This article was posted to USENET newsgroup sci.med.vision on Dec 11,
1995. It was originally found on CompuServe.
I Can See
by Adam Klein
PREFACE
This is the story of how I learned to see clearly without
the aid of refractive (usually called corrective) lenses. I write
it because I feel a duty to inform as many people as I can that
improving one's naked eyesight is a real possibility despite the
skepticism of the eye care professional world. I will refer to
such apparently unrelated subjects as singing, memory palaces,
high-tech catalogues, myofascial trigger points, yoga, diet and
pinhole glasses in order to show how these things combined in my
life to allow me to shed the crutch of eyeglasses, and so some of
those who read this will be encouraged to try for themselves, or
keep trying.
INTRODUCTION
For centuries, no one from Europe sailed past the western
tip of Africa for the simple reason that they had been told with
no room for doubt that the world ended there and they would
surely perish if they passed it. The feelings I experienced the
first time I encountered success in the retraining of my eyes
must be similar to those felt by the sailors of that first ship
that saw the southwest African coast. An elation that despite
everything I'd been told all my life it was truly possible,
though at the time I had no idea how far I'd be able to take this
journey, that is, if I'd ever see clearly all the time. A deep
anger at the fact that I hadn't found out about it sooner,
because almost no one knows about or believes in these
techniques, and because due to my ignorance my social life during
the nineteen years I wore glasses was almost certainly much
lonelier than it would otherwise have been. Those who don't wear
glasses as children and teenagers have no inkling of the
psychological effect imposed on the children by the wearing of
these things. We are branded as nerds, brainy misfits, unathletic
"spazzes," to use the slang of my day. When I learned, through
personal experience, that most children wouldn't need glasses if
these techniques were learned, understood, standardized and
disseminated, the ostracization of all these children as being no
less different from what is called normal than being of another
skin tone or sexual preference became to me a heinous crime, a
perpetratorless, victim-replete crime. Thus it is for those like
me, of all ages but especially those as yet unborn, that I must
tell my story, in the hope that in the future the techniques of
eye training will be taken seriously and become a part of the eye
care arsenal in the war against blurred vision. I have nothing to
sell; I consider awareness of this information to be a right of
all those not diagnosed at 20/20.
MY UNWITTING PREPARATION
I learned some Hatha yoga techniques when I was eight years
old. The degree of body awareness it gave me has proved extremely
useful in my adult life. One technique, a breathing exercise, in
part requires the person to relax all the muscles in the body
(besides the ones needed for sitting up) by noticing tension and
releasing it. This is done in conjunction with regulating the
breath with the intention of slowing the heart rate (which many
medical practitioners will argue cannot be brought under
voluntary control) and generally relaxing the body. Years later,
when I learned the techniques of operatic singing, I was able to
apply this relaxation technique by noticing and releasing tension
in muscles not necessary to the production of an efficient tone.
(Many opera singing techniques pay little attention to the fact
that there are many sets of muscles in the laryngeal area, and
very few are needed for singing. The great diversity of tonal
color among singers is due to the many possible combinations of
muscular action by which one can make a sound, each of which will
result in harmonic structures predictably different from the
others.) The difficulty in singing is that the muscles used to
phonate are not directly controllable, like the heart rate. One
must find ways around this obstacle of inaccessibility through
mental images designed to get the muscles to act properly, and of
course through audiofeedback. For ten years daily I practiced
these concepts guided by my teachers, and my voice underwent many
changes in size, timbre and sustain ability, some drastic. I thus
became accustomed to searching for a sound that initially would
have been unimagined in my mind or ears, but would, when the
proper muscular combination was used, often accidentally,
suddenly make itself manifest. Because of this constant change in
the sounds I was able to produce, I learned to dissociate the
sound of my voice from my personality, which some singers and
many nonsingers never do, and by extension to dissociate all
other aspects of my physical being from my personality, excepting
of course those attributes innate to my sex, whatever they may
be. Through this experience I came to understand on a personal
level that things are often not as they seem.
