poem – imitate children

learn from children

eyes wide open
pointing
moving, dancing

great imitators – poking themselves in the eye as a result of watching mamma put in her contacts

close their eyes when they need rest

How would I paint that?

Lately I’ve taken stock of my stress and fatigue.  Since last fall I made an attempt at reducing both.  I’ve found now that I’ve managed to reduce my fatigue a bit – which I attribute to prioritizing sleep over writing emails and calling friends/family in the evenings.  The problem is, this hasn’t done anything for my stress levels, if anything, I’m more stressed because of the friends and family I’m neglecting.  What I need to do is to prioritize my free time better so that I’m taking care of myself and my relationships first, and doing things like browsing aimlessly online etc less.  I feel that the constant stress of trying to do too much all the time is my main block to better vision.

I have a couple of books that provide a lot of help.  The trick, as with anything, is to actually do what they recommend.  One thing I started doing purely for myself is to watercolor paint.  I was always drawn to artistic pursuits, but as a child performed horribly and it put me off for the rest of my life.  I was overly competitive as a child, and since my brother and sister were way better at drawing, painting, and sculpture, I never took any interest in learning it.  Once in high school I decided to make a pencil ddrawing of a pair of scissors just to prove to myself that I could do it.  It took me hours, and I still have the drawing, which I’m still impressed with.  However, that was the end of that…   So now that I’m less competitive about these things and recognize that I would simply like to do something artistic purely for the enjoyment of doing it, experimenting with it, and learning something along the way.  I thought back to my art classes and remembered my worst experience as a child was with watercolor.  We had to paint our winter jackets.  So just imagine a bright pink and yellow jacket crumpled up in front of you and trying to paint that as a first try at watercolor.  Needless to say, the painting turned out to just look like some mess of fluorescent colors and I was horrified with the result.  I have so few memories from gradeschool, I thought I would use this as an opportunity to make this memory an optimum instead of a pessimum.  I happened to see a watercolor calendar that offered a new watercolor lesson each day so I bought it.  It’s so fun!  After only two paintings I realized my (severely limited) skill was already better than the crappy brush and paints included in the calendar and bought a better brush and paper to work on.

This has been such a rewarding adventure both personally and for my eyes.  I only do it once a week or so, but it allows me to just forget about everything else and enjoy life through color for an hour or so.  In other words, a big plus for reducing stress.  Plus, then I have something better to talk about when I call people other than ‘yes, I’m still spending too much time in the lab… no, nothing new really…’.  It reminds me of what I like about being me – that I’ve always loved trying new things.  It used to be sporty pursuits, but now that I’ve tried everything from karate to climbing, I’m pretty sure I’ll just stick with yoga and running.  So I like the idea of starting a new theme and trying out new forms of artistic pursuits.

As for my eyes, painting is a wonderful way to wake up the eye-mind connection.  Suddenly I realize that although grass is green, it has endless shades, and to paint it so that it looks good (or at least looks like grass!) then I have to think about mixing different colors, adding highlights, noticing where light and shadow falls. For days after doing a painting my eyes are much more sensitive to different colors.  Instead of just noticing the shape of details, I notice the range of colors and shades.  This is great for central fixation!  Normally, practicing with central fixation I think about looking at smaller and smaller details and I generally shift on smaller and smaller shapes.  Now I can do the same thing with colors.  I notice finer nuances of color and shading, texture and depth within smaller spaces.  It’s a treat for the eyes.  Plus, since I often think about it in the context of, ‘wow, how would I go about painting that’, it helps me to forget about my eyes while doing this fine shifting, which is just what is best for the eyes.

drift swing

I’ve recently found that not thinking so linearly about swinging is helping.  Usually I just think about swinging up and down or left and right.  Doing circles and diagonals (like the figure 8 I first saw recommended by huxley) or just drifting swinging often helps me a lot more than thinking so linearly!

Approaching vision improvement

I learned something from my husband that I wanted to write about here.  When teaching or telling others about natural vision improvement don’t focus on what the method will do for that person, don’t try to make them ‘believe’ in the method.

The better way to approach it is to say, it’s a relaxation method – different people relax differently (so what worked for me might not work for you) and relaxation will bring different benefits to different people. Benefits will vary, anything from relieving headaches to regaining perfect sight, improving the memory or concentration, or simply becoming more aware of the body. The most important thing is that no matter what relaxation technique is done, it is enjoyed. Each practice should be worth it even if the sight doesn’t improve because the practice itself is enjoyable and brings relaxation to the body.  It doesn’t matter if they believe that their eyes can improve or not, they can try the relaxation methods for some time and find out for themselves.

By suggesting that the practice is simply an enjoyable way to relax that might have the side benefit of improving the vision, all pressure to ‘make the eyes better’ can melt away. Instead of palming and thinking, ‘are my eyes getting better by doing this? I don’t believe this crap!’ someone might think, ‘wow, I didn’t realize I had such a vivid memory of my favourite childhood toys’. In the end, they can be pleasantly surprised and relaxed rather than disappointed.

