Most days I able to do 5 minutes of Palming, 100 long swings, and one other eye exercise like a Binocular one (one/two thumb ). I have gone from 18 hour contact lens wear to reduced vision glasses ( less 2 diopters than my eyeglass prescription) when necessary and no glasses at all when possible. Doing the paintbrush with nose all the time.
But it has been 6 months and it is hard to stay with it when I literally cannot see any improvement. By that I don't mean I need anyone to egg me on; I'm saying that my I am so Myopic I can't see if there is any improvement! I try hard ( breathing and relaxing of course) to see the clear point in all the blur. What can I do in my routine to get a sense ? I am seriously -5.5 both eyes in contacts. -6 glasses.
08-21-2014, 07:53 AM (This post was last modified: 08-21-2014, 11:43 AM by Nancy.)
Have you used the eye chart? You can stand 3 or 5 feet away at the start, but just do it! It is very gratifying to see tangible evidence of your vision improving this way, when you can read a line you couldn't before.
You should notice something change with your vision immediately. If you practice anything and after a few minutes you still haven't noticed any temporary change it probably isn't worth continuing that. You need to change something.
Trying to see the clear point might be a problem. While it's not good to look without paying attention to details, it's also not good to try hard to see them. Make a very brief attempt, give up, move to the next one, give up again, etc. It's kind of like typing on a keyboard, the way the softer you can press each key the faster you can type. But it's also like if you press a key too hard the wrong letter comes up, and if you hold the key down for longer than an instant it erases everything. Wouldn't that be interesting.
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"Half of our funny, heathen lives, we are bent double to gather things we have tossed away." - George Meredith
I'd just get outside and try getting exposed to as much extreme distances as you can.
If you have a friend, ask them to take you on a drive on the highway, with light traffic so you tend to have cars in the distance but not up close right in front of the vehicle you are riding in. Maybe early morning on a weekend day.
And ask to sit in the middle of the back seat, and look through the two front seats through the windshield while your friend is driving. Notice the road in front of you stretching into the horizon.
Do that for at least an hour and see if you notice a change in your vision afterwards.
(08-20-2014, 04:49 PM)chloespeaks Wrote: Most days I able to do 5 minutes of Palming, 100 long swings, and one other eye exercise like a Binocular one (one/two thumb ). I have gone from 18 hour contact lens wear to reduced vision glasses ( less 2 diopters than my eyeglass prescription) when necessary and no glasses at all when possible. Doing the paintbrush with nose all the time.
But it has been 6 months and it is hard to stay with it when I literally cannot see any improvement. By that I don't mean I need anyone to egg me on; I'm saying that my I am so Myopic I can't see if there is any improvement! I try hard ( breathing and relaxing of course) to see the clear point in all the blur. What can I do in my routine to get a sense ? I am seriously -5.5 both eyes in contacts. -6 glasses.
Remember that practicing Bates is not about 'exercising,' or going through the motions of this many techniques, or for this long or that long. Diopters are for the most part irrelevant with this method. Don't get too hung up on conventional optics. As Bates said, the eyes don't always follow the 'laws of optics,' and he found many that defied explanation by any optician or optic book. It's mostly about developing awareness of, and discovering how you are using your eyes incorrectly, and taking the necessary steps to change that. Seeing perfectly takes no effort, it's effortless, so as long as one is continuing the efforts the strain and tension will remain. You only need to master one technique to restore vision, but having several is helpful if you get stagnant and find yourself forcing things too much with one particular thing. As Nancy said, an eye chart is essential in Bates, to use with the memory, imagination, shifting and swinging, and flashing techniques. While other object can give us a general sense of seeing better or worse, the eye chart gives instant, accurate feedback, in a very granular form, if you keep the conditions the same. The better you can remember a letter seen clearly, imagine it in your head clearly, you'll have a weapon to carry with you throughout the day when you feel you're straining. In fact, don't get just one, try to get 2 or 3 identical charts, to use one at near where you see best, one at a middle distance, and one for a far distance. Experiment with different distances to find what YOUR particular optimisms are, and which letters, colors, or shapes are an optimism to you, and which aren't.
