What are you supposed to be learning? Are you detaching from the process? How is it that you want to see details when the actions you’re taking in every moment say you don’t?
When you look at an object, notice how much you can see, if you really examine the details in the blur. People with blurry vision are in the habit of glancing at something, taking it all in “as is” without inspection, and moving on to something else. Take a moment to notice what you can see. No, it won’t be clear right away, but every time you accept what you can see at a glance, you’re telling your visual system, “That’s just fine, no need to improve my vision of that, I’ll take it as it is.” And you do this over and over, telling your visual system that it doesn’t need to do anything at all. Is it any surprise that your vision stays bad or even gets worse?
No matter how blurry something is, every time you glance at something, make a habit of also glancing at at least one small piece of it, or the smallest piece of blur you can perceive, affirming that there is stuff there to see. This is just a small change to your process of seeing. But guess what? When you start doing this, you’re changing directions. You’re repeatedly telling your visual system that you want to see more and you are not satisfied with the one glob of blur that you have been accepting. Your visual system does not understand English. It understands what you tell it to do with your actions alone. When you begin to briefly look for a smaller detail every time you look at something, it becomes more automatic, and when it becomes more automatic, you do it a LOT, and it becomes a powerful, persistent command.
Your visual system loves to focus images. But it isn’t focusing, because you’ve been ignoring the details it gives you, thereby discouraging it from giving you any more, and you even become frustrated and impatient with it as soon as what you see isn’t clear enough for you, and you quickly give up and start squinting your eyes or doing whatever it is you do. You have to give it time. As long as you keep giving it the command – your action of looking – to focus images and give you more details, it will eventually realize that you’re serious, and before long it will start responding quicker each time, because it knows you’re serious about using what it gives you.
It is as if the visual system, and the rest of the systems in your body, are individually and collectively a being that is there to work with you and support you with the only thing it knows how to do, and like any being, it will not respond well to abuse. You can squint your eyes, tense your eyes, equivalent to beating it with a stick, and sometimes the stick will work somewhat, but in the long term you’re creating a relationship that it will not tolerate, and it won’t be giving you its best performance.
There’s nothing wrong with your eyes or brain that’s preventing you from seeing clearly. You’re just not treating them in the way they expect to be treated.
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I founded iblindness.org in 2002 as I began reading books on the Bates Method and became interested in vision improvement. I believe that everyone who is motivated can identify the roots of their vision problems and apply behavioral changes to solve them.
David, thanks — this post is a gem. I’ve been aware for a long time that I’ve been abusing my eyes, and am focusing on treating them like loved appreciated abandoned kids or something similar, but I never looked at it as simply as you put it. Thanks.
I like how you are relating your hypothesis to the day to day practical. I am reminded of the book Psycho Cybernetics. It talks about how our bodies are what amounts to a cybernetic mechanism that fulfills the objective given them.
Very interesting David, I don’t stop to surprise me, of how wrong I have been in the way I’ve used my eyes all those past years, abusing of them, trying hard to clear up the image, tensing my neck, etcetera. Fortunately I’ve found the right way and it’s working, thank you!
I would like to rate this post with stars or something but i can’t find the buttom!
Lord
You say to make a habit of looking at at least one smaller point at each thing you glance at. I think what’s confused me in the past is trying to make every single shift attending to tiny points, and no longer using broad shifts to gather general data. I’m trying to understand the ratio of how much you do either one. Is it more like…..look at details of every object of interest, or look at details in every single shift of the eye/attention?
Sorry Lord, that wasnt actually a reply to your comment.
The way I see it, a shift is done as a consequential part of a process of perceiving what is there, but you shouldn’t pay too much attention to the shift itself, the same as you wouldn’t pay attention to the movement of the muscles of your body while playing tennis. You focus on what you want to do and where you want to be. So it’s an open ended question. It depends on what interests you most.
So that gets back to the idea that a myope has to change the way they are interested in objects. That maybe they have to be more involved and interested enough to find out more about what’s going on over there. For me that begs the question, why weren’t you interested in the first place? Or was it more of a fear that drives one to not move attention where it wants to go?
I’m making it a little more complex than it probably is. But I tend to think it’s not necessarily one’s interest that is off, but something HOLDING them back from attending to where they naturally feel. And that “holding back” is caused by excess effort/strain.
I think it’s a mess of consequences or feedback loops that’s hard to unravel and pinpoint just one root cause. Boredom could be a big part of it, made worse by the discomfort and disengagement of using the eyes wrong and tensing them either in fear or effort or just as an old habit.
Man, thanks for the work u have done on vision improvement. I started reading some of the first blogs and realized that all the imgaes are missing. So if you can re-upload/link them would be very nice for the new people in the site 🙂
Good suggestion! I have fixed the image links on the old blog posts.