This is a helpful approach both when talking to people about what your doing when you’re following these methods, or when attempting to teach others.  I got these ideas from my husband with perfect sight.  We will try to help his mother, who has glaucoma.  Obviously, she will keep taking her drops prescribed by the OD, but if we can manage to stop her from losing any more field of vision, it will be a success!    If her glaucoma also reverses, we will have a big party and I will teach more people

skeptics

I just read a really interesting post on iblindness.org.

Mordant had written in a while back discussing his skepticism of the method.  Anyone practicing the method can understand this.  There are days when the eyes are really good, and days when it seems like perfect sight is so far away your brain tries to convince you that the method will never work for you.  Here is the link to the reply that I found so interesting:

http://www.iblindness.org/community/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1519&p=10127#p10124

For my news, my eyes are better than ever   My latest success has come from alternating looking at the chart with palming and remembering the blackest letters that I saw (without forcing the memory).  The overall effect is great – yesterday evening I could read all of 20/50 and flashes of 20/40 letters indoors.  This is great for me because usually my eyesight iin the evening is around 20/100.   Now that my evening eyesight is as good as that in the morning, I’m hopeful that I will be able to get to 20/40 soon!

Christmas wishes

I wish everyone a peaceful holiday. I’m off for a while, see you in the New Year!

Take advantage of some quiet time over the holiday. Here is how I practice improving my eyesight with Christmas cards. The general idea is to practice shifting and central fixation on the details of the cards (without glasses of course).

Shifting. I have the cards standing at different places in my living room, some on the coffee table, some on book shelves. I stand at a distance from most that I can at least make out the outline of some of the cards and the main colors on the cards. Making sure that I keep blinking regularly and don’t hold my breath, I look at the design on one card. What details do I see? Is it a landscape, are there figures? Do I remember looking at the card close up? I compare the colors and trace along the outlines of the details I can recongize.

Relax. Sometimes I remember who the card is from and what they wrote inside. Then I look to another card at a different distance. Relax, keep the eyes softly blinking and look at the details on this card. Even if I can’t make out details right away, it is possible to see the colors and think of what those colors remind me of. Inevitably this helps my vision to clear a bit. If my eyes feel tired then I close them and just remember the last details I saw and trace them in my imagination. Or rather, I let the memory of what I saw come to me, and if I end up thinking of something else equally relaxing then I don’t force myself to think of the cards. I’ll continue and as the image improves, it becomes easier to practice central fixation.

Central fixation.  When I look at a Christmas card with a person on it I look at the details on their face. Then I choose some details to shift on. For example, I look from the eye to the mouth. I see the mouth better than the eyes because I’m looking at the mouth. What I think in my head as I move my eyes from the eye to the mouth is – I see the eye worse than the mouth now. It might seem cumbersome to do this for each detail, but as I get faster at it, I find that what this does is it allows me to let go of what I just saw, and to then see better where I’m looking now.

That is exactly what central fixation is – seeing best where you are looking, and seeing everything else worse. People with defective eyesight tend to try to see everything well all at the same time. That is why it’s important psychologically to let go of a detail when you go on to look at something else.

Here’s another example: a card with a snowman and santa. As I look from the snowman’s nose to santa’s hat, I think, I see the snowman’s nose worse now. Doing central fixation this way (instead of thinking ‘I see santa’s hat best’) also keeps me from staring. Staring would be if I only saw santa’s hat and didn’t notice the snowman’s nose at all. By noticing that I see the snowman’s nose worse when I look at santa’s hat, I end up actually seeing santa’s hat more clearly than I did the last time I looked at it.

The most important part of all of this is to actually relax and enjoy the practice. I usually don’t practice more than 10 to 30 minutes. I remember the feeling of calm and better eyesight as I go on with my day, and this allows the improvement in my eyesight to last a bit longer each time. The eyesight should improve a little bit, or even a lot if you manage to do this practice well. If it doesn’t improve, or if it seems to get worse, then ask someone with perfect sight to help you to do it right!

When I ask my husband with perfect sight to help me with my practice, he usually points at the details and describes them as he sees them. He does it in a fun way and as soon as he’s bored, we stop You can learn a lot from people with perfect sight!

updates

I spent a lot of time last weekend rewriting/updating my static pages listed on the upper right hand corner of my blog.  (‘About…’ , ‘Better Eyesight’)  Check them out if you haven’t read them in a while.

Although my blog is my personal experience with eyesight improvement, I am trying to make it more accessible to people who might have just found my blog!

Speaking of updates – I would also like to highlight that cleareyesight.info has gone through a lot of updates!The website can be overwhilming – there is just SO much information!  I prefer the pdf of the website because I lose my place on the website pages.  With the pdf version it is possible to look through a page or two at a time and it’s easy to keep track of where you are by noting the page number.  Also, the copy of Better Eyesight magazines that can be obtained from cleareyesight.info are far superior to any other version!  The magazines are collected in their entirety.  They are easier to read than the photocopy version.  Some editorial comments have been added to explain things, these are done in a different color than the original text.  There are also tons of simple sketches!  I’ve noticed these on the website as well, there are many sketches to illustrate the Bates methods.  Anything that makes the Bates method easier to understand and more accessible is very valuable and these sketches do just that.  Also note that the money for the e-books goes to chartiies for the blind, see the website for details.

