I am approximate 1/3 of the way through the book "Relearning to See: Improve Your Eyesight Naturally!" by Thomas Quackenbush.
My main concern is that I am not in touch with my own body well enough to know whether I am doing something correctly. I've been doing the exercises such as swing, long swing, and infinity swing. Throughout the day I try to centralize on small points and try to read slower. When my eyes feel dry, I take it that that's what most people mean by strain, and I take a break and do some quick palming (1 min or so). My eyes dry out a lot due to my occupation (engineer) since I look at the computer a lot.
I've been doing this for a week and I don't seem to see any results. It is very difficult for me to judge whether I am doing these exercises incorrectly or if I just need to keep doing it longer. I should also add that I am not wearing glasses at all and my latest prescription is -4. At work, I have my monitor to the lowest brightness and close enough for me to work.
In short, I would like some tips on judging whether I am doing the exercises wrong or if I just need to keep going at it.
What are you using to gauge your improvement? Do you have an eyechart? An eyechart is indepensable in vision improvement, because it gives the most granular feedback of your level of acuity. Other objects can be used, but are not nearly as reliable. You also cannot rely solely on feeling, as feeling can often be quite misleading. The proof is in the pudding, if you're doing something correctly, acuity changes for the better, to one degree or another. And it will be reflected in the level of detail and number of lines you can read on an eyechart. Only you can see through your eyes, so only you can tell if you're doing something effectively or not. One week is not a long time in vision improvement. This can be a slow process of undoing years of wrong visual habits, and relearning correct ones. The techniques prescribed by Bates were devised to secure relaxation of the mind, which in turn, helps release tension in the visual system.
Most people are out of touch with the tension in their bodies. Years of wearing corrective lenses trains us to block out our senses that would tell us otherwise. Part of the vision improvement process is not just about relearning to see, but relearning awareness. I don't know how you are approaching this, but if you're just going through the motions as some type of 'exercise,' as we typically think of exercises, you'll more than likely end up frustrated. Dry eyes may be one symptom of many when it comes to straining. You need to experiment with techniques a bit to better discover what is more effective for you. Not everyone responds to the same things. Have you tried palming for different lengths of time (some longer than one minute), tried just closing your eyes, tried varying the length of swings, the speed, rhythm, etc.?
I would be helpful if you could ask more specific questions about a particular technique that you are working with, and describe what you are experiencing, so people can better gauge what you are actually doing and be able to give advice.
I have a printed eye chart here in front of my desk at work. I will get one at home as well. I think my problem is that it is not a real eye chart, so it is scaled down. That makes only the first 3 rows readable from 1m away. I will go and buy a real one.
I am mostly working with the swing, long swing, and infinity swing. I am trying to sense better shifting of objects but I noticed that I always need another object behind the object I am centralizing in order to see it shift in the correct direction. So for far away objects which I cannot see another object behind it clearly enough, I see no shifting for that object.
I have tried palming last night for 15 minutes when lying on my back. It was hard to gather the patience for it and when I was done the light felt so bright. I didn't get any clear flashes like some other testimonials have gotten. I think it has to do with what I am thinking of during palming. In Quackenbush's book, he said to imagine something that I would like to see. Tonight I will try David's advice on just listening to breathing.
This morning I woke up with dry eyes, as if they have been straining overnight. I thought going outside and shifting during my commute to work would fix it. It didn't. Palming for 20 seconds did.
I am sorry that none of what I am writing is very organized, for I don't really know how to organize it. It is just a collection of my thoughts and my experience when working on the Bate's method.
You might want to buy two or more real ones. Sometimes it's helpful to hold one at the nearpoint, and shift then to one at a more distant point, remembering what it looked like at the nearpoint. It's great that you have one at work, where you can quickly gauge how things are at any moment. But it's best to dedicate time to eye chart practice each day without any disruptions or distractions, which work often brings. It sometimes takes a certain amount of time to get into the right frame of mind, and you want to approach it feeling as comfortably as possible. Treat eye chart practice not as any kind of a test, but as one of the tools that you practice with to improve vision. Memorize it, the shapes of each letter, the open, white spaces - get familiar with all that. Make it a fun, friendly tool, not a stressful testing situation (as you might get at a visual exam).
