Strange thing

[chris hansen]

Hello,

The strangest thing happened today.

I was working on an eye exercise I read about. You look at the eye chart and focus on the white part below one of the lines and keep blinking. The idea is that if there's nothing to focus on your eyes will relax. After a few minutes my eyes felt kind of wierd, the white on the chart looked whiter, the black was blacker and the letters came in a bit more clearly. Than I felt kind of sick to my stomach so I crawled into bed and bawled my eyes out and I couldn't stop for the longest time.

I've heard that vision improvment can be accompanied by a strong emotional response but I wasn't prepared for anything like this. Just writing about it is getting me all upset again.

[David]

Very interesting. Repressed emotions do tend to come out when you relax and let down your guard, as if they have to be continually pushed down in order to stay down (similar to how vision has to continually put under a strain to stay blurry). So to me it sounds like a beneficial experience.

Dave

[chris hansen]

It happened again.

I was looking at the eye chart and I could feel a lot of tension build in my ears, sinuses and jaw. My jaw got so tight it was hard to move it. The tension started to move down to my throat and I started to feel afraid. Finally I sat down and cried like a baby for the longest time.

It was a little different from the first time though. The first time all the tension and emotions came from behind my eyes. This time it all came from the throat and jaw. My neck tightened up so much I thought I would pull a muscle. It was pretty intense. There seems to be something in there that's coming out. I have no idea what it is but it's kind of scary and I think it's been there for a long time.

After I recovered I noticed that my eyes felt more relaxed than I can remember them ever being. As unpleasant as this is, I think it's very productive.

[chris hansen]

I'm starting to notice a pattern here.

I was working with the eye chart today and felt tension building up mainly in my jaw and throat. I also started to feel nervousness or anxiety in my stomach. The clearer the eye chart became, the worse I felt until I broke down and cried. Then I laid down and closed my eyes and I could feel my eyeballs kind of twitching for a while. I noticed there was some residual tension in my throat and about half way through dinner I started feeling sick to my stomach and thought I would toss my cookies. It didn't come to that but I laid down for a while and eventually started feeling better.

I noticed that even when I'm at work, when I'm walking around looking at how 3-D everything is, I start to feel tension building up in my jaw and face and I start to feel a little nervous. I have a feeling that improving my vision is going to be a difficult and painful process.

I'm glad this forum is here so I can write about this and share it with people, it feels theraputic. I would welcome people's thoughts.

[Christian]

I was having a lot of tension in my jaw some time ago (after removing it from my back and stomach  : I much more relaxed now and feel perfect to start improving my vision, I haven't wore the glasses for more  than a week and I have like -3 & 0.75 astigmatism) nothing bad happened but is  a really bad place to hold it. I was wondering, is  there a place in the body where you can send safely the tension, maybe the hands? and then maybe use the hands to hit something...

[David]

Christian,

I'm pretty sure tension can get displaced to other areas (patterns of tension are certainly more complicated than I understand), but I don't think it's feasible to consciously attempt. Maybe what you feel is a different type of energy? Because martial arts and other systems involve controlling energy.

In a way, chronic tension is already a form of safety, because it's a way of handling something that we don't want to fully deal with. But it wrecks the body when it sticks around.

Dave

[TheRainIsGone]

Hi, I just joined the board and believe that my nearsightedness is due to some repression of emotions and/or memories.  I found Chris Hansen's posts to be very interesting and encouraging.  The last posts are from December.  Just wondering if CH has any new info to share.  I'm very curious to know how things are going and find out more about the mind-body connection and emotional process involved in correcting myopia. 

[chris hansen]

Hi, I just joined the board and believe that my nearsightedness is due to some repression of emotions and/or memories.   I found Chris Hansen's posts to be very interesting and encouraging.  The last posts are from December.  Just wondering if CH has any new info to share.  I'm very curious to know how things are going and find out more about the mind-body connection and emotional process involved in correcting myopia.   

Since you ask,

It got worse before it got better but I haven't been getting the same reactions lately that I did in the past. Only occasionally do I get an emotional response now and then it's milder than the ones I've had in the past.

