Does anyone know if any of the methods in this book are effective in treating myopia and which ones to focus in on? I’m curious if any of you have experience with any of the methods in this book.
The Author Mentions the Following Techniques:
1. Palming- This is an idea from Bates about relaxing the eyes by placing your palms over them. I imagine that palming is great for eyesight relaxation. Not sure if this is tied to eyesight improvement or not, but
2. Shifting: I imagine that shifting is super important in regards to improving vision. It still takes time to grasp the concept of it, but I understand the basic idea. Our ancestor’s didn’t only look into the distance, but they scanned their environments with extreme precision and flexibility. It’s a technique lot more effective than staring at one narrow computer screen, no?
3. Central Fixation: I’m not quite sure I understand the idea behind this. Basically, our central field of vision is at its most clear, but I’m not actually sure in what capacity I would utilize that…
4. Blinking: Blinking is super important, another essential quality of the eye that computers and books can diminish. I believe the blinking is of utmost significance, it can be difficult to be conscious of it.
5. Deep Breathing: Deep breathing is good for a lot of things, including overall health. Not sure how it would affect the eyes though.
6. Movement: Another category I didn’t quite interpret clearly from the book. Not sure how movement and shifting differ from one another.
7. Memory/Imagination: Definitely “iffy” about this one. I guess it helps to visualize your goals, but I’m not sure what scientific effect that would actually have on eyesight.
8. Shifting- Close/Near/Far: I imagine this one to be of value as well. No doubt it is crucial to be able to have high efficiency in close range, medium range, and far range, and be able to alternate between them at any given point.
9. Sunning: While I have little doubt that exposure to light and Vitamin D are beneficial to the eyes, I
10. Fine Print: The mention of reading very fine print actually surprised me the most, and seems to be like quite the effective exercise. In essence, it’s pretty much the same idea as the plus lens, but in a different capacity. We are flexing our eyes to read just at the edge of blur to improve and magnify our concentration. In fact, it can be argued that fine print encapsulates the ideas of the plus lens but only with less strain.
Despite the author’s criticism of the plus lens method, I think both that and the fine print method could be effective in improving sight. Though I wonder if the fine print might even be superior. Granted, the fine print is not always an option, for example when I am looking at images on the computer I will need the plus. But for text, fine print might be the way to go.
At the very least, I would argue that we need to go back to our natural roots as much as possible and use our eyes in the same way that our ancestors did. I believe that if vision improvement is indeed possible (which I very much hope to be so) than we need to utilize our eyes correctly.
Overall, I would assume that some of these methods might be effective, others not so much. None of them hurt, at the very least. The only ones I would argue against putting into practice is sunning, simply because looking into the sunlight can do more harm than good. Also, palming can prove to be time consuming. As a whole though, these exercises can at the very least be of good supplement. Curious all of your thoughts, once more.