My "Clear Flashes" Are Polyopic...

[Oleg K.]

Hi,

I'm a 29 years old myope with -3.5 D prescription, having been wearning contacts for about 10 years. Now I'm practicing Bates method for about 3 weeks and I think I'm having certain progress.

As perhaps all myopes will agree, myopic vision is not like seeing everything plainly blurred, but rather seeing a lot of shadows, of different offset and intensity, of the same object, which interfere with each other thereby producing the overall "blur". This is called "polyopia" or sometimes "monocular polyopia" to emphasize that the polyopic effect occurs even when you look with only one eye.

I think I'm getting a kind of "clear flashes" recently, however I wonder if this is truly the right way for them. During my clear flash, one of the "shadows" becomes somewhat stronger than others so that when I look over it, I can see the object clearly . However the rest of shadows don't go. They only appear somewhat weaker. Should it be so? Am I moving in the right way? What's going to happen to all those other shadows when I am to have a "real" clear flash - will they converge or fade out and idismiss?

I'd appreciate any detail regarding this.

[David]

Oleg,

Yeah, that's normal. In a perfect clear flash you wouldn't see multiple images at all, but while you do it's nothing to worry about. AS it happens, just keep looking around at different details of objects themselves, dismissing the multiple images as illusions.

Dave

[Oleg K.]

Dave,

Thanks, you sound encouraging!

I've heard one guy saying that he "learned to control" his recti muscles that shortened his eye and thereby reduced myopia much faster than simple relaxation of the obliques. I think I've also heard some Bates follower claimed that as well. Is this correct, should I aim to learn this as well? It sounds somewhat opposite to Bates' urge to relax, so I wonder.

[David]

Oleg,

I'd be curious as to what sensations he's talking about that he's interpreting to be conscious control of his muscles, but without being him it's hard to guess. But I doubt I'd share his interpretation of it. I would also wonder whether his vision improved to normal or at least close to it, and how bad it was to begin with.

There's also one problem with saying he learned to shorten his recti muscles and reduce his myopia. Bates's model was the opposite - chronically tense recti muscles produced hyperopia, while obliques produced myopia. He's free to come up with his own model, but I've never heard of that one, so I'm inclined to think he got the idea in his head with some cursory reading and got over-excited about it. Everyone practicing Bates sooner or later gets the idea that the way to go is to learn to consciously relax the muscles, but it usually requires a different approach to overcome years of abusing the eyes.

Dave

[cat]

Here's something EXTREMELY eerie that I noticed a few months ago, and this thread has helped me explain it.

Cross your eyes manually. Not by letting your eyes glaze over and zone out, but by forcing it. You know what I mean? Some people might not know how to do it. I learned how in 3rd grade. You will see two images going away from each other, getting blurrier and blurrier the farther you push. Now, recreate this act but with one eye closed OR COVERED. Strain yourself so that you are trying very hard to do it. You can't really do it as hard as you can with your eye closed. It's best to cover it--try both, though.
What I notice is that my myopia increases by INCREDIBLE degrees.I can put a piece of paper RIGHT UP TO MY EYE, and do this to make it appear farther away so that I can read it clearly! Or, if I'm looking at something farther away, if I do this I will notice ALL SORTS OF DISTORTIONS and EXTREME MYOPIA to the piont where nothing can be read or seen properly. Also, you truly begin to notice all of thse little "overlappings" that the thread starter posted about.

To me this must unlock SOME secret about how the eye works. After all, only the ciliary muscles can focus in up class (according to OD's), right?

How can I use this to my advantage?  What if I could relax this muscle instead of tense it?

[Oleg K.]

Dave,

I agree that the guy was rather talking subjectively about his sensation of "conscious control". Anyway, my current task is to relax my obliques. I only wonder if the recti really flatten the normal eye to see far objects or they are already seen in the relaxed state. In the latter case, recti are not used for accomodation at all, only the obliques.

Well, recently I practiced relaxation a lot during a day. It was a sunny day and so relaxation produced many nice clear flashes almost immediately, encouraging me to relax again and again. However, the nicely sensed relaxation was sometimes accompanied by a little pulling feeling somewhere behind my eyes. Is that the rest of tension that I have never realized before? Is this the way the tension is discovered?

Also, at the end of the day I think I had a cramp in the muscles so that I couldn't relax them any more. The relaxation just went out of my control, and the more I thought about it trying to relax, the worse headache I got. The pain was similar to the pulling feeling I got during the day, but perhaps in a different area of the head, I'm not very sure. My eyes became hard to move and I tended to stare badly. Finally, I even got shadows under the eyes. You imagine I had a kind of panic The best thing I could think of was to go to bed trying to think about something else, not my eyes. Did you have a similar experience? Am I doing something wrong? Maybe my progress was moving just too fast and the tension striked me back?

[David]

Here's something EXTREMELY eerie that I noticed a few months ago, and this thread has helped me explain it.

Cross your eyes manually. Not by letting your eyes glaze over and zone out, but by forcing it. You know what I mean? Some people might not know how to do it. I learned how in 3rd grade. You will see two images going away from each other, getting blurrier and blurrier the farther you push. Now, recreate this act but with one eye closed OR COVERED. Strain yourself so that you are trying very hard to do it. You can't really do it as hard as you can with your eye closed. It's best to cover it--try both, though.
What I notice is that my myopia increases by INCREDIBLE degrees.I can put a piece of paper RIGHT UP TO MY EYE, and do this to make it appear farther away so that I can read it clearly! Or, if I'm looking at something farther away, if I do this I will notice ALL SORTS OF DISTORTIONS and EXTREME MYOPIA to the piont where nothing can be read or seen properly. Also, you truly begin to notice all of thse little "overlappings" that the thread starter posted about.

