Eye Exercise And Bates Method Resource

[iGuest 3]

The existence of eye exercises and the relationship of ocular motility imbalances to impaired vision as well as neurological symptoms mimicking ADHD have been know in France for years. In North America and Canada the medical industry is only just beginning to recognize the relationship between ocular motility and one's eyesight. I am presently searching for a free copy of the Bates method and see if it's effective for me. I had a series of eye exercises that were beginning to work for me years ago but I was not diligent, and can no longer find my notes. 

I have no doubt that Bates may have made grand and enthusiastic claims (given the times) and perhaps in some ideal world he would be right. There are people like Shari Edwards who can hear and produce sounds that no other human being in present day records can, she is a scientist and runs a bio tech company called Nutrasound. 

Far be it from me to dispute an individual with (apparently) so many great accomplishments as the genius meditating martial artist but one really questions as to why someone with such great accomplishments would even care to go on some kind of crusade about the ambitious claims of a little known dead man. 

"Test all things and hold to that which is true" - for you. What works for one may not work for another. What's important is not to be right but be happy and fulfilled. If somebody's eye exercises  work for you - great! If not, don't waste time whining about it or trumpeting your genius from some silly cyber soap box - MOVE ON AND FIND SOMETHING ELSE!

Try EFT (emofree.Com) or TAT (tatlife.Com) or chinese medicine, or ayurvedic medicine, or generative NLP process work. The origin of many pathologies is emotional and if not the origin, emotional trauma and limiting beliefs certainly can, and do, contribute to pathological conditions. 

It's far more impressive to be helpful and encouraging than to be right. And with any real knowledge comes some semblance of humility - pity, it appears that some si-fu's and sensei's neglect to teach their students that.

[NxTGaming 0]

I just joined this forum to reply to this.

Firstly, the optometry industry does not support Bate's method because they can't really make money

from it.

 

Imagine this: myopic (near-sighted) guys walks in an optometrist shop, optometrist tells him:

 

"You can pay me a few hundred dollars for glasses which 90% of the time cements your blur (makes it

permanent). And once that happens, it's highly likely that your prescription gets worse over time as

a result of wearing glasses permanently, and you will keep having to come back to pay more money for

higher lenses."

 

Then the optometrist adds:

 

"You can also go and try the bates method. The bates method costs nothing. Except it requires some

effort and understanding on your part. Its got to do with reducing strain and retraining natural

eyesight habits that can often be lost in this modern world which evolved much faster than our eyes

could. Anyhow, there are thousands of people who have done this. Your choice..."

 

Of course the (sane) patients will go for the bate's method. Its the natural way anyway:

 

Glasses: Big, heavy, ugly, cause face strain

Fog up

Light reflections

Dust, Dirt, cleaning

Flatten image (looks smaller for myopes)

Dulls colour (all glass does this)

Need Maintenance

 

Contacts: Oxygen.

Infections (can lead to serious problems)

Protien buildup

Preakage

Eye damage

Need Maintenance

 

LASIK: Possible serious implications (eg blindness)

Some very common implications (halos, starbursts etc)

Irreversible.

New tech, unproven long term results.

 

Plus the bates method can get them back good, natural eyesight along with reduced face, head & neck

strain, which affects a lot of body strain.

 

Now how the f*** is the optometrist supposed to make money? How the hell is he supposed to keep an income? Has his whole time in optometry been a fraud? And has everything he learnt in his degree to everything he has practised in his 'profession' been a lie? ( Ans: It cant be! )

 

This fear is huge (imagine yourself in this position ), and that is why many optometrists simply deny any knowledge of it, or dismiss it as false, or in some cases, laugh at it.

 

Now, first go check out some pics of the eye's anatomy:

eye: http://www.lionsclubs.org/EN/404.php

eye muscles: http://www.perret-optic.ch/

 

Conventional accommodation theory (founded by Hermann Helmholtz) says accommodation (focussing the eye for close distance viewing) is due to the lens of the eye flexing. This is the theory followed by the Optometry industry. Bates found that people that had their lens removed from their eyes could

still accommodate. Accordng to Helmholtz laws, this isnt possible. Secondly he discovered that the

part of the eye that did accomodation was actually a pair of exterior muscles called the obliques.

And that when they flexed, they changed the shape of the eye (made it longer by 'squashing' the eye)

which was best for close vision.

 

Short-sighted people's external obliques are in a state of chronic strain. ie they are always

flexing, so the eyeball is squashed and kept longer the WHOLE time, not just when needed for close

vision. The person doesnt notice (it's a subconscious process anyway), and the visual system has

forgotten how to relax for distant vision where it doesn't need to accommodate.

 

The genius of the bates method is in using methods for relaxing this strain and relearning good

vision habits. These methods aren't 'exercises', they are vision habits which must initially be

enforced/remembered consciously until they eventually sink into the subconscious visual system and

restore natural vision.

