Hi, I have been going without glasses now and have started having clear flashes. I have been so excited but am a little unsure and frustrated at the same time. I started at -5D in both eyes with no astigmatism, so things were super blurry. Now, when I get a clear flash, my eyes hurt really badly, and they water profusely. I can see all sorts of details in the distance, which is very exciting, and often words come in and out of focus from far away. I can also often induce a clear flash at will simply by closing my eyes for a few seconds and opening them very relaxedly. I can easily feel the difference now between my contracted muscles and my relaxed muscles and see an immediate change in my vision if I relax the muscles.
As I said, I can feel all sorts of stinging, kind of in a circle around my eyes, when this happens, and my eyes tear like crazy. Often, they just start doing it out of the blue when I look into the distance, like they're automatically adjusting their focus. Fortunately, they're also becoming less painful than they were the first two days, but my eyes still water profusely every time.
I haven't yet experienced a flash of perfect vision. Rather, my blur has been replaced with multiple images. During a very good clear flash, the number of images decreases, and one of the images becomes very bold. During my best clear flash so far, which was last Sunday, my eyes felt WONDERFUL, like they were open for the first time in twenty years, but I still saw two of everything. If I cover one eye, I still see two, so it's not a difference between my eyes.
I'm assuming I'm making progress, but it is frustrating. I've become kind of clumsy because I'm seeing different levels of clarity and blur at different depths. For example, if I look at the ground, I see blades of grass in all different levels of blur, rather than simply more blur the farther away an object is. If I look at a straight line, I see a very distinct line surrounded by many other lines of varying levels of blur.
Has anyone else had this same experience? What do you think causes this?
Michelle, this is great! Your visual system is re-calibrating, learning how to adjust itself to see clearly. Take a look at the first pages of David's description of the method, which I think is where he talks about an "explosion of details", where you used to see only blur. You ARE making progress, big progress, so don't doubt yourself -- the relaxation you feel in your eyes, and the occasional sharp clarity, are sure signs of this. Don't let the multiple images bother you -- yes, they're in the brain, not because you have 2 eyes, and are just more re-calibrating. Just make sure you're only focusing on one point at a time, not trying to merge the double images or something similar, and it will get better. Good work!
Sounds to me like your eyes aren't communicating very well with each other and/or with the brain and mind.
How do they communicate with each other? At the Optic Chiasm 1/2 of the nerve fibers from each optic nerve switch sides! Secret: The 1/2 that switch come from the nasal sides of the retinas; the 1/2 that do not switch are from the temporal sides of the retinas where the maculas/foveas are!
How can you improve the communication? You have to force them to see the exact same thing/area near-simultaneously - but before they can learn that, they have to learn to move together and to share the dominance - first one eye (your dominant better eye) leads and the other follows, then let the follower lead and the leader follow. Secret: They can't do it unless they stay pointed along the same line(s).
Try the Bates Long Swing, 10 reps while letting one eye lead, 10 reps while letting the other eye lead, and 10 reps with both eyes leading.
I think watery eyes are a sign that your eyelids and tearglands are trying to repair the corneal tearfilms necessary for the clear sight you are aiming for. Flush your eyes with cold water as often as you can. Yawn. Raise your eyebrows. Stretch your orbits.
Congratulations on such quick success, you're definitely going in the right direction. When I started, I can definitely remember getting some flashes with burning, stinging, and tearing sensations. It tended to settle down, but as I went through each notch of improvement, it was usually preceeded by, or accompanied by some odd ache in the eyes and/or head. As Nancy said, a recalibration is a good description. As our eyeballs go through actual physical changes to a flatter shape, its got to pull on structures that haven't been pulled in such a way in a long time. Our cornea is just one of those structures, and it's one of the most sensitive tissues in the body - 300 times more dense in nerve endings than the skin. You can bet those nerve endings are going to tell you when something is changing. They've probably just long forgotten that it's for the better, having been locked in an elongated position for so long by the aid of lenses. Whatever you're doing to eliminate that tension, keep at it, and you'll find the eyes will automatically keep wanting to adjust themselves for clearer and clearer vision.