In 1983 my father was diagnosed with lymphoma, and because
of the dismal forecast given him about his life by the doctor who
diagnosed him, he sought an alternative cure. Through this search
of his I became acquainted with the Hippocrates Health Institute,
which promotes a cure for cancer through a diet of only raw,
alkaline-reaction-inducing foods. Though several people had been
helped back to health by this diet, my father's version of it
eventually failed and he underwent chemotherapy, but due to the
year on this diet his body was much stronger and better able to
withstand chemo's chemical onslaught, and in fact he never lost
his hair, even when he was given the drugs he was assured would
make it fall out. (Also, the cancer in his bone marrow at his
first biopsy, before the diet, had somehow disappeared by the
time he decided to undergo chemo.) This adventure taught me that
the medical community, no matter how much they insist we submit
to their care, actually know very little about the workings of
the human body. The nutritional industry is similarly sailing
equally uncharted waters. I became predisposed to distrust these
and other authorities when it comes to proclamations concerning
the abilities and inabilities of the human organism.
In 1972 I got my first pair of glasses. I had resisted them
for a year, saying I didn't need them, but once I got them I wore
them constantly, except to see closely. It bothered me that every
time I had a checkup my eyes had slipped a little more into
myopia, starting at 20/70 and ending at my last checkup in 1984
around 20/300. (20/70 is "legally blind" in New York State.) I
was never given more of an explanation for this decline than that
it was a normal progression for myopes. When I took genetics in
high school and college, I began to wonder why I was the only
myope in my entire family, including parents, both brothers,
uncles, aunts, and cousins. Genetically this made no sense to me.
So for years I doubted the eye care industry's claim that my
condition was unchangeable, but I found no concrete
substantiation of my suspicions until 1991.
In 1989 I was led to the book "The Art of Memory" by Frances
Yates through my participation in an avant-garde opera by Robert
Ashley, "Improvement: Don Leaves Linda" which refers
allegorically to Giordano Bruno and memory systems, and through
my acquaintance with one Philip Guerrard who was familiar with
Yates' books on these subjects. The art of memory is a technique
of using imagery as an aid in the memorization of speeches by
ancient Greek orators. It involves building structures, e.g.,
houses or palaces, in one's imagination, to house images chosen
for the ability of their attributes to remind one of an idea,
phrase, or even a word. The theory is that since humans depend so
much on visual information, it should help in the retention in
memory of such abstract things as words or ideas if one links
images to them, preferably striking images. I tested this on
myself, and made a house for all the jokes I knew, since I had
long been annoyed by my inability to remember all the jokes I
knew at parties or on long car trips with new acquaintances. It
works. I can now at will call up from memory any one of over
fifty jokes simply by mentally looking through the house I used
and seeing the representative objects I placed there. I then used
the art to help me remember all the important facets of my vocal
technique, which was easy since many of them were images already.
I thus became able much more quickly to figure out which part of
my technique I wasn't paying enough or any attention to when I
was having vocal trouble. This made me better prepared to improve
my eyesight when those techniques useful to me asserted
themselves over the other ones not specific to my personal
psychomuscular makeup. I made a house for them as well, some
images of which are described later.
MY CHANCE EXPOSURE
In 1991, I was singing the role of Don José in Philadelphia, and
I glanced at a Hammacher-Schlemmer catalog that a chorus member
had brought to rehearsal to alleviate the tedium of waiting for a
chorus scene to be rehearsed. In the catalogue was an ad for
"aerobic glasses," made of opaque plastic and studded in a
honeycomb pattern with pinholes. It advertised seeing clearly
without using lenses and improving eyesight. The concept of
pinholes was familiar to me: before I allowed myself to wear
glasses I had discovered that I could see better if I formed a
small hole with both pairs of thumbs and index fingers and
looking through them. I ordered the "aerobic glasses" at an
exorbitant price ($40.00; I later saw the same thing in a health
food store in Iowa for $25.00. They're worth about 50" in
material, if that.) and received them at my next job, which was
Faust in Durham NC. I wore them and shared them with fellow cast
members, who were amazed at the effect they produced. Almost
everyone who tried them could see fairly clearly, and what amazed
them was that it could be done without lenses of any sort.
