Vistabona

To overcome eyes problems with natural medicine, it is necessary to get new habits to replace old ones. At the beginning it is not so fast as if you go to an optical consultation, but when you learn “Yoga” for your eyes, it works like an instinct to preserve your eyes for ever.

 

When I decided to start improving my vision, I read many books about Bates´s Method. I thought, I was wrong, that the program consisted of a serial of exercises and I just did them. But I didn´t improve my vision problems.  I didn´t realize until later, that the key to improve my vision consisted of relearning vision habits through the day.

 

The testimony of a man with eye defects is common to many people who tried to improve their vision with eye exercises. When they got no improvement, they picked up their glasses for the rest of their lives; they had not realized that to improve for ever, it was completely necessary forget the bad habits that, often, are rooted in childhood.

Reprogram bad habits  

There is no doubt; the construction of new viewing habits, to replace old ones. is a difficult and slow process.  After wearing glasses or contact lens for a long time, some areas of brain need a reactivation and it not only takes time but effort and perseverance.

 

To carry out the “reprogramming” you must implement a program for healing mind and body and it must include regular exercise, techniques to reduce stress, postural re-education and the proper nutrition. It will be also necessary to incorporate some new healthy practices for the rest of eyes like: daily palming, exposition to the sun with eyes closed previously washed with cold water, facial auto-massage, good light, reducing the use of glasses or contact lens and, especially, don’t expose the eyes to long periods of stress.

Some of theses basic rules of visual hygiene were presented in the previous issue of “Año Cero” and you can learn more about them in the books recommended. If you also incorporate the principles and habits that I show below, the eye improvement will be significant in s short time.

 

To get results, you have to practice exercises consciously all the time until they become unconscious habits.  If you´re consistent, the feeling of improvement will be a victory over oneself and the vision of the world will be savored with “new eyes”. With no doubt, the beginning of improvement will not be as fast as going to the optical, but when you learn the “Yoga” for eyes it becomes a kind of instinct to preserve our eyes permanently.

 

Three principles of  vision  

When the eyes are working properly, the person have the feeling that everything what he sees seems to be moving. In this way, one of the best methods to improve the view is to imitate, consciously, the movement of normal vision: you have to learn to move your eyes constantly and imaging that everything you see is moving. It´s the habit of have the eyes fixed what can damage the eyes. If you avoid it, and you move them, the view improves.

((See below box)).

 

Centralization is the second principle of natural vision. Human eye only can see one point at a time clearly because it is impossible to see clearly without centralize. When vision is not perfect, the objects that are not observed can be better watched, but when the person has a normal vision, only the central object is watched clearly, while other objects are watched with less clarity and color. If we look at a chair, we should not try to see it at once; first of all we have to look the back, watching this part better and other worse. You have to remember to blink, your eyes while you move them; from the back of the chair to seat, and from seat, to the chair legs watching better each part successively. If you want to learn to centralize correctly you should build a “halo”, and so, you will correct the unconscious habit of not focusing.

 

Relax, is the most important of the three principles of good vision because the other two are based on it. If you don´t learn to focus and to move the eyes correctly, it will be very difficult to relax them. Because the healthy eye only rests when it moves and “focuses” continuously and with no effort.

 

To get that relax, many people have to modify their incorrect habits of life. The daily facial massage and the practice of meditation, the hatha yoga or any other relaxation technique, help us to remove the tension created by years of stressful viewing habits. But to get results, it is necessary to incorporate the three habits of natural vision that we show below: contouring, breathing and blinking.

 

Three habits of natural vision  

These habits are related with the three principles of vision: movement, centralization and relaxation. At the beginning you will have the feeling that they are separated from each other. But as they are integrated, this feeling disappears.

The first of these habits is contouring - The continue practice of this, will let us to eliminate the habit of “staring”, – one of the causes of bad vision- because this becomes in an automatic habit.  To make the contour or profile of the objects, it is used an imaginary pencil (brush, pen or laser), put on the tip of the nose. In this way it is possible “contouring” the world all day.

The second habit of natural vision is breathing. Abdominal breathing is essential for health and healthy vision. If you don’t breath correctly you can learn to do it through Yoga, or with Alexander technique, which help to eliminate old bad habits of posture and breathing.

 

To finish, it is necessary to blink regularly. Many people don´t do it because they are blocked by their emotions and fairs; normally people blink every five or ten seconds. If you blink consciously all day, this practice will become in an unconscious habit which let you to see naturally and clearly.