I also see double (or more) images and I take it as a good sign as my vision improves at the same time. I wrote about that elsewhere in the forum:
When I compare my improved sight to the blurry vision before, I find, that the blurry vision is still there, but there is also a clear image, which becomes more and more distinct and dominant by the eye-training. It is as if the brain would pick up some small clear pixels to build up a clear picture and all the blurry rest remains visible in the background where it will slowly 'fade out' (so I hope at least).
When I look at distant houses or cars (in 1 km) for example I can see clear contours, even of the windows in the houses and beneath the clear building a big blurry spot, like the reflection of it in troubled water. When my eyes are really relaxed, I can even read the small subtitles in TV (with my contact lenses I had sometimes difficulties to read them, but I think, my c lenses were not really strong enough in the end) and beneath, just one line below, there is a blurry image of the same writing.
The more distant the seen objects are, the greater the difference between the 2 images, and when I approach a certain object with clear contours - for example a traffic sign - I can watch both images approach each other, then overlap and finally fuse into one.
My theory is, that the blurry image is the 'perpheral vision', which is always blurry, as one can only see clearly in a very small point. Up to a certain distance, this peripheral vision is clear enough so that it doesn't trouble the sight at the near point. But if you look far away, only the clear image seen in the fovea should be dominant.
When we train our eyes to always look in short distances and take in as much informatio as possible at one time ( as requires our modern life style ) we train our brain to see the peripheral vision as dominant - which results in a 'blurr' when we look in the distance.
When I now train my eyes to look at only 1 small point in the distance and see the resulting image ( in the fovea ) as the dominant one, I get 2 images: the central, clear one and the peripheral one, which still maintains its 'aquired dominance'.
Now it is a matter of training to make the central vision more and more dominant and to get the peripheral vision to loose its dominance....which will still take a lot of practice and patience
It might be worth knowing if the double images are due to a different image from each eye or due to two images from one of your eyes (astigmatism). I think when the eyes have teaming issues, the image is moreso confusing than it is "double", whereas with astigmatism it's clearly a double image close together.
A double image in one eye in the vision improvement process is a good sign. It means you're not satisfied with a glob of blur, and you're looking into it and disrupting your seeing process that was sort of working for blurry images but doesn't work for clearer images that you see without the assistance of glasses.
Site Administrator
"Half of our funny, heathen lives, we are bent double to gather things we have tossed away." - George Meredith
Thank you for your responses! I am extremely excited about my progress so far. I'm a teacher and have the summer off so I completely abandoned the glasses and have been working on sketching/shifting/centralization literally all day. I think that's why my progress has been so fast so far. It actually really slowed down this week because I had to do a three-day teacher training, where I wore reduced prescription glasses. I was amazed how my eyes immediately strained right back up, even though I couldn't see perfectly through the glasses. I noticed that after a day of wearing the reduced glasses, I couldn't have a clear flash at will (and felt very frustrated about it the past few days!). But I did extra palming before nighttime and managed to have a couple anyway. Now I'm off until Aug. 15 so I have plenty of time to keep going with this.
I'm glad others have had this multiple imaging happen to them. I wanted to mention that the pain I feel during a clear flash is a good pain, if that makes any sense. Afterwards, my eyes are red and a little swollen, but they feel SO MUCH BETTER, like a tremendous burden has been lifted from them. Plus, I have the emotional satisfaction of knowing I just saw some detail in the distance I didn't even know existed before. I guess my eyes are going through that initial turmoil our bodies experience when we first stir things up and before the results to true healing emerge.
I noticed that if I try to make the multiple images converge, they immediately start multiplying more until I have a large blob of blur. So I'm trying to only look at one small spot within any of the images and them move on. I'm working on not judging anything and not trying to make anything better, just focusing more on relaxing the muscles I feel around my eyes and not staring or trying to force my vision to clear.