With the "glasses" came a booklet called "SECRETS OF SEEING
WITHOUT GLASSES OR CONTACTS" which described exercises to do to
strengthen and relax the muscles around the eye, a schedule for
wearing the "glasses" and also a reference to one Dr. William
Bates, on whose original techniques the writers of this pamphlet
had allegedly improved. I mentioned that name to the woman
playing Marguerite, Kay Lowe, and she said she had his book. I
borrowed and read it. The pamphlet writers had not improved on
Bates' technique, only added others, and actually misrepresented
some of the most important exercises.
Dr. William H. Bates, M.D., wrote his book "The Bates Method
for BETTER EYESIGHT WITHOUT GLASSES" in the early part of this
century, and it was published by Emily Bates in 1940. Bates, who
died in 1931, was an ophthalmologist in the New York area who
taught himself to overcome his presbyopia ("farsightedness") and
then proceeded to refine and augment the techniques he developed
for himself to help others to learn to see without the aid of
lenses. (The book is still available for purchase. (It is an "Owl
Book," published by Henry Holt, New York.) It was during my
reading of the chapter "Imagination as an aid to vision" that I
first experienced the possibility of long-lasting vision
improvement.
The book described a process of observing a letter at a
distance at which it appeared in clear focus, then using memory
of the letter to imagine it clearly while viewing it at distances
at which it would not be seen clearly (in my case, farther away).
One could increase the distance in small increments, as Bates had
one woman do. I applied this technique immediately after reading
it to a few whole words on the page I had been reading. It
worked. (It must be emphasized that I read the book with my
unaided eyes. I believe it would do no good to read it while
wearing glasses. because one couldn't then immediately try out
the various exercises described.) I held the book farther away by
degrees until I was seeing the words clearly at a distance twice
that at which I had been able to see clearly with my naked eye
for the past decade and a half. By the time that gig ended I was
able after some practice to read book spine titles on my TV eight
feet away. The first title I read this way was "Wonderful Life"
by Stephen Jay Gould. I am not a believer in fate or occult
connections between things, but that title was appropriate, I
thought.
Some of the explanations in Bates' book for various eye
problems have been superseded by modern advances in methods of
physical examination and a better understanding of the behavior
of light. But his techniques for relaxation of the eye
musculature have not, to my knowledge an in my opinion, been
significantly improved upon.
THE TECHNIQUES
The techniques in Bates' book which I found most helpful to
me (it must be understood that eyesight, like singing, is a
highly psychological endeavor and no one set of images will work
for any two people, let alone everyone)were: Palming, Shifting,
remembering the color black, never staring at any one point for
more than a second, and using the letter chart provided with the
book to help relax the eye muscles (not the ciliary muscle, the
ones around the eyeball, the ones responsible for moving the eye
around. They can not be felt when they're contracting and I
discovered that mine had been locked in a certain combination of
tension for many years, which had increased incrementally by each
checkup). Please read his book to learn about these techniques in
detail. The arcane writing style and the quaint naïveté of
someone writing before television can nevertheless be digested. I
will describe here the tricks I've discovered myself that are not
described by Bates.
THE NECK CONNECTION
My next gig after FAUST was in Chautauqua NY, where I
attended a lecture by a trigger point specialist, which is
someone who alleviates muscular pain such as headaches by
application of an understanding of the relationships between
incorrectly contracting muscles and pressure points called
trigger points that if properly massaged bring about a release of
the offending tension. His live demonstration on singers he had
never before met convinced many of us that there was some
substance behind his radical rhetoric, and convinced me that his
reference book "Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger
Point Manual" would be worth having. (He wore glasses, and I
asked him if he'd heard of Bates, and he said yes but didn't seem
interested in applying it to his own field. I found it curious
that even someone as far from the medical mainstream as a trigger
point specialist, and someone who constantly worked to relax
others' muscles, should show such little interest in improving
the function of his own eye muscles.) I bought the book through
the local bookstore at home. It is a user-friendly reference
guide to alleviating muscle problems by the use of diagrams
showing the many trigger points and which muscles they affect. It
led me to wonder if there were eye-muscle trigger points, and
several months later I discovered one while on a long car trip.
