Mark825’s Blog

One of the classes I am taking this semester (Biopsychosocial Perspectives on Physical Activity) has helped me to better understand why Bates’ approach to vision is different and more complete than the opinion held by the majority of optometrists and ophthalmologists.  As a starting point, Bates viewed vision with a biopsychosocial model while most eye doctors viewed, and still view, vision with the biomedical model.

I’ll first describe what the models represent.  The biopsychosocial model of health is comprised of three parts: “bio” refers to biological/physiological processes such as physical injuries and bacterial infections; “psycho” refers to psychological/mental/behavioral processes such as emotions, cognitions, and motivations; “social” refers to one’s relationships with other people or groups. Basically, this model says that one’s health or illness is prevented/maintained/caused by a combination of biological, psychological and social factors; this model supports a relationship between the mind and body.  On the other hand, the biomedical model (which focuses on illness) says an illness is caused by a single biological factor; this model claims that the mind and body are separate.  Just at a definitional level, it is easy to see how these models are significantly different.

These two models further explain the differences in how vision conditions are treated.  Bates treated people by addressing the physical, mental, and social factors that influence one’s vision.

• Biological factor: Bates believed that imperfect vision was directly caused by strained (external) eye muscles, which caused the eyes to be misshapen.  To treat the physical causes of poor vision, Bates addressed the mental and social factors of vision.  These two latter factors indirectly caused imperfect eyesight.
• Psychological factor: Bates believed that the direct biological causes of poor vision were caused by mental strain.  To treat the mental causes of imperfect sight, Bates taught his patients to relax their minds so that one thing was thought of best (central fixation of the mind).  Some relaxation methods he taught were swinging, shifting, palming, using the imagination and using the memory.
• Social factor: Bates believed that the indirect mental causes of imperfect vision were influenced by one’s relationship with other people.  One example of this was a story from Bates’ book which told of a school boy who could not see the chart clearly when his teacher was standing behind him and telling him to “mind what he was about”.  When Bates asked the teacher to leave the room, the boy was relieved of that stress and could read the chart perfectly.  In order to treat the social factors of poor sight, Bates either had the anxiety-causing person leave the room and/or helped the patient to not become stressed out by the thought or presence of the negative person.

Conventional eye doctors follow the biomedical model that attributes all vision conditions to physical factors.

• Biological factor: An eye has poor vision because it is physically elongated or shortened (horizontally), and/or the ciliary muscles have deformed the natural curve of the lens.  This change in shape is cause by an irreversible physiological process (which is not caused by the external eye muscles).  Since the vision cannot be improved, concave or convex lenses (glasses, contacts, surgery) can be used to adjust where the rays of light focus inside the eye.

With all this said, it is clear that the biopsychosocial model is more complete than the biomedical model.  Current research strongly supports that biological, psychological, and social factors can influence one’s health.  Furthermore, I think personal experience also confirms the veracity of the former model.  For example, a stomach ache can be caused by a variety of things.  A physical cause could be improperly cooked food (food poisoning); however, anxiety about an exam or strong anger at another person can also give one a stomach ache.

While it may seem disheartening that most eye doctors currently follow the biomedical model, I think there is hope for the future of vision treatment.  As more and more research supports that mental and social factors have a strong influence on health and illness, this new way of thinking may spread to the fields of optometry and opthalmology.  Perhaps in the future, eye doctors and vision researchers will look back and see that Bates’ approach to vision treatment was correct all along.

A couple days ago I read several of the Stories from the Clinic articles and some of the Better Eyesight magazine articles.  The articles and anecdotes were very interesting and motivating.  One of the common recommendations for a variety of myopia patients was to palm several times throughout the day when away from the clinic.  Either Bates or his assistant Emily often taught the patients how to palm during their visits, and then told them to practice it several times every day.

However, the patients weren’t just instructed to cover their eyes.  Rather, they were told to imagine something pleasant, shift on a letter they had just seen from the chart, or just talk about interesting subjects with the doctor.  The patients were not supposed to over-focus on the imagined object, but just think about it in a relaxed manner.  These additional instructions to the palming were meant to further reduce the mental strain of the patients.

With this knowledge that palming should not usually be practiced by itself, I tried palming for a few minutes while shifting (in my mind) to different parts of a capital “M” I had seen on my computer screen.  When I opened my eyes, the letters on the screen were definitely clearer for a few seconds.  I used this form of palming multiple times yesterday so that I could try to keep my mental strain reduced.  Also, I tried a few times (with less success) to just remember the relaxed feeling of when I opened my eyes after palming since Emily had mentioned that that practice helped her to keep clear sight even after a stressful day.  I think that as I use the palming/imagination technique more often, I will be better able to remember how relaxed it makes me feel.

