Recommended Books

All of these books are currently in print. There have been dozens of books published about vision improvement over the last century, and lucky for us, some of the best older books have been reprinted.

I selected these books because they are the BEST and most popular books you can get on vision improvement. They are all based on the Bates method or similar methods. These are the books that people keep buying and recommending to others, year after year, and leaving good Amazon reviews on. I try to provide the most useful information on this website, but everyone has a unique perspective, and I’m sure I picked up lots of things from these books myself.

Better Eyesight: The Complete Magazines of William H. Bates

If you want to dig deep into everything Dr. Bates had to said about vision improvement, this huge book is for you.

Dr. Bates published these small monthly magazines from 1919 to 1930. They contain articles by Bates, his assistant, and other contributors. A good portion of it has to do with his work with children, but it also has articles on his success with patients with various eye diseases such as cataract, glaucoma and others, as well as common problems such as nearsightedness and farsightedness.

Improve Your Eyesight

The author was a scientist who revsrsed his myopia with the Bates method.

One tidbit – There are two ways for the brain to fail at the visual process. One is to interfere with the mechanics of vision. The other way is altering the consistency of the barrier between the subconscious and conscious mind.

He also has a unique theory of accommodation (how the eyes change focus).

Relearning to See

This textbook-sized volume is one of the most popular and well-distributed books on the Bates method. The author has been teaching natural vision improvement since 1983 and was originally trained by Janet Goodrich, a renowned vision improvement teacher. Some years later, he developed his own unique understanding of the Bates method as visual habits that need to be practiced all day long. In this book he establishes the three principles of natural vision and the three habits of natural vision. He covers a broad variety of related topics, such as computer and TV use, lighting, the anatomy of the eye, and more.

Better Vision Now

Clara Hackett worked with over 2,800 people whose visual deficiencies ranged from nearsightedness and farsightedness to more serious problems such as glaucoma and cataracts. In the book she includes many modification to techniques that Dr. Bates established to produce better results and introducing variety to help eliminate boredom. She also utilizes the use of color in exercises instead of just black-and-white eye charts.

Help Yourself to Better Sight

Margaret Corbett, who was trained by Dr. Bates as a teacher of his methods after she helped her husband apply it, worked with some notable figures such as novelist Aldous Huxley, who also wrote a book on the subject. In 1941 she was brought to trial on the charge of practicing medicine and optometry without a license, but was acquitted of all charges after her testimony of her relaxation methods and hundreds of clients lining up eager to testify as witnesses on her behalf.

In this book she innovates many new exercises as an adjunct to the methods that Bates himself taught. As such, this book is full of different exercises to try.

Take Off Your Glasses and See

Jacob Liberman is an optometrist who realized that what he was taught in optometry school wasn’t entirely correct, and consequently he changed his ways of thinking about vision and about the entire being. This book reveals that the prescription from your optometrist is not as accurate as you may think and that chronically blurry vision can and does spontaneously clear up in an instant, despite what optometrists have been taught.

Restoring Your Eyesight: A Taoist Approach

Doug Marsh combines methods pioneered a century ago by Bates with the ancient Chinese wisdom of Taoism. Marsh describes how vision goes deeper than the eyes and optic nerves, extending well into the layers of the mind, emotions, and spirit. Eyesight difficulties are often connected to behavioral and stress-related syndromes, such as dyslexia, ADHD, stuttering, TMJ, and anxiety disorders. He draws upon the core values of the Bates method and those of Taoism – rhythm, softness, return, balance, and wholeness – to provide guidelines for a holistic healing of outer and inner vision. He has a solid understanding of the Bates method through applying it to reversing his own myopia and through extensive research on the many books written about the Bates method, as well as dozens of other sources cited in this book.

Not listed here are our free eBooks that you can read online or download.