Nearly every night, about an hr to 1.5 hrs before I go to bed, I practice the bates method, and every time, I can get clear(er) vision, which is fantastic. My main question is How to handle the day? Because I'm seeing all hours of the day but I can't necessarily practice the method all of those hours.
I know that vision acuity fluctuates from day to day and because I'm really trying to get my vision better, I'm constantly reminding myself that I need to make sure I'm practicing seeing correctly. However, at times My eyes will get dry and I'll noticed my vision is on the bottom-end of the "fluctuation"(if that makes sense). Basically, in other words, I've noticed that my vision is noticably worse than other times. This is also true when I sit down to practice the method at nights, at times the eyechart will be clear(er), which always gives me hope, and other times it is blurry to start off. Basically a sine/cosine graph in terms of vision acuity from day to day(sorry for bringing math into this).
How should I handle these times, or let alone, how should I approach the whole day? Palming does help but is there a mentality I should take throughout the day that will sort of reinforce what I am practicing at nights?
I have a couple options:
-Do I just let go of everything, not think about vision or even trying to practice it here and there throughout the day? But this I feel will get me back into my old seeing ways which got me here in the first place.
OR
-Do I attempt to practice seeing correctly whenever I get a chance(stoplights, watching tv, etc.)? When I've done this, I've notice that it can backfire and my vision will slightly worsen for the time. Because I'll turn it into work sometimes and I know that is NOT the way to go about it.
There are a lot of things you can do throughout the day, from more obvious things, to the less obvious. If you completely drop your awareness of how you are using your eyes, yes, you will most likely slip back into your old seeing ways.
What exactly are you practicing at night that facilitates your clear vision?
Your lifestyle, your job, your responsibilities, etc. are going to dictate what and how much you can practice throughout the day. Everyone's situation is different, so you may have to be a little creative in how you work it into your day. But in the least, you should be able to practice the less obvious:
-blinking - you have to blink all day anyways,
-shifting - you have to shift " " ",
-noticing opposition movement - as you ride in moving vehicles, as you walk, etc.
-sway/rock - you can keep up a very slight, inconspicuous sway all day, and notice the movement of the periphery, and other stationary objects as you sway.
- memory - practice remembering some small object/letter/period/color all day - the more perfect and instantaneous you can remember it, vision follows. Like anything else, though, you don't want to lock onto the memory of just one part of it, or imagine it stationary. A series of things or sequence is good to remember and visualize as it helps prevent that.
All these things can help lessen the tendency to stare throughout the day. When something seems to backfire, yes, it's just your body's way of telling you you're approaching it with effort. You have to LET relaxation happen, by providing it the right conditions. But you cannot force it to happen. When we try to force relaxation, it it'll say NOPE! Not NOW!
When I practice at night, I use an eyechart at about 10 ft away, another at 5 ft that I'll switch between, but I mainly practice on the 10 ft one. I also use some pictures that are on the wall next to the eyechart. I primarily do what David talks about, not locking on, letting my vision move, shifting, relaxing, blinking, looking at something and breaking it apart, trying to see deeper. However, I will note that when I look at the picture, as opposed to the eyechart, it is MUCH easier for me to get clearer vision. My eyes don't have the temptations that the eyechart brings. However, I can still get clearer vision by looking at the eyechart, but there's just something with Text that makes my habitual mentality harder to deal with. Could be because I know in my mind what each letter's exact shape is and when I look at them, I am trying to force it or something. I don't know.
Also, My right eye is substantially weaker than my left. And when my vision does get clearer after practicing, I momentarily patch my left(dominant) to see if my right eye got clearer and SOMETIMES my right is is clearer as well, but other times my right eye doesn't really want to follow and remains the same blurry vision that it always is.
I do patch the left eye and try the exercises with my right one, and that does work for the most part. But if I do it too long I'll notice that (via the optic chiasm) my left's eye's patched(basically black) vision starts to overlay my rights vision and seems to drop the clarity because my vision dims. I'm assuming this is normal?
