Heal your eyesight

 

I’m a real advocate of self-healing. I believe simple exercises such as meditation and yoga practiced over time can prevent illness and also help the body heal itself. In fact I’ve had some amazing experiences of self-healing.

One of my most remarkable cases of self-healing has been the improvement of my eyesight.

I went from being dependent on reading glasses as a teenager and for most of my adult life to being glasses free since 2010.

My lens prescription wasn’t strong, only 0.75, but my main problem was I was dependent on my glasses. I was unable to read for more than 10 minutes without them. 10 minutes of reading and my eyes would get strained and start to hurt. My vision would be out of focus for several hours after.

At this point in my life I was developing the practices in my book The Energy Equation. I meditated regularly and often used guided meditations. I started creating my own meditations and as I did I became increasingly aware of the vast array of organs, muscles and tissues that my body was made up of. I also became aware of my internal energy, what the Chinese would refer to as chi or prana in Sanskrit.

I started noticing the constant tension that my body was in. My muscles were tense, especially my back and shoulders, I had subtle aches and also energy blockages in my body. I characterise energy blockages as areas of the body that feel disconnected or out of sorts. None of these were debilitating, they felt quite normal. But too many of these aches and it is death by a thousand cuts; they lead to more serious ailments.

And that’s the issue most of us have. We are so used to stress that we fail to notice the everyday tension and pain we carry. One of the aims of the book is to get the reader present to their body so that they can then increase their energy.

For me the major surprise was how much tension was in my eyes. My eyes were strained but I didn’t even notice.

Over time I was able to tune into the tiny muscles around my eyes and get them to relax. I would imagine energy flowing to them, and as I did, the tension started to release. It took a bit of practice.

It is like learning to raise one eyebrow. If you’ve ever tried to develop the ability to raise one eyebrow without the other one rising, you’ll notice that is difficult at first. Both eyes move when you want only one to move; Or you can raise one in isolation but not the other. However over time you can learn to isolate the muscles so that you can raise one eyebrow without the other. You are teaching the brain to find and isolate these muscles. The brain creates neural pathways that allow it to do this.
It is a similar principle with eyesight. With some practice you can gain enough sensitivity of feeling in your eyes. You can various components of your eyes and you can gain control over them to allow them to relax.

So the main access is to spend time doing body mindfulness. Spend time just sitting with your eyes closed exploring the sensations in your eyes. My book has some good exercises on body sensitivity.

Additional practices to help your eyesight

No reading first thing in the morning
The biggest thing that worked was the avoiding  reading (or looking at your phone or computer) for at least an hour in the morning. Our eyes were made to be moving, not remaining fixed on a page or phone screen. Go out for a walk in the morning before doing any computer work. When you go out for a walk your eyes get their morning exercise. I found that once my eyes had done this exercise they would be less likely to feel strained throughout the day. If I got up and read straight away I would have blurry vision the whole day and would need my glasses.

Pinhole glasses
Another product that helped were pinhole glasses. I used these for a couple of weeks and I found they helped to strengthen my eyes. They kick started being able to be glasses free.

These three practices helped the most. It took about 4 months of daily practice and the results were pretty quick:

After 2 weeks:
I went from 10 minutes without glasses to 30.

After a month:
An hour without glasses.

Month 2
Two hours without glasses. I can do light computer work now and I don’t feel the need to carry glasses for days when I’m not working.

Month 3
Four hours without glasses. Once you get to 4 hours you effectively don’t need glasses. You just set up your day into small segments where you don’t spend more than 4 hours in front of a screen and you take a long break between segments.

After 4 months

Now I can work a 10 hour day  in front of the computer (with breaks) and I’m fine.
A few additional notes

So here are a few more things I noticed:

Staring at a screen is more straining than reading from paper.
Lighting makes a difference. Use natural lighting as much as possible.
Sit in a comfortable position. When you are uncomfortable your body is in tension and it will be harder to isolate the eye muscles.

Now does this work if you are short-sighted? The principles are the same. You are allowing your eye to relax. It’s slightly more challenging if you are walking outside not being able to see things clearly but you have to trust in the process. The pinhole glasses really help to begin

If you started life with perfect vision I see no reason why that vision can’t be regained.

There are a couple of books that I recommend The handbook of self healing by Meir Schneider.

The Bates method of healing your eyesight Better Eyesight Without Glasses, by William Horatio Bates