu Wrote:If you think that just doing exercises X number of times a day for Y days will get you to 20/20 vision, you have much to understand. If it was that easy, why are we all still here on these forums? The truth is that if it was something as simple as, say, swinging five hundred times a day for five hundred days, it would really be a matter of whether we had enough willpower to do it. Unfortunately, it's not like that and there's more than motivation involved.
Actually, I have to break the shocking news to you guys: IT IS ABOUT DOING EXERCISES X NUMBER OF TIMES A DAY FOR Y DAYS!
It is hard because a person has to first understand what they need to do. You do that by reading all the material available and trying things out, but then there comes a time when you have selected what works, and you need to allocate time every day and practice. Even if it feels boring and a chore.
Pikachu, you say you haven't improved. Please try to do 500 swings every day (should take you 30 minutes) and palm 2-3 times a day for half an hour each . Do this for a month and then come back and tell me with all honesty that you haven't improved more than you have in all the time you have been around on this forum. Bates actually recommends 2-3 hours of exercises in most serious cases. And the treatment can go on for 9 months. And most of us would be considered "serious" because of the low visual acuity and the number of years we have worn glasses. I think about 1 in a 1000 people could just remove their glasses and spontaneously improve, but the rest of us 999 people better get busy. You cannot gain relaxation on your own or just by reading about it. And it is only fooling yourselves when you say, "I practice good vision habits all day!" You cannot practice good vision habits, until you have perfect vision. That's a fact. Good vision habits are practiced subconciously for the most part. You get to that by first putting in hours and hours of dedicated time into practicing precisely what Bates explains.
I am only doing approximately 1 hour each day, I should do much more but right now I just cannot spare more time. I am taking my chances by not doing as much as recommended by Bates, and I don't expect too much as a result, but thanks to some higher powers, my vision is now probably better than it was 15 years ago! Which is still not great, but this has been accomplished in 9 short months and just after 6, I already shocked my optotmetrist! I hope I can go on like this for years and become a real evidence that this method is working.
Think about where you want to be a few years from now? Wouldn't you wish you had perfect vision by then? Instead you wasted hours a day chatting here for a long period of your life about your vision and you will eventually, inevitably give up and leave an put those glasses back on. So instead of chatting, it may be a better idea to put in some work and effort now and when you are fully cured, you can just go on with your life and then you will not have that nagging feeling with you all the time about whether you are following good vision habits now or not until you become insane. I just wish that there were other people like me, with the same determination, because otherwise, rightfully, this forum is just the laughing stock of the World!
2xtreme2fit Wrote:I can say proudly say that I have restored my eyesight to 98% of what is said to be 20/20, if that answers your doubts.
And regarding the times you need to exercise your eyes, the number is 0.
Good on you man, but leme guess how long did that take you 2 years?
Pikachu Wrote:If you think that just doing exercises X number of times a day for Y days will get you to 20/20 vision, you have much to understand. If it was that easy, why are we all still here on these forums? The truth is that if it was something as simple as, say, swinging five hundred times a day for five hundred days, it would really be a matter of whether we had enough willpower to do it. Unfortunately, it's not like that and there's more than motivation involved.
Actually, I have to break the shocking news to you guys: IT IS ABOUT DOING EXERCISES X NUMBER OF TIMES A DAY FOR Y DAYS!
It is hard because a person has to first understand what they need to do. You do that by reading all the material available and trying things out, but then there comes a time when you have selected what works, and you need to allocate time every day and practice. Even if it feels boring and a chore.
Pikachu, you say you haven't improved. Please try to do 500 swings every day (should take you 30 minutes) and palm 2-3 times a day for half an hour each . Do this for a month and then come back and tell me with all honesty that you haven't improved more than you have in all the time you have been around on this forum. Bates actually recommends 2-3 hours of exercises in most serious cases. And the treatment can go on for 9 months. And most of us would be considered "serious" because of the low visual acuity and the number of years we have worn glasses. I think about 1 in a 1000 people could just remove their glasses and spontaneously improve, but the rest of us 999 people better get busy. You cannot gain relaxation on your own or just by reading about it. And it is only fooling yourselves when you say, "I practice good vision habits all day!" You cannot practice good vision habits, until you have perfect vision. That's a fact. Good vision habits are practiced subconciously for the most part. You get to that by first putting in hours and hours of dedicated time into practicing precisely what Bates explains.
I am only doing approximately 1 hour each day, I should do much more but right now I just cannot spare more time. I am taking my chances by not doing as much as recommended by Bates, and I don't expect too much as a result, but thanks to some higher powers, my vision is now probably better than it was 15 years ago! Which is still not great, but this has been accomplished in 9 short months and just after 6, I already shocked my optotmetrist! I hope I can go on like this for years and become a real evidence that this method is working.
Think about where you want to be a few years from now? Wouldn't you wish you had perfect vision by then? Instead you wasted hours a day chatting here for a long period of your life about your vision and you will eventually, inevitably give up and leave an put those glasses back on. So instead of chatting, it may be a better idea to put in some work and effort now and when you are fully cured, you can just go on with your life and then you will not have that nagging feeling with you all the time about whether you are following good vision habits now or not until you become insane. I just wish that there were other people like me, with the same determination, because otherwise, rightfully, this forum is just the laughing stock of the World!
Thanks
Andrea
Good on you andre, i like your post, to let you know im very determent to restoring my eyesight and i have all the time in the orld as i am still young and could spare time for good vision habits btw i sent u a message plz read it
@Andrea Major: I had actually not considered that approach before. Then what that really means is that it's really a matter of how much time we choose to put into improving our eyesight. Which means that if I don't see improvement, I'm not spending enough time with it. Interesting. Thanks for the post. I may not agree with everything you say, but I appreciate your posts for the way they make me think about the Bates method in a different way than I'm used to.
