This "idea" has been discussed here before. I believe that strain is no good in any way and trying to compensate strain by introducing another strain is pure madness. Although it sounds strange, you can end up with both myopia and hypermetropia symptoms at the same time, and increased tension inside the eyeball. In other words, although myopia and hypermetropia have opposite symptoms but they are not opposite by its reason, namely they are caused by different muscles which are not even antagonists.
It's an interesting effect that people who start practicing Bates (including myself at the beginning) tend to look for such "ideas" and think they have invented their own techniques that outperform Bates. After some time I realized that the closer I turned my face to the original Bates method, the better results I obtained, and "my own techniques" were just an illusion. IMHO Thomas Quack is just another "mental fart". Why don't you truly read and understand the original Bates book?
The idea hasn't been brought up here before. If you want to try it, go ahead and report your results. But I think the main thing that you can get out of it is there is a certain way that people use their eyes to sustain myopia, and a certain way people use their eyes to sustain hyperopia, but it's only observable at the right distance, where they produce blur (close up for hyperopia and distant for myopia). Observing the difference closely can be very useful, because all of a sudden you're dealing with what's real - not what you may interpret Bates as having said, but what Bates must have meant as he observed the same thing you are.
Watch how he uses his eyes at the distance he has trouble seeing at, contrasted with at a distance he sees clearly at. He doesn't have to be looking at you to do this.
Dave
Site Administrator
"Half of our funny, heathen lives, we are bent double to gather things we have tossed away." - George Meredith
First of all, I've read all 520+ pgs of the book "Relearning to See" and it is an excellent starting book. There's a very detailed Table of Contents that helps you find the information you need and it is like an encyclopedia in the amount of things you can learn from it. This book is meant to help you get a solid foundation and good starting overview on things. Just so you know, this book does not contain only Bates' ideas but Quackenbush's additional exercises so you will need to check into Bates' original work as well to differentiate completely. It's very important to keep things simple at first so you don't confuse where the real results may be coming from. This means to try to master the fundamentals before even thinking of trying other people's teachings implemented on top of Dr. Bates' original teachings.
I've never had a need to try anything other than Dr. Bates' own techniques. They work very well if done correctly, and can work in a very short period of time. In Dr. Bates' magazine publications, he wrote that several of his patients became able to see 20/20 or better in just one hour. This does not even surprise me.
It's late and I'm out of time to answer your question but if you decide to try the experiment, I'd like to hear how it goes. Take care.