 

Again, it is not just a set of exercises, and this is where many people go wrong. Think of those programs that teach you to touch type with those typing exercises that slowly progress. Instead of focusing on just the scope of the exercise ("type: asd fse asfe sasasa def sae sde"), which is meaningless, you should actually be focussing on what techniques and habits the exercise is trying to teach and remembering and internalising the typing habits until it becomes natural and you dont even have to think about it. Once you finally learn touchtyping, every time you type from then on in normal situations, you are practising, but you dont think of it as an 'exercise' because you dont need to. The same applies with vision improvement with the bates method.

 

Think of this as restoring the original firmware (subconscious instructions) to your visual circuitry

(your visual system) after it has been flashed with buggy firmware at a time when the computer (you) was

unstable.

 

 

Bates method consists of a few main concepts:

 

Movement: natural movement in the eyes AND the body.

Centralisation: focussing on one small central area rather than diffusing on a large area

Relaxation: seeing in the relased state

 

Each consists of a few habits:

 

Removing glasses / contact lenses

 

Movement: shifting

swaying

swinging

oppositional movement

blinking

body posture

 

Centralisation: non-Staring

mental focus/active intent

non-diffusing

 

Relaxation: sunning

palming

breathing

 

This is only a brief overview, and doesnt cover everything.

 

These things are not obvious at first, why should they be? since they are meant to be subconscious!

Once you learn them, practise a bit, and form good habits, it will start internalising. In fact, if

you practise these concepts for the first time, you will start to notice a difference straight away.

 

Some people try this and it doesnt work for them, that is because they are doing it wrong because

they dont really understand what is going on. And that they are TRYING. trying hard creates more

strain. You kind of have to just allow yourself to see differently. TRYING REALLY HARD will just

create STRAIN, which is the opposite of what you want.

 

Notice how I didnt actually tell you what each of the methods are and how to do them? Its because

these concepts and methods seem very very simple and basic if given a brief description of what to

do. Im not saying they are hard, but they can be often misenterpreted.

 

What you really want, and what I really want for you, is to really understand what is going on,

and all the subtleties of each concept that nature already designed for our vision. If you want to do this right and do it well, instead of reading up on the net about it, and going to various websites with brief descriptions and try to learn it all in one day, is to go and buy yourself a book or two about the subject.

 

I personally recommend These two books:

 

Better Eyesight Without Glasses by William Bates (you can find free legal ebook versions on the net,

This one is a bit old and full of recounts and old theory instead of techniques, but at least you get to see where it all started)

 

Relearning to See by Thomas Quackenbush (you MUST get this. based on bates method, and is VERY usefull and successfull. The quality, ease, and depth of this book is outstanding).

 

Good luck, and spread the knowledge after you have realised this works. - HyperWireD

I think the best way to exercise your eye which is for free to is to Massage your cheeks, because it basically sooth the nerves around your eye, other way is to use both of your knuckle and gently rub the both sides of your temple. Always remember to keep your eyes close if you are exercsing your eyes, or i would make you dizzy.

[inverse_bloom 0]

I actually tried excercising my eyes at a certain period a couple of years ago and didn't get any benefits. Actually i think it caused more strain, i dont believe i was doing it wrong but more so that i didn't allow my eye's enough opportunity to rest. Due to being at the computer, studying or reading books the standard eye exercises to strengthen eyes wasn't effective for me.

Edited October 29, 2009 by inverse_bloom (see edit history)

[iGuest 3]

Free eye exercises with animationsEye Exercise And Bates Method Resource

Great eye exercises with animations that demonstrate it at eyetrainer.Org

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

[iGuest 3]

horses mouthEye Exercise And Bates Method Resource

After seeing well all my life, my eyes deteriorated as I moved into my late forties. Thus summer they got particularly bad, so much so that I couldn't watch television if I was too near, could not see the computer and had to use glasses to read. Even seeing long distances was blurry.

I had no idea that there were other options to glasses. I came across Bates on the internet and started the exercises, the first night the sockets of my eyes ached, this carried on for a few days until that went, next I would wake up and my eyes felt like they had grit in them, it was as if they had dried out around the edges and suddenly  I was trying to use them, over the course of the next month, this gradually went away. If I had gone to an optician they would have jumped on this as evidence that I had somehow caused damage to my eyes. If I went for a run down the road now I am sure I would ache and pull a few muscles. I would not blame the exercise.

The change in my eyesight has been dramatic, it is a long way from perfect but I have got rid of my glasses, use the computer for much of the day without any problem and can see my phone. Very occasionally I will use my glasses maybe 3 times in a few months. I have also been a bit half hearted with the exercises and am sure could see much better if I did it properly.

I always cringe a bit when I read people stating other peoples experience as fact. Bates will work for you if you are the kind of person who is willing to believe that glasses, like prescribed drugs, are alien to the body and suppress illness, whereas the body is able to heal itself if given the opportunity.

-reply by liberteen