Palming has not been consistently successful in the past for clearing up my vision.  It mostly relaxed my body and, I thought, my mind but did little to improve my visual acuity.  However, it seems that perhaps I was just not adding the mental components of imagination or memory.  I will continue to palm several times throughout the day while using my imagination so that I can reduce and prevent the mental strain that is hindering my clear eyesight.

I’m finally done with this semester of school, so now I have less stress and more free time to improve my vision.  The main differences I plan on making are using my Snellen chart every day and trying to use my glasses less.  My overall vision seems to be clearer for things in my surroundings, but I see about the same visual acuity with my Snellen chart.  I’m sure with consistent use, though, I’ll start seeing the letters clearer.

An underlying habit that I will try to practice at all times is seeing without effort.  Whether I’m looking at the Snellen chart, using my imagination, or just looking at ordinary objects, it is my goal to use little to no effort as I do these things.  Although it seems counterintuitive to my previously myopic mind that using less effort will bring me more results, I know that effortless vision is the means and goal of perfect sight.

Lastly, I’m very happy to have a community of other vision improvement people to motivate me and share their ideas!  I hope everyone is having a good week with their eyesight.

I noticed a key principle of good vision while being a passenger in a car today.  As we were driving this morning, the sun kept shining into my eyes from different directions and angles.  My first reaction to this annoyance would be to close my eyelids and scrunch up my face in order to block out the light.  However, the reaction that I chose instead was to lightly close my eyes and try to relax more.  The first reaction is pushed by the myopic part of me, and the latter is urged by the new part of me that wants to reduce mental and physical strain.

While my myopic aspect thinks that scrunching up my face and tightly closing my eyes will be the most effective action to make the bright light less annoying, I know that this reaction would only add more strain to the initial stress I had from being aggravated by the sunlight.  The more relaxed response where I closed my eyes and later opened them reduced the strain that the sunlight had previously caused.  When I used the second reaction this morning, the sunlight bothered me about 90% less than before.  I was still a little sensitive to the sunlight as I do not currently have perfect mental relaxation.  However, the more relaxed state noticeably reduced the amount of irritation that the light caused.

The two choices I faced in this story are present throughout every day in my vision improvement journey.  I always have the choice to strain more in reaction to something I want to see better or to relax more in order to let the object become clear.  This constant choice is the part of the vision improvement process that must be applied at all times.  One’s vision will become improved once more of these choices are made toward the relaxed response.

I know that I am not choosing the relaxed reaction enough, but I am definitely using this reaction more than I used to.  Even if I have been using the stressful reaction for much of the day, my vision quickly becomes clearer once I make the other choice and let my mind and eyes relax.  In order to regain perfect sight, I need to answer all my daily vision decisions with the relaxed response instead of the strained response.

At this point in my vision improvement journey, I’ve learned all the basic principles of reaching and maintaining clear vision.  This does not mean that I will stop educating myself about the topic, as I can still learn helpful techniques and read motivating stories.  However, the basic principles of perfect sight will remain pretty much the same regardless of which new techniques I learn.

Therefore, the best thing I can do now for my vision is to put my knowledge of the principles and techniques into daily practice.  I have been wearing glasses or contacts for about a decade, so it seems reasonable to me that it will just take some time for my visual system to heal back to its previous clear state.  I’ve already improved my vision a good deal from its worst point, but it will take some time to reach the level of mostly 20/10 visual acuity.  I know this process would be quicker if I had a Bates teacher to guide and motivate me, but right now I just have myself and the online vision improvement community to support my efforts.  I would like in the future to attend a vision seminar or take a lesson from a vision teacher since I am so interested in the topic; this would be true even if I had already regained clear vision.

What I’ll be working on daily now is three main things:  1. Wear my glasses as little as possible.  2. Try to be relaxed mentally and physically all day long.  3.  Learn and practice new/known techniques either with the Snellen chart or objects in order to provide extra relief of mental strain.

I want to wish everyone good luck in the vision improvement community!  You’re all in my thoughts and prayers.

I have been pretty busy with school lately, so I haven’t had the time to write on my blog as much as I would like.  In this post I want to describe new ideas/observations I’ve noticed.

