Snellen & Visualization
Just finished a Bates session. I was using the snellen as per usual lately. 10 feet away, sitting, two different charts one over the other, headphones on. This time I took my headphones off after a few minutes knowing that I would go deeper if I didnât have that noise. True enough, I had more signigicant results this time. I had and still have a pinched nerve in my neck and pain in my neck and trapezoid between my neck and shoulder. It is quite painful. Imediately I knew to close my eyes and count breaths. This began to relax me. I did my best in counting my breaths and staying aware of my now experience. I stretched my neck from time to time often quite erradically. After about 25 min. I started getting some clearing with the chart and that was notable and encouraging. I found that the best results came when I really looked for detail in the most casual manner. I was looking and letting at the same time. The looking for details served the purpose of staying connected to the subject and not fuzzing out mentally and staying on task.
Also, when starting my session, I was getting nice visuals with my eyes closed. They were continually morphing but there was a clarity to them. They had substance and I felt very relaxed and pleasant watching them. Later when clearing some writing on the white board the charts were taped to I could not at first read this list until I started to recall the earlier feeling and activate my imagination. It was the first time I clearly used my imagination to improve my vision and it worked just as Bates wrote. This was very encouraging and I am excited to keep exploring!
Read some BEWG last night befor bed and some more after waking this morning. It has been many months since I have read the chaptr on strain. His writing struck me as incredibly lucid and to the point. I think when I have read his words on strain in the past I was resisting their simplicity and focus on relaxation. Maybe I was still relating to relaxation as if it is really hard and difficult to attain or I just wasnât that familiar with what he meant by it and was attached to clear vision so I sort of rejected it.
This is the sentence that struck me:
We cannot by any amount of effort make ourselves see, but by learning to control our thoughts we can accomplish the end indirectly.
As I was working with the chart this morning for 20 min. I noticed I was straining a little more that usual and I was unhappy with the resulting blur. When clearness becomes a reason for strain and I feel too anxious to close my eyes and meditate, that is a sign that I may not have any progress or relaxation of the visual system, not until I breathe and relax. Breathing and relaxing can seem so lame and hard and boring and excruciating. At these time it might be best to just forget about the chart and sit somewhere away from it and take a break. Maybe in silence with no distraction.
I did close my eyes for about five minutes and when I opened them the chart was clearer. But the strain came right back because I was still relating to the chart as outside me and something which takes effort to see.
When it become permenent, the correction is permanent.
This relaxation cannot however, be obtained by any sort of effort. It is fundamental that a person should understand this; so long as he thinks, consciously or unconsciously, that relief from strain may be obtained by another strain, the improvement will be delayed.
How to identify strain? Relaxation through meditation; timed and moment to moment.
Sat in front of the Snellen this morning. Started off with headphones and music. After a few minutes my ears were hurting no matter how low I put the volume. I removed the headphones and didnât suffer the usual separation anxiety. I seemed to have about the same level of strain as the previous day. Last night involved a high level of stress and chaos as someone close to me was processing some deep seated issues and fear in their life. I did the best I could to be supportive but it was difficult to not take some of the frustrations personally. All ended well but my nerves were a little on edge afterwards as is typical when helping them process for a few hours.
After sitting with my strain and realizing that meditation would have to be the first order of things, I followed an instinct to put myself back in my 7th grade history class when I first remember struggling with blurry vision. I recalled quite palpably the amount of fear and anxiety that was present in my life at the time. It was absolutely huge. P.T.S.D. sort of stuff and it is no wonder at all that if I had a tendency to strain that this would worsen at this time. I was horribly self-conscious and thought I was deficient in all ways. I feared sticking out in any way and wanted to be unnoticed. To amplify the stress there was a very real racial conflict at the school and hostility was everywhere. I felt that the teachers were angry at me personally and was in constant worry about falling comprehending what was happening in class and not falling behind. When the blackboard became too blurry to read I felt I had no choice but to try very hard to see it. EFFORT. STRAIN. This must have went on for weeks and weeks until I admitted my problem to my mother and went to an eye doctor. By then I was truly desperate to see even if it meant looking even more awkward and vulnerable in glasses.
So I went back to these unpleasant times and began examining the bodily sensations and mental attitudes. I imagined thinking, âthe hell with them. I am taking the time to relax my eyes and let go of strain. This is more important than being an âAâ student.â This seemed to help. I felt a release of blocked emotion and a weight being lifted from me. I bent over and stretched my back. This releases something that burned and flooded my chest and neck and head. I felt better.