Once I learned to see clearly fairly often, around 40% of
the time (and the rest of the time was never nearly as blurry as
it had been when I wore glasses) I was able to drive with unaided
eyes, except at night when my eyes got tired and it became more
difficult to relax them. (Since then I have become able to drive
quite late into the night with unaided eyes.) One evening I
began to massage the neck muscles at the base of the skull. I
found that if I held pressure on these muscles my eyes would
involuntarily see more clearly. It took several more months for
it to occur to me that I didn't need to constantly hold my
fingers to my neck to see clearly more easily, that the same
result could be achieved by using muscles on the other, anterior,
side of my neck to counterbalance the pull of these rear muscles
and relax their hold on my eyes. The memory image I use for this
is a seahorse, because of the curvature of their heads and necks.
When I use the muscles in front of my ears to rock my head
forward and loosen those rear neck muscles, it feels like I'm
imitating a seahorse.
BLINKING
When I first started learning to release the ocular tensions
accrued over the years, my yoga background was invaluable. I soon
became aware of many theretofore unrecognized tightnesses in the
eyes brought on by various actions. One of the very first I
noticed was a tension brought on by blinking. This is difficult
to describe, and I must use image metaphors. The way I learned to
blink had a feeling associated with it similar to the action of
pulling shut a long trapdoor than was suspended by a spring at
the free end, and pulling it from a position about halfway down
the length of the door. Another analogy would be using one's foot
to depress a spring-loaded organ or synthesizer volume pedal. Or
simply pushing down a cafeteria-type spring-loaded dish holder
mounted on a table the surface of which is at shoulder height,
with the tips of one's fingers from as far away as one could
reach, keeping the arm perfectly straight. If you can keep one
eye wide open and the other shut but not at all squinting, they
way you keep the eye shut is the way I used to blink. This way of
blinking, I found, caused my eyes to blur a bit, and I quickly
started blinking more, as it were, with the front muscles of the
eyelids, those muscles employed when one shuts the eyes tight
while also raising and stretching the upper lip in a smiling
grimace. It would be like going to the free end of the trapdoor
and pulling down gripping the edge with the palm side of your
forearms facing you. Or using your thumbs an the very end of the
organ pedal instead of your whole foot along its entire length.
Or just sitting on the plates. It was a very noticeable blink and
resembled a nervous twitch. Gradually I allowed myself to blink
in a more normal-looking manner, but without the old blurring
tensions. I use the large "front blink" now only when the other
techniques aren't helping, or when time doesn't allow more
effective but slower techniques like shifting. The memory image I
use for this is the old Porky Pig, way back before Bugs Bunny was
created when all toons had drops of sweat eject from the tops of
their heads when they got nervous, and their eyelids were dark
and shiny and opened and closed with a mechanical precision. A
better image for some would be that mechanical owl in "Clash of
the Titans" whose eyes blinked so loudly.
THE INNER EYELID
Any Trekkie will identify with the above title and its
presence in Vulcans which allowed Spock to instinctively shield
his optic nerve from the blinding rays of McCoy's experimental
light bombardment which killed the creature within Spock. Its
relevance here is that there's no better way to describe one of
the tricks I discovered to keep my sight clear. It's related to
the blinking problem, except that one applies this feeling with
the eyes open. It actually feels like I'm lifting up another
eyelid that sits directly on top of my eye, like lifting up a
long skirt to reveal a white petticoat. It's a very calm feeling
when it's achieved, and until I discovered the Seahorse and
Zaphod techniques was one of my main tricks. I say "tricks"
because one must trick the muscles into behaving with these
images. The image for this one is, of course, Mr. Spock himself.
