Glaucoma is a disease of the optic nerve, often caused by irregular pressure in the eyes, that results in loss of the visual field and, eventually, blindness. Glaucoma can be a scary disease for many people because of this, and also since its symptoms may not be obvious until the disease is quite advanced.
The loss of vision that occurs with glaucoma has a few factor. One is pressure, and another is weakness of the optic nerve and disk (the area where the nerve connects to the retina). So if you have a very strong optic nerve and disk, even high pressure will not necessarily lead to a loss of vision. But if you have a weal optic nerve and disk, even low pressure could lead to a loss of vision. For this reason, everyone must be evaluated to determine whether they have a weak or a strong optic nerve and disk before the effects of pressure can be understood and predicted accurately.
The complication here comes from Lasik surgery because it alters the thickness of the cornea, which will alter the perception of pressure, thus making it harder to measure. To date, it has been difficult to determine what the pressure truly is after Lasik surgery.
We would like to assume that normal pressure in the eye is between 10 and 20 mercury points. Anything less than 10 mercury point could be insufficient pressure on the eye. We need pressure in the eye just like a tire needs pressure to maintain its integrity. Chronic dehydration can cause vision compromised. But when the pressure mounts, it can destroy weak areas in our eyes. The main area that it destroys is the optic disk, which is rather weak in all of us but is even weaker in people who have glaucoma. Reducing pressure would take away the risk of blindness or, at least, of partial blindness.
Statistically, it is true to say that those who have pressure above 30 mercury point will most likely lose more vision, but only statistically. In any particular case, it could be that even a pressure higher that 30 mercury point does not lead to vision loss. You could also say that some people at a pressure of only 24 or 25 mercury point may lose a lot of vision.
The other problem that could easily occur is low-tension glaucoma. With low-tension glaucoma, the optic disk degenerates and is destroyed even at a pressure under that which is considered to be desirable for most of us. The optic disk is a weak and vulnerable area. When that area has pressure it cannot withstand, the optic disk can be compromised. In some people with completely normal pressure (the 16 mercury points that most of us would desire to have), the optic disk can still be destroyed. Still, the prevailing viewpoint is that the problem is the high pressure in high-tension glaucoma patients, and if they have surgery to reduce the pressure, the problem will go away. While I agree with it to a point, I believe that it is only a part of what happens. Therefore, the treatment is sometimes ineffective, and can even be dangerous because it works only on the eye pressure without considering other factors.
Recently I had the pleasure of working with a bright woman named Lucia, who came all the way from brazil to San Francisco for two weeks of intensive sessions with me. She came to me with much fear because she had lost 95 percent of her nerve functionality due to glaucoma. The surprising thing about her case was that, after doing the eye exercises and before she even met with me, she gained back the peripheral vision she had lost; her field of vision was almost completely normal―there was only one small spot of vision loss―and her acuity was 20/20. I am not the only one who is surprised with such magnificent vision after such significant loss of nerve tissue.
Lucia also told me that several of her family members were afflicted with cardiovascular disease. Knowing that she had this history, my conclusion from her case was that doing the exercises had increased her blood flow to the remaining nerve tissue and had improved the situation tremendously. Doctors had offered her a very risky surgery to reduce the pressure, but it would have also posed a big risk to her vision, and she could have lost it completely. I am happy she refused.
I believe that the following can help people with glaucoma:
• Reduction of pressure (in this I agree with doctors)
• Balanced use of the two eyes and within each eye
• Sufficient circulation to nourish the optic nerve
In Lucia's case, the bodywork we did was just as important as the vision work, and the part of the nerve that was working assumed the work of the nerves that had been destroyed.
The frustrating part of it all is that even when you reduce the pressure to 10 or 11 mercury point, as many doctors want you to do, the optic disk may be fine but could also continue to erode to the point of destruction, causing damage to the optic nerve. And the feeling shared by medical doctors is that the optic nerve can never regenerate.
Unlike cataract surgery, about which physicians are very optimistic, physicians continuously see that they cannot fully control glaucoma: not with drops, not with surgery. There is no way to clarify to anyone that reduction of pressure equals reduction of destruction of the optic nerve. And it is clear that most people like to have a simple technical solution to complex problems. Since there seems to be no magic bullet for glaucoma, people live in fear. And that fear is one of the main destructive dangers to our eyes.
The eyes feel this fear. The tissues feel the fear as well, and then become much worse. With some of my patients who had temporary improvement in therapy, I sometimes felt that this cloud of fear caused them to deteriorate anyway. With other patients, where the situation seemed to be grave to everyone else, their trust in the therapy dramatically improved their vision through the correct exercises and the right knowledge. Positive affirmation can be very useful. You can close your eyes and visualize that the strength of your eyes out-powers any phenomenon that can destroy them. Positive affirmation is 50 percent of your healing process.
When it comes to high pressure in the eyes, all factors must be considered: lack of balanced use of the eyes, stiffness of the neck (which is a result of stiffness of the body), or even a sense of emotional loss ― not just stress, but loss.
A good example is the desire for peace and harmony in a relationship, but never finding it because of resolutions that never come. Similarly, kids of divorced parents feel this when they want to see their parents getting along but never do. There are many different situations that can cause glaucoma, so apply this knowledge in a way that works for your specific situation.
Some people may have lost a lot of vision before the practice of these exercises and will do anything they can to keep the vision they already have and to sharpen their vision. Some people may have only a mild vision loss. Pay attention to the area where your vision is mildly lost, and use the area that is fuzzy or almost blind; this will help you to defend the rest of your visual system. So, apply the knowledge individually to your needs. Take time and pay attention to yourself in a way that works for you.
I will never forget one of my dearest patients, Murray, who had glaucoma. He did well in his therapy, with me for a period of seven years. But he took a turn for the worse when his wife died. Issues between him and his wife were never resolved, and that's one of the worst situations when a person you love perishes. If a person who was very dear to you did not get along with you, and the problem you had with that person was never resolved, with their death comes a sense of loss without closure. Part of this loss is not processing your inner feelings around the unresolved issues you had with the deceased member. Murray had a problem with his wife's senility and the Alzheimer's she had developed toward the end of her life. He discovered much anger that she had against some people which she had never brought out during their marital life. It revealed much of her anguish that he had never noticed during her youth. He was struck by the amount of anger and frustration that came out of her when she forgot the present and only remembered the past. And here was a woman who was a world educator and a writer.
When she died, his glaucoma became much worse because his emotional state lacked the stability that he had during most of the marriage. he was also exhausted from trying to keep his wife in as good a shape as he could during the last years of her life. Often, when there is a sense of lose and death, it can lead to a loss of vision. A sense of loss or death could result from the absence of anything that you really loved and adored like relationships, stability, or a home you had liked but from which you had to move. Anything that deep inside leads to an emotional connection, and when it leaves your life without a positive resolution, it could lead to tremendous subconscious tension. That tension reveals itself a a great mascular contraction in your neck. And that neck contraction hampers and disturbs the blood flow to your brain and to your eyes. When it disturbs the blood flow to your brain, you run a risk of strokes and hemorrhages of the brain cells. When it disturbs the blood flow to your eyes, you run the risk of losing retinal areas and vision, and you run a greater risk of having high pressure in your eyes.
Exercise Program for Glaucoma
• 1. Peripheral Exercise: 20 minutes daily.
• 2. Palming: 6 minutes at a time, three times daily, with at least 5 minutes between sessions for 30 minutes a day.
• 3. Sunning: 20 minutes daily.
• 4. Headlines (from the section on astigmatism): 10 minutes.
• 5. Block the Strong Eye (tape the medium-sized piece of paper onto the bridge of your nose so that it blocks the central vision of your strong eye; now read with your weaker eye while waving your hand in the periphery of your stronger eye): 10 minutes.
• 6. Physical Exercises for Glaucoma: 20 minutes daily.
Note: While working on your eyes, also address your emotional state and create a good emotional environment for yourself. And remember to work on your eyes throughout the day. Find time here and there to always work on healing your vision.
• 1. Peripheral Exercise: 20 minutes daily.
Exploring the Periphery
It is impossible to strain your eyes while looking centrally if you remember to simultaneously focus on your periphery. In our culture, we suppress parts of the eye that help us to see well naturally. It is a subconscious suppression. We suppress the periphery because we make it irrelevant to our lives. As we focus on objects in front of us, we simply don't pay attention to what's around us. On the other hand, our ancient fathers and mothers, our predecessors, had to pay attention to their surroundings; in the jungle, you wouldn't last more than a week without noticing the periphery. In fact, you would be eaten or you would starve to death if you did not notice what was around you.