The eye chart is a pessimism for most people, so don't feel bad about that. It can take a long time to get out of the 'testing' mentality, that we have to somehow perform differently when we look at a chart. We immediately starting doing things subconsciously. Compared to some interesting, colored, picture, an eye chart is quite dull to look at... it isn't going to stimulate the same way a picture can - a theme, the colors, textures, details, contrasts, the context of details all of which excite more neural pathways than some boring b&w chart. The eye chart is, however, the best feedback as to the level of acuity at any given moment. It never lies, whereas other objects, pictures, scenery can seem incredibly clear, but then when you quickly shift over to a chart you may see that it wasn't as sharp as you believed. When working with a chart, or other letters (I like to work with one row of about 5 letters at a time), it's good to memorize it, get intimately familiar with it, first at your optimal distance where you see it best, then slowly increasing the distance. Are you sitting still when looking at it? You might want to try keeping you body moving, very slightly, either side to side, or forward and back (or a little of both). Rocking slightly forward and back was very effective for me. I also found it helpful to frequently look off to the side at some blank area, and visualize (in my mind) a small area of each letter in a quick sequence. It really can be easier to remember and imagine those letters in your head once you've got them memorized, than it is to actually see them, and the better you get at that, the better the actual letters are seen. But you're never projecting the letters on the surface of anything, just keep it all inside the head. Working with just one line also made it easier to look an inch or two above or below, while visualizing them. You can tell when something positive is happening when you see the actual letters get darker or sharper in the peripheral.
I think that it would be natural for the brain to want to process the information from your dominant left, even when it's covered. You might want to see if any extra stimulation via body motion of the sway helps out the right eye from being so over dominated by even a covered left.
Does long-term progress usually come in the form of more and more clear flashes occurring over time that eventually lead to a permanent cure? because I've noticed when I get a clear flash, my left eye is at least 20/20 if not better, and my right eye(being abysmal as it is, goes to 20/40 or somewhere in the neighborhood. So once your eyes start to "clear-flash" more than they are in the "habitual eye-strain", it eventually just a becomes the permanent clear-flash?
Or do you see a generally see small,gradual improvement over time that eventually gets to clear vision?
Was just curious on those that have had improvement
Generally speaking, (and from my own experience), I would say that clearer vision can come in either form, or both, depending on the individual. What you have to realize is that your level of acuity is affected by many variables at any given moment. This is true even for those who have always had perfect vision. In all his career as an ophthalmologist, Bates said he had met few people with perfect sight who could maintain it for more than a couple minutes, even under the most favorable conditions. He proved over and over that, under certain conditions, (like looking at unfamiliar objects) children as well as adults, can strain, and produce errors of refraction. Looking at familiar objects had the opposite effect. In spite of his public challenges, nobody could disprove him, or were all fearful to even attempt.
What I'm getting at is that, if even people with perfect sight can have such fluctuations in acuity, how much more so can those who are attempting to improve their vision. Some have had many years of perfecting the art of straining, staring, holding onto abnormal tensions of which they are unaware. I myself had 25 years of wearing corrective lenses, and that's a long time to condition your visual system to doing all the wrong things. Once you take the lenses off, all bets are off. You level of acuity will be defined by the conditions and variables that bear down upon you at the moment. If favorable, you will have more favorable results; if not so favorable, you can quickly backslide into the old wrongful habits in an attempt to overcome. The level of light, color contrasts, whether you are in a familiar or unfamiliar environment, are you tired, stressed out, anxious that day, hungry, fatigued, sick, ailing from injury, (there are infinite variables) - all these things, any one or infinite combinations, can alter your acuity. It can make things difficult to measure, since you might have incredible acuity under one set of conditions, then under another you wonder what demon hit you. That's why it is difficult, I believe, if not impossible, to measure what is unconventional in conventional terms.
You will know your level acuity throughout the day better than anyone else. Sometimes you may backslide a little, sometimes a lot - again, it's going to depend on the conditions at the moment. Bates talked a lot about gaining 'mental control,' and that's about learning how to fend off incorrect seeing habits, especially when we are confronted with unfavorable conditions. As someone who has been down the path of myopia, you are far more vulnerable to incorrect responses or reflexes when confronted with blur. The goal, long term, is to lessen that vulnerability. The better you become at that, the more you will realize consistent levels of improved acuity (e.g., longer, or more frequent flashes, fewer backslides, or not backsliding so far).