SEEING BEYOND
In Des Moines, the summer after my initial success, I
discovered a trick more mental than muscular. It's important to
not let the sight process get nervous, because it will panic and
the muscles will contract severely (and bring my vision back to
where it was when I needed glasses). To this end I tried to
understand what it was that made my eyes go myopic in the first
place. Bates talks about the effect that reading a lot has had on
people's eyes in general, i.e. we have trained our eyes to see
close in order to read, and many of us try to apply the muscle
ratios needed to see very close to seeing far away, which doesn't
work. The eyes have been shaped by nature (those of you who still
don't believe in evolution will not like this. Sorry.) to see
images far away. Seeing close is of secondary importance, in
terms of survival. But the eye can adapt to either extreme. Force
of habit will cause it to let one set of muscular ratios
predominate, and since seeing far requires little or no muscular
adjustment from a state of rest, since the eye was built to see
far, living a life where most sight is for distant objects, the
muscles necessary to see really close will from disuse "forget"
how to do it, like our toe muscles which only in persons without
the ability to use hands are exercised enough to make the feet
able to write with a pencil, though we all have the same sets of
muscles. Conversely, prolonged use of the eye muscles for close
work will tend to lock them into that pattern of performance, and
one will with great difficulty if at all be able to relax them
again to see far. (Computer screens are especially hard on eyes,
because the screen image is not clear to start with, and the
tendency to stare to see it clearly is encouraged.) Charles
Darwin, in "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex,"
makes the observation that "savages," as he calls them, meaning
no disrespect, overwhelmingly see at a distance much better than
Europeans. Of course. Savages don't read books all the time.
My eyes had gotten used to focusing in order to see close. I
speculated that their tendency through learned unconscious habit
to focus on close things, which entails crossing the eyes to
varying degrees depending on proximity, probably was affecting my
ability to see distant objects. In other words, my eyes were
using see-close techniques for both near and far vision. At
least, I thought, my eyes were thinking that objects were closer
than they really were, and not understanding when they weren't
getting a clear image. (To extend the Star Trek reference, in the
first movie V-GER was thinking, "I have sent the creator the
correct sequence. Why does the creator not respond?" Or in
Robocop when he says "my targeting system is off." But he knew
why. My eyes didn't.) I tried tricking my eyes into focusing for
the proper distance by pretending the object in question was a
little farther than it seemed. I got this idea while looking at
the pattern of tiles in the Men's Room and trying to get the
parallel lines to converge. This was a game I had played for many
years, but now with my eyes more relaxed it had the effect of
clearing up the image, specifically of removing the false second
image caused by astigmatism, which according to Bates is simply
another form of incorrect muscle adjustment. Just as all the eye
muscles contracting will elongate the eyeball, so a few of them
contracting will warp the ball just enough for the cornea to
become uneven, which causes astigmatism and hence multiple
images.
(Also, in the pamphlet that accompanied the "aerobic
glasses" was an image of a stop sign that was split into two
images, neither of which had all the parts. One is asked to bring
the images together by looking as if at a distant object so that
the stop sign becomes complete. One could do something similar on
this page by trying to make the following two sets of letters
converge in order to form a five-letter word (BATES):
X X
B T S A E
X X
A E B T S
X X
Line up the X's and see if you can see all 5 letters in the
words. It's tricky. [This document or at least the previous five
lines should be printed in a monospaced typeface, 10 characters
per inch.] The purpose of this picture is to train the eyes to
diverge in direction while looking at a close object, which helps
relax them. It also causes the image in each eye to be equally
important, forcing the weaker or less-used eye to pull its weight.
This is probably the only part of that pamphlet of any value.)
With this trick I was for the first time able to hold my
vision clear for long periods, that is longer that 20 seconds,
without constantly shifting focus. I was able using this method
to go through Lucia di Lammermoor's entire mad scene with sharp
images, and that was in low light. My memory image for it is
Zaphod Beeblebrox from the Douglas Adams "Hitchhiker" trilogy
(now in five books), since he has two heads. When one looks past
an object in the foreground, one will see two of the close
object. When one looks at the foreground object, one sees two of
the background object. I try to turn Zaphod's two heads into one
by looking past them. Curious logic, I admit, but memory systems
work best when they're quirky.
MUSCLE STRETCHING
As a matter of muscular hygiene it is good to keep the muscles
stretched out -- ask any dancer or gymnast. The same applies to the
eyes In the morning, or whenever they're tired, it helps to
stretch the eye muscles by moving them to their extremes- right,
left, up, down, and all directions in between. Many people have
advocated this exercise; I saw it illustrated in a Charlie Brown
cartoon when I was young. Most, I'm sure, never took the exercise
seriously. My image for this is a Cylon warrior. Watch Battlestar
Galactica, you'll understand why.
