I'm sure your all getting tired of my constant questions, much of which has already been answered but its understanding those answers in greater detail I have the problem with. Hopefully these posts will be of help to all on the journey of natural vision improvement.
Here it is... I read up on sorris's blog today about a previous post which regarded central fixation. In it she mentioned that in order for central fixation to work or become more habitual, it is a good idea to try and notice that your vision is worse outside of your central vision lets say when looking at the top of a letter and noticing the bottom being more blurry.
It is my understanding that the idea behind this is to highlight to your subconscious, Hey! You no see so good here! Which in turn will lead you to return to using your central vision more.
Could someone please tell me if I have something correct here or if I just misunderstood.
Nobody needs to apologize for trying to earnestly understand these principles. They can seem quite simple in on paper, but when tries to put them into practice, can seem quite difficult to get.
When Bates spoke of shifting and central fixation, he frequently referred to it as 'seeing worse.' Sounds a little backwards, you would think we would want to see better, not worse :\ I trust his judgement here, because he had such a vast amount of experience treating hundreds of thousands of patients. From that experience, he learned that it was usually, (tho not in every case), better for a beginner patient to think of the point shifted away from as seen worse, as opposed to thinking of the point shifted TO as seen better. Of course, if done successfully, the point shifted TO will be seen better. You can't help but see it better. You just don't have to think of it that way in your mind - and they usually got much better results being instructed as such. Physically, it's the exact same thing, but your mental approach to it is not. It helps siphon off some of the intensity and concentration at which you look at your central point. An intensity and concentration that can cause MORE strain. He explains this in his chapter on CF:
"In learning to see best where he is looking it is usually best for the patient to think of the point not directly regarded as being seen less distinctly than the point he is looking at, instead of thinking of the point fixed as being seen best, as the latter practice has a tendency, in most cases, to intensify the strain under which the eye is already laboring. One part of an object is seen best only when the mind is content to see the greater part of it indistinctly, and as the degree of relaxation increases the area of the part seen worse increases, until that seen best becomes merely a point."
Thank you, I must say this forum is possibly the greatest and most inspiring social circle I have ever come across. All of you guys are true role models, you were bold enough to question conventional methods and now because of it even more people either have attained or will soon attain one of the best senses of all.
It is the god honest truth that without this forum I would have very little hope and far less of an understanding of bates work. Perhaps one day soon, the majority of people will open there eyes to bates method, implementing it in schools and so on instead of siding with the companys that make billions exploiting this growing group of people.