But we ignore the periphery so we can focus on computers and paperwork all day without being distracted by our environment. We try to concentrate on the task at hand and can't be distracted by the commotion around us. When we don't notice the periphery, the strain on our central vision become much greater, which, in time, makes us use it poorly. This causes us to strain our central vision, decreasing its clarity and eventually losing it. The old adage that says use it or lose it holds true here. With time, we lose the connection between our brain, our optic nerve, and the rod cells of the periphery. Along with genetic tendencies, this can be a cause of glaucoma.
What we need to do right now is to exercise our periphery.
Periphery Exercise 1: Look into the Distance
Sit somewhere comfortable where you can see something in the distance that you enjoy looking at. As you look into the distance, start to wave your hands to the sides of your head to notify your eyes that a periphery exists. Don't look at your hands waving; just look into the distance. Allow your eyes to recognize the movement of your hands.
Wave your hands in such a way that your fingers point toward you and your wrists are loose. Do this for a minute or two. As you do this, you should feel your eyes release their tension; this relaxation in your eyes is vitally important to healthy vision.
Periphery Exercise 2: The Small Pieces of Paper
Cut out a small piece of opaque paper (about one inch by two inches) (1" x 2 ") and tape the paper horizontally on the bridge of your nose so that the wide parts are centered in front of your eyes. This will disrupt part of your vision.
Walk around in a familiar environment with this paper on your nose for a minute or two. Now sit down and wave your hands to the side of your head like you did before. Stand up and sit down several times, moving your whole body up and down, as you wave your hands to the sides. As you do this, it reveals to your brain the existence of a moving periphery with which it normally does not connect.
In the past, people used to walk at night, sometimes in total darkness and sometimes with light from the stars and moon. Imagine how important it was foe them to notice things moving in their periphery at night! For thousands millions of years, our ancestors used to walk this way. Now we have the city lights at night, and our peripheral cells are hardly being used because they are mainly designed for night vision.
Waving our hands to our sides wakes up the peripheral cells because the rods of the retina respond to movement rather than to still images; conversely, the cones respond better to a still picture. These cones are mainly in the central part of the retina (the macula) and are used to look at details. An overwhelming number of the retina's cells are the rods, which respond mainly to the impression of movement. When we exercise these rods, we take away a lot of stress from the overworked cones, and we make it easier for them to function more correctly. Instead of the brain forcing the eye to freeze and to strenuously see a picture, the brain will command the eye to look gently and easily in order to see the entire landscape better.
Next, put a longer piece of paper (one inch by five inches) (1"x 5") on the bridge of your nose and repeat this exercise. Then use a piece of paper that is one inch by seven inches (1" x 7"). By blocking so much of your central vision, and even some of your peripheral vision, you will discover a periphery that you hardly ever use consciously. Now go back to the medium-sized paper and repeat the exercise. Then use the small piece of paper and repeat the exercise for a final time. You may find that the small piece now seems even smaller in your perception. That is because much of your brain that had been suppressed is now engaged in peripheral vision.
To finish, take the small paper off, stand, and do the long swing so your brain will absorb the exercise you have just performed.
How to Do the Long Swing
Stand with your legs slightly more than hip-width apart and your knees slightly bent. Hold your index finger about one foot on front of your face, pointing up to the ceiling. Look at your finger with a soft gaze. If you are legally blind, or even with correction have very poor vision, you can look at your index and middle fingers together. While looking at your finger(s), swing your body from side to side. As you swing to the right, twist your body so that your left heel rises slightly off the ground. As you twist your body to the left, your right heel raises slightly off the ground. If your hand becomes tired, you can switch hands. Do this at least twenty (20) times.
You will notice the sensation that everything in the background seems to be moving in the opposite direction of your finger, like scenery passing by you as you look out the window of a train. Allow yourself to feel the sense of relaxation that comes when you don't need to place a hard focus on any one object. Move to the right, and the world moves to the left. Move to the left, and the world moves to the right.
Now hold your finger horizontally in front of your face. Move your finger up and down in front of you, moving your head vertically along with your finger. Remember to continue to hold a soft gaze. When you move up, everything in the background seems to be moving down. When you move down, everything seems to be moving up.
Next, hold your finger in front of you and do the long swing, pointing your finger to the ceiling as in the first explanation, but this time as you swing to one side, bend at the waist and sweep down in a half circle―just to kneel level. Don't lower your head below your knees, but continue the swing until your arm is fully extended and you are looking up at your finger. This exercise should relax your eyes further.
The next step is very important. This is where we visualize the long swing. We close our eyes and do the movement with our bodies, and visualize in our mind's eye that the world is swinging back and forth, passing in front of our eyes. Everything you visualize is moving directly opposite. When you move to the right, the neighbourhood moves to the left. When you move to the left, the whole world moves to the right. Remember how you saw objects this way. Now you open your eyes and continue the exercise.
When you look in this way, you stop yourself from freezing. It becomes easier to look at details and much easier to blink. Remind yourself to blink. Blinking will help you to relax.
Physical Exercises for Glaucoma
Good thoughts and good prayer can be healing. Visualize that blood is circulating to your retina, making it soft and nurturing your optic disk. Also visualize that the fluid in its clear form is flowing in the area between the cornea and the macula. Visualize that good blood circulation is nourishing your optic disk and retina. Visualize the blood coming from the back, and from your neck to the back of the head, and nourishing your optic disk. Visualize that blood is flowing into your eyes and draining from it. Then visualize that the aqueous humor is flowing into the front area of your eye from the lens to the cornea, nourishing both, and draining into the the area of your nose. It's amazing how powerful the human body is and how much it does all at once. It is not power that belongs to you but to nature, and you are a wonderful guest of nature's within your own human body. There is a connection between that power and of all universal powers around you; this connection gives that power a tremendous amount of strength.
The power that brings rain from the sky and wind to the earth, the power that is mysterious to all of us and runs the whole universe, is the same power that moves your blood and your fluids. It does so constantly The more you acknowledge its power and its strength, the better it will work for you. There is a connection between your mind and soul and the natural functions of your human body. When you have glaucoma, physical exercises are important to prevent the pressure from mounting and growing in your eyes and, in fact, will reduce it. Other exercises will be important to preserve your vision. All of them will be a pleasure to do. When you work on your body, you work for the purpose of having fun with it, and it is a pleasure to do the work. When you have that feeling, it is going to be wonderful to heal your glaucoma and to overcome it. It will create a better connection between you and your internal forces, and it will help you to tune in to the forces of universe. it is probably the best antidepressant you can ever have.
Special Instruction for Palming with Glaucoma
You should only palm for up to ten(10) minutes at a time. Then wait at least five (5) minutes before palming again. You can do this many times a day. But if you palm too long all in one session, you can experience an increase in pressure. if, for example, you have closed-angle glaucoma and you palm for a half an hour all at once, you can have an increase in pressure of 4 mercury points.
• 2. Palming: 6 minutes at a time, three times daily, with at least 5 minutes between sessions for 30 minutes a day.
Palming.
Note: Before palming, individuals with glaucoma should read and understand "Special Instructions for Palming with Glaucoma" (see above↑) for important modification to this exercise.
Palming have been practiced for more than 1,500 years. Palming is an exercise that complement every other practice you will learn from this blog.
Many people believe that they receive sufficient rest for their eyes while they are asleep. While sleep is very important, even with adequate sleep, many people still experience eye fatigue. There are a few reasons why this happens. One reason is that in these modern times we often hear noise around us while we are asleep; even though we don't feel disturbed, the noise upsets our rest on a subconscious level. The other reason sleep often fails to sufficiently rest our eyes is that many people sleep in rooms that are not completely dark. I suggest that you darken your bedroom as much as you can. The darker the room while asleep, the more rest you will give your eyes. Sleeping in total darkness produces hormones, such as melatonin, that relax your body, allowing you to experience deeper and more refreshing sleep.
In order for sleep to be completely satisfying, quite often we dream. Dreams enhance our state of being; it is as though they wash away the day. Although dreams allow for physical and mental relaxation, the saccadic movement during dreams does not allow for full relaxation of the eyes.
The greatest rest is a conscious rest, not a passive rest. William Bates, the originator of eye exercises in the modern world, understood this principle. When you meditate, you enter a state of transcendental relaxation. As with meditation, palming helps us to quiet the mind and focus on eye relaxation. This produces a very powerful effect.