I also want to say that I have no idea which of my eyes is dominant. I'm right-handed but my eye prescriptions are exactly the same. Before I started doing the Bates method, my eyes always seemed exactly the same. Now, they go back and forth all the time. Sometimes my right eye's better and sometimes my left eye's better, and when I have a really good clear flash, they both see double.
This happens to me too! Sometimes it happens with both eyes, but usually it happens with only my worse eye alone (astigmatism).
In my experience the worst thing you can do is what David warned about: try to squeeze or press the multiple images together. So what I've learned to do is to first acknowledge that I have no idea which of the two images is the real one. Instead I ignore that question completely, and I begin to search for smaller and smaller details on one of the images only (it doesn't matter which). If it turns out to be the 'real' object then it begins to clear and become more sharp and the duplicate starts to fade away until it's unnoticeable (if I can keep relaxed and only focused on searching for details, that is). Otherwise, if I've mistakenly chosen to search for details on the duplicate image, then searching for details works only for a short moment before everything in my visual field sort of 'blows up' into one great blur and then reassembles itself - kind of like when a camera is focusing - there's that moment during adjustment when all goes blurry before it finds the right clarity. When the picture clears up again there is a clear flash which reveals the 'true' object, and from there I begin again to search for details.
In short: searching for details really does work - it seems to take the pressure off of 'fixing' the double image and place the importance on seeing what you can see while letting the eyes make their own, natural adjustments.
When I look at distant objects, it is most helpful to follow David's instructions to shift quickly between the small details ( <!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.iblindness.org/community/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2104">viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2104</a><!-- l --> ) so that my eyes don't stay fixed on one point long enough to get irritated by the double images.
When I practice with the eye-chart, I have the problem, that the blurry double image comes exactly in the place of the next line. I then, at first, keep my eyes half closed till the line becomes clear and then I open the eyes slowly more and more...
Michelle, I was getting the exact same things when the first really big changes started to happen. There was always pain on somewhere around the edge of the cornea. That made me somewhat afraid. It was like I released my eyes like a couple of dogs and they immediately started attacking the details vigorously. And that caused pain. But the acuity gained from it was astonishing. I guess it was something like 5/4 even though I normally don't even have acuity of 10/200. I was worried about how I was going to be able to drive, if such "attacks" occurred on the way.
I really hope this is a good thing and it's due to the "good" pain in the cornea. I also get the multiple images. I't funny how their distance changes in proportion to the distance from my eyes. If I move back, they spread and if I come closer they go closer to one another. I can also choose which one to concentrate on and keep clearer at will.
About the eye dominance, isn't it so easy to find out as just placing your thumb in front of an object you're looking at in the distance? Then close one eye and see if the thumb moves or not. A few years I noticed that I had a different dominance for distant objects than to objects close by. While I found it curious I told it to my ophthalmologist, and he was like: "So? It happens."
Michelle Wrote:... I noticed that if I try to make the multiple images converge, they immediately start multiplying more until I have a large blob of blur. ...
I also want to say that I have no idea which of my eyes is dominant. I'm right-handed but my eye prescriptions are exactly the same. Before I started doing the Bates method, my eyes always seemed exactly the same. Now, they go back and forth all the time. Sometimes my right eye's better and sometimes my left eye's better, and when I have a really good clear flash, they both see double.
Hold onto that 'blob of blur'!! It is much closer to normal vision than your regular overall distance blur. Hold onto it as long as you can, going about your normal activities, and blinking blinking blinking and shifting and yawning and stretching your eyebrows, lids and cheeks. Smile. Splash cold water into your eyes. Keep your line of sight elevated above where your eyes are used to looking - if your eyesight development became 'stunted', one thing it needs is to be brought back in line with the rest of your physical development - i.e., you are probably taller now than when your eyesight went myopic, so your eyesight needs to be elevated to match your height. You are trying to jump-start your visual system into getting back on track for normal eyesight (re)development.
