List of Materials for Getting Started
1. Four (4) pieces of dark construction paper cut 2 inches x 2 inches, 2 inches x 5 inches, 2 inches x 7 inches, and 2 inches x 9 inches.
2. Masking tape.
3. Tennis ballsㅡat least two (preferably usedㅡyour local tennis club would most likely give you a few!)
4. Obstruction glasses. Recycle from cheap spectacles.
5. Red and green glasses.
6. Red pencil or pen (use a red felt tip pen if vision loss is extreme)
7. Plain white copy paper.
8. Small flash lite with red bulb or red tape over lens.
9. Ten-foot long and twenty(20)-foot long eye charts.
10. Flashing lights ( when working with severe vision loss)
11. Glow in the dark ball.
12. Beads on a string.
13. Pinhole glasses (optional).
These items can often be made at home from materials found in local stationary shops.
Click here to read the book...from page 1 to page 6.
Vision For Life, Page 7
In short, I encountered so much resistance to what I did that I didn't even know it was possible to attempt change without facing resistance. When everybody resists you, difficulty comes not only in doing the exercises, but also in dealing with the fact that your family, friends, teachers, and even neighbors oppose your efforts. Still, I persisted.
Within three (3) months, I was able to see print. And now with 38 diopters, which is a microscopical lens, but with 20 diopters, which is simply a very thick lens. Headaches that had plagued me all my life disappeared within six(6) months.
What is 20/20 Vision? How to Convert Diopters to a 20/20 Measure
We all hear the term 20/20 vision thrown about to mean anyone who has healthy eyesight. But what does it mean? And how does it convert to the lens prescription your optometrist gives you, measured in diopters? By the end of this article you’ll be an expert on the definition and understanding of 20/20 eyesight.
What is 20/20 Vision?
The average human being with healthy eyesight has 20/20 focus. This is a benchmark measure of what you should be able to see at a distance of 20 feet.
This measure only really becomes important when people stray from the norm. For instance, if you have 20/100 vision, it means that other people can see clearly from 100 feet away, what you can only see at 20 feet. It’s a big disadvantage.
Can You Have Better Than 20/20 Eyesight?
Yes, it is possible – having 20/20 focus is merely the average visual acuity for a healthy human being. But there is nothing stopping people from being above average and gaining better than 20/20 vision.
Some fighter pilots use eye exercises to attain 20/10 vision, while the world record belongs to a man naturally achieved 20/8 focus by training his eyes for better vision. Incidentally, eagles have natural vision of 20/2 – hence the expression eagle eye, which means an exceptional eye for detail.
What are Diopters?
If you are nearsighted (anything worse than about 20/50 vision), your optometrist will write you a prescription to improve your long distance vision. This describes, in a measure called diopters, the refractive power of your new glasses or contacts.
You will get a separate diopter value for each eye – often one eye is slightly weaker than the other. If the measurement has a minus (-) before it, you are nearsighted and have trouble seeing things in the distance. If there is a plus (+) before it, you are farsighted and have trouble seeing things up close.
How to Convert Diopters to 20/20 Vision
While the 20/20 vision system measures how well you can see compared to a healthy benchmark, diopters measure the focusing power of your glasses.
There is a relationship between the two, shown in the table below. This gives you a very rough conversion between diopters and the 20/20 measurement – but bear in mind there is a lot of variation between individuals.
Diopter Measure = 20/20 Measure
-1.00 = 20/40
-2.00 = 20/80*
-3.00 = 20/150*
-4.00 = 20/300*
-5.00 = 20/400*
-6.00 = 20/500*
*Higher diopter values are harder to calculate because it depends on the person – some sources cite a whole range between -4.00 and -6.00 to reflect 20/400 vision. So these figures are an approximation. Note how the 20/20 measure doesn’t increase consistently, and may actually increase exponentially beyond -6.00 (severe myopia).
Seeing the Light
Within a year of practicing the Bates Method, I was able to see regular letters. I'll never forget the day I was doing the sunning exercise on a roof and looking at sharp black letters printed on white paper. I placed the paper at the tip of my nose. For the very first time in my life, at the age of seventeen and a half, I could see the printed word without magnification. This success took such a huge effort that I threw up. Again, I sunned and palmed and threw up, until I saw another letter, than another. Soon, I heard loud voices in argument. It was the neighbors downstairs accusing each other of creating a mess on the windows. So I went downstairs and told them what had happened. Instead of being angry with me, they were amazed at my honesty. I could have ignored my deeds, but I didn't. I was proud of the fact that i could finally see a letter. I honed my process and, within three months, could see multiple letters by putting the print right in front on my nose.
