Eyestrain seems somehow linked to the fear of falling. The next time you ride standing up on the subway or on a bus, notice how, just as you shift your weight and tense certain muscles in your legs to maintain your balance, you also tense certain muscles in your eyes. This is altogether unnecessary and is, of course, linked to bad vision.
In my case, I unconsciously push my eyes toward the direction in which the train is accelerating. As the train accelerates, I push my eyes toward the front of the train; when the train decelerates, I push my eyes toward the back of the train.
I used to resist this strain, which made riding the subway a strain. I've since realized that by noticing this pushing feeling and producing it consciously ("making vision worse") during my 10-minute commute on the train, I can dramatically improve my vision over the course of a few stops on the subway.
Sounds crazy? You owe it to yourself to give it a try. You may be surprised. If you don't ride the subway or bus, put yourself in some other situation in which you have to work to maintain your balance. Of course, you'll need to take off your glasses in order to notice what I want you to notice.
Certainly not; anything that helps raise your awareness of tension in the body, and especially around the eyes, is a benefit, as you've demonstrated. Nice observation -
I've seen an abnormal fear in myself of going down stairs for a long time now, which may be the same thing. I thought it was from not being aware of where my feet are (ungrounded!), and also sometimes not being able to see that far well, if the visibility conditions are poor and the steps are uneven. A big thing helping me here is slowing down, not rushing forward to accomplish something while being only half-aware, my mind on something else. I have not yet noticed the eyeball pushing forward and back Sean_Augensicht mentioned, but will look for it now. Thanks for anything new on this topic which makes me think, and learn.
Read The elevator ride (I think that's the name of the article) by Dr. Bates in Better Eyesight Magazine. A person was dizzy due to not moving the eyes, tension, staring, not allowing oppositional movement 'the swing' to occur.
That's pretty interesting. I've actually noticed that phenomenon before, but I never thought to produce the strain intentionally! My own personal experience is a bit strange. Sometimes, when I am standing, I close my eyes and try to relax. Either unintentionally or intentionally (sometimes it's one, sometimes it's the other, sometimes I can't tell!), I will move my body very slightly in a certain direction. And sometimes, when I lean just a little bit more than I would like, I will instinctively try to counterbalance myself. This usually involves strain of the legs, and, interestingly, of the eyes. It sort of feels like I'm trying to push my eyes in the opposite direction, as if that would serve as a counterweight and keep myself balanced. Next time, I'll see if I can produce it deliberately.
Thanks for the insight, Sean! It's always nice to read your posts.
Pikachu Wrote:That's pretty interesting. I've actually noticed that phenomenon before, but I never thought to produce the strain intentionally! My own personal experience is a bit strange. Sometimes, when I am standing, I close my eyes and try to relax. Either unintentionally or intentionally (sometimes it's one, sometimes it's the other, sometimes I can't tell!), I will move my body very slightly in a certain direction. And sometimes, when I lean just a little bit more than I would like, I will instinctively try to counterbalance myself. This usually involves strain of the legs, and, interestingly, of the eyes. It sort of feels like I'm trying to push my eyes in the opposite direction, as if that would serve as a counterweight and keep myself balanced. Next time, I'll see if I can produce it deliberately.
Thanks for the insight, Sean! It's always nice to read your posts.
Yeah, as Bates observed, if you can learn to produce a strain deliberately, it often goes away. By contrast, resisting the strain makes things worse. I think one of the greatest challenges to improvement is that the tendency to resist is so deeply ingrained, and that we must constantly seek to discover through careful self-observation all the ways in which we resist. I mean this in a literal, musculoskeletal sense, but you're free to give this a mental interpretation as well, if you wish.
I've been playing around with the strain for a little while now, and here's what I've observed:
1. If the eyes are strained (at least to the point that I feel something), there MUST be a muscle some place in the body that is being clenched/squeezed/etc. Conversely, if a muscle is being clenched, there is, to a greater or lesser extent, some eyestrain. I have not yet found an exception to this.
2. It seems that clenching different muscles produces different strains. I'm not sure why this is, or even if I'm just imagining things, but it was an interesting observation I made yesterday.
3. It also seems that the greatest strain to the eyes occur when I am unable to connect that strain with a part of my body that is also straining.
4. Not sure why, but I have found that it is generally my legs and neck that are most often clenched, although I can produce a strain as well by clenching my arms and chest. I don't know if this means that those are the areas that are most often strained or if those are simply the areas that I am most aware of.
And I ran into a question as I was playing around with this: What does it mean exactly to deliberately produce a strain? Does it simply mean to put yourself into a situation where the strain would occur and take note of it? Or do you deliberately clench muscles (as I have been doing) and note the effect on the vision? Or do you do something with the eyes to bring it about? Before, I had only thought of the last one, but if I understand this correctly, wouldn't the second and third approaches be equivalent since eye strain = body strain?
