Re: What does Bates mean by seeing worse?

[bkowalski]

I am a high myope (20/400) and have been experimenting with some of Dr Bates' methods described in his book.  He often refers to seeing worse when practising some of the methods, such as shifting with an eye chart: "Shift to a letter on the same line far enough away so that the first is seen worse."

I am starting at my near point where I see best which is about 6 inches. I don't know what exactly is meant by "seeing worse" - should the letter become less black, or soft edges like the start of a blur?? 

I also sometimes get a double image which seems to be just loss of mental control because I can quickly fix it. 

Any help appreciated. 

[David]

Look at an object in front of you and hold your finger out to your right side. Hold your finger so far to your right periphery that you are able to tell that it's there, but if you didn't know what was there you wouldn't be able to distinguish it. Now you can say that you finger is seen worse than the object you're looking at, right? It isn't a matter of being blurry, it's just weakly perceived. The same is true if your finger were only an inch to the side. But you don't notice it right away. It's something that you need to practice for a while, and frequently.

When you get double vision, give it time to see if it fixes itself. You need to get out of the habit of fixing it. Sometimes it needs to get worse before it gets better. Imagine that you're switching seats with someone as you're driving a car. At some point you have to give up control to him, and the car might go out of control until you're completely out of the way and he gets used to driving it.

Dave

[bkowalski]

Look at an object in front of you and hold your finger out to your right side. Hold your finger so far to your right periphery that you are able to tell that it's there, but if you didn't know what was there you wouldn't be able to distinguish it.

I tried this, and my finger has to be more than 15 inches away from the large "E" on the eye chart (200 ft line) to see the finger worse.  I will keep working towards bringing that in closer and closer and continuing to see it worse, thanks. 

When you get double vision, give it time to see if it fixes itself. You need to get out of the habit of fixing it. Sometimes it needs to get worse before it gets better.

This got me thinking, and after looking through the following thread, I would like clarification. 

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.iblindness.org/forum/index.php/topic,268.0.html">http://www.iblindness.org/forum/index.p ... 268.0.html</a><!-- m -->

It seems that when I "zone out" and possibly become cross-eyed at my near point (although I don't think I am...), it feels more relaxing, it feels like I am just letting vision happen passively as Bates says is the case with normal sight. When I fixed it myself before, I noticed a strain from then on in reading at my near point. How can I play with this, how can it help? Should I be doing this a lot and waiting for my visual system to "get used to driving"?  (BTW I like the analogy!)

...I went away and played with this a bit, and I can now see the "E" more distinctly at 4 feet than before.  This really feels right to me, but it would be good to know others have had or seen similar experiences.

[David]

Whenever you consciously direct your eyes to do something, whether shifting or fixing double vision or whatever it might be, don't do it with anything more than the smallest amount of effort you can imagine. Even just the thought of what you want to do might be enough.

That's what makes it so hard to teach - Everyone with these kind of vision problems over-exerts themselves in their habits of movement, exaggerating movement and effort in not just the eyes but the whole body, far beyond what is necessary to accomplish a task. And it's such a long-standing habit that it's unconscious. The only way to bring the unreasonable effort to consciousness is by example of what is not it. This means getting a person to relax, at first maybe just when closing the eyes and palming, but before long necessarily also with the eyes open, by means of long practice of shifting exercises, the swing, and various other exercises invented over the years.

Good vision is something between complete passivity and strained exertion, but much closer to passivity than people tend to think. Going completely passive and zoning out doesn't tend to work well, because a person usually tries to accomplish that by freezing up even more in an effort to stop straining their eyes. This is why movement is so important - it's so much harder to maintain strain under conditions of enough movement. You don't risk zoning out and locking yourself.

Dave

[bkowalski]

Thanks Dave, I've learned a lot in this discussion - I've got to try to relax more about improving. I had a clear flash (about 2 weeks ago) about 3 weeks after starting Bates stuff, with some permanent improvement, but none since then. And I just noticed over the weekend that I have been continually testing my vision to see if it's improving - seems totally counterproductive now. I need to relax into and accept my vision as it is, and believe in the method. 

Besides some stuff I'm already doing (palming, sunning, swinging, sketching, meditation, emotional awareness), I think I will next write down all the Bates methods from his book and cycle through them to see if any one starts working. My plan is to cycle through them, trying maybe just one per day. Bates said that if a difference or an improvement wasn't realized right away, then the strain of continuing to try would outweigh the benefit. I'm also reading the book by Janet
Goodrich directed at children to help my own child. 

I am curious about something, since you started this with 20/200, that's really not too far off from where I am - I tested 20/230 the other day. How difficult was it for you to throw away your eyeglasses?