THE SIDE OF THE HEAD
At the same time I discovered the Seahorse muscle, I began to try
consciously relax the muscles between the eyes and ears on the
side of the head. These are not the same as the muscle I use to
rock my skull forward, which is in front of my ear but attaches
to my neck. These muscles are limited to the skull and extend up
under the hair. The feeling I get when my sight is absolutely
clear is one of utter freedom from tension, and thinking about
these muscles often helps achieve that. My image for this is the
famous Munch painting "The Scream," because of where the
subject's hands are- right on those muscles, or slightly below.
Positional accuracy is not important.
CROSSING AND RELEASING
When I went to Paris to perform Ashley's opera at a festival
there, I became more aware of a tendency for my eyes to want to
cross when the image wasn't clear. For months I had resisted this
urge, thinking it counterproductive. But now it occurred to me
that maybe there was a tension problem there that I wasn't
allowing to be resolved, so I let them cross. I had discovered
early on that while practicing with the eye chart in the morning
(and in this I combined palming with remembering black and
shifting so that one eye was covered while the other tried to
relax), the way each eye would go about relaxing would start with
it focusing really close (I didn't at first notice, since the
other eye was covered, that this involved the covered eye
crossing while the open one kept looking straight ahead), then
gradually as I shifted it back and forth across the line of
letters it would come into focus. (I also learned at this time
that the eyes focus independently of each other, for when I would
switch eyes the newly uncovered one rarely was seeing with the
same degree of clarity that the one I had been practicing with
was. This explained to me the difference between my eyes in my
prescription. The right one had always measured up slightly
weaker; actually it was just trying harder to see close. Now the
right one sees clearly at least as often as the left one does.)
Now, in Paris, I did the same thing without the other eye
covered. They crossed, and I would shift my attention from what
one eye was seeing to what the other was seeing, back and forth,
and as they relaxed they would uncross and both eyes would be
clearer. It's an interesting exercise to alternately disregard
what the other eye is receiving. It made it clear that my eyes
hardly ever see with equal clarity, and sometimes, depending on
the circumstances of the light, even see colors differently. It
also helps to make the more blurred eye clearer to instantly
compare its image to the clear one. My memory object for this is
the old Wilkinson blades sword logo, since they cross. In
combination with the Zaphod technique, this can get the eyes
clear very quickly.
THE FOREHEAD MUSCLES
This is my most recently codified relaxing tactic. After the
Seahorse and side-of-the-head muscles had been employed for a
while, I became aware of tension located in the area above my
eyes, basically the forehead region. (I must stress that I was
unaware of this tension until I'd been relaxing other muscles in
the vicinity for some time. Indeed, this can be said for all the
tensions I've released: In their turn, each was noticed only
after others had been released, except of course the first one,
which was released through suggestions from the Bates book as
outlined above.) This forehead tension is quite subtle and I have
been able to release it only through imagining the muscles to be
more relaxed than they are, in effect willing them to release. It
is difficult to effect this release without incurringor letting
recur other tensions nearby, such as beneath the eyes. Still, on
a recent road trip I enjoyed my highest percentage todate of
absolute clarity with this concept, in conjunction with the
Seahorse, shifting, remembering black and crossing & releasing.
My image for this, I hope rather obviously, is the head of a
Sperm whale with its enormous forehead area.
A WORD ON MY IMAGES
The images I have chosen to remind myself of the techniques
herein described and the ones from the Bates book that I use that
I have not described, have particular relevance in my life. I
don't expect any of them to mean much to anyone else. If you
choose to use mnemonic devices in your journey to better vision,
please pick images of special meaning to you, for they are most
easily remembered.
CONCLUSION
With my concepts and techniques kept readily accessible in my
memory, I am able to successfully fight the incorrect muscular
habits formed in my childhood and reinforced during the years I
was dependent on refractive lenses. As time passes, it gets
increasingly easier to keep my eyes relaxed and see clearly. I
almost never wear glasses any more, and then only extremely
briefly when I need to read a street sign while driving at night.
