I keep hearing squeezing the eyes for 5-10 secs and then open your eyes wide and see clear. It claims to be an exercise but i thought squeezing the eyes was bad. Should i continue to squeeze my eyes?
That is an "exercise" method. Not a relaxation and get back to normal method. Do you think a five year old with perfect sight squeezes their eyes and then opens them wide everytime they want to see something far away? I don't think so.
So in short, if you are doing Bates, this isn't Bates, and I wouldn't recommend it.
FIAT2LUX Wrote:That is an "exercise" method. Not a relaxation and get back to normal method. Do you think a five year old with perfect sight squeezes their eyes and then opens them wide everytime they want to see something far away? I don't think so.
So in short, if you are doing Bates, this isn't Bates, and I wouldn't recommend it.
Right, the 5 - yr. old w/ perfect sight (or anyone w/ perfect sight, for that matter) doesn't need to do anything. But, hear me out. The person carrying around a chronic refractive error is carrying around a chronic state of abnormal tension. In most cases this tension is completely under the radar, gripping stealthily. It was a fundamental part of Bates' treatment to get adults and children to realize that effort makes vision worse - the kind of efforts that increase tension, especially in and around the eyes. When you can successfully make vision worse, or increase those baseline tensions, you may increase your awareness of the underlying cause of your imperfect sight, and thus be able to lessen it, stop it, and avoid it. Now, I don't think squeezing the eyes for the sake of squeezing them is very productive. But, if you are deliberately tensing your eyes and all that is around them (for brief moments, of course), with the purpose of then letting all that tension go, and sinking into as deep a relaxation as possible immediately afterwards, I think there may be benefit. But it's all about the relaxation, and not at all about exercise, as you say. Learning mental control of tensions that don't belong there is the name of the game. And anything that can contribute to that I believe is a positive. It just has to be done with the right purpose in mind, though. I will occasionally squeeze more than that, I like to take it much further and tense up the neck, face, shoulders, torso, legs - because the whole body is sometimes an accomplice in our visual problems, and it helps to release tension from everywhere. The tensions around the eyes can be the most frustrating to realize, but even if we can get the body to release some of that unconsciously, even temporarily, that is a good stepping stone to further improvement.
If you have myopia, you should find that squeezing your eyes shut and quickly opening them will improve the focus of your eyes for a moment. The squeezing action puts physical pressure on your eyes that causes a temporary focus change. Of course, it doesnât last long. People do this as a desperate means to get clear vision to see something clearly temporarily and/or do it with the idea that itâs a way of massaging the eyes. Massage does make a certain amount of sense for tense muscles, but I donât have a good understanding of the blood circulation in and around the eyes, what happens when certain muscles get tense, and what happens when you squeeze the eyelids shut. What I can say is this practice isnât necessary and it sends mixed signals if youâre trying to teach yourself how to get and keep clear vision by using your eyes correctly.
Squeezing the eyes shut can be a tempting practice because of the immediate effects it has on the focus of the eyes. And the physicality of the sensation from your eyes as a result of an overt physical action is a comfortable distraction from the at times confusing, frustrating and uncomfortable process of learning to subtly use your eyes in a different way to improve your vision.
Site Administrator
"Half of our funny, heathen lives, we are bent double to gather things we have tossed away." - George Meredith
kevin913 Wrote:Thanks for the replies, i am edified now
Hi Kevin -
You might want to check out "Progressive Muscle Relaxtion," or just Google it, and you'll probably get about a half million results. It's been around for a long time (since early 1900s), and is very popular especial w/ physical therapists in learning to release tension in the whole body, including the facial muscles around the eyes. Of course, what you're after is not a brief immediate flash from any physical pressure on the eyes, but rather learning awareness of tension and relaxation. It takes practice, but I find this to be an excellent complement to the Bates techniques, and may help uncover tensions you have held for ions, yet not been aware of.
