It is not a process of improvement, it is recovery. We do not improve a little each day and pick up from where we left off, or become better and better in the sense of making progress that is very easy to track on a consistent basis. No, recovery is a process of change, changing who we are and how we behave. All those addictions that people get involved in - alcohol, drugs, anything - I'm convinced that it's all very similar, the same as vision disorders, getting caught in a way of doing things that turns into a groove and who we are seems to become the essence of the addiction, and it can seem impossible that we could be something other than that. So vision recovery can seem so daunting, because on some level we identify with the way we are currently so strongly that something as simple, seemingly, as using our bodies in a way that allows us to see clearly can seem so foreign and impossible. It's only because of addiction. Any addict finds all kinds of ways that it's so difficult to get away from the addiction, comes up with every excuse in the book, claims that none of the methods to kick the addition have worked for him. The methods are just tools, just tricks, a way of tricking yourself into finding a different way of being, the same way the Bates method tricks you into finding a different way of seeing, a different way of using your eyes and vision and taking in and perceiving the world around you.
So this came to me as I was about to head to bed.
David
Site Administrator
"Half of our funny, heathen lives, we are bent double to gather things we have tossed away." - George Meredith
Subject: "Recovery", or Snellen-clearing -- the RIGHT WORDS!
What I HATE is the fact that this type of result is
"swept under the carpet" -- for various reasons.
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I think that a study, conducted by OLDER students who
had a powerful reason to clear their Snellen -- under
THEIR control -- could be effective.
(By the two second-opinion methods currently available.)
But to data, there had been no attempt to repeat the
above result.
Well, how far you can read down a Snellen chart at a given time isn't a full picture of the process of vision recovery. But what I really meant to get at was another issue - people get into this thinking of it as doing something for their vision, or enhancing their vision, as something separate from themselves. It's really a process of improving yourself, in the way you do things, not improving vision as a "thing" that is lacking and has to be worked on. It's already perfect - the only problem is in the way you use it.
On this note, I'm actually thinking about changing the theme of the site slightly from "vision improvement" to "vision recovery", because I think it more accurately describes this.
David
Site Administrator
"Half of our funny, heathen lives, we are bent double to gather things we have tossed away." - George Meredith
David Wrote:On this note, I'm actually thinking about changing the theme of the site slightly from "vision improvement" to "vision recovery", because I think it more accurately describes this.
That's a great idea! "The Bates Method of Vision Recovery" is a more accurate description, I totally agree.
I prefer the word recovery too.
The word 'improvement' sounds more like effort, work, doing something.
The word 'recovery' sounds more like letting go, relaxing, relearning.
I guess you could say that the goal is improvement and the journey is recovery. You have to recover your good vision habits to get the vision improvement.