I work at a computer, and pinhole glasses don't seem to be doing the trick yet. I am trying to get my boss to spring for a bigger monitor. And of course I have to wear my glasses when driving. So I've eliminated glasses from everything except about half the time at work and driving. I do get a lot of ridicule from work colleagues and even family/friends - with my vision, I can't even read normally at a comfortable distance. My biggest source of support is my kids. 

By the way, the zoning out I do is with no effort at all, I don't think...  It feels totally relaxed. I have to consciously focus at my near point in order to read easily - is that not a form of strain? 

-Brad

[David]

Yes, avoid the urge to constantly test your vision. And picking one exercise a day is a good idea. There's more to try, and more variations, besides what's in Bates's book, but it's a great place to start.

Well I started with reduced contact lenses, and that didn't work out as well as I had hoped, and finally at one point I just knew that I had to get away from them altogether. They were getting very uncomfortable for some reason, even brand new ones, which was probably my eyes getting resensitized. And I knew it was what I had to do to improve my vision anyway, so how hard it was didn't really factor into my decision. But you know, in situations where you can't see, anxiety just paves the way for an unfortunte outcome. If you stay confident that things will somehow work out in a manner that perhaps you can't currently conceive of, you allow the universe room to work for you and guide you so that a temporary vision handicap never becomes as big a problem as you can imagine.

When your visual system is relaxed, it will automatically focus for whatever distance you're attending to. If it doesn't focus, you're doing something to stop it.

Dave

[Oleg K.]

Getting back to this topic, Dave, don't you think that Bates formulation of central fixation as "trying to see eccentric points worse than central" is slightly confusing? It confused myself and I see many beginners are confused too. The point of confusion, imho, is that one is supposed to try *to see* eccentric points, no matter better of worse, which already may cause strain. Though I think I understand Bates reason to give such formulation, I have elaborated one of my own and am asking you to comment if it's correct.

What I do is try to look at the single central point only at any given moment, and not allow myself to notice points outside of that central locality. So that if I want to see another portion of the object I'm looking at, I need to shift my eyes to a new position. It's like looking through a telescope - the walls of the tube just do not allow you to see anything beyond the view field without moving the tube. In the outcome, my eyes begin to shift constantly, just because it's boring to look at the same narrow locality more than a couple of instants. Also, the size of the central locality matters, it's better when it's smaller. Subconsciouslh, it's equal to the image detail level you allow your mind to request and resolve. When I think of a smaller point radius, my eyes begin making smaller shifts and I begin seeing more details in a short while. Generally, this exercise tends to produce clear flashes of different quality in a couple of minutes. When I begin, even if I don't see anything but blur in the direction I'm looking at, I pretend that I've caught some detail in the central locality and imitate the scrutiny of the object until the details actually clear up.

Tell me if I perform this excercise correctly and if so, perhaps my approach can be helpful for other confused beginners? Thanks!

[David]

That sounds good to me. And you're getting clear flashes out of it. The part about pretending you catch details is a really good way to actually catch them. And it's in alignment with new-age manifesting too - start at the end, at what you really want, not at the beginning at what you think you are limited to have.

The part about seeing through a tube brings up the subtle but important difference between central fixation and tunnel vision. With tunnel vision (which is bad), you have to stare to keep it up, and you still see a relatively large area equally clearly (badly). With central fixation you see the periphery less than you would while diffusing, but you're aware of it in a more appropriate way that allows you to see the point in your center of vision clearest, occuping most of your mental attention too so that it only seems like your periphery is mostly gone.

Dave

[Oleg K.]

Thanks, Dave

Sure, I was talking about mental concentration on the central point, not any kind of physically blinding/dimming out the rest of the view area.

In context of central fixation, I wonder what is the correct pattern of using the eyes when reading text. When I read fast, especially skiping some words and lines looking for the content of my interest (e.g. on a web page), it seems that I fall into the diffuse vision pattern involuntarily. The process is too fast and automatic; there is simply no reason to stop and acquire central fixation on a letter, as soon as I have recognized it and can move on. Also leters don't have any "detail" that could be interesting in to scrutinize (unless I'm reading my Snellen). Words are seen as whole. I think that even healthy eyes follow that pattern.

So, is there any difference in how healthy and myopic eyes read printed text and is there anything wrong with this pattern that should be fixed, e.g. by applying central fixation?

[bjsilva]

Also letters don't have any "detail" that could be interesting in to scrutinize (unless I'm reading my Snellen). Words are seen as whole. I think that even healthy eyes follow that pattern.