From then on, I continued to work. People were surprised that instead of just feeling my way down the road, I could literally see the road. Instead of not recognizing them, I started to know their faces. One neighbor was actually upset that I could recognize her! "What is wrong?" she would ask. "You're the blind person in the neighborhood. How can you see us? What have you done? What's going on?" It was amazing. I had taken away from her the feeling of security that resulted from her knowing what was going on in the neighborhood. It was almost as if she felt that the world she knew had been taken away from her.
Page 8 (continue ) (Click here to read the book...from page 8 to page 10.)
Healing Myself of Blindness, Page10.
... looking at anything. Looking was a new order to my brain. The result, even though I was starting to see more, was that my eyes hurt. Palming and lying down fro a long time had helped me. Sometimes I just didn't want to see anything; it was just too much. But I kept looking.
When I arrived in the United States, (I was born in Soviet Union) I met some people who were very interested in my work. They offered to help me train other people in y methods. It was new to me to have people embrace my experiences. I learned how to teach individualsㅡMiriam always taught me to work only with individualsㅡand how to teach classes in a way that would enable each individual to learn how to with with himself or herself. From this I learned that the greatest difficulty most people have is that they do not believe they can find the time to work on themselves. Most people think they are too busy. Others feel impatient and are not willing to invest the effort it takes to quiet and to relax their minds and bodies. I teach them how to incorporate these exercises into their existing routines. I teach them that looking at details is something they had stopped being motivated to do a long time ago and that to do so stimulates the maculaㅡ the central part of retinaㅡand can prevent macular degeneration.
I teach them that sitting with a loose neck is worth the investment of moving the head in a rotating motion before sitting in a chair. I teach people that while they use their computers, they should look far away from time to time to rest they eyes. These are simple healthy habits that are easily incorporated into day-to-day life.
My own two children were born with cataracts, which was traumatic for me and for their mother, as we knew from experience the struggle they would face. AT the age of two weeks, they went through cataract surgeries that allowed the visual brain to develop normally. This way not known in my generation. Because their surgeries were successful, they did not have to deal with the scarring that I dealt with when I was young. Using the techniques you will read about in this book, Vision for Life, their vision has improved tremendously. Throughout their childhood and adolescence, my children have covered their strong eyes and looked with their weak eyes at objects in order to ease the strain of looking with the strong eyes all the time.
With an artist's mind and an artists's heart, my son is often in his own world in many ways. While in his world, however, he looks at details with great interest. because of his powerful capacity of observation and love of details, he sees much that others do not see. He has developed the best vision of any kid who was ever born with cataracts. He now sees at 20/40 without glasses. This is 80 percent of 20/20 vision, without his natural lenses. Anyone else without the natural lens of the eye would be seeing 20/400 (5 percent of normal vision). He sees 20/15 with glasses. Most other kids who were born with cataracts and had successful surgeries see 20/80 or 20/100 using much thicker lenses; 20/40 is unheard of for someone who has no natural lens of his own.
Mt daughter has also passed through many transitions. We used to play a lot of games in our living room, where she would cover her strong eye and play ball with me using her weaker eye. Seeing that ball as it rolled close and far made a huge difference for her and her vision greatly improved. At the age of twelve, she developed elevated eye pressure. Immediately the doctors wanted to give her eye drops to reduce her eyes' pressure. We decline the doctors' recommendation because we believed the eye drops could be damaging. I worked with her instead, and in spite of incredible demanding meddle school and high school schedules with many extracurricular activities, she found some time to work on her periphery, which reduced eye pressure. She also found some time to work on her neck. She saw acupuncturists and homeopathic specialists, took vitamin treatments, and got massage treatments to reduce the tension in her back and neck. I taught her how to relax her whole body in many different ways in order to bring more blood circulation to her head. her eyes pressure was reduced enormously.
The process was long, hard, and cumbersome, and had its ups and downs, but it worked. With high eyes pressure, some people have a tendency toward developing glaucoma, and glaucoma expresses itself by damaging the optic nerve and diminishing the field of vision.
↑ Top view.
↓ Pituitary gland position relatively to optic nerves and optic chiasm.
So our success with her is partial but good; her vision is 20/20. Though her tendency is for high pressure, her optic nerve is very healthy, and her field of vision is excellent.
From these experiences with myself, with my own children, and with thousands of patients and students with whom I have worked, I have come to truly believe that people can improve their vision and find the time to do so,whether they're in school or in the workplace.
A wonderful computer engineer, who once came to a class of mine, was able to improve his vision from 20/200 to 20/80 during the class. He reduced his prescription by half within eight months, from 7 diopters to 3.5 diopters. For the first time in his adult life, and still in his forties, he felt comfortable driving without glasses.
