With swinging, you swing your body or head left to right and imagine that the world is moving opposite direction of your movement. How could you get clear flashes from this, and after how many minutes will you obtain the clear flashes?
Clear flashes don't always come during one activity, it may take a long time. It took me over two weeks practicing several different activities and incorporating good vision habits into daily life before I finally got a clear flash, and it just happened while I was working.
Swinging is an illusion that objects are moving in the opposite direction of your eyes. Sit in an office swivel chair and gently and slowly move from side to side, letting your eyes move with your body. Notice how the objects in the room appear to move in the opposite direction. That is the swing.
Now you can go create this illusion in many ways, the long swing where you rotate your body from east to west 180 degrees and back again, slowly and letting your eyes move with your body. Other ways are to make sure you walk with a free flowing gait, and notice how things will gently swing. And it's easier to do while jogging. My daughter loves to make things swing while dancing.
I am only a Bates Method beginner, and someone please correct me if I am wrong, but based on my reading of Bates and MacCracken, nowhere do they discuss clear flashes when describing the variety of swinging techniques.
Both shifting and swinging help us to overcome the glasses-eyed stare by facilitating central fixation. Swinging, in particular, relaxes the eyes/mind. Swinging combines well with palming, i.e., palm before swinging and palm after.
It is most important to be aware that Bates Methods techniques are most effective when performed in an objective state of mind. In other words, it is counter-productive to concern yourself with results, because this will only cause mental stress, equivalent to "trying to see".
There is no timetable and no guarantees of clear flashes. If reading the books of Drs. Bates and MacCracken has not convinced you, you have to be willing to practice its techniques entirely objectively. In other words, your mind should be concerned only with the technique.
The goal of the Bates techniques is included within the techniques themselves. When you practice a Bates Method technique you are improving your vision. Clear flashes can occur only when there is no effort to make them happen. In "Swinging tp Relax" (Use Your Own Eyes, Ch.19), Dr. MacCracken emphasizes the importance of after-images as a reliable indication of improvement and good technique.
You might find MacCracken a much easier read than Bates. Use Your Own Eyes provides many extraordinary insights into the practice of Bates Method techniques are not so easy to intuit. MacCracken's intention in writing Use Your Own Eyes was that it should serve as a "teacher" that would provide anyone who read it with all they need to know in order to practice Bates Method successfully. It offers a very solid grounding in the principles of Bates Method.
If you will take time to read MacCracken, I think you will get a lot more out of Dr. Bates' book. Bates Method is deeper than the ocean -- you can dive into these two books again and again and never reach the bottom of their wisdom and knowledge.
With a better theoretical understanding of Bates Method principles, your practice will become playful (as it is meant to be), and you won't worry about clear flashes.
If you make study of these two books an integral part of your Bates Method practice, you will always be able to distinguish true Bates Method and never be confused by "eye exercisers" who add-to and subtract-from Dr. Bates' method.