To me this must unlock SOME secret about how the eye works. After all, only the ciliary muscles can focus in up class (according to OD's), right?

How can I use this to my advantage?  What if I could relax this muscle instead of tense it?

cat,

There's a relationship between convergence and accommodation, meaning your eyes turn inward as you focus near so that they point at the same thing. So when you cross your eyes, they tend to focus near. You can shake that up with stereograms, which isn't a bad idea because myopic people are used to accommodating too much for a given convergence degree. Yet another side effect of glasses. But basically what you're talking about is what strain is - putting too much muscular effort into something where much less is more appropriate.

Dave

[Oleg K.]

I'm the starter of this topic, so I'll continue if you don't mind

I'm happy to report some progress. Today was a sunny day and I had a clear flash which was outstanding. I saw even better than previously with my contacts on. I've seen a car's turn signal blinking in about 200 m from me, as a perfect point light, with no halo. My left eye wasn't so clear though and it was having still a polyopic clear flash. The right eye's polyopic contours somewhat faded and no longer appeared as contours but rather as fog, surrounding perfectly clear image. It lasted for about 20 min so I even began thinking it could stay forever

It didn't disappear when I blinked or looked somewhere else, changing the distance of sight, looking on still and moving objects, etc. I only noticed that the fog is more noticeable on close objects in darker room than on far objects in sun light.

[David]

Well that could happen, that it happens suddenly and pretty much stays forever. See Ridley's thread in the Success Stories section for an example. Usually it just stays for a while, and then you get more and more of them until it becomes more of a normal thing to see clearly, but you never know what'll happen.

But yes, that sounds great. 20 mins isn't bad at all. My guess is that you haven't been wearing your contacts, am I right?

Dave

[Oleg K.]

Sure, I threw the contacts away from the very beginning and didn't wear no glasses either. I don't have any idea what made me so resolute My prescription was -3.5, so it was quite painful at first, especially working with computer. I leaned forward all the time and my eyes were always red, covered with blood vessels. When I went outdoors, I had a feeling of chasm between my short-area sight and the far objects, which caused me headache and nausea, especially in darker closed rooms, like stores and subways. I kept practising Bates and after some time of adaptation (nearly two weeks), I felt better. Now I'm practicing for 5 weeks and finally I've got the feeling I'm going the right way. BTW I tried to put on my contacts recently and I found them too strong minus for me.

Yet I don't have much experience, and my opinion changes too often to make any bold statements. Up to the moment, I believe that clear flashes can be produced consciously. I think I can do it. My current problem is that I can't sustain flashes for long. The state of flash soon changes to what I feel as eye muscle cramp. Then I make conscious "effort" to relax again, and it happens so on, with flashes gradually becoming longer and cramps smaller. Suprisingly, the conscious command to relax my eyes isn't something supernatural. It somewhat resembles me the way I relax my urinary bladder in the toilet, you know . Extraoculars are just other involuntary muscles in the area of eyes and neck, so one can learn to control indirectly, sooner or later. Bates seems to be just a fit-all assistance in elaborating and maintaining that skill. Have you got a similar experience?

[kiran]

having same problem with my eyes too.but making a slow but sure progress.there are polyopic images on say capital letter R.which i see three times overlapping possibly due to high myopia. left eye  -3and right one4.5..is there any specific exercise to help this one.previously i could not do without glasses or contacts  but after about one onth of exercising i dont have to use either except for driving. i am able to see the distant signboards but with overlapping words meaning if i see clearly one word there is another one on the top of it. pls advise what other exercise i can do. this website has really helped me.thanks

[David]

having same problem with my eyes too.but making a slow but sure progress.there are polyopic images on say capital letter R.which i see three times overlapping possibly due to high myopia. left eye  -3and right one4.5..is there any specific exercise to help this one.previously i could not do without glasses or contacts  but after about one onth of exercising i dont have to use either except for driving. i am able to see the distant signboards but with overlapping words meaning if i see clearly one word there is another one on the top of it. pls advise what other exercise i can do. this website has really helped me.thanks

What else can you do besides what? This is, what are you doing now?

Dave

[kiran]

thanks dave for replying my post. i am doing good progress but it will be a great help if u could advise which specific  eye exercise to do to reduce astigmatism.at the moment i do almost most of exercises but overlapping images are always there  although words are clearing up.thanks  again

[David]

Again, saying you do most of the exercises doesn't tell us anything. There are several common ones, and many variations on them, and each one is subtle enough that there are countless ways to approach it wrong. There are also exercises that come from other sources and are not in the spirit of the Bates method at all and just confuse people.

If you can give in excruciating detail the way you do one of them (how does it feel, what types of movements you make, what you're thinking, how long you do it, and anything else), maybe me or someone else would better get an idea of what you're doing and what could be changed. Any of the exercises can be very useful, but it all depends on how you do them.

Dave

[ppsaidon]

cat,

There's a relationship between convergence and accommodation, meaning your eyes turn inward as you focus near so that they point at the same thing. So when you cross your eyes, they tend to focus near. You can shake that up with stereograms, which isn't a bad idea because myopic people are used to accommodating too much for a given convergence degree. Yet another side effect of glasses. But basically what you're talking about is what strain is - putting too much muscular effort into something where much less is more appropriate.

Dave

Dave and others, I've learnt to consciously relax my eyes and I'm experiencing vision just like Oleg describes (I also have a similar prescription).
The problem is that when I use both my eyes (relaxed) and focusing on something I'm going cross-eyed and seeing double vision.

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't this mean that I'm naturally focusing BEYOND the point I'm looking at?
(Just like when you hold up a finger and look beyond it; you see a double image).
Are stereograms the correct approach?

Thanks

Also cat, when you're "zoning out" I think you're actually relaxing your eye muscles (that's what I do).