We all can take the time. We just have to decide that we are worth the time and that the process is worth our while. WE need to make an effort to combine eye exercises with our everyday lives. Then we can thrive. Then we can excel. Imagine never needing to have any major treatments from the eye doctor. Imagine your life without cataracts, macular degeneration, glaucoma, or retina detachment. Imagine that you can improve your life simply by creating more life in your eyes.
So far, the oldest person I've worked with was 101 years old. This patient experienced great changes and was able to see better and to improve his brain and eye functions quite a bit, even after just one session. Since he was one of only two patients over the age of a hundred with whom I have worked, I can only give these examples. I did, however, have success with both of them. I have also worked with several patients in their eighties and nineties and have witnessed tremendous positive changes in their visual systems through working with these eye exercises.
There is no doubt in my mind that, whether you are in your twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, or beyond, you can change the function of your eyes for the better vision. There is enough elasticity in your brain to back it up. The problem is not age itself, but whether or not a person is practicing the correct eye exercises for his or her age. It may be easier for a five-year-old child to get used to the weaker eye's workings by putting on a patch for four or eight hours a day as her or she plays. And truly, the human brain has more plasticity when you're five than when you're seventy-five. But there are good, age-appropriate exercises you can do at anytime in your life that can change your visual system completely.
The brain is not made of plastic…Neuroplasticity, or brain plasticity, refers to the brain's ability to CHANGE throughout life. The human brain has the amazing ability to reorganize itself by forming new connections between brain cells (neurons).
What is Neuroplasticity?
A dark-age of science. For four hundred years it was believed that brain anatomy was fixed. Norman Doidge M.D. in his book "The Brain that Changes Itself" puts it like this, "The common wisdom was that after childhood the brain changed only when it began the long process of decline; that when brain cells failed to develop properly, or were injured, or died, they could not be replaced. Nor could the brain ever alter its structure and find a new way to function if part of it was damaged. The theory of the unchanging brain decreed that people who were born with brain or mental limitations, or who sustained brain damage, would be limited or damaged for life." The analogy used to understand the body during that four hundred years was that of a machine. Even today people still tend to use that analogy, which leads to the idea that the brain is the processor, that the brain is hardware not software and that we speak of aspects of mind or brain as being hardwired, immutable.
1. Four (4) pieces of dark construction paper cut 2 inches x 2 inches, 2 inches x 5 inches, 2 inches x 7 inches, and 2 inches x 9 inches.
2. Masking tape.
3. Tennis ballsㅡat least two (preferably usedㅡyour local tennis club would most likely give you a few!)
4. Obstruction glasses. Recycle from cheap spectacles.
5. Red and green glasses.
6. Red pencil or pen (use a red felt tip pen if vision loss is extreme)
7. Plain white copy paper.
8. Small flash lite with red bulb or red tape over lens.
9. Ten-foot long and twenty(20)-foot long eye charts.
11. Glow in the dark ball.
12. Beads on a string.
13. Pinhole glasses (optional).
These items can often be made at home from materials found in local stationary shops.
Click here to read the book...from page 1 to page 6.
Vision For Life, Page 7
In short, I encountered so much resistance to what I did that I didn't even know it was possible to attempt change without facing resistance. When everybody resists you, difficulty comes not only in doing the exercises, but also in dealing with the fact that your family, friends, teachers, and even neighbors oppose your efforts. Still, I persisted.
Within three (3) months, I was able to see print. And now with 38 diopters, which is a microscopical lens, but with 20 diopters, which is simply a very thick lens. Headaches that had plagued me all my life disappeared within six(6) months.
What is 20/20 Vision? How to Convert Diopters to a 20/20 Measure
We all hear the term 20/20 vision thrown about to mean anyone who has healthy eyesight. But what does it mean? And how does it convert to the lens prescription your optometrist gives you, measured in diopters? By the end of this article you’ll be an expert on the definition and understanding of 20/20 eyesight.
What is 20/20 Vision?
The average human being with healthy eyesight has 20/20 focus. This is a benchmark measure of what you should be able to see at a distance of 20 feet.
This measure only really becomes important when people stray from the norm. For instance, if you have 20/100 vision, it means that other people can see clearly from 100 feet away, what you can only see at 20 feet. It’s a big disadvantage.
Can You Have Better Than 20/20 Eyesight?
Yes, it is possible – having 20/20 focus is merely the average visual acuity for a healthy human being. But there is nothing stopping people from being above average and gaining better than 20/20 vision.