The major thing I’ve been making more of a habit lately is using my Snellen chart once or twice a day.  I try to use it for 15-30 minutes at a time depending on my motivation.  After all these months of improving my vision, I am finally able to use the chart in the correct manner  the majority of the time.  The chart is now just a special object, but not a test, for my eyes to look upon.  What makes the chart special in comparison to other objects I see throughout the day is that I know what the letters should look like when they are clear and there are a variety of sizes and locations for the letters.  When I use the chart now, I am able to notice when a technique or action causes my vision to become sharper.  From this information, I am able to practice the most effective techniques for my eyesight.  While the chart is good for practicing vision activities, it is also good (indirectly) for pointing out the causes of one’s mental strain (which is causing the poor vision).

This takes some knowledge and experience, but one can tell which vision habits are lacking in order to allow clear vision.  For me, I know that my main flaw is not shifting in small enough increments.  A secondary cause of strain is not noticing the periphery as I look at the center of my visual field.  I can tell this as the activities that benefit my vision the most are conscious shifting about a very small imagined object (from memory) or period and long swings.  These activities require the use of central fixation and using the entire visual field.  When these two are combined, my vision is usually the clearest.

Based on the above information, I now understand why palming is usually not too effective at clearing up my vision- my cause of mental strain is not physical stress.  If I just needed to relax my mind and body in order to see clearly, then palming would be a good activity for me to practice.  However, my experience shows that small shifting is more important for me to practice.

Beyond these ideas, another change I’ve made is using my first pair of close work glasses (-3.00 D) for driving, which I started doing today.  I drive the same roads pretty much every day, so these glasses allow me to drive safely but with a little less clarity than my current distance pair of glasses.  Since I only need my close work glasses (-2.50 D) for seeing the projector screens at school and computer screens, my distance pair (-3.75 D) will be used very little or not at all now. In addition to this change, I am still working on wearing glasses as little as possible throughout the day.

I think the next step I will work on is using the computer without glasses.  The strength of the glasses I use for the computer is so low (-2.50 D) that I believe I can reach this goal in a relatively short time.  I know I can see clearer now through the close work pair than when I first received them.  So, instead of ordering a weaker close work pair of glasses, I think I will start transitioning to not using any glasses for this task.  I’ll probably start doing this with my home computer then later with the computers at school which I often use for homework.  I  know this goal is fully achievable if I make a habit of using small shifts and not having tunnel vision.

I haven’t been doing too much different lately: I take off my glasses when they aren’t needed, I try to relax physically and mentally, I keep blinking and moving my eyes, I try to have good posture and breathe fully, etc.  At this point in my vision journey I’ve made plenty of progress from where I started, but I still have a good amount of visual acuity to improve in order to see clearly without glasses.  Unless I learn of some quickly effective technique or idea to clear up my vision, I think I just need to keep doing what I am already while reducing the amount of time I wear glasses.

Another thing that would obviously help is more motivation, but it’s hard to increase that right now when I know my glasses are only 2.00 Diopters less than my strongest glasses (with 4.00 Diopters left before I wouldn’t need any correction).  I guess the optimistic (yet truthful) way to look at this would be to focus on how vision improvement doesn’t usually follow an even linear path. I just wish I could discover/learn of a new idea or technique that would make the path more exponential. I already know Bates’ techniques and other relaxation techniques, so I’m sure I just need to make more time for practicing the techniques that are beneficial for me.

On another note, one thing I’ve noticed more lately (it’s been happening for a while) is that I’m more interested in my other senses (beside vision) when I’m not wearing my glasses.  I’ve especially noticed this with my sense of touch as I like to feel the texture of new and familiar objects much more often now than I used to.  I think this is because before, when I was wearing my glasses, I could see the details of objects and guess at their textures and shapes.  Now, however, objects are not seen as clearly, so feeling them teaches me more about the textures and materials used in an object.  I wouldn’t necessarily say that my senses other than vision are enhanced when I don’t wear glasses, but I just pay more attention to them.  I wonder if other people who are improving their vision have noticed this same phenomenon.

I’ve been doing pretty good so far at only wearing my glasses for the computer, projector screens, and driving.  I haven’t worn my glasses for watching TV or shopping for food since the last post.  The only other times I remember wearing my glasses were during my internship (at a physical therapy facility) in order to read the displays and buttons on the electrical stimulation and ultrasound machines.  However, once I learn the layout of the machines, I will probably be able to leave my glasses off during my interning.