There is a great Jewish adage that says the truth is always simple. The way to the truth, however may be complex.
To do palming correctly, or to palm correctly, and to receive the benefits of this powerful exercise, you first have to engage in the correct preparation. You must have relaxed hands because this exercise takes you to a place where your hands nurture your eye. Healthy hands can bring warmth, energy, and blood flow to the eyes, but there is no way for you to energise your eyes if your hands are angry, irritated, or numb in any way. Ensuring relaxed hands is necessary to receive benefits from this exercise.
Preparing to Palm.
The most important thing when palming is that you are not stressed. I recommend massaging your temples, face, shoulders, and the top of your head in order to bring good blood flow to the eyes and become as relaxed as possible.
Loosen your shoulders. move your shoulders together in a rotation motion, forward(clockwise) and then backward(anti-clockwise). Then rotate each shoulder separately forward and back. Picture that the shoulder tip is moving the shoulder. Now tap on the tip of the shoulder with your opposite hand and say out loud, "SHOULDER TIP!" Moving the shoulders in a rotating motion increases blood circulation; as you repeat this exercise several times (at least 8 times), your shoulders will feel lighter.
Stand beside a wall. Next, lift your arm up to shoulder height and move your whole arm in a rotating motion, imagining that your fingertips are moving your arm. By focusing on your fingertips, your body will naturally loosen. Tap the wall with your fingertips and say, "FINGERTIPS!" Then put your opposite hand on your shoulder and move it in a rotating motion. Repeat this series of movements with the opposite shoulder and hand.
Quite often the area between the shoulders get contracted, and energy becomes trapped because there is not enough movement happening in that area. Consequently, there is not enough blood flow, which quite literally freezes the hands.
The next step for palming is to open and close your ten fingers one hundred times, visualizing that the fingertips are initiating the movement.
From time to time, tap with your fingertips on the opposite forearm. Now massage your hands, front and back, by pretending you are washing them with soap and water. Then rub your two palms together, with the front of your fingers rubbing back and forth against each other in a circular motion.
The result of this exercise is that your fingers will be warm and your hands will be loose. The warmth and relaxation of your hands will enable you now to palm your eyes in a way that is correct and beneficial. Though it is very important tobe relaxed while palming, not all these shoulder exercises will be necessary each time. At the very least, rub your palms together to warm them; then intertwine your fingers, straighten your arms, and move your arms in a circular motion. Utilize your full range of motion several times in both directions, first with your hands palm to palm, and then withyour palms facing outward. depending on the time available, these relaxation exercises may last anywhere between two(2) to eight(8) minutes.
How to Palm
Now that you have pepared your body for palming, sit somewhere comfortable. You need to have your elbows resting on pillows or on a table top with a pillow so that your head is leaning neitheir forward nor backward. In other words, you are sitting comfortably in good posture. It is very important that you are not holding your arms up, that you are not straining your neck by letting your head tilt back, and, most important, that you never put any pressure on your face at all.
If you put your weight on anything, it is on your elbows. Rub your palms together to warm them and place them very gently over the eyes obits. The palms never touch the eyelids, but notice how your palms feel over your eyes lids, over the entire eye obit. Can you feel the warmth?
Do your hands feel nurturing as they sit ever so lightly over your eyes orbits? This is important. if you are stressed or angry, your palming session will not feel good. repeat the exercises to prepare for palming or do some kind of activity that helps you to let go of the stress or the anger you are carrying. Try walking barefoot on cobblestones or grass patch, say, for 10 minutes.
How Long Should You Palm over Your Eyes?
The duration of your palming may change depending on your schedule and your state of mind. if you are busy, perhaps you might take a break in the middle of your work from time to time and sit for a few minutes to palm. You can palm for one(1) minute just to rest the eyes, but it takes a minimum of six(6) minutes to clear the retina from neurological waste products. of course, it is even more wonderful if you can palm for fifteen(15) or twenty(20) minutes at a time!
Visualization While Palming Eyes
While you palm, there are two visualizations that will help you to receive the full benefit of this exercise. The first one is that you visualize a figure of eight(8), or an infinity sign. you can visualize a boat on the ocean moving in the figure-eight pattern, or a train in the mountains travelling a route shaped like an infinity sign. This is a fluid movement that helps your mind be able to travel from detail to detail easily and fluidly.
The second visualization is of total blackness and increasing blackness. Close your eyes and begin palming. Now visualize that the room you are in is being painted black. Visualize that your body is being painted black. Visualize that the neighbourhood is being painted black. Visualize that the city is being painted black. Visualize black paint covering the entire world. Visualize taht all the stars and the sun are being painted black. This is total blackness you are visualizing. Black is the color that allows the optic nerve to relax.
Breathing While Palming Eyes
Remember to inhale slowly and exhale slowly while palming. Visualize your abdomen rising slowly and falling gently. Count to eight, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, as you slowly breathe in, then count to eleven, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11, as you slowly breathe out. Don't tense up; just let yourself breathe in and out relaxingly.
Right now, you feel that your whole torso is expanding while you inhale and shrinking as you exhale. At the same time, you should feel that your head expands as you inhale and shrinks as you exhale. You visualize that your pelvis expands as you inhale and shrinks as you exhale, or that your legs expand as you breathe in and shrink as you breathe out. You visualize that your whole body expands as you breathe in and shrinks as you breath out.
Relaxing the Ears
A good addition to palming the yes is resting the ears from external noise. As a result of the noise we live in, our senses are under continuous pressure. Pressure causes tension, and if we are tense, we can never get to a lace of relaxed eyes.
So, when you finish palming the eyes, rub your hands together again to increase the blood flow to your fingers; then put your thumbs deep inside your ears. Right thumb into the right ear, while left thumb into the left ear. Listen to your breath. What does it sound like? It may sound like ocean waves or wind. Breathe deeply and slowly to the count of ten, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, and palm the ears again. You will feel your neck muscles becoming loose, and your whole head will start to relax.
Benefits of Palming
People who have multiple sclerosis [What Is MS? Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an unpredictable, often disabling disease of the central nervous system that disrupts the flow of information within the brain, and between the brain and body. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a potentially disabling disease of the brain and spinal cord (central nervous system). In MS, the immune system attacks the protective sheath (myelin) that covers nerve fibers and causes communication problems between your brain and the rest of your body.] and have an attack on their visual system quite often receive cortisone treatments from their doctors. In many cases, if such patients just sat down for a whole day palming with a nice cloth around their eyes, they would be able to overcome the attack on their visual system simply through rest. it is a simple truth that relaxation is very powerful.When you relax completely, your human body returns to its highest and best functioning.
I am in awe of nature for giving us such wonderful tools with which to see. In all its complexity, nature had fine-tuned our vision. Vision is completely integrated with our development as human being and is progressing side by side with it. Most of the visual process is subconscious and unknown to us. But science is gradually realising the marvellous energy behind vision!
We, humans, have 125 million photoreceptor cells in each retina, with a billion light rays bouncing against some of them every single minute, converting light into visual energy. To allow the process to function at its best, we need to learn not to squint. You may not be aware that your eyes squint even when you sleep and dream.
Palming can work away our tendency to squint. When you palm the eyes with soft, relaxed hands, and when you see black, there is a wonderful release of the eyelids, the temples, the forehead, and the entire skull. Squinting is eliminated, and you notice a relaxed sensation as you open your eyes. You also sense much more periphery because, with fully open eyelids, much more light can penetrate your eyes.
Quite often, physicians say that squinting does not have any ill effects, but it does. In this respect, the wisdom here , the modern medicine still needs to adopt the right concept that rest and relaxation are powerful.
Combining Palming with Other Exercises
After you have mastered palming, next time you are sunning, practicing the long swing, or night walking, stop for a few moments, put your hands over your eye orbits, and do your palming. Breathe slowly, in deep breaths. Your pupils will have time to enlarge a bit. Then take your hands off and return to your other exercise.
From time to time, also stop to massage your eyebrows. Massage the right eyebrow from the bridge of your nose to your temple; then do the same thing on the left side. massage your cheekbones and stretch the muscles of your cheekbones from nose to ear.Every time you firmly massage your cheekbone, you may find that more light penetrates your eyes and you experience a sense of less squinting.
• 3. Sunning: 20 minutes daily.
Sunning
Surrendering to the sun briefly each day can make a huge difference in terms of our overall feeling of well-being.