Some fighter pilots use eye exercises to attain 20/10 vision, while the world record belongs to a man naturally achieved 20/8 focus by training his eyes for better vision. Incidentally, eagles have natural vision of 20/2 – hence the expression eagle eye, which means an exceptional eye for detail.
What are Diopters?
If you are nearsighted (anything worse than about 20/50 vision), your optometrist will write you a prescription to improve your long distance vision. This describes, in a measure called diopters, the refractive power of your new glasses or contacts.
You will get a separate diopter value for each eye – often one eye is slightly weaker than the other. If the measurement has a minus (-) before it, you are nearsighted and have trouble seeing things in the distance. If there is a plus (+) before it, you are farsighted and have trouble seeing things up close.
How to Convert Diopters to 20/20 Vision
While the 20/20 vision system measures how well you can see compared to a healthy benchmark, diopters measure the focusing power of your glasses.
There is a relationship between the two, shown in the table below. This gives you a very rough conversion between diopters and the 20/20 measurement – but bear in mind there is a lot of variation between individuals.
Diopter Measure = 20/20 Measure
-1.00 = 20/40
-2.00 = 20/80*
-3.00 = 20/150*
-4.00 = 20/300*
-5.00 = 20/400*
-6.00 = 20/500*
*Higher diopter values are harder to calculate because it depends on the person – some sources cite a whole range between -4.00 and -6.00 to reflect 20/400 vision. So these figures are an approximation. Note how the 20/20 measure doesn’t increase consistently, and may actually increase exponentially beyond -6.00 (severe myopia).
Seeing the Light
Within a year of practicing the Bates Method, I was able to see regular letters. I'll never forget the day I was doing the sunning exercise on a roof and looking at sharp black letters printed on white paper. I placed the paper at the tip of my nose. For the very first time in my life, at the age of seventeen and a half, I could see the printed word without magnification. This success took such a huge effort that I threw up. Again, I sunned and palmed and threw up, until I saw another letter, than another. Soon, I heard loud voices in argument. It was the neighbors downstairs accusing each other of creating a mess on the windows. So I went downstairs and told them what had happened. Instead of being angry with me, they were amazed at my honesty. I could have ignored my deeds, but I didn't. I was proud of the fact that i could finally see a letter. I honed my process and, within three months, could see multiple letters by putting the print right in front on my nose.
From then on, I continued to work. People were surprised that instead of just feeling my way down the road, I could literally see the road. Instead of not recognizing them, I started to know their faces. One neighbor was actually upset that I could recognize her! "What is wrong?" she would ask. "You're the blind person in the neighborhood. How can you see us? What have you done? What's going on?" It was amazing. I had taken away from her the feeling of security that resulted from her knowing what was going on in the neighborhood. It was almost as if she felt that the world she knew had been taken away from her.
Page 8 (continue ) (Click here to read the book...from page 8 to page 10.)
Healing Myself of Blindness, Page10.
... looking at anything. Looking was a new order to my brain. The result, even though I was starting to see more, was that my eyes hurt. Palming and lying down fro a long time had helped me. Sometimes I just didn't want to see anything; it was just too much. But I kept looking.
When I arrived in the United States, (I was born in Soviet Union) I met some people who were very interested in my work. They offered to help me train other people in y methods. It was new to me to have people embrace my experiences. I learned how to teach individualsㅡMiriam always taught me to work only with individualsㅡand how to teach classes in a way that would enable each individual to learn how to with with himself or herself. From this I learned that the greatest difficulty most people have is that they do not believe they can find the time to work on themselves. Most people think they are too busy. Others feel impatient and are not willing to invest the effort it takes to quiet and to relax their minds and bodies. I teach them how to incorporate these exercises into their existing routines. I teach them that looking at details is something they had stopped being motivated to do a long time ago and that to do so stimulates the maculaㅡ the central part of retinaㅡand can prevent macular degeneration.
I teach them that sitting with a loose neck is worth the investment of moving the head in a rotating motion before sitting in a chair. I teach people that while they use their computers, they should look far away from time to time to rest they eyes. These are simple healthy habits that are easily incorporated into day-to-day life.
My own two children were born with cataracts, which was traumatic for me and for their mother, as we knew from experience the struggle they would face. AT the age of two weeks, they went through cataract surgeries that allowed the visual brain to develop normally. This way not known in my generation. Because their surgeries were successful, they did not have to deal with the scarring that I dealt with when I was young. Using the techniques you will read about in this book, Vision for Life, their vision has improved tremendously. Throughout their childhood and adolescence, my children have covered their strong eyes and looked with their weak eyes at objects in order to ease the strain of looking with the strong eyes all the time.