Our thoughts are the main problem when palming - you can't bring into it any of your daily worries, concerns, stresses. Yes, let the mind drift on pleasant things, pleasant memories. Anything negative will always defeat the effectiveness of it. Definitely try David's advice on just listening to breathing. I played a game of just seeing how many different things I could hear, and shift my attention slowly from one of those things to another - breathing being one of them. It helps you to be in the moment, present. Palming is a real mental discipline, and takes practice to be able to control unwanted thoughts from creeping in. Certain times of the day may just be better than others.
No need to apologize about your writing, you express yourself quite well. Keep it up, and keep asking specific questions when you are uncertain.
I just practiced some swinging, eye charting, and palming for 1 hour total. Here are my thoughts/feedback.
Swinging:
I did some regular swinging and the long swing as discussed in the Quackenbush's book. My eyes felt dried before starting this and I thought this swinging method is supposed to be a tool to relax the eye. I couldn't relax it much with this method, at least not every time. Had to do it with palming. I'm a bit lost on this technique.
Palming:
This really relaxes my eyes, even if I am not doing it to the full potential. I don't get any clear flashes or anything. But I have some direction on how to proceed with this technique with more mental imagery.
Eye charting:
I practiced some of the techniques listed here:
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I think with this technique, I started to get the edges or corners of a certain letter clear, with the rest blurry. In other words, the centralized area is very small, but it seems like I was able to make some progress in getting some clearer vision. I don't know if my eyes are playing tricks on me or not. I feel like I am so disconnected with my eyes that if I see progress, I don't know whether I should believe my eyes or not.
Other thoughts:
Some colleagues at work aren't too supportive of this no glasses thing I have started since last week. I have my glasses off 24/7 so my monitor is about 20 cm away from my eyes. Most are skeptical of this method and stress me to put glasses on so I don't hurt my eyes with the close monitor. I also have a strong feeling that if in 1 month I don't see any results, I will become extremely frustrated, unwilling to put glasses back on but also losing faith in my techniques.
Does anyone know any place to buy Snellen cards in Europe? I live in Sweden and the shipping from Ebay and Amazon for these cards are ridiculous (~30 - 100USD)
The long swing is to help shake out some of the tension in the whole body - the legs, torso, neck, arms, and help just let go of trying to hold onto the visual percepts. If something isn't getting you somewhere, don't get too concerned about it - just move onto other things, which it seems you have, and come back to it at a later time. Par for the course. Maybe just focus on noticing oppositional movement as you walk, ride moving vehicles, turn your head to look in another direction - all variations of swings. The goal is just getting comfortable with and noticing all this movement in stationary objects - imagining things stationary is a hallmark of those with refractive errors.
Don't expect to get any support from anyone around you, even your family. I have a couple sisters and 4 brothers, all but one myopic, and none are the least interested, even though they see me free from lenses now. My mother, no matter how many times I correct her, states "oh, you do those eye EXERCISES."
There was a reason Emily Lierman (Bates) suggested to patients that they just keep their treatment to themselves. People around you are just so negative and pessimistic they just pull you down into negative thoughts of your own, and in vision improvement you need all the positive energy you can get. As long as you are not putting yourself or others in any kind of danger, or as long as it's not having a negative impact on your ability to do your job, it's nobody's business what you choose to do with your eyes. In the end, you'll be the one healthy eyes, and everyone else will be struggling with every eye problem that comes over time.
If you go to <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://i-see.org">http://i-see.org</a><!-- m -->, you should be able to download a variety of eyecharts to print out - use the best paper and printer you can find.
@arocarty: Regarding support from those around us, I agree that it is difficult to find others who sympathize, much less those who are willing to help. In the end, it is our own motivation that will have to drive us anyway. But I think I should mention that not all people are closed to the idea of vision improvement. There are not many, but I have been very open with my vision improvement to my friends and while none of them are willing to invest the time to try it, they are neutrally skeptical at worst - meaning that they aren't sure whether the Bates method will work or not, which is a fair view in my opinion. And there are a couple of friends who say that they will be true believers when I get my sight to 20/20, which is refreshingly motivating. I even have a friend who claims that one of his eyes improved by a quarter of a diopter because I "taught" him how to palm and he palms every once in a while. Maybe so, but I have't had any success with palming, so maybe this friend should teach me!