Since the 1980s, physicians have warned people against the dangers of exposure to the sunlight. Now they understand the benefits of sunlight and recommend that we have some exposure to the sun daily. The sun is one of the best nurturers that nature has given us. it is important, however, to adapt your eyes to the strong light of the sun. Sunning exercise is a great exercise for this purpose because it is relaxing to the eyes and can also help you with your sleep.
I once had a patient who complained about terible insomnia. She ha not slept for many nights and had a tremendous amount of tension. I taught her the sunning exercise and massaged her in the sun. After her first session, she went home and slept right through the night; after taking only three sessions at the school, she reported that she had slept much better. That was years ago. To this day, she practices the sunning technique and no longer experiences sleep deprivation.
Today, physicians suggest that we should not expose ourselves to the sun, except before 10 a.m. and after 5 p.m. In my humble opinion, we should sometimes expose ourselves to the sun even at midday. Yes, at 12 noon. If you are sensitive to sunlight, you should start by practicing the sunning exercise early in the morning or near dusk, or for just five (5) minutes at a time in the middle of the day.
To begin sunning, all you need to do is close your eyes and face the sun. Now move your head from side to side, rotating it from shoulder to shoulder. As you face the sun, the sphincter pupillae constrict the pupils. As you move your head away toward one shoulder, the radial dilator muscle dilates the pupils, even though your eyes are closed. Some people find it easy to move their head 180 degrees from shoulder to shoulder. If you find this full range of motion difficult, simply bring your opposite shoulder forward slightly; it will help you yo move your head all the way toward the side and to compensate for the limited range of motion until you loosen up. The more you practice this simple exercise, the more your range of motion and flexibility will increase.
The movements should not be fast, but they should not be slow, either. Just relax, breathe deeply and slowly, and visualize that the sun, with its energy and light, is penetrating your face and nurturing your eyes as well as your mind. Your eyelids should be closed softly; do not squeeze your eyelids shut. You want the eyelids to close as gently as if you were about to go to sleep. The less you squeeze your eyelids, the more relaxed your eyes will become.
When I was in high school, I had been doing this sunning exercise on a camping trip. Seeing me rotate my head back and forth, a girl asked, "Why do you keep saying no? Can't you say yes?" So i moved my head up and down as if to nod "yes,"and I had a revelation. I noticed that this movement led to a greater variability in the angles at which light reached my eyes, thus awakening more parts of them. This additional exercise allowed for greater stimulation and an increased sensation of lightness and darkness. I would recommend that this additional exercise be included during sunning.
Whenever you experience that difference between extremes of dark and light, your pupils become stronger. The pupils of most modern people are very weak because they wear sunglasses when they're outside, which weakens the pupils. Automatic activities, like those of the eye's iris muscles that affect the pupils, are influenced by function and use. The more you constrict and expand your pupils, the stronger the iris muscles become. Your retina also benefits from more concentrated light, and blood flows much better to the eye as a result of the pupils contracting and expanding.
The sunning exercise is mandatory for people who want to improve their vision. Like any exercise, it does not create drastic change for everyone. But quite a few of my clients have experienced huge vision improvement and have reduced the strength of their eyeglass prescriptions when they have diligently practiced sunning. When you have a break at work or school, I recommend sunning instead of smoking cigarettes or drinking coffee.
Skying
Skying is a simple exercise which is similar to sunning. but you do this skying as an alternative when there is no sun. You just put one hand behind the back of your head and one hand on your forehead, applying great pressure so that you massage your head as you turn it from side to side. Now move your head from side to side like you are sunning and blink rapidly at the sky.
After two (2) minutes of skying, do a minute of swinging. (see above for "How to Do the Long Swing.") Then do three (3) minutes of skying and two (2) minutes of swinging. Then do three (3) more minutes of skying and two (2) more minutes of swinging. This is an anti-squinting exercise, and as you sky and then swing, you are letting more light into your eyes and stopping the tendency to squint.
• 4. Headlines (from the section on astigmatism): 10 minutes.
Headlines
Note: If you are farsighted, this is a great exercise to practice before starting to work on your other exercises.
For this exercise, you will need an eye chart taped to the wall at eye level, your cheap sunglasses with the lens on the strong eye's side covered with opaque tape, and the page with large and small print or a newspaper with a large-print headline.
Stand at a distance from the eye chart so that you can see the top third of the chart clearly without much straining, but you have to strain to see the bottom two-thirds of the chart. Basically, you are going to look at the eye chart while quickly waving the headlines in front of your face. Look past the blur of the headlines being waved in your face and try to read the eye chart. Every few seconds, stop waving the headlines and look quickly at them. Blurt out the first letter you see clearly. Now wave the page back and forth again and go back to reading the eye chart. The object is to quickly shift your focus from far to near and back to far again.
If you have a partner with whom to practice these exercises, you can do this headlines exercise a little differently. While you are reading the eye chart, your partner can flash fingers in front of your face, very close to your eyes, and you can tell your partner how many fingers he or she is holding up. of course, this method is not good if you are by yourself because you cannot surprise yourself with your own fingers!
So when you are practising by yourself, pick up the page with the large headlines and quickly wave it back and forth in front of your eyes while looking at the chart on the wall. read the chart aloud even if all you can read is the first three lines; do so repeatedly. Now for less than half a second, stop waving the headlines, look at the large print, and say the first letter you can see. if you are in a phase of half-guessing and half-seeing because of the speed, that's exactly where you want you to be. Then return to waving the page back and forth.
Let's say that you are reading the letters on the top line of the eye chart. As you wave the piece of paper with the headline back and forth in front of your face, you might see he words "moving economy" in your periphery. What you want to do is to wave the paper so quickly that when you stop you may only see "e"; then you keep waving it and say the letter "e" as you return your gaze to the chart and read the top line of letters on the eye chart once agin. Then you stop waving the paper, and you may see the letter "c" or the letter "o." Announce it aloud; then wave the paper and read the top line of the chart again. It is good to speak with a loud voice as you do these eye exercises, as it helps to distract yourself from focusing on the exercise itself. This will make it much more effective.
The next phase is to improve your near vision by trying this same exercise reading the LARGE and small print on pages 99-100. this way, you are working with the eye chart to improve your eyesight for distant objects and with the large and small print pages for objects nearby.
Now put on your cheap sunglasses with the strong eye's side covered with opaque tape. Again wave the paper with the large print in front of your weaker eye while looking at the chart on the wll. Read the top line of the chart aloud while waving the headline back and forth in front of your face. From time to time, stop waving the headlines in front of your face for half a second, enough time to guess a letter that you see. After ten times of doing this, look at the chart with your weak eye, but without waving the headline in the air. You may be able to clearly read an extra line on the chart. Then take off the glasses, and you may be able to clearly read two extra lines on the chart.
Glow in the Dark
Note: We do this exercise because we want the eye to move around. We have found, in our experience, that many people have an easier time moving their eyes in a rotating motion in the dark.
The idea is to follow the glowing objects with your eye, not by moving your whole head. Move your eyes only, so that your eye muscle are stretching. The stretching motion changes the structure of the eyes with time. People say the cornea cannot change shape, but they are wrong.
For this exercise, you will need a glow-in-the-dark ball, a dark room, and a strip of paper to tape to your nose. The paper should stretch from the top of your forehead to the bottom of your chin, the same as in the Melissa exercise mentioned earlier in this book and also in the next chapter "Overcoming Cross-Sighted and Lazy Eye".
Eventually this exercise gets simple, but it's difficult to master at first. All you do is tape the paper to your forehead and to your chin, turn the lights off in your room, and play catch with the glowing ball. Throw the ball from hand to hand so that the ball crosses the visual plane in front of your face. It should disappear briefly as it passes the paper taped to your head. You can also practice bouncing the ball off the wall, throwing it with one hand and catching it with the other. Remember not to move your whole head to track the location of the ball. Move only your eyeballs so that they can stretch through their full range of motion in both directions.
Imagine doing curls with your biceps but only bending your arms a little bit. You would not be getting the full benefit of the exercise, and you may even damage the very part of your body you are attempting to build up. This idea is the same when it comes to your eyes. Exercise the eye muscles by watching the glowing ball in the dark and moving your eyes through the full range of their possible motion; this will stretch, and even change, the shape of your cornea over time.
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• 5. Block the Strong Eye (tape the medium-sized piece of paper onto the bridge of your nose so that it blocks the central vision of your strong eye; now read with your weaker eye while waving your hand in the periphery of your stronger eye): 10 minutes.
