What Is the Shape of Your Eyeballs?

 

I need to mow my lawn.

 

I missed a photo-opt yesterday when the sun was out--today it's not.

 

Yesterday, January 15, the sun came out in honor of  Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. And in the evening the sky was dressed in a gorgeous pink light.

 

How's Your Weather?

 

We're iced in. No sunshine either.

 

The robins continue to arrive in the mornings to feast on the bush outside my window. Yesterday, there were ten; three days ago, there were two, today they are sleeping in.

 

Glad to supply breakfast, guys. 

 

The robins are round. (Is this where the term round-robin comes from?) I don't know if they're fat or fluffed out, but typically, robins aren't round birds. These are still playing their game of flying up under a cluster of berries and catching berries on the fly. Cute. (I don’t want to repeat myself if you read Jo’s Newsletter.)

 

As I have said before, your worldview depends upon which window you are looking through.  

 

I managed to open the chicken yard gate today by throwing a few loads of hot water on icy snow. 

 

Then, once I squeezed through the almost ample space for me in the gate opening—and shaved a little off my backside in the process—I scraped the ice away from the gate to open it and replenish their food and water. 

 

There is a slight incline up to the gate and I have polished the ice by gingerly walking on it. Today one chicken skied down the slope to escape the yard and didn't sound happy with the speed at which she had done it. Luckily, she had wings for balance, or is that Ailerons for roll?  Either way she adjusted her attitude.  Often a difficult feat.

 

Vision Training Again. 

 

The following quote motivated me into action:

 

"We're getting elongated eyeballs from focusing on the computer screen." -- The Internet.

 

 

I screamed, "If we can change the shape of our eyeballs by staring at a computer screen, we can change our vision with exercises." 

 

I blogged about The Bates Method of Vision Training in January of 2021. That post got more comments than any other with folks asking for more.

 

Well, here’s more.

 I have created a small booklet (58 pages) telling what I remember from 30 years ago when I took vision training using the Bates Method.

 

 

I'm a layperson who is using my own experience as data, plus a little research thrown into the mix.

 

 

See Jo's Newsletter for more information.

 

 

 

Consider this: The eyes, like other body parts, can heal. 

 

A testament to the Bates Method of Vision Training was that during my training while sitting in a dimly lighted restaurant, I was the only one of six people at the table who could read the menu.

 

I entered the one-on-one vision training needing glasses to read the phone book. (Remember phone books?) I left the training with 20/20 vision and could read the phone book.

 

I found data regarding The Bates Method of Vision Training in The Art of Seeing by Aldous Huxley. Huxley was virtually blind from a severe eye infection when he was 16. He functioned as a sighted person by using strong glasses, which exhausted him. When he discovered a trainer who knew of the Bathes Method and after applying the exercises, he said, "I gained sight that was better than when I was using spectacles." 

 

click on image

 

 

Well well, weather: I just went into the house to make toasted cheese sandwiches and whap, the power went off. Rats. How many of you have power? The world is doing a number on us isn’t it? I discovered that our propane range does light with a match, so we have a cook top, and hubby and I had toasted cheese sandwiches for lunch.

 

I came back to my office while I still have battery power on my computer, and where Sweetpea asked me what happened to the heater? I figured I would finish this blog, and when the Wi-Fi is on, I will send it.

 

Keep the faith.

 

Thanks for reading. You are my special people. Whoa, my fingers are getting cold.

 

Aloha, (Sending warm thoughts.)

 

 

https://joycedavis.substack.com

 

I'd Like to Give The World...

 

A Puppy!

Imagine having the eager anticipation of that little boy.

On the home front:

As I drove into town yesterday morning, the tree limbs alongside the road looked as though drawn with a Quill pen using India Ink. The telephone poles were bold, black, straight, arms stretched to electrical wires. I looked to the hills beyond the grass fields and saw the dramatic layered gray of mountain ranges as often featured in black and white photographs. 

“I can see clearly now!” [(Musical notes] The day before, I had a lens clouded with cataracts removed from my right eye and replaced with an inter-ocular lens.? And then, on a different route coming from that post-opt visit, ten brilliant white egrets—stark white against emerald green—had set down in a grassy field alongside the road. I took it as a salute to my new clarity. 