 

Moving objects

Imagine that fixed objects move in the opposite way to the movement of eyes and head. When you walk in a room, or on the street, notice how the floor, or pavement, it seems that it approaches to you, while the objects on each side seem to move in the opposite way to the movement of your body. The correct way to do it is moving eyes (and head) from one point to another slow, regular and continuously without any effort and not trying to see. Get you a continue habit to imagine objects like if they move until it becomes an unconscious habit.

 

Build a halo.

You have to learn to focus the sight with the help of a halo.  You can build it easily with a plastic covered wire which is flexible, but hard enough, to let it be shaped.  You can use too a visor and tie it on a stick.

 

It is essential to put a vertical bar exactly in front of the nose. When you look across “focusing”, you will see two vertical bars shaping a window; instead only one. You will notice that your tendency to try to see the objects outside the window as clearly as those within, it will be corrected slowly with practice and checking that vision is better inside the window.

 

Outline with the magic pencil 

Sit down comfortably, breathe deeply and relaxed. Following, imagine you have a magic pencil on the tip of your nose and start to draw the shape of the objects. Don´t forget to move your head while you are drawing. Spend some seconds outlining the biggest objects, and after, do it with the small ones. Then, draw the nearest objects and then, the most distant. Take the pencil like a lifelong friend.  Your new habit is outline with your pencil wherever you go. Become in a “portraitist” and profile softly with the pencil of your nose the face of people you have in front of you, or that you watch on TV; Blink continuously. If you drive down the road, try to outline the cars which go in front of you. Do the same with traffic signs and with the objects on each side of the road. When you are at home, you should outline continuously and breathe deeply to refresh your eyes, the neck and shoulders. Stretch your arms and yawn.

Bye to eyestrain and hyperopia

 

Watching TV, reading continuously, working with computer screens and other activities that require a closer look are joined to presbyopia and hyperopia.  To maintain these vision defects under control, or to avoid their appearance, you must to outline all the time (look at the magic pencil paragraph). It is good to practice with a close object (a watch or a flower in your hands):

 

Cover your left eye with your right hand or with a patch (the hidden eye must be open under the hand previously recessed). Move the palm of your left hand to your face, close the right eye, and then detach it from the eye while you look at the hand and its lines carefully. Move the hand away, and then, bring it near the eye until it is out of focus. Breathe deeply six times (inhale and exhale) at the same time you “palm” your eyes (with your cupped hands covering them). Following, do the same with the other eye. Finish the cycle again with a new “palming”.

 

The practice of quick visual change should be integrated in daily habits; this is just to look consciously far and immediately after close wherever the objects are. IT is especially amusing, and healthy, to do this when you are driving: with the magic pencil of your nose, look at the end of the highway until you reach with your vision. Outline the farthest shapes for a moment, and then look at the central line in front of your car, but nonstop to outline. Look far away again and repeat this sequence inhaling and exhaling softly.

 

Read with the great white blaze

Take a piece of white paper and put it at a comfortable distance in front of you. Feel the reflective quality and its whiteness. Close your eyes and relax your harms. With the pencil on your nose, draw some white objects (an egg, flowers…). Imagine you pat the whiteness of these objects. Meanwhile, enjoying the whiteness and look at the piece of paper without stopping contouring. You will fell it is whiter than before.

This activity relaxes the vision and increases the saccadic movement of eyes so necessary to read easily. Then, take a book and practice the following:

Put the magic pencil on the tip of your nose and begin to read the book you hold on your hands without stopping to paint the white areas which there are around the letters with your pencil, included the edges of pages. Draw a white circle in the opposite direction from clockwise around the biggest letters. Are you able to see a white halo around the letters?; if so, you are watching the great white blaze. If, however, you are forcing your eyes, you will not see this blaze neither the blackest letters. A white ground is the key to read relaxed and to perceive letters correctly at all distances independently of the size.  When you are reading, don´t forget to put “white paint” around the letters: you will appreciate a greater contrast between the ink and the white ground of the paper, and letters will appear more clearly. Have a rest from time to time making “palming”, yawing and stretching. Breathe deeply, blink and non-stop painting with your pencil the white background. If you stop at the end of each paragraph closing your eyes, when you open them, you´ll see the white glow intensified and your eyes not only don´t become tired, but you´ll be able to read the smallest letter easily.

 

Confiding on peripheral vision  

When we are sat, in front of the computers, watching television or wearing glasses, almost we lose peripheral vision (this factor contributes to traffic and occupational accidents). The following exercise will help you to improve peripheral vision:

 

Look to the centre of concentric circles at the same time that the page moves in a circular motion; you´ll have the impression that circles go round. Following, with the magic pencil of your nose, outline “CONFIDENCE”; it is written below the circles without stopping to make the circular movement.  No distrust about your peripheral vision. The more you focus your eyes and move them, peripheral movements will be improved.