Regarding your observations 1-4, I'm very, very excited that someone else has discovered the same thing. I'd written about my eyestrain being linked to strains in my chest, arms, and legs previously--almost like there are strings distally attaching the body part to the eyes. This observation got drowned out in a flood of newbie posts, and I thought nobody had noticed it. When I consciously practice noticing the swing, I can feel the other muscle in my chest or legs pulling or pushing in synch with the pulling/pushing feeling in my eyes. And simply noticing it passively reduces the strain and makes my vision a little better immediately. When I'm doing it right, I get this weird, light-feeling sensation that's kind of hard to describe. There is sort of a shift in mental state that I haven't been able to put words to, yet.
Pikachu Wrote:And I ran into a question as I was playing around with this: What does it mean exactly to deliberately produce a strain? Does it simply mean to put yourself into a situation where the strain would occur and take note of it? Or do you deliberately clench muscles (as I have been doing) and note the effect on the vision? Or do you do something with the eyes to bring it about? Before, I had only thought of the last one, but if I understand this correctly, wouldn't the second and third approaches be equivalent since eye strain = body strain?
I think it's more like the first thing you said: putting yourself in a situation where the strain would occur and taking note of it. The sensation you want is that of someone else pulling on that muscle for you, and the thing to do at that point is to watch it happen without trying to pull a different muscle to counter it. What I've found helps as far as preventing yourself from pulling a different muscle in your eye to fight it is to notice some side-effect completely removed from your visual fixation (e.g., notice some object swinging in the periphery, or notice the pulling sensation in the body part, or notice your breathing).
I think we're onto something, Pikachu. My practice is becoming more and more effective. These days I wear -5.5 diopters right / -4 left for driving, but after practicing for about 15 minutes today, I was able to temporarily get 20/20 vision using -3.75 right / -3.00 left lenses. The improvement lasted until I stopped practicing consciously.
Good to know that I'm on the right track. The hardest part is not stacking strains on top of one another. It's really tempting to try to "undo" a strain, only to find that all you've done is add another!
I'll report back when I make more progress. Hopefully, that will be sooner rather than later.
Sean_Augensicht, today I have made 2 rides in Bus. I was sitting on both.
In the first, I made like you. When the Bus accelerated I pushed outward the eyes and I felt creating a strain. When the Bus desaccelerated I pushed inward the eyes and felt some relief.
On the other ride, I did the opposite. When the Bus accelerated I pushed inward, and when desaccelerated I pushed outward. Didn't felt any strain or relief.
Not to sound like a jerk, but I'm not surprised you saw no improvement. You didn't read what I wrote, and you invented your own method that apparently involved using effort. I didn't tell you to push your eyes this way or that way using a new strain. I said to notice (using just thought, not a command to do a physical movement) consciously what you'd already been doing unconsciously, and allow it to happen on its own. The latter is what I meant by reproducing the strain intentionally.
Sean, today I did some driving on long straight roads where I could go 60 mph at times, and I noticed my eyeballs reaching forward, as if they were trying to help the car move. I tried to increase this eyeball movement and it was very uncomfortable, a big feeling of strain, but I did get a few brief very clear flashes. I couldn't sustain the effort, though. I am less sure that my eyes pushed back when I braked -- it felt more like they stopped trying to reach forward and just settled back into the sockets. I'd be interested if anyone else is experiencing this when driving, and especially if exaggerating it improves vision. This may be different from riding on the train, as losing my balance is not a factor, but I definitely noticed the trying in my eyeballs. Thanks, I guess! (I am both grateful and dismayed to discover yet another unconscious bad visual habit...)
@Nancy: Exaggeration of the strain has led to mild, temporary improvement for me as well. But it appears that I misunderstood Sean's post when I did that. Either way, I think that noticing the strain and then consciously taking it one step further definitely helps me figure out exactly where the strain is coming from, but doing that can also make it harder to detect other strains, which is a bit counterproductive.
@Sean_Augensicht: After getting your clarification regarding putting myself in a situation where I would strain, I set about doing just that. First of all, I am a bit surprised (appalled?) at just how often I strain. I naively thought that it would not be easy to put myself in a situation where would strain. Minutes later, I was laughing at that thought. Just looking at an object in the distance immediately puts strain on my eyes. Shifting from one point to another does the same thing. Heck, I strain when I close my eyes!
I did indeed feel the marionette pulling that you mentioned, but it somehow isn't as strong a pull as I imagined. Is it just supposed to be a vague feeling of the muscles slowly tensing up?
I think I also got something that is similar to the feeling you described earlier, but I am also unsure about that. I didn't really feel much physically, but I got this sort of feeling of relief, like I had been hiding a secret for years and had just gotten it off my chest. Is this what you were talking about?
And finally, I have a question regarding the process that you go through when you practice. Do you alternate between situations where your eyes are strained and situations when they aren't (e.g. looking from the nearpoint to the farpoint and then back and forth)? Or do you go from one strained situation to another? It made sense intuitively to me to go from strained to unstrained and so on, but I found that (a) there isn't a truly unstrained situation for me and (b) sometimes the strain persists when I go from strained situation to unstrained situation and it's a bit confusing sometimes.