With an artist's mind and an artists's heart, my son is often in his own world in many ways. While in his world, however, he looks at details with great interest. because of his powerful capacity of observation and love of details, he sees much that others do not see. He has developed the best vision of any kid who was ever born with cataracts. He now sees at 20/40 without glasses. This is 80 percent of 20/20 vision, without his natural lenses. Anyone else without the natural lens of the eye would be seeing 20/400 (5 percent of normal vision). He sees 20/15 with glasses. Most other kids who were born with cataracts and had successful surgeries see 20/80 or 20/100 using much thicker lenses; 20/40 is unheard of for someone who has no natural lens of his own.
Mt daughter has also passed through many transitions. We used to play a lot of games in our living room, where she would cover her strong eye and play ball with me using her weaker eye. Seeing that ball as it rolled close and far made a huge difference for her and her vision greatly improved. At the age of twelve, she developed elevated eye pressure. Immediately the doctors wanted to give her eye drops to reduce her eyes' pressure. We decline the doctors' recommendation because we believed the eye drops could be damaging. I worked with her instead, and in spite of incredible demanding meddle school and high school schedules with many extracurricular activities, she found some time to work on her periphery, which reduced eye pressure. She also found some time to work on her neck. She saw acupuncturists and homeopathic specialists, took vitamin treatments, and got massage treatments to reduce the tension in her back and neck. I taught her how to relax her whole body in many different ways in order to bring more blood circulation to her head. her eyes pressure was reduced enormously.
The process was long, hard, and cumbersome, and had its ups and downs, but it worked. With high eyes pressure, some people have a tendency toward developing glaucoma, and glaucoma expresses itself by damaging the optic nerve and diminishing the field of vision.
↑ Top view.
↓ Pituitary gland position relatively to optic nerves and optic chiasm.
So our success with her is partial but good; her vision is 20/20. Though her tendency is for high pressure, her optic nerve is very healthy, and her field of vision is excellent.
From these experiences with myself, with my own children, and with thousands of patients and students with whom I have worked, I have come to truly believe that people can improve their vision and find the time to do so,whether they're in school or in the workplace.
A wonderful computer engineer, who once came to a class of mine, was able to improve his vision from 20/200 to 20/80 during the class. He reduced his prescription by half within eight months, from 7 diopters to 3.5 diopters. For the first time in his adult life, and still in his forties, he felt comfortable driving without glasses.
We all can take the time. We just have to decide that we are worth the time and that the process is worth our while. WE need to make an effort to combine eye exercises with our everyday lives. Then we can thrive. Then we can excel. Imagine never needing to have any major treatments from the eye doctor. Imagine your life without cataracts, macular degeneration, glaucoma, or retina detachment. Imagine that you can improve your life simply by creating more life in your eyes.
So far, the oldest person I've worked with was 101 years old. This patient experienced great changes and was able to see better and to improve his brain and eye functions quite a bit, even after just one session. Since he was one of only two patients over the age of a hundred with whom I have worked, I can only give these examples. I did, however, have success with both of them. I have also worked with several patients in their eighties and nineties and have witnessed tremendous positive changes in their visual systems through working with these eye exercises.
There is no doubt in my mind that, whether you are in your twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, or beyond, you can change the function of your eyes for the better vision. There is enough elasticity in your brain to back it up. The problem is not age itself, but whether or not a person is practicing the correct eye exercises for his or her age. It may be easier for a five-year-old child to get used to the weaker eye's workings by putting on a patch for four or eight hours a day as her or she plays. And truly, the human brain has more plasticity when you're five than when you're seventy-five. But there are good, age-appropriate exercises you can do at anytime in your life that can change your visual system completely.
The brain is not made of plastic…Neuroplasticity, or brain plasticity, refers to the brain's ability to CHANGE throughout life. The human brain has the amazing ability to reorganize itself by forming new connections between brain cells (neurons).
What is Neuroplasticity?
A dark-age of science. For four hundred years it was believed that brain anatomy was fixed. Norman Doidge M.D. in his book "The Brain that Changes Itself" puts it like this, "The common wisdom was that after childhood the brain changed only when it began the long process of decline; that when brain cells failed to develop properly, or were injured, or died, they could not be replaced. Nor could the brain ever alter its structure and find a new way to function if part of it was damaged. The theory of the unchanging brain decreed that people who were born with brain or mental limitations, or who sustained brain damage, would be limited or damaged for life." The analogy used to understand the body during that four hundred years was that of a machine. Even today people still tend to use that analogy, which leads to the idea that the brain is the processor, that the brain is hardware not software and that we speak of aspects of mind or brain as being hardwired, immutable.
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