• 6. Physical Exercises for Glaucoma: 20 minutes daily.
The loss of vision that occurs with glaucoma has a few factor. One is pressure, and another is weakness of the optic nerve and disk (the area where the nerve connects to the retina). So if you have a very strong optic nerve and disk, even high pressure will not necessarily lead to a loss of vision. But if you have a weal optic nerve and disk, even low pressure could lead to a loss of vision. For this reason, everyone must be evaluated to determine whether they have a weak or a strong optic nerve and disk before the effects of pressure can be understood and predicted accurately.
The complication here comes from Lasik surgery because it alters the thickness of the cornea, which will alter the perception of pressure, thus making it harder to measure. To date, it has been difficult to determine what the pressure truly is after Lasik surgery.
We would like to assume that normal pressure in the eye is between 10 and 20 mercury points. Anything less than 10 mercury point could be insufficient pressure on the eye. We need pressure in the eye just like a tire needs pressure to maintain its integrity. Chronic dehydration can cause vision compromised. But when the pressure mounts, it can destroy weak areas in our eyes. The main area that it destroys is the optic disk, which is rather weak in all of us but is even weaker in people who have glaucoma. Reducing pressure would take away the risk of blindness or, at least, of partial blindness.
Statistically, it is true to say that those who have pressure above 30 mercury point will most likely lose more vision, but only statistically. In any particular case, it could be that even a pressure higher that 30 mercury point does not lead to vision loss. You could also say that some people at a pressure of only 24 or 25 mercury point may lose a lot of vision.
The other problem that could easily occur is low-tension glaucoma. With low-tension glaucoma, the optic disk degenerates and is destroyed even at a pressure under that which is considered to be desirable for most of us. The optic disk is a weak and vulnerable area. When that area has pressure it cannot withstand, the optic disk can be compromised. In some people with completely normal pressure (the 16 mercury points that most of us would desire to have), the optic disk can still be destroyed. Still, the prevailing viewpoint is that the problem is the high pressure in high-tension glaucoma patients, and if they have surgery to reduce the pressure, the problem will go away. While I agree with it to a point, I believe that it is only a part of what happens. Therefore, the treatment is sometimes ineffective, and can even be dangerous because it works only on the eye pressure without considering other factors.
Recently I had the pleasure of working with a bright woman named Lucia, who came all the way from brazil to San Francisco for two weeks of intensive sessions with me. She came to me with much fear because she had lost 95 percent of her nerve functionality due to glaucoma. The surprising thing about her case was that, after doing the eye exercises and before she even met with me, she gained back the peripheral vision she had lost; her field of vision was almost completely normal―there was only one small spot of vision loss―and her acuity was 20/20. I am not the only one who is surprised with such magnificent vision after such significant loss of nerve tissue.
Lucia also told me that several of her family members were afflicted with cardiovascular disease. Knowing that she had this history, my conclusion from her case was that doing the exercises had increased her blood flow to the remaining nerve tissue and had improved the situation tremendously. Doctors had offered her a very risky surgery to reduce the pressure, but it would have also posed a big risk to her vision, and she could have lost it completely. I am happy she refused.
I believe that the following can help people with glaucoma:
• Reduction of pressure (in this I agree with doctors)
• Balanced use of the two eyes and within each eye
• Sufficient circulation to nourish the optic nerve
In Lucia's case, the bodywork we did was just as important as the vision work, and the part of the nerve that was working assumed the work of the nerves that had been destroyed.
The frustrating part of it all is that even when you reduce the pressure to 10 or 11 mercury point, as many doctors want you to do, the optic disk may be fine but could also continue to erode to the point of destruction, causing damage to the optic nerve. And the feeling shared by medical doctors is that the optic nerve can never regenerate.
Unlike cataract surgery, about which physicians are very optimistic, physicians continuously see that they cannot fully control glaucoma: not with drops, not with surgery. There is no way to clarify to anyone that reduction of pressure equals reduction of destruction of the optic nerve. And it is clear that most people like to have a simple technical solution to complex problems. Since there seems to be no magic bullet for glaucoma, people live in fear. And that fear is one of the main destructive dangers to our eyes.
The eyes feel this fear. The tissues feel the fear as well, and then become much worse. With some of my patients who had temporary improvement in therapy, I sometimes felt that this cloud of fear caused them to deteriorate anyway. With other patients, where the situation seemed to be grave to everyone else, their trust in the therapy dramatically improved their vision through the correct exercises and the right knowledge. Positive affirmation can be very useful. You can close your eyes and visualize that the strength of your eyes out-powers any phenomenon that can destroy them. Positive affirmation is 50 percent of your healing process.
When it comes to high pressure in the eyes, all factors must be considered: lack of balanced use of the eyes, stiffness of the neck (which is a result of stiffness of the body), or even a sense of emotional loss ― not just stress, but loss.
A good example is the desire for peace and harmony in a relationship, but never finding it because of resolutions that never come. Similarly, kids of divorced parents feel this when they want to see their parents getting along but never do. There are many different situations that can cause glaucoma, so apply this knowledge in a way that works for your specific situation.
Some people may have lost a lot of vision before the practice of these exercises and will do anything they can to keep the vision they already have and to sharpen their vision. Some people may have only a mild vision loss. Pay attention to the area where your vision is mildly lost, and use the area that is fuzzy or almost blind; this will help you to defend the rest of your visual system. So, apply the knowledge individually to your needs. Take time and pay attention to yourself in a way that works for you.
I will never forget one of my dearest patients, Murray, who had glaucoma. He did well in his therapy, with me for a period of seven years. But he took a turn for the worse when his wife died. Issues between him and his wife were never resolved, and that's one of the worst situations when a person you love perishes. If a person who was very dear to you did not get along with you, and the problem you had with that person was never resolved, with their death comes a sense of loss without closure. Part of this loss is not processing your inner feelings around the unresolved issues you had with the deceased member. Murray had a problem with his wife's senility and the Alzheimer's she had developed toward the end of her life. He discovered much anger that she had against some people which she had never brought out during their marital life. It revealed much of her anguish that he had never noticed during her youth. He was struck by the amount of anger and frustration that came out of her when she forgot the present and only remembered the past. And here was a woman who was a world educator and a writer.
When she died, his glaucoma became much worse because his emotional state lacked the stability that he had during most of the marriage. he was also exhausted from trying to keep his wife in as good a shape as he could during the last years of her life. Often, when there is a sense of lose and death, it can lead to a loss of vision. A sense of loss or death could result from the absence of anything that you really loved and adored like relationships, stability, or a home you had liked but from which you had to move. Anything that deep inside leads to an emotional connection, and when it leaves your life without a positive resolution, it could lead to tremendous subconscious tension. That tension reveals itself a a great mascular contraction in your neck. And that neck contraction hampers and disturbs the blood flow to your brain and to your eyes. When it disturbs the blood flow to your brain, you run a risk of strokes and hemorrhages of the brain cells. When it disturbs the blood flow to your eyes, you run the risk of losing retinal areas and vision, and you run a greater risk of having high pressure in your eyes.
Exercise Program for Glaucoma
• 1. Peripheral Exercise: 20 minutes daily.
• 2. Palming: 6 minutes at a time, three times daily, with at least 5 minutes between sessions for 30 minutes a day.
• 3. Sunning: 20 minutes daily.
• 4. Headlines (from the section on astigmatism): 10 minutes.
• 5. Block the Strong Eye (tape the medium-sized piece of paper onto the bridge of your nose so that it blocks the central vision of your strong eye; now read with your weaker eye while waving your hand in the periphery of your stronger eye): 10 minutes.
• 6. Physical Exercises for Glaucoma: 20 minutes daily.
Note: While working on your eyes, also address your emotional state and create a good emotional environment for yourself. And remember to work on your eyes throughout the day. Find time here and there to always work on healing your vision.
• 1. Peripheral Exercise: 20 minutes daily.
Exploring the Periphery
It is impossible to strain your eyes while looking centrally if you remember to simultaneously focus on your periphery. In our culture, we suppress parts of the eye that help us to see well naturally. It is a subconscious suppression. We suppress the periphery because we make it irrelevant to our lives. As we focus on objects in front of us, we simply don't pay attention to what's around us. On the other hand, our ancient fathers and mothers, our predecessors, had to pay attention to their surroundings; in the jungle, you wouldn't last more than a week without noticing the periphery. In fact, you would be eaten or you would starve to death if you did not notice what was around you.