A entire word will generally fall into the clearer parts of your vision and can be read as a whole even while centralising, but there is one point more prominent, clearer, etc., than the rest. It's not that there is a lot of visual interest in a letter, but rather that while looking at the centre of an "h" in the word "the", you should be aware that you are looking at that one point rather than the entire word. If you do not notice this it just takes some practise.

It's important to know that your mind's ability to "fool" you into seeing something you're not actually seeing is quite amazing. In Quackenbush's book Relearning to See, he gives various examples of how your mind "fills in the blanks" in your vision, and it's quite surprising at first. People with normal vision may not know exactly how they're using their eyes until it's pointed out to them.

Acquiring central fixation on a letter while reading will be deliberate and probably annoying at first, but the idea is that you will (re)develop better vision habits. In fact, while you're (re)learning you'll probably have a hard time following the content of what you're reading as you're trying to centralise (which, incidentally, reinforces Bates' point that you can only do one thing at one time best).

Hope that helps.

[bkowalski]

Thanks Oleg and Dave, the recent posts have helped me get a feeling of what I'm looking for in this respect.  However, I am not really getting anywhere with practice yet.  Because my near point is about 6 inches, convergence is an issue, and every time I relax my eyes and just try to let go, I get double vision.  Maybe I just need to keep doing that, until the double vision clears?  Any advice on how often and for how long I should practice this?  Or should I practice convergence first or in parallel? 

[Oleg K.]

Hi bkowalski,

Personally I don't quite understand your problem with double vision and convergence. Is that double vision in each eye or there's one vision in one eye and the other one in the other eye?

The first is called polyopia. There can be two, three, many images and image contours in each eye, that mix together and cause that myopic blur.

The second is natural for the eyes to return into the position for far vision when you relax the convergence muscles. The far sight is the relaxed position for the eyes. In that position, if you place an object in the near zone in front of you, you'll see exactly two images, one in each eye. I will be surprised if you never noticed that effect before in your life. This is how our stereoscopic vision works, and this is not a problem, this kind of double vision should not "clear".

I suspect that you are just trying to find the muscle you want to voluntarily relax and you find the convergence muscles. It's not exactly what you should do. Thinking about your eyes as physical organs of your body will cause you more strain (I have experienced that!). I suspect that when getting the double vision you first "try to relax", stop moving your eyes, i.e. begin staring. instead, you should think about objects you are looking at, using visualization and trying to follow the correct vision habits described by Bates.

[bkowalski]

I finally got another clear flash.  I was sitting normally in a vehicle while parked, and I observed the odometer reading. I tried out something that I read in Meir Schneider's book, and the digits cleared until I could read them!  That's quite amazing for someone who's clear far point is 6 inches. 

Since then, I've been experimenting with a digital clock on the stove at home.  Once I've relaxed myself and my eyes, I practice the central fixation technique described by Schneider - it's essentially the same as bjsilva's reply in this thread.  When my eyes are relaxed enough, out of the blur - and I mean it's a sea of blur, looks like just a streak of blue/green light - out of the blur pops a crystal clear image of the numbers. 

I cannot tell you what a cool feeling this is for me, after 35+ years of dependence on glasses......  to know that my natural vision is still there inside of me. 

However, often the image is below or above where it should be, and moves around, fading in and out.  At that point, I tell my brain to "construct the image" as I continue to be aware of a central point and less aware of the immediate surrounding area, and of course I shift from digit to digit. 

I really believe with how much correction I'm used to (-8.50 D), that it's very psychosomatic for me, and I continue to search for my brain's ability to interpret properly what my eyes are physiologically sending to it. 

Has anyone similar experiences?  With perfectly clear letters/digits within a sea of blur?  Is this sort of practice beneficial, with LED's in an otherwise darkened environment? 

Thanks a lot, this forum has helped me so much.  I have been believing with as much conviction as possible that clear natural vision will happen, and after this latest experience, I know I'm on the right track. 

-killer

[Oleg K.]

Having re-read my own posts on this topic after a while, I want to disclaim my previous objection to Bates telling to see eccentric points worse than the central point. Now, that I am more experienced I know Bates was perfectly right and used exactly the correct words to describe what one should do.

To bkowalski:
When I have a clear flash, it starts like you described. First, a multitude of clear images appear and move around, next some of them fade and the rest of them get arranged along horizontal line (I think at this point I'm becoming astygmatic because I see horizontal lines clear and vertical blurred), then most of the images dismiss and only two are left along the horizontal line, then the second image dismisses and there is only one crisp image in a slight fog, and finally the fog disappears too and my vision is completely clear.