In the last two days I have on a number of occasions experienced my visual system working more properly. This happened while following the instructions of David Kiesling, moderator and webmaster of iblindness.org. David has been advocating a way of looking and clearing vision that was never referred to in Batesâ writings but, nevertheless. has been very effective for many users of the site and seems completely in line with the Bates Method. The technique involves seeking out details any detail no matter how large or fractured. Smaller and smaller details are searched for. Nothing else is attempted. The eyes are being used correctly when they are only concerned with seeking our small details. This is relaxing and eventually the mind uses this information to focus the subject. This worked for me yesterday while sitting inside a vegetable garden and today while using a snellen outside in sunlight. It took patience and focus but was really pleasant. There was on both occaisions a freedom that came from only doing what was necessary to see. No forcing an image to emerge, no trying to see everything at once, no trying to make sense of what I was seeing. It felt like a little miracle that things cleared up so quickly and automatically.
I have to give real credit to David for being aware of his eyesight and process to such a degree to notice how he uses details and such a great way of explaining it. His lucidity is admirable.
I think I can use this technique to make proper seeing a habit because it is ,ore lke something that can be done at any time anywhere. Iâm excited!
On the test chart today I read the 20/30 line briefly. This is an improvement by one line over the last time I used the chart out in the sun. This is great feedback about my progress with using details!
Rarely have I been this consistant about working with my eyes and awareness. In fact, this is likely the most committed and active I have ever been with Bates. Iâve heard it mentioned that momentum is really important and I am getting some of that. It really is training and changing a habit. And on top of that it is letting go of unnatural behavior that is not a part of who I truly am.
I havenât been too good about reaching relaxed states lately. My work has been stressing me out and Iâve been relying on my podcasts to numb the pain. Podcasts are my drug. I guess it could be worse but it is having an undesirable effect on my life. Maybe Iâll go more into that another time. At any rate, my last session in front of the Snellen chart I was continuing to practice looking for details, observing my awareness of what Iâm looking at shift, observing universal swing, and feeling more relaxed as I get into a more natural way of seeing.
RIght now I am up against my long standing paradigm of hurrying and being in a constant hurry. I try to think of more that one thing at a time. I think there is something efficient in this. Or maybe I believe it will prevent me from being too slow and being scolded. Childhood formation stuff. So, I am interested in making a shift away from this as it effects my way of seeing (lack of central fixation) and it is effecting me at my day job where I am required to process a lot of information quickly and perform new physical tasks under a managers watchful eye. This ellicits considerable performance anxiety in me. A new way of reacting to this situation is required. My automatic response is to get tense, disassociated, unfocused and skip important steps.
We will see how I handle this. I think some introspection is in order and some decision to act differently, as someone who is confident in their ability.
Otto, thanks so much for sharing your experiences -- I relate to a lot of what you said. What is helping me now is the realization that while the stress was externally imposed in the past (like in your history class), now I have the power to choose my environment, and to make it peaceful, or to leave if it's not. Claiming my right to have quiet time alone is essential to me now. Keep up the good work!
A big gap has transpired since 2012. I have taken a break from practicing any kind of regular eye-strain lessening activities and I have not given too much thought to eye-strain during this gap.
In the last week my thoughts have returned to eyestrain just the slightest bit. Lately, work has been simple and solitary, with iPod on, there is a constant and repeating stream of tracks educational and meditative. I listen to a guided meditation from Jon Kabat-Zinn. I have discovered a new podcast about happiness though self-awareness (by Gary Van Warmerdam) that is quite revelatory for me.
One old track that I have put into rotation again is a hypnosis track meant to be listened to while palming and before going to bed. It is by a Portland, Oregon Bates vision teacher. In the track he says many supportive, self-healing words to be accepted into your subconscious. These affirming words such as, âI let go of all negative thinking about my eyesight and accept the possibility of clarity now" and I am allowing my vision to get better and better every day" actually elicit resistance in my mind. I can feel myself react to these words with doubt, pessimism, frustration and self-reproach. There is no doubt that a heightened awareness of this reaction exists in large part due to semi-regular mindfulness meditation.
The time is coming again for me to delve into regular Bates practice, staying aware of how I am using my eyes and releasing strain where it is apparent; spending as much time as possible without glasses on, palming frequently, using my imagination, shifting, and looking for details (not a classical Bates technique).
Iâll be reporting here on how this goes. My approach will be significantly different in at least one regard. That is that I am not so attached to having my vision improve as I used to be. That is to say that I am not going to allow myself to get worked up about my vision improvement. I am not going to allow myself to strain more and put forth greater effort in order to attempt to overcome poor vision.These were common traps in the past but I recognize it now as needless suffering.
Again, one of my favorite Bates quotes:
Quote:This relaxation cannot however, be obtained by any sort of effort. It is fundamental that a person should understand this; so long as he thinks, consciously or unconsciously, that relief from strain may be obtained by another strain, the improvement will be delayed.