Finally, there is a new blogger, Monica, that is publishing a book of hers online step by step:  http://natural2020vision.wordpress.com/
It is written in the spirit of what Clark Night has done with cleareyesight.info.  Monica has compiled her thoughts and experiences with the Bates method and shared them for free.

Thank you!

chart practice: memory and imagination

Before I read the chart, I  often read excerpts from Dr. Bates’s magazine articles for inspiration.  Up until now, things that helped to clear the chart was to practice central fixation, do some gentle swinging/shifting, and to breathe deeply.  Now, I’m going back to practice some memory and imagination techniques.  They didn’t work before, but are working for me now.

Dr. Bates recommended many techniques such as: flashing, closing the eyes and remembering a letter, imagining a letter more clear than it was seen, looking away from the chart and remembering a letter with the eyes open, etc.  I realized this morning – all of those techniques are the same thing!  They are simply ways of thinking of one thing only, of relaxing. of doing something so simple you don’t have to try.  The reason these techniques didn’t work for me before was because I was trying so hard to force my memory and imagination.  Now I realize I could use anything, the important thing is to just relax, think of one thing, the memory of a cloud would do the same thing!  Then looking briefly at the chart with this relaxed state to build trust in the visual system with that relaxed state.  Since I’ve been going without glasses so much lately (haven’t touched them for 4 days I realized tonight), it seems like I’m finally getting used to not trying to see, and seeing even better because of that.  Plus, now that I’ve learned how to practice on the chart and use what I learned the whole day, I am able to make progress the whole day!

Somehow, the combination of these lessons/progress is allowing me to finally gain some real benefit from my memory and imagination.

I will write an example to make this more clear:

This morning, I read the chart from 13 feet.  It seemed like although I could read most of the letters to the 50 line, the quality wasn’t good.  Then I looked to see what the smallest letter I could see was..  I could see part of the E on the 40 line.  Then I closed my eyes, remembering what I had seen and simply imagining it to be darker.  I didn’t try, I just let it come.  Then I opened my eyes and briefly looked at the same letteer again.  It was darker and more distinct.  I did this a few times, then I started loooking at the larger letters again.  I was very impressed to find that the blur from the larger letters was gone!  More than half of the letters on the 40 line had cleared up as well.

I was able to repeat a similar practice throughout the day when I took breaks, and managed to see better than ever in the lab.  I don’t feel like I’m ‘going without glasses’ anymore.  I am definitely more effective at work without glasses because I find my attention more directed.  I have finally reached the point where I can go without glasses and it doesn’t feel like it’s anything I have to ‘try’ to do, or that it’s anything I have to think about at all.  Thanks for all the encouragement!

Let it swing

New here?  Check out the static pages (listed at the top of the column to the right) that describe summaries of my experience with eyesight improvement.

My chart practice is still going well.  I remember last year around this time when I could first see 20/50 regularly I was so excited I declared victory and in the stressful year that followed I didn’t practice much.  I now know that I declared victory too early!  Although 20/50 is fantastic compared to 5/200 that I had before, I’m learning that I will only make still further improvement by being consistent with my practice.  It was a good lesson to learn.  Now, when I practice with the chart and I strain to see a line, I can better remind myself to practice on a larger line, or improve my sight from a closer distance first – but whatever I do, it is always valuable to practice!  I then take what I learn that morning nad make a kind of mantra out of it to remember during the day so that I can continue improving my sight during the day.  I don’t really like the word mantra but I can’t think of a better word!

The best are those that are only a few words.  If they encourage the swing I find them much more successful.  Now as the Christmas season is here, I’m finding ways to incorporate the mantra into a song.  For example, you know the one that goes ‘let it snow, let it snow, let it snow’?  I can tell you, it’s not possible to have tense shoulders while humming that tune and thinking the words ‘let it swing, let it swing, let it swing’.  There are quite a few songs that are perfect for eyesight improvement.

Have you seen Madagascar?  The song that goes ‘I like to move it move it’ makes a good one.  The nice thing about having these lyrics in a song is that it is easier to keep it in my head during the day even while doing my work.

success stories

I like reading success stories    Some day I hope mine is a really good one.

I don’t like the title of this article, but the content is actually quite good and at the end there is a good success story:  http://www.motherearthnews.com

I also go to Ester’s site to catch up on her latest success stories.  Today I found this article by her that she read at the last NVI conference.    It took me two years to realize the point that she makes in this article and now that I’ve got it I’m making a lot of progress!  So save yourself the frustration and read it:  http://www.visionsofjoy.org/pdfs/RelaxIntoSeeing.pdf