Something I want to comment on is the main three things I use my glasses for (computer, projector screens, driving).  I wrote them in this order because I believe I will be able to remove them from the list in that order.  I can already read a few things on computers from a normal distance, so I’m sure I will lose my need for glasses for this activity first.  At school I almost always sit in the front row and am able to see the screens with my close work (20/80) glasses.  Many of my teachers prepare handouts online with the slides for their lectures, so I am able to read from these which reduces my need to look at the screen.  So, when I am able to read papers at a normal distance (about the same distance from myself to the computer screen), I should be able to attend lectures without needing my glasses.  Finally, driving would be the last required activity for my glasses use.  This is mainly because of the laws in my state for requiring 20/40 vision to drive.  I am confident that I’m able to drive fine on surface streets during the daytime without my glasses.  However, driving on freeways or at night is not something I currently would be comfortable doing without my glasses.  Once my vision is good enough, though, I’m sure I would get used to driving in any environmental condition without glasses fairly quickly.

The steps I’m taking now to improve my vision are using my glasses as little as possible, being relaxed physically and mentally, and imagining that I can see things clearly (as recommended by Ron).  I’ll keep doing at least these things until my 3 glasses activities become 2, 1, and eventually 0.

Lately my vision seems to be clearer than in previous weeks.  I haven’t been doing too much direct vision work, but when my glasses are off I see things clearer than I used to.  The problem is that I’m wearing my glasses most of the day.

Both pairs of my glasses are reduced prescriptions (20/40 and 20/80), so they aren’t as harmful as full strength glasses from an optometrist.  However, my eyes cannot relearn how to see clearly if the glasses are doing the work for them most of the day.

So, I’m going to make a conscious effort to wear my glasses as little as possible from now on.  With the exception of emergency situations, I will only be wearing my glasses for driving, seeing the projector screens at school, and using the computer.  The rest of the time, I do not really need to wear them.  This effort will be a change because up to now, most of the time I’ve used my glasses to watch television, watch movies, go grocery shopping, and other things I can’t recall right now.

My eyes need a chance to work on their own for longer than the time in the morning before I drive to school and the last few minutes before I go to bed.  This won’t only be a physical change, but it will also be a psychological struggle to resist putting on my glasses to see a little clearer.

I’m not at the point where I can completely go without glasses for the entire day, but I need to greatly minimize the times that I do wear them.  Once I’ve persisted with this change for a few weeks or days, I’m sure my vision will become clearer at a faster rate than it is now.

I haven’t been doing too much lately as far as a vision improvement routine.  I’ve been doing long swings once or twice a day, I’ve taken off my glasses when I didn’t need them, and I’ve tried to see with an open focus.

One thing I have been thinking about is the purpose or intention of each of the techniques Bates used to cure people’s eyesight.  I know the end goal is to allow mental relaxation, which will lead to the improvement in one’s vision.  However, I have wondered why certain techniques help some people but not others.  From what I know about vision improvement, it seems that a technique will improve someone’s vision if it reduces the source of mental strain for that person.  Therefore, if a Bates instructor, another person, or the person himself knows what is causing a mental strain, a certain technique should be able to reverse their bad vision condition.  I know I can’t figure this out myself as I have only helped my own vision.  However, if all the Bates instructors and people who have improved their eyesight combined the data on what techniques helped people with certain types of mental strain, it seems that the vision improvement process could be more quickly and efficiently carried out.

Anyway, I thought I would at least give my limited opinion on the purpose of each technique:

• Long Swings: The purpose of this technique is to prevent staring.  Since one’s visual window is constantly moving (as one’s focus does with the universal swing), one is not able to look at any point for more than a split second.  This technique should be helpful for those who have bad eyesight because they constantly stare at objects for too long without movement.
• Palming: The purpose of this technique is to allow physical and mental relaxation.  One’s body is relaxed because they sit/lie in a comfortable position to do this technique, and one’s mind is relaxed because all light stimulation is blocked out and there is nothing to see.  This technique should be helpful for those that have reduced vision because they are constantly stressed out with their body and/or mind.
• Shifting: The purpose of this technique is to prevent staring.  This is at a smaller level than the long swing because it only applies to the center of one’s visual field.  This technique should be helpful for those who have poor vision because they do not look at many tiny parts of an object in order to see the whole.
• Central fixation: This is not an action or technique, but it is a characteristic that describes how people with clear vision see.  With a central fixation of vision, one sees the periphery and center of the visual field at the same time, but the center is the clearest area.  This technique should be helpful for those who have decreased eyesight because they try to see entire objects clearly instead of seeing one small part of the object clearly at one moment.

I’m sure this classification of the techniques is not perfect (and maybe the techniques aren’t even able to be categorized), but this is what I currently believe the purpose of each technique is.  If anyone has any suggestions for changes/additions/removals, please leave a comment and I will be happy to read them.