I have written about Vision Training, where specific relaxation techniques or exercises can help a person see better. However, cataracts are another thing, coming with age or U.V. damage. As I drove, I noticed my hands on the steering wheel were littered with brown spots—I knew they were there, but not as severe as I was seeing them. Oh dear, this is serious, I see the crumbs and lint in the crevasses of the car’s console. 

I felt like the protagonist in one of Ray Bradbury’s short stories, a myopic hero suddenly put on glasses, and images, previously unknown to him, suddenly popped into view. Pores on people’s faces particularly annoyed him. 

I’m not annoyed. I love seeing. I’m a happy camper.

On the world front:

One thing I wanted to mention. Have you noticed that we tend to get a cold or flu when we are stressed? 

This stress can be physical–we’re exhausted, we’re over-extended ourselves in work, or with exercise. We got over-chilled. We didn’t sleep, we’ve been eating a lot of junk, we’re worried, be it with finances or world conditions. Our relationships suck, or we had some physical malady that concerned us. We’re mad at somebody, enraged that they hurt us, feel bullied and victimized. We’re concerned for our kids or our lot in life. We’re generally disgruntled and hate those people who think differently from us. And What happens? The flu develops into a pandemic.

I’m not saying that the people who caught the flu are responsible for catching it—people do pick up germs, and sometimes the germs win. (I’m sorry.) I’m proposing that the virus got to critical mass because of how we’ve been, how we’ve treated other people, how polarized we’ve been. We’ve been stirred up and kept in that state of agitation for a long time. That makes fertile ground for illnesses. 

It’s a thought. I could be all wet.

What do you think?

P.S. According to a neurosurgeon, John E. Sarno, “If an imbalance occurs on a spiritual level and is not addressed, it will move to a mental level. If it is not addressed there, it will move to an emotional level. If it is not addressed there, it will move to a physical level, where it is very difficult to ignore.”

20/20

Something about 2020 seems hugely significant.  

  

Perfect vision, maybe?  

  

Okay, folks, here we go. First, before reading this, rub your palms together and place them over your eyes, lean your elbows on your desk and relax...give it a few minutes.  

  

Are you back? Now isn’t that better? Does the screen look a little sharper? Nope, not for me, I had to put on my glasses. But when you send love to a part of your body, can’t you feel it smile a little?  

  

My most popular blog of 2019 was the article I wrote on vision. “Check Your Eyeballs” February 19, 2019, and because I got requests for more information, I wrote “Hello Beautiful, Check Your eyeballs II, April 16, 2019.

 

 I’m wondering if anyone used the suggestions presented in those two articles. If so, what were their results?

  

You know, though, in speaking of 20/20 vision, I am talking about more than seeing with your physical eyes. I am also speaking about the clear vision of seeing with your heart, spirit, whatever you wish to call that mysterious knowing.  

  

But, let’s talk about physical vision for a minute: Remember this quote? “Suppose,” wrote Matthew Luckiesh, Director of General Electric’s Lighting Research Laboratory, “that crippled eyes could be transformed into crippled legs. What a heart-rending parade we would witness on a busy street! Nearly every other person would go limping by. Many would be on crutches and some on wheelchairs.”  

  

Fascinating isn’t it that the medical profession believes that almost every part of the body is fixable, but the eyes are mechanisms that can be helped only with mechanical means, like glasses and surgery.   

When the legs are injured, they make every effort to get the person walking again.  

I’m happy the optometrists and ophthalmologists have laser surgery and chemical treatment for serious conditions like glaucoma and infections. I’m not discounting how physicians can fix a detached retina, and other injuries, what I’m addressing is that there is more.  

  

With the eye, we have an extension of the brain reaching out into the world, and we know from other exercises such as “Patterning” (crawl therapy) that while the brain can teach the body, the body can teach the brain.   

  

Once my husband and I volunteered to help a teenage boy who, following a simple tonsillectomy, woke up unable to talk except for mumbling a few swear words. Neither could he sit or walk or crawl.  

When we left the program to have our baby, he could crawl--more like a scoot, down a hallway of his own accord.  