But we ignore the periphery so we can focus on computers and paperwork all day without being distracted by our environment. We try to concentrate on the task at hand and can't be distracted by the commotion around us. When we don't notice the periphery, the strain on our central vision become much greater, which, in time, makes us use it poorly. This causes us to strain our central vision, decreasing its clarity and eventually losing it. The old adage that says use it or lose it holds true here. With time, we lose the connection between our brain, our optic nerve, and the rod cells of the periphery. Along with genetic tendencies, this can be a cause of glaucoma.
What we need to do right now is to exercise our periphery.
Periphery Exercise 1: Look into the Distance
Sit somewhere comfortable where you can see something in the distance that you enjoy looking at. As you look into the distance, start to wave your hands to the sides of your head to notify your eyes that a periphery exists. Don't look at your hands waving; just look into the distance. Allow your eyes to recognize the movement of your hands.
Wave your hands in such a way that your fingers point toward you and your wrists are loose. Do this for a minute or two. As you do this, you should feel your eyes release their tension; this relaxation in your eyes is vitally important to healthy vision.
Periphery Exercise 2: The Small Pieces of Paper
Cut out a small piece of opaque paper (about one inch by two inches) (1" x 2 ") and tape the paper horizontally on the bridge of your nose so that the wide parts are centered in front of your eyes. This will disrupt part of your vision.
Walk around in a familiar environment with this paper on your nose for a minute or two. Now sit down and wave your hands to the side of your head like you did before. Stand up and sit down several times, moving your whole body up and down, as you wave your hands to the sides. As you do this, it reveals to your brain the existence of a moving periphery with which it normally does not connect.
In the past, people used to walk at night, sometimes in total darkness and sometimes with light from the stars and moon. Imagine how important it was foe them to notice things moving in their periphery at night! For thousands millions of years, our ancestors used to walk this way. Now we have the city lights at night, and our peripheral cells are hardly being used because they are mainly designed for night vision.
Waving our hands to our sides wakes up the peripheral cells because the rods of the retina respond to movement rather than to still images; conversely, the cones respond better to a still picture. These cones are mainly in the central part of the retina (the macula) and are used to look at details. An overwhelming number of the retina's cells are the rods, which respond mainly to the impression of movement. When we exercise these rods, we take away a lot of stress from the overworked cones, and we make it easier for them to function more correctly. Instead of the brain forcing the eye to freeze and to strenuously see a picture, the brain will command the eye to look gently and easily in order to see the entire landscape better.
Next, put a longer piece of paper (one inch by five inches) (1"x 5") on the bridge of your nose and repeat this exercise. Then use a piece of paper that is one inch by seven inches (1" x 7"). By blocking so much of your central vision, and even some of your peripheral vision, you will discover a periphery that you hardly ever use consciously. Now go back to the medium-sized paper and repeat the exercise. Then use the small piece of paper and repeat the exercise for a final time. You may find that the small piece now seems even smaller in your perception. That is because much of your brain that had been suppressed is now engaged in peripheral vision.
To finish, take the small paper off, stand, and do the long swing so your brain will absorb the exercise you have just performed.
How to Do the Long Swing
Stand with your legs slightly more than hip-width apart and your knees slightly bent. Hold your index finger about one foot on front of your face, pointing up to the ceiling. Look at your finger with a soft gaze. If you are legally blind, or even with correction have very poor vision, you can look at your index and middle fingers together. While looking at your finger(s), swing your body from side to side. As you swing to the right, twist your body so that your left heel rises slightly off the ground. As you twist your body to the left, your right heel raises slightly off the ground. If your hand becomes tired, you can switch hands. Do this at least twenty (20) times.
You will notice the sensation that everything in the background seems to be moving in the opposite direction of your finger, like scenery passing by you as you look out the window of a train. Allow yourself to feel the sense of relaxation that comes when you don't need to place a hard focus on any one object. Move to the right, and the world moves to the left. Move to the left, and the world moves to the right.
Now hold your finger horizontally in front of your face. Move your finger up and down in front of you, moving your head vertically along with your finger. Remember to continue to hold a soft gaze. When you move up, everything in the background seems to be moving down. When you move down, everything seems to be moving up.
Next, hold your finger in front of you and do the long swing, pointing your finger to the ceiling as in the first explanation, but this time as you swing to one side, bend at the waist and sweep down in a half circle―just to kneel level. Don't lower your head below your knees, but continue the swing until your arm is fully extended and you are looking up at your finger. This exercise should relax your eyes further.
The next step is very important. This is where we visualize the long swing. We close our eyes and do the movement with our bodies, and visualize in our mind's eye that the world is swinging back and forth, passing in front of our eyes. Everything you visualize is moving directly opposite. When you move to the right, the neighbourhood moves to the left. When you move to the left, the whole world moves to the right. Remember how you saw objects this way. Now you open your eyes and continue the exercise.
When you look in this way, you stop yourself from freezing. It becomes easier to look at details and much easier to blink. Remind yourself to blink. Blinking will help you to relax.
Physical Exercises for Glaucoma
Good thoughts and good prayer can be healing. Visualize that blood is circulating to your retina, making it soft and nurturing your optic disk. Also visualize that the fluid in its clear form is flowing in the area between the cornea and the macula. Visualize that good blood circulation is nourishing your optic disk and retina. Visualize the blood coming from the back, and from your neck to the back of the head, and nourishing your optic disk. Visualize that blood is flowing into your eyes and draining from it. Then visualize that the aqueous humor is flowing into the front area of your eye from the lens to the cornea, nourishing both, and draining into the the area of your nose. It's amazing how powerful the human body is and how much it does all at once. It is not power that belongs to you but to nature, and you are a wonderful guest of nature's within your own human body. There is a connection between that power and of all universal powers around you; this connection gives that power a tremendous amount of strength.
The power that brings rain from the sky and wind to the earth, the power that is mysterious to all of us and runs the whole universe, is the same power that moves your blood and your fluids. It does so constantly The more you acknowledge its power and its strength, the better it will work for you. There is a connection between your mind and soul and the natural functions of your human body. When you have glaucoma, physical exercises are important to prevent the pressure from mounting and growing in your eyes and, in fact, will reduce it. Other exercises will be important to preserve your vision. All of them will be a pleasure to do. When you work on your body, you work for the purpose of having fun with it, and it is a pleasure to do the work. When you have that feeling, it is going to be wonderful to heal your glaucoma and to overcome it. It will create a better connection between you and your internal forces, and it will help you to tune in to the forces of universe. it is probably the best antidepressant you can ever have.
Special Instruction for Palming with Glaucoma
You should only palm for up to ten(10) minutes at a time. Then wait at least five (5) minutes before palming again. You can do this many times a day. But if you palm too long all in one session, you can experience an increase in pressure. if, for example, you have closed-angle glaucoma and you palm for a half an hour all at once, you can have an increase in pressure of 4 mercury points.
• 2. Palming: 6 minutes at a time, three times daily, with at least 5 minutes between sessions for 30 minutes a day.
Palming.
Note: Before palming, individuals with glaucoma should read and understand "Special Instructions for Palming with Glaucoma" (see above↑) for important modification to this exercise.
Palming have been practiced for more than 1,500 years. Palming is an exercise that complement every other practice you will learn from this blog.
Many people believe that they receive sufficient rest for their eyes while they are asleep. While sleep is very important, even with adequate sleep, many people still experience eye fatigue. There are a few reasons why this happens. One reason is that in these modern times we often hear noise around us while we are asleep; even though we don't feel disturbed, the noise upsets our rest on a subconscious level. The other reason sleep often fails to sufficiently rest our eyes is that many people sleep in rooms that are not completely dark. I suggest that you darken your bedroom as much as you can. The darker the room while asleep, the more rest you will give your eyes. Sleeping in total darkness produces hormones, such as melatonin, that relax your body, allowing you to experience deeper and more refreshing sleep.
In order for sleep to be completely satisfying, quite often we dream. Dreams enhance our state of being; it is as though they wash away the day. Although dreams allow for physical and mental relaxation, the saccadic movement during dreams does not allow for full relaxation of the eyes.
The greatest rest is a conscious rest, not a passive rest. William Bates, the originator of eye exercises in the modern world, understood this principle. When you meditate, you enter a state of transcendental relaxation. As with meditation, palming helps us to quiet the mind and focus on eye relaxation. This produces a very powerful effect.