My theory is that, when your visual system reaches a new level of relaxation, it can bring up the emotional baggage that's associated with it but after spending enough time at that new level of relaxation, your body comes to accept it as 'normal' and you stop getting those unpleasant experiences. When you reach an even deeper level of relaxation you might have to acclimate to that as well. At least that's the way it seems to be working with me.

At any rate, I continue to improve and the unpleasant reactions have been milder and less frequent but it sure has been a rough ride at times.

[David]

That's true in my experience too. Aspects of normal vision seem weird and exciting, but after a while I was totally used to it, and it stopped seeming weird at all. It's because normal vision is what's normal for people, and it takes something abnormal to stay in any other condition. So emotional reactions are reactions to becoming normal again, more ourselves, or more the way we have to be to function correctly. And because normal vision is something that's actually so normal, you won't keep getting the reactions forever; it's just something that had to happen for you as you stopped holding something in. It sounds like you figured that out.

Dave

Since you ask,

It got worse before it got better but I haven't been getting the same reactions lately that I did in the past. Only occasionally do I get an emotional response now and then it's milder than the ones I've had in the past.

My theory is that, when your visual system reaches a new level of relaxation, it can bring up the emotional baggage that's associated with it but after spending enough time at that new level of relaxation, your body comes to accept it as 'normal' and you stop getting those unpleasant experiences. When you reach an even deeper level of relaxation you might have to acclimate to that as well. At least that's the way it seems to be working with me.

At any rate, I continue to improve and the unpleasant reactions have been milder and less frequent but it sure has been a rough ride at times.

[TheRainIsGone]

Thanks for the responses.

I've started doing some of the eye exercises and used the pinhole glasses for a bit the past few days.  Have had some excruciating stomach problems today.  My stomach is where tension and emotional upset surfaces for me.

Would almost prefer to have an intense emotional reaction instead of this.  No discernible improvement in my vision either.

Can't help wondering if working on my vision is causing this---and wondering if it is worth pursuing.  Maybe it would be better to live with my myopia than risk opening up what may be a huge can of worms physically and emotionally.

Has anyone else experienced physical instead of emotional symptoms like this?  Has improving your vision caused you to remember suppressed traumas or experiences?  Any ideas on how long it might last or if it is worth it?

[David]

ThePainIsGone,

I'm about the last person to claim I know what's going on in the physical body. There's so much that can go on to cause noticeable sensations - tension loosening, chakras blocked or opening up, bad digestion, bad posture, gas (hey, let's be realistic), even the body structurally having to readjust itself due to a loss of chronic tension. And I take any explanation with a grain of salt. The inside of the body is so complicated and invisible, and long-held assumptions are always turning out to be wrong.

I've had upper back problems that have released spontaneously when I was meditating. No feeling, nothing, but when I stood up, my back didn't hurt. It's come back, in various ways, but it goes away when I take care of myself. Maybe it's there as an inherent bodily weakness from being a Leo.

I've had issues with release in my shoulders too. But your stomach is an organ, so it's more interesting. But while I'm talking astrology, the sign of Cancer does rule the stomach and emotions.

Maybe it's just the way I am, but I can't understand why anyone would want to deny themselves improvement, regardless of any amount of pain it means. Pain in the process of self improvement is always temporary and is just about transitioning. Whereas if you hold everything still so that no change can take place, you may feel safer but you're destroying most of your capability for...well, just about everything. And your body won't appreciate it either.

Dave

[RoyFokker]

I read a case history on seeing.org that also highlighted the emotional effects of using the Bates method:
...

Awareness and acceptance brought about big emotional swings; I felt I was standing back from myself and observing my feelings and emotions without interfering with their natural course. I was amazed how fears and anxieties I had locked away, surfaced and eventually faded away. I felt like a boat rising and falling on the sea, allowing each wave to come and go without any attempt to alter position or course, or fight against them in any way.

...

[chris hansen]

Thanks for the responses.

I've started doing some of the eye exercises and used the pinhole glasses for a bit the past few days.  Have had some excruciating stomach problems today.  My stomach is where tension and emotional upset surfaces for me.

Would almost prefer to have an intense emotional reaction instead of this.  No discernible improvement in my vision either.

