Quick Measurements and Specificity

Two Sunday nights ago: I did many long swings and noticed the “shifty eyes” effect again; 5/80 to 5/40.

All of the following measurements were made over the course of about 5 minutes each with just breathing fully, blinking lightly, and relaxing my body:

Monday morning: 5/80 to 5/40.

Monday night: 5/63 to 5/40.  I also did some long swinging.

Tuesday morning: 3/50 to 3/30.

Tuesday night: 3/50 to 3/30.

Wednesday morning: 10/100 to 10/62.

Wednesday night: 10/200 to 10/50.  I also did some acupressure points to help relax my face and eyes (these points were found in Leo Angart’s book).

Thursday morning: 10/100 to 10/50.

Thursday night: 10/100 to 10/50.

First, I wanted to apologize if writing my posts in this format (a long list of measurements) is more irritating or not as helpful as my previous posts.  I’ve been busy with school and do not get to use my computer as often.

I’ve started trying to do my measurements in the above form for about two weeks now- I take a quick measurement in the morning and another one at night each day.  I think in the long run these quick measurements will be the most beneficial to my vision because of the principle of specificity I have learned about in many of my classes.  This principle says that a certain type of training will produce results for mainly one closely related activity.  For example, the most helpful training for a marathon runner (to increase his/her time) would be to run long distances; doing sprinting intervals wouldn’t have as much direct effect on the goal.  Another example would be someone training for free throws (to improve accuracy) in basketball.  While practicing halfcourt shots and layups might have a small, positive effect toward this goal, practicing free throw shots from different positions would improve the person’s accuracy (for free throw shots) the most.  Even though I have gotten the best visual acuity readings with Snellen sessions lasting at or over 20 minutes, this is not specific to how I will use my vision in daily life.  For tasks in the real world, my eyes need to adjust their focus in less than a second in order to be practical.   Therefore, it only makes sense to me that the majority of my vision improvement work should consist of very brief sessions where my eyes need to relax as much as possible in the short time allotted.

However, one shouldn’t train only with the exact activity that needs to be improved, other exercises can be included as supplementation.  So, I will still try to include longer sessions (over 5 minutes) on occasion in order to teach my mind/body/eyes how to reach the deeper levels of relaxation that are necessary for clear vision.

As a further observation, my default vision (without glasses) seems to be slightly clearer now.  I am able to see a little more detail in distant objects, and I can read books maybe about 1 inch further from my eyes.  These aren’t major increases, but they are slightly better than how clearly I saw a few weeks ago.

Lastly, as I typed out the above measurements, I noticed that I had a better reading after massaging acupressure points on my face (on Wednesday night). 😐 The measurement on this night started worse than the morning measurement, but it still ended better. 8) I’ll try to use the acupressure points in some future sessions in order to relax my face and eyes.

Shifty eyes

I have a lot of measurements to mention this time because I have been busy with school lately.

For the 3 measurements from last week, I just breathed fully, blinked and relaxed for about 5 minutes each time:

Last Tuesday morning: 4/80 to 4/30.

Last Tuesday night: 4/80 to 4/35.

Last Wednesday morning: 3/62 to 3/25.

Last Wednesday evening: 3/62 to 3/30.

Last Thursday morning: 5/80 to 5/40.

Last Thursday  evening: 5/80 to 5/40.

Now my measurements for this week:

Monday night: I did over 150 long swings, and my visual acuity changed from 4/80 to 4/35.  During the final swings, the objects in my visual field seemed to rapidly shift as my gaze moved over them.  The shifting was a new thing for me, but at the same time my eyes felt relaxed while it was taking place.

Tuesday night: I did long swings for a long time without counting them.  Instead, I just focused on relaxing and letting my eyes/vision do what they wanted.  My  readings went from 4/80 to 4/35.  Like on Monday, when I got into the rhythm of swinging the objects in my vision seemed to quickly shift.  The shifting was similar to if I was looking at a flip book or if a film were played just slow enough that I could see each individual frame.

Pretty much these readings are my experiments with the ideas Sorrisi suggested on her blog.  For the first week, I took Snellen measurements twice a day in order to see the overall state of my vision.  I changed the distance from the chart each day to add more variety.  While I liked doing two measurements a day, I did not make the time for it this week.  However, I would like to continue that practice soon.

Also, the two readings this week are my attempts at using high numbers of long swings.  Swinging hasn’t improved my vision in the past, but I decided to try it again to see if it is helpful at this time– it was. 🙂 Something interesting that happened both times is the shifting of objects in my visual field once I was swinging at a regular, relaxed pace.  I described how this looked on the Monday night information, and I am reminded of something else I think Sorrisi wrote in her blog on long swings.  She said that her eyes/vision also got to a point where they rapidly shifted from point to point, but then her eyes started to move smoothly and her visual acuity was improved at this point.  While I reached the shifting point, I did not arrive at the latter stage of relaxation and fluid eye movements.  Maybe Sorrisi or someone else could give me some tips/ideas on how to move past the shifty phase to the smooth phase. ❓

Anyway, I’ll post further measurements and thoughts once I make them. 😉

Fluctuations

Last Thursday night:  I practiced seeing the flash for about 20 minutes.  I started at around 10/200 and relaxed to 10/40.  After I had gotten to the point where I was “seeing the flash”, I did 100 long swings.  Finally, I swayed while switching my focus from the wall to a letter and back to the wall.  These additions were things that Sorrisi recommended in one of her blogs.  However, my best visual acuity (10/40) was before the long swings.  After the long swings, when I was swaying to one letter at a time, my visual acuity was actually lower (maybe around 10/60 at best).  I found these results interesting, but I’m not exactly sure why my visual acuity declined after the swings. 😕

Sunday afternoon:  I practiced seeing the flash for about 30  minutes while at my fiancee’s house.  I did not have a Sellen chart to check my visual acuity, but I could definetly notice the brief flashes of clearer vision after each blink.

One thing I want to mention is that I have noticed lately how much my visual acuity fluctuates (in a positive direction) throughout the day.  I am not saying that my vision is clearer in the evening than in the morning, but when I look at a distant or detailed object without my glasses I observe something like the following: the object appears blurry (probably 10/100); then as I relax and blink lightly, it clears slightly immediately after each blink.  This change is not drammatic, but is noticeable enough for me to know that my eyes are at least trying to see clearly.  As I become more able to have a relaxed mind and body throughout the day, I’m sure these fluctuations will lead to perfectly clear vision that lasts through my blinking. 🙂