The few times when I'm unable to adequately overcome eye tension,
which are now no longer than half a minute and occur only after
extended computer work or at the end of a long day, are a
pittance to pay for the freedom from frames or contact lens
chemicals and their accompanying expense. One of the greatest
benefits is the ability to lean my head against something, be it
a pillow or my beloved's breast, without any obstruction or worry
about having to get up later and put contacts in a solution, and
watch the TV or a sunset or the stars. Another great thing is
that people look at me differently without the wall of lenses on
my face. I didn't like contact lenses- they made my eyes tired
and were too much trouble-so I went from a bespectacled aloof
intellectual to a personable "normal" guy in the space of three
weeks. I can play frisbee in the rain and go swimming with
perfect clarity and no problems of fogging or losing a contact. I
don't have to worry about where my glasses are. The list is very
long.
Make no mistake, to unlearn bad vision habits is difficult
and requires constant attention. It requires a strong will,
immense patience and great determination, and mostly the desire
for the freedom success brings. Everyone who wears lenses should
be given the opportunity to apply Bates' techniques. All they
have to lose is the freedom they are already denied by their
dependence on their lenses. The gains are comparatively
immeasurable. But millions are denied the mere possibility of
awareness of these facts by the silence of those who, since they
were taught otherwise or tried and failed, will not spread this
knowledge. A recent National Geographic article on vision stated
categorically without mentioning theories to the contrary, that
science does not know the cause of myopia. Answering my letter to
the editor, which pointed out Bates and his technique and its
success in my case but which was not printed, the editor wrote me
that, due to space considerations and expected interest to
readers, many things, INCLUDING BATES' "THEORIES," had to be
omitted! I wrote back asking what could possibly be of more
interest to readers of an article on vision than the possible
existence of an inexpensive way for a large percentage of
lenswearers to rid themselves of their optical crutch. I have
received no response to my second letter. And the Bates method
was once again ignored. Bates' book has been in print over fifty
years. It was sheer luck that I came across it at all. Once
again, it's not a conspiracy. It is the inertia of ignorance and
the inability of most people to think outside strictly
conditioned pathways. I hope this little treatise will encourage
others to give the Bates method or some variant a try and
hopefully experience the joy I have.
Adam Klein
June 1993
UPDATE July 1994
Still not using glasses. Also, still not seeing clearly 100% of
the time, but more often than before, with less work. I have been
experimenting with where to focus the idea of relaxing, that is
where in the eye area to simply "tell" the muscles to relax. This
is a direct steal from my singing-learning process, and also from
yoga. Try to feel tension, and then relax to get rid of it. The
two spots I've been comparing are between the eyes and near their
outer edges. I talked to a medical student in February, and he
mentioned that there was a muscle that attaches obliquely to the
eye, from the nose side on the bone to the temple side on the
eye, and I wondered if that was the muscle which was making my
eyes cross and not the ones on the outer part of the eye. After
four months of trying to relax one and then the other region, it
seems clear that for me it's better to relax the outer areas They
seem to be what makes my eyes cross, not the ones in between. So
the "Geordi LaForge" area (described above as the "The Scream"
image, but since then changed to Geordi, because of where his
visor attaches to his head-- the actual area is slightly below
where those clips seem to be, but close enough) is evidently one
of the most important ones these days to concentrate on. Since
settling on that area over the inner one, I can see clearer
longer in much less light than before.
I should mention that my eyes never crossed before I
started to figure out how to relax them, and they don't stay
crossed. It's just until the muscles that are making them do that,
which are very hard to feel, relax.
I have discovered Stereograms, random-dot and otherwise.
If they're wide enough, that is, if one needs to look very close to
parallel to see the image-- in other words, when the fusion dots
approach 2.5 inches apart, they're very good for relaxing the
eyes. Besides, they're too cool for words. I've even managed to
make a stereoscopic desktop pattern for use with Wallpaper*,
which itself, when using the 128x128 pixel patterns, is good for
relaxing. A large monitor helps.