His parents were using the Doman-Delacato method to build new synapses. Doctors Doman and Delacato developed a system they called patterning for brain-damaged children. It was putting the body back to its crawl stage with the help of volunteers, and allowing the body to rewire itself.   

  

The way to do it is to have at least three people “pattern” the person as though he was crawling.  

  

 One person turned the head from side to side as two others moved the arms and legs into a crawling pattern.   

  

I heard that the author Roland Dahl used this method after his pregnant wife, Patrica Neal, had a series of strokes that put her in a coma for 21 days, It left her paralyzed, unable to talk, and virtually blind. Dahl knew that a brain will quickly die if not used and resorted to a brutal therapeutic program that restored the use of her body. However, she never regained sight in one eye.    

  

She and most everyone else thought her acting career was over. Yet, in 1968, three years following her strokes, she obtained an Academy Award Nomination for the movie, The Subject was Roses. 

 In 1963 she had won the best actress Academy Award for Hud, a movie with Paul Newman.    

Patrica Neal lived to be well into her 80’s.   

Aldous Huxley sent me down the Vision road after I read an account of his book, The Art of Seeing. I already knew of the Bates method having taken it professionally in San Diego in the later part of the 1980’s. When Huxley spoke so eloquently about sensing the environment as well as seeing it, I was moved to mention my own experience.   

  

Some people will grumble that the Bates’ method is dangerous or ridiculous, and it has been discounted by many. Yet, people had astounding results, myself included. I left my therapist with 20/20 vision.   

  

People jump on  “sunning” the eyes as dangerous. Yet they fail to read, DO NOT LOOK AT THE SUN.   

  

I explained the procedure in Check Your Eyeballs. You close one eye, look down with the other, and while looking down, hold that eyelid up, allowing the sun to shine through the white of the eye--NEVER THROUGH THE PUPIL. You can burn a hole in your retina that way.  

  

You know how, when you go from the house out into the sunlight, how it can pain the eyes, or make you squint? I remember driving down the hill from Rancho Santa Fe into San Diego, and noticing that the sunlight didn’t hurt my eyes.  

  

Huxley wrote, “At the present time, my vision, though very far from normal, is about twice as good as it used to be when I wore spectacles, and before I had learned the art of seeing.”  

In the preface to the book, Huxley describes how, at the age of sixteen, he had a violent attack of keratitis punctata which made him nearly completely blind for eighteen months and left him thereafter with severely impaired sight. He managed to live as a sighted person with the aid of strong spectacles, but reading, in particular, was a great strain. As his reading ability became worse, he sought the help of Margaret Corbett who was a teacher of the Bates Method.  

Isn’t it strange how systems come and go, get discounted, are misused, and then swept away? Professionals poo-poo it, and people lose faith in it. It is so much easier to pop a pill or put on glasses.   

I wear glasses, but not all the time. Eyes, like our bodies, fluctuate, and I don’t want to force them to become fixed by a prescription. One’s general health or lack of it, tiredness, boredom, emotional states all affect the eyes. Using the Bates method takes a lot of work. It’s exercise. It requires discipline.   

  

But then, how much work does it take to stand up and swing your torso and arms from side to side allowing your eyes to softly sweep the room?   

How much work is it to look up from reading or the computer screen take your glasses off, and look to the distance? (Near to far.)

   

How much work is it to stop staring? Eyes are meant to move. Stop staring at objects, books, people.   

And some think that stress causes us to tighten the muscles around our eyes, and thus alter the shape of the eyeball. The idea is to relax those muscles.  

  

You will find on my sites that I am into Mind, Body, and Spirit, believing that we are a total entity and that everything works together. What affects one aspect of our lives is likely to affect another. 

  

Today, I tuned into Dr. Christiane Northrup (Women’s Bodies, Women’s Minds), who uses the Bates Method. She said that yes, she wears contacts, has since she was a teenager. However, unlike some who go to the doctor every year and are fitted for stronger glasses, her eyesight has not deteriorated.  

  

“People often ask me what is the most effective technique for transforming their life. It is a little embarrassing that after years and years of research and experimentation. I have to say that the best answer is—just be a little kinder.” 

--Aldous Huxley