Your reply has shocked me! (Pleasantly) I expected receiving an "attitude" back for giving my own "attitude", but instead you broke the cycle! Good for you! And I apologize for my tone.
It seems to me that you are willing and able to listen and try new things, which is very important in the treatment, because it is impossible to get everything right the first time. But I think you are slightly off course at the moment. Work on trying to see that it is easy. If you have already read the Cure of Imperfect Sight without Glasses, I think you would much benefit from getting the Better Eyesight Magazines and beginning to read them. The case studies will help you to understand what sort of things you should practice. You will see that they quite simplify things, too, so you no longer have to spend time overthinking how things need to be done or why.
(Dave sells the entire collection in his BatesMethodStore.)
It has helped me a great deal and I am not even half way! :-)
Oh, and I think you need to stay away from the Snellen for a while. It will do you good if you practice not looking at it - resist the temptation to test your eyes! It is a great exercise in mental control until you are ready for it again in a couple of months.
@Andrea Major: There is no need to apologize. You did not make any personal attack on me and I understand that you were trying to make your point clear. You mention not looking at the Snellen chart as mental control. I must say that I don't understand what the point of that is. I suppose that it could be a strain to try to force yourself to see those impossible-to-see letters, but at the same time, isn't it mental control if one can look at the Snellen without trying to see anything in particular? Regardless, I try not to obsess about what I get out of looking at the Snellen, but sometimes, curiousity gets the best of me.
As for the "trying to see that it is easy" part, I've decided that I'll try swinging (or swaying) all day, whenever I happen to have free time or when I can do it without inconveniencing myself (I find it easier to read while swaying). I'm sure that if I remember to do it often enough, I'll definitely surpass the goal of 500 swings a day (not that I'd want to count them).
The palming might be more difficult for me. I can put aside the time, but up until now, I have not been able to palm effectively, and I haven't been able to figure out exactly why. When I stop palming, it is not uncommon to find that my vision has gotten worse or that I feel less relaxed than before. That is a red flag telling me that something I am doing or thinking is not right. And I have to figure that part out first.
On the whole, I must say that your view on the Bates method is very logical, but I still have to say that I believe that vision improvement comes from a combination of the two extremes: doing exercises often and developing proper vision habits. I know that there are books out there that advocate just the exercises and books out there (like Quackenbush's) that says it is all about the habits and nothing else. Interestingly enough, both sides seem to quote Bates quite often, and both seem to have their own share of successes, which leads me to believe that to some extent, both approaches must be correct in some way. I'm curious as to what your own routine is for vision improvement. What is it you do every day, how often do you do it, and what has helped you along the path the most? This is a pretty long post, but it helps that I've been swaying the entire time.
2xtreme2fit Wrote:I can say proudly say that I have restored my eyesight to 98% of what is said to be 20/20, if that answers your doubts.
And regarding the times you need to exercise your eyes, the number is 0.
Good on you man, but leme guess how long did that take you 2 years?
2xtreme2fit Wrote:I can say proudly say that I have restored my eyesight to 98% of what is said to be 20/20, if that answers your doubts.
And regarding the times you need to exercise your eyes, the number is 0.
Good on you man, but leme guess how long did that take you 2 years?
I have an issue with people emphasizing that the habits need to be changed. To me they have taken things out of context from the original Bates materials. It is true that it is the habits that will destroy the eyesight, but vision habits are not conciously practiced. Bates says it is nervousness that causes all those bad habits. For example, try to swing from 20 feet an area of an inch on the Snellen continuously, slowly and smoothly. You will find that it is impossible to do without the eyes jerking, jumping. The eyes cannot even arrive at the same place twice, whereas you could approximately do this on a blank wall where there was nothing to see. It is the letters at that distance, which destroy the ability to swing. On the other hand, your ability to swing is nearly perfect when you look at the near point and attempt to read small print. Again, you are not conscious of it, but you are practicing perfect vision habits at the near point.
I exercise approx. 1 hour a day. I do palming mostly 3-5 times a day. The session should be at least 20 minutes once or twice. I do long swings and read small prints with one eye. The multitasking thing didn't work for me. Like swaying while reading or something. I have to have dedicated time when I don't do anything other than my exercises. I cannot have any music on, people talking or anything, because, I found those made the effectiveness worse. It isn't important what I do though, I keep changing things up. During the first 7 months or so, I could not do any palming either. I could do flashing though, when I would only close my eyes for a few seconds, so at that time, that was more effective than palming.
To avoid the Snellen, think that the Snellen chart is a very attractive young lady (assuming you are a guy). Now you want to ask her out on a date, but you are afraid of being turned down, so you play it cool with her for a while. You do that by getting really close to her and not looking at her as if you were not interested so that she begins to fall for you more and more thinking that she is not good enough for you. Eventually she will be the one running to you! Can you practice this for a few days?
To radiation15,
I can't tell you the degree of my eyesight because I don't know. I kind of "preach" not to believe in numbers because I find it strange. I could tell you that I see clearly when I want to, almost feels like I can manipulate relaxation to my needs. I recently posted the best way I've found that works for me in the 'Not Fearing the Sun' topic. That is the only thing I do these days besides looking at the Sun intermittently.
Andrea Major, I respectfully disagree with your "IT IS ABOUT DOING EXERCISES" statement. I defer exercises to things you should do at your own leisure. The thing about the Bates Method is you really don't know what will work for you & how much it will work - until you start discovering things about yourself, right?
I suppose you've been doing it for a long time & you now have formed a certain mindset about what is to be done. Our approaches can be different but not our motive...