Hello, I'm 15 and have myopia of 20/400. I think that people with myopia think about their eyes too much and this causes them to have more difficulty in releasing the muscle tension around their eyes. Should one forget about their eyes completely while doing Bates and put their full attention on what they see rather than how their eyes feel?
I feel a lot of tenseness around my eyes and I think it distracts me when I do Bates techniques because I'm aiming at releasing the muscles. Maybe that's my problem? Because sometimes I feel weird aching and other sensations while and after performing Bates. Also, of course it can be tough to totally forget about your eyes when you're practicing conscious blinking and shifting.
Bates said somewhere that when somebody with normal vision simply brings their eyes to their attention, their vision lowers a tiny bit. I think any muscle is most relaxed when you completely forget about it.
Should I forget about my eyes while practicing and how could I do this?
Thanks for any thoughts on this.
PS - I practice palming, shifting, swinging, memory and imagination. I also have a Bates teacher who is going to give me a lesson on Thursday.
Vision is passive?! Your mind can think of only one thing best, when you think of your eyes, then you can't think of the thing you are looking at! simple isn't it, that's why if your vision gets normal your eyes would not feel anymore, because you are not thinking of your eyes, but the thing you are seeing.
My daughter has good natural vision, and she says that after palming, it feels like her eyes are not even there... Most of the time, I try to think of experiencing the world with my own natural vision. And when I'm practising some specific good habits, I think of looking or changing my gaze, but never about how my eyes should organically work.
My advice is to first acknowledge the feeling in your eyes. People repress the feelings of strain and tension, just like they do with chronic tension in their shoulders and other body parts, so that they aren't even aware of it anymore. Repressing the tension and choosing to ignore the tension might sound like the same thing, but it isn't. The fact that you feel the tension is a good thing. It means you are no longer willing to repress it. Acknowledging it makes all the difference. But that doesn't mean you have to constantly think about it. Just once is enough.
Say to yourself "I acknowledge this feeling in my eyes right now, but what I want is something else," and switch to imagining what the feeling of complete relief would be like. Then every time your awareness shifts to the tension, you should immediately refuse to spend your time thinking about the tension, and switch to something else, anything else, as long as it isn't a thought that brings you anxiety, because everything you think about will feed on itself and become more intense or more real.
That will help you stop being distracted by the feelings in your eyes, and even help in freeing them.
So once you put the above into practice, yes, it's an excellent practice to forget about your eyes and leave them alone. One thing you can do is shift your awareness to the rest of your body to affirm that it's no longer necessary to direct so much energy to your eyes. Visual tension is all over the body, not just the eyes, because straining is putting in an effort far beyond what is necessary or appropriate to the task, and part of that is involving other parts of the body to tense up as if to help in some way. So once you mentally de-assign your body the task of seeing, you might find that you get an immediate release of tension in your body that you didn't know existed.
Dave
Site Administrator
"Half of our funny, heathen lives, we are bent double to gather things we have tossed away." - George Meredith
Dave, that is excellent advice. I'm on spring break right now so I have a lot of time to practice Bates. I'll be reporting when I see progress.
Damnnn! Your spring break starts early! When did you get off? I still have weeks left.
But back on topic, I've felt things similar to what you have. Once I started practicing Bates my eyes began to tell me just how stressed they are and when I expose them to more stress, it is much more easy for me to detect its effect. So I think it can be a very useful tool that can allow you to gauge how your activities are affecting the stress in your body.