Can't help wondering if working on my vision is causing this---and wondering if it is worth pursuing.  Maybe it would be better to live with my myopia than risk opening up what may be a huge can of worms physically and emotionally.

Has anyone else experienced physical instead of emotional symptoms like this?  Has improving your vision caused you to remember suppressed traumas or experiences?  Any ideas on how long it might last or if it is worth it?

Working on your vision could certainly cause stomach upset, I've sure had enough of it.

Some of the physical symptoms I've experienced from vision therapy include:

Shaking
Nausea
Sinus passages closing off
A buzzing sensation in hands and forearms, like electricity passing through.
Uncontrollable crying
Impossibly tight neck muscles
Feeling cold

On the plus side, I've been a calmer and more relaxed person lately. I'd also like to point out that I had virtually no improvement until after that first day when I broke down crying and couldn't stop. After that things started to happen.

[David]

Chris,

That buzzing or vibrating feeling is a sign that you're really opening up your awareness. I don't know exactly what it is, but from what I've felt and heard other people say, I think it has basically to do with tuning into a different energy level. I initially got it very strongly in my hands when sungazing, and now more throughout the rest of my body when meditating.

People don't usually plan on getting into that kind of stuff when they want to improve their vision, but when you start to relax and ease into a more natural, open way of doing things with the intention of improving your vision, it's hard to stop from becoming aware of other things that really don't have to do directly with vision. Our consciousness is repressed by our society, particularly the things we're taught early in school, and when we start opening the gate to start letting stuff flow better again, it's hard to guess what's going to come in or go out.

Dave

[cheeba]

I've been interested for a while in the connections between Bates' methods and the theories of Wilhelm Reich. In his view, myopia is the result of a learned pattern of tension around the eyes (so far so similar) adopted in order to suppress powerful organic sensations in the body. Thus, tension in the stomach comes from an attempt to restrain the "butterflies" feeling, in the throat from the desire to cry out or sob, and in the eyes from restraining the sensations related to crying. By breaking up this "character armour" he believed that the body could be returned to its normal functioning, although he worked on the physical and emotional levels at the same time. Some of the reactions he describes in his patients are very similar to Chris' (see below). In particular, he reports that the armour breaks up starting from the eye region and slowly including the throat and the lower regions of the body. I experienced some spontaneous movement a few years ago following this pattern.

So, I've only been trying Bates method for a few months (and sporadically at that), but I've found that understanding the tension in the eyes as being simultaneously an emotional supression of sensation has been really helpful. For example, during the "swinging" exercise, focusing not only on the awareness of reverse movement in the visual field, but also on maximising the _sensation_ of swinging in the eye has brought about improved results. There are various other techniques Reich used which might usefully supplement Bates methods. He used to move a small penlight around in the visual field of the patient in random directions, getting them to follow it with their eyes, for example.

Where Reich arrived at bodywork via psychoanalysis, Bates seems to have moved in the other direction, arriving at a psychology of vision through his opthamological research.

Does anyone else know of any connections between the two? Someone more qualified than me, for example. There seems to be great scope for a synthesis of the two approaches, and I'd be really interested to learn if anyone has already done any work on this.

Relevant quotes:

"the loosening of the rigid muscular attitudes resulted in peculiar somatic sensations: involuntary trembling, jerking of muscles, sensations of hot and cold, itching, crawling, prickling sensations, goose flesh, and the somatic perception of anxiety, anger and pleasure." Sound familiar to anyone?

"In the ocular armour segment we find a contraction and immoblisation of all or most muscles in the eyeball, the lids, the forehead, the tear glands, etc. this is expressed in immobility of the forehead and the eyelids, empty expression of the eyes or protruding eyeballs, a masklike expression or immobility on both sides of the nose. The patient is unable to open his eyes wide, as if in fright. In schizophrenics, as a result of contracted eyeball muscles, the expression of the eyes is empty or as if staring into the distance. Many patients have been unable to cry for many years... Very often there is myopia, astygmatism or other visual disturbances."

(Wilhelm Reich: Selected Writings, 1961, pp. 122 and 158.)