There is a great Jewish adage that says the truth is always simple. The way to the truth, however may be complex.
To do palming correctly, or to palm correctly, and to receive the benefits of this powerful exercise, you first have to engage in the correct preparation. You must have relaxed hands because this exercise takes you to a place where your hands nurture your eye. Healthy hands can bring warmth, energy, and blood flow to the eyes, but there is no way for you to energise your eyes if your hands are angry, irritated, or numb in any way. Ensuring relaxed hands is necessary to receive benefits from this exercise.
Preparing to Palm.
The most important thing when palming is that you are not stressed. I recommend massaging your temples, face, shoulders, and the top of your head in order to bring good blood flow to the eyes and become as relaxed as possible.
Loosen your shoulders. move your shoulders together in a rotation motion, forward(clockwise) and then backward(anti-clockwise). Then rotate each shoulder separately forward and back. Picture that the shoulder tip is moving the shoulder. Now tap on the tip of the shoulder with your opposite hand and say out loud, "SHOULDER TIP!" Moving the shoulders in a rotating motion increases blood circulation; as you repeat this exercise several times (at least 8 times), your shoulders will feel lighter.
Stand beside a wall. Next, lift your arm up to shoulder height and move your whole arm in a rotating motion, imagining that your fingertips are moving your arm. By focusing on your fingertips, your body will naturally loosen. Tap the wall with your fingertips and say, "FINGERTIPS!" Then put your opposite hand on your shoulder and move it in a rotating motion. Repeat this series of movements with the opposite shoulder and hand.
Quite often the area between the shoulders get contracted, and energy becomes trapped because there is not enough movement happening in that area. Consequently, there is not enough blood flow, which quite literally freezes the hands.
The next step for palming is to open and close your ten fingers one hundred times, visualizing that the fingertips are initiating the movement.
From time to time, tap with your fingertips on the opposite forearm. Now massage your hands, front and back, by pretending you are washing them with soap and water. Then rub your two palms together, with the front of your fingers rubbing back and forth against each other in a circular motion.
The result of this exercise is that your fingers will be warm and your hands will be loose. The warmth and relaxation of your hands will enable you now to palm your eyes in a way that is correct and beneficial. Though it is very important tobe relaxed while palming, not all these shoulder exercises will be necessary each time. At the very least, rub your palms together to warm them; then intertwine your fingers, straighten your arms, and move your arms in a circular motion. Utilize your full range of motion several times in both directions, first with your hands palm to palm, and then withyour palms facing outward. depending on the time available, these relaxation exercises may last anywhere between two(2) to eight(8) minutes.
How to Palm
Now that you have pepared your body for palming, sit somewhere comfortable. You need to have your elbows resting on pillows or on a table top with a pillow so that your head is leaning neitheir forward nor backward. In other words, you are sitting comfortably in good posture. It is very important that you are not holding your arms up, that you are not straining your neck by letting your head tilt back, and, most important, that you never put any pressure on your face at all.
If you put your weight on anything, it is on your elbows. Rub your palms together to warm them and place them very gently over the eyes obits. The palms never touch the eyelids, but notice how your palms feel over your eyes lids, over the entire eye obit. Can you feel the warmth?
Do your hands feel nurturing as they sit ever so lightly over your eyes orbits? This is important. if you are stressed or angry, your palming session will not feel good. repeat the exercises to prepare for palming or do some kind of activity that helps you to let go of the stress or the anger you are carrying. Try walking barefoot on cobblestones or grass patch, say, for 10 minutes.
How Long Should You Palm over Your Eyes?
The duration of your palming may change depending on your schedule and your state of mind. if you are busy, perhaps you might take a break in the middle of your work from time to time and sit for a few minutes to palm. You can palm for one(1) minute just to rest the eyes, but it takes a minimum of six(6) minutes to clear the retina from neurological waste products. of course, it is even more wonderful if you can palm for fifteen(15) or twenty(20) minutes at a time!
Visualization While Palming Eyes
While you palm, there are two visualizations that will help you to receive the full benefit of this exercise. The first one is that you visualize a figure of eight(8), or an infinity sign. you can visualize a boat on the ocean moving in the figure-eight pattern, or a train in the mountains travelling a route shaped like an infinity sign. This is a fluid movement that helps your mind be able to travel from detail to detail easily and fluidly.
The second visualization is of total blackness and increasing blackness. Close your eyes and begin palming. Now visualize that the room you are in is being painted black. Visualize that your body is being painted black. Visualize that the neighbourhood is being painted black. Visualize that the city is being painted black. Visualize black paint covering the entire world. Visualize taht all the stars and the sun are being painted black. This is total blackness you are visualizing. Black is the color that allows the optic nerve to relax.
Breathing While Palming Eyes
Remember to inhale slowly and exhale slowly while palming. Visualize your abdomen rising slowly and falling gently. Count to eight, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, as you slowly breathe in, then count to eleven, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11, as you slowly breathe out. Don't tense up; just let yourself breathe in and out relaxingly.
Right now, you feel that your whole torso is expanding while you inhale and shrinking as you exhale. At the same time, you should feel that your head expands as you inhale and shrinks as you exhale. You visualize that your pelvis expands as you inhale and shrinks as you exhale, or that your legs expand as you breathe in and shrink as you breathe out. You visualize that your whole body expands as you breathe in and shrinks as you breath out.
Relaxing the Ears
A good addition to palming the yes is resting the ears from external noise. As a result of the noise we live in, our senses are under continuous pressure. Pressure causes tension, and if we are tense, we can never get to a lace of relaxed eyes.
So, when you finish palming the eyes, rub your hands together again to increase the blood flow to your fingers; then put your thumbs deep inside your ears. Right thumb into the right ear, while left thumb into the left ear. Listen to your breath. What does it sound like? It may sound like ocean waves or wind. Breathe deeply and slowly to the count of ten, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, and palm the ears again. You will feel your neck muscles becoming loose, and your whole head will start to relax.
Benefits of Palming
People who have multiple sclerosis [What Is MS? Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an unpredictable, often disabling disease of the central nervous system that disrupts the flow of information within the brain, and between the brain and body. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a potentially disabling disease of the brain and spinal cord (central nervous system). In MS, the immune system attacks the protective sheath (myelin) that covers nerve fibers and causes communication problems between your brain and the rest of your body.] and have an attack on their visual system quite often receive cortisone treatments from their doctors. In many cases, if such patients just sat down for a whole day palming with a nice cloth around their eyes, they would be able to overcome the attack on their visual system simply through rest. it is a simple truth that relaxation is very powerful.When you relax completely, your human body returns to its highest and best functioning.
I am in awe of nature for giving us such wonderful tools with which to see. In all its complexity, nature had fine-tuned our vision. Vision is completely integrated with our development as human being and is progressing side by side with it. Most of the visual process is subconscious and unknown to us. But science is gradually realising the marvellous energy behind vision!
We, humans, have 125 million photoreceptor cells in each retina, with a billion light rays bouncing against some of them every single minute, converting light into visual energy. To allow the process to function at its best, we need to learn not to squint. You may not be aware that your eyes squint even when you sleep and dream.
Palming can work away our tendency to squint. When you palm the eyes with soft, relaxed hands, and when you see black, there is a wonderful release of the eyelids, the temples, the forehead, and the entire skull. Squinting is eliminated, and you notice a relaxed sensation as you open your eyes. You also sense much more periphery because, with fully open eyelids, much more light can penetrate your eyes.
Quite often, physicians say that squinting does not have any ill effects, but it does. In this respect, the wisdom here , the modern medicine still needs to adopt the right concept that rest and relaxation are powerful.
Combining Palming with Other Exercises
After you have mastered palming, next time you are sunning, practicing the long swing, or night walking, stop for a few moments, put your hands over your eye orbits, and do your palming. Breathe slowly, in deep breaths. Your pupils will have time to enlarge a bit. Then take your hands off and return to your other exercise.
From time to time, also stop to massage your eyebrows. Massage the right eyebrow from the bridge of your nose to your temple; then do the same thing on the left side. massage your cheekbones and stretch the muscles of your cheekbones from nose to ear.Every time you firmly massage your cheekbone, you may find that more light penetrates your eyes and you experience a sense of less squinting.
• 3. Sunning: 20 minutes daily.
Sunning
Surrendering to the sun briefly each day can make a huge difference in terms of our overall feeling of well-being.
Since the 1980s, physicians have warned people against the dangers of exposure to the sunlight. Now they understand the benefits of sunlight and recommend that we have some exposure to the sun daily. The sun is one of the best nurturers that nature has given us. it is important, however, to adapt your eyes to the strong light of the sun. Sunning exercise is a great exercise for this purpose because it is relaxing to the eyes and can also help you with your sleep.
I once had a patient who complained about terible insomnia. She ha not slept for many nights and had a tremendous amount of tension. I taught her the sunning exercise and massaged her in the sun. After her first session, she went home and slept right through the night; after taking only three sessions at the school, she reported that she had slept much better. That was years ago. To this day, she practices the sunning technique and no longer experiences sleep deprivation.
Today, physicians suggest that we should not expose ourselves to the sun, except before 10 a.m. and after 5 p.m. In my humble opinion, we should sometimes expose ourselves to the sun even at midday. Yes, at 12 noon. If you are sensitive to sunlight, you should start by practicing the sunning exercise early in the morning or near dusk, or for just five (5) minutes at a time in the middle of the day.
To begin sunning, all you need to do is close your eyes and face the sun. Now move your head from side to side, rotating it from shoulder to shoulder. As you face the sun, the sphincter pupillae constrict the pupils. As you move your head away toward one shoulder, the radial dilator muscle dilates the pupils, even though your eyes are closed. Some people find it easy to move their head 180 degrees from shoulder to shoulder. If you find this full range of motion difficult, simply bring your opposite shoulder forward slightly; it will help you yo move your head all the way toward the side and to compensate for the limited range of motion until you loosen up. The more you practice this simple exercise, the more your range of motion and flexibility will increase.
The movements should not be fast, but they should not be slow, either. Just relax, breathe deeply and slowly, and visualize that the sun, with its energy and light, is penetrating your face and nurturing your eyes as well as your mind. Your eyelids should be closed softly; do not squeeze your eyelids shut. You want the eyelids to close as gently as if you were about to go to sleep. The less you squeeze your eyelids, the more relaxed your eyes will become.
When I was in high school, I had been doing this sunning exercise on a camping trip. Seeing me rotate my head back and forth, a girl asked, "Why do you keep saying no? Can't you say yes?" So i moved my head up and down as if to nod "yes,"and I had a revelation. I noticed that this movement led to a greater variability in the angles at which light reached my eyes, thus awakening more parts of them. This additional exercise allowed for greater stimulation and an increased sensation of lightness and darkness. I would recommend that this additional exercise be included during sunning.
Whenever you experience that difference between extremes of dark and light, your pupils become stronger. The pupils of most modern people are very weak because they wear sunglasses when they're outside, which weakens the pupils. Automatic activities, like those of the eye's iris muscles that affect the pupils, are influenced by function and use. The more you constrict and expand your pupils, the stronger the iris muscles become. Your retina also benefits from more concentrated light, and blood flows much better to the eye as a result of the pupils contracting and expanding.
The sunning exercise is mandatory for people who want to improve their vision. Like any exercise, it does not create drastic change for everyone. But quite a few of my clients have experienced huge vision improvement and have reduced the strength of their eyeglass prescriptions when they have diligently practiced sunning. When you have a break at work or school, I recommend sunning instead of smoking cigarettes or drinking coffee.
Skying
Skying is a simple exercise which is similar to sunning. but you do this skying as an alternative when there is no sun. You just put one hand behind the back of your head and one hand on your forehead, applying great pressure so that you massage your head as you turn it from side to side. Now move your head from side to side like you are sunning and blink rapidly at the sky.
After two (2) minutes of skying, do a minute of swinging. (see above for "How to Do the Long Swing.") Then do three (3) minutes of skying and two (2) minutes of swinging. Then do three (3) more minutes of skying and two (2) more minutes of swinging. This is an anti-squinting exercise, and as you sky and then swing, you are letting more light into your eyes and stopping the tendency to squint.
• 4. Headlines (from the section on astigmatism): 10 minutes.
Headlines
Note: If you are farsighted, this is a great exercise to practice before starting to work on your other exercises.
For this exercise, you will need an eye chart taped to the wall at eye level, your cheap sunglasses with the lens on the strong eye's side covered with opaque tape, and the page with large and small print or a newspaper with a large-print headline.
Stand at a distance from the eye chart so that you can see the top third of the chart clearly without much straining, but you have to strain to see the bottom two-thirds of the chart. Basically, you are going to look at the eye chart while quickly waving the headlines in front of your face. Look past the blur of the headlines being waved in your face and try to read the eye chart. Every few seconds, stop waving the headlines and look quickly at them. Blurt out the first letter you see clearly. Now wave the page back and forth again and go back to reading the eye chart. The object is to quickly shift your focus from far to near and back to far again.
If you have a partner with whom to practice these exercises, you can do this headlines exercise a little differently. While you are reading the eye chart, your partner can flash fingers in front of your face, very close to your eyes, and you can tell your partner how many fingers he or she is holding up. of course, this method is not good if you are by yourself because you cannot surprise yourself with your own fingers!
So when you are practising by yourself, pick up the page with the large headlines and quickly wave it back and forth in front of your eyes while looking at the chart on the wall. read the chart aloud even if all you can read is the first three lines; do so repeatedly. Now for less than half a second, stop waving the headlines, look at the large print, and say the first letter you can see. if you are in a phase of half-guessing and half-seeing because of the speed, that's exactly where you want you to be. Then return to waving the page back and forth.
Let's say that you are reading the letters on the top line of the eye chart. As you wave the piece of paper with the headline back and forth in front of your face, you might see he words "moving economy" in your periphery. What you want to do is to wave the paper so quickly that when you stop you may only see "e"; then you keep waving it and say the letter "e" as you return your gaze to the chart and read the top line of letters on the eye chart once agin. Then you stop waving the paper, and you may see the letter "c" or the letter "o." Announce it aloud; then wave the paper and read the top line of the chart again. It is good to speak with a loud voice as you do these eye exercises, as it helps to distract yourself from focusing on the exercise itself. This will make it much more effective.
The next phase is to improve your near vision by trying this same exercise reading the LARGE and small print on pages 99-100. this way, you are working with the eye chart to improve your eyesight for distant objects and with the large and small print pages for objects nearby.
Now put on your cheap sunglasses with the strong eye's side covered with opaque tape. Again wave the paper with the large print in front of your weaker eye while looking at the chart on the wll. Read the top line of the chart aloud while waving the headline back and forth in front of your face. From time to time, stop waving the headlines in front of your face for half a second, enough time to guess a letter that you see. After ten times of doing this, look at the chart with your weak eye, but without waving the headline in the air. You may be able to clearly read an extra line on the chart. Then take off the glasses, and you may be able to clearly read two extra lines on the chart.
Glow in the Dark
Note: We do this exercise because we want the eye to move around. We have found, in our experience, that many people have an easier time moving their eyes in a rotating motion in the dark.
The idea is to follow the glowing objects with your eye, not by moving your whole head. Move your eyes only, so that your eye muscle are stretching. The stretching motion changes the structure of the eyes with time. People say the cornea cannot change shape, but they are wrong.
For this exercise, you will need a glow-in-the-dark ball, a dark room, and a strip of paper to tape to your nose. The paper should stretch from the top of your forehead to the bottom of your chin, the same as in the Melissa exercise mentioned earlier in this book and also in the next chapter "Overcoming Cross-Sighted and Lazy Eye".
Eventually this exercise gets simple, but it's difficult to master at first. All you do is tape the paper to your forehead and to your chin, turn the lights off in your room, and play catch with the glowing ball. Throw the ball from hand to hand so that the ball crosses the visual plane in front of your face. It should disappear briefly as it passes the paper taped to your head. You can also practice bouncing the ball off the wall, throwing it with one hand and catching it with the other. Remember not to move your whole head to track the location of the ball. Move only your eyeballs so that they can stretch through their full range of motion in both directions.
Imagine doing curls with your biceps but only bending your arms a little bit. You would not be getting the full benefit of the exercise, and you may even damage the very part of your body you are attempting to build up. This idea is the same when it comes to your eyes. Exercise the eye muscles by watching the glowing ball in the dark and moving your eyes through the full range of their possible motion; this will stretch, and even change, the shape of your cornea over time.
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• 5. Block the Strong Eye (tape the medium-sized piece of paper onto the bridge of your nose so that it blocks the central vision of your strong eye; now read with your weaker eye while waving your hand in the periphery of your stronger eye): 10 minutes.
• 6. Physical Exercises for Glaucoma: 20 minutes daily.
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