Vision for Life

by Meir Schneider

  Your goal is to be able to hold a double for a full ten minutes. You can move from one double to another. You can see the front bead as single and all the other four as doubles. You can move through the five beads, one after another, and hold each double for two minutes. So, you don’t have to stay at one point for the full ten minutes, but you should continuously see double for the duration.

  You can then increase the amount of time that you see double, and try to go all the way to twenty minutes, or even to half an hour. You can decide one time, in a marathon session, to look at one bead and see the other four as doubles for ten minutes each; therefore, you would see double for fifty minutes. As long as the strain is not too high, this is a great exercise for good coordination between the two eyes.

  Two-Color Exercise (Beak Glasses)

  This exercise uses a tool we sometimes refer to in fun as “beak glasses.” We call them beak glasses because they are glass frames with the lenses removed and with two strips of paper attached to the front of them in such a way that they stick straight out between the lenses. When you put them on, it looks as if you had a two-colored beak.

  The pieces of paper should be two different colors; for example, one could be orange and the other yellow. Put on the glasses and look straight ahead into the distance. Now toss a tennis ball from one hand to the other and try to catch the ball. Toss the ball several times.

  Figure 5.4. “Beak Glasses.” When the ball is on the right side, it emphasizes to the right eye that the right color exists.

  Since the paper is attached to the front of the glasses, you are guaranteed to be using both of your eyes for this exercise. When the ball is on the left side of your body, it emphasizes to the left eye that the left color exists. When the ball is on the right side, it emphasizes to the right eye that the right color exists. As the ball travels from side to side, the peripheral vision of both eyes is being worked individually; the central vision is still looking straight ahead into the distance. Remember that the central vision sees a mostly still picture, while the peripheral vision sees movement.

  One interesting thing about this exercise is to notice which color each eye seems to be seeing. If your eyes are completely at ease and completely functional, when you look into the distance you will see the two colors, each one of them on the opposite side. And this will indicate that they work well together.

  If one of these colors disappears, you can also wave your hand close to your eye—not so close that it’s dangerous, but right in front of the eye. Often, that color will reappear. Seeing two colors with both eyes, especially for someone who has a hard time using both eyes together, could be a very relaxing experience at certain times.

  Red and Green Glasses

  Each color has different wavelengths. For example, the color red has long wavelengths, and the color green has short wavelengths. If you look through a pair of glasses with one green lens and one red lens, quite often the colors of the objects you look at seem to be different through the red lens than through the green. Some colors you can see easier with the red, and others you can see easier with the green.

  Figure 5.5. Working with red and green glasses made it possible for me to have partial three-dimensional vision.

  When you look at the world with both eyes through the red and green filter, you will see quite a few amazing things. For example, if you walk in a park or in your garden with red and green glasses on, you’re going to find that you see a pinkish view of flowers through the red lens but, at the same time, a greenish view of leaves much clearer with your green lens. So, from time to time, close one eye and look at colors with the open eye; then close that eye and open the other, and see what colors you notice. Do the pink flower petals disappear when you close the eye looking through the red lens? Do the green leaves disappear when you look only through the red lens? Now look around with both eyes open.

  You’ll find, however, that if you close the eye looking through the red lens and look at the pink or reddish flower only through the green lens, it will not look red or pink to you; rather, it will look dark, which is far from its true color. If you close the eye looking through the green lens and look only through the red, the green leaves would look dark.

  In fact, this is exactly how you start to develop bilateral vision and three-dimensional vision. You emphasize to yourself the difference between the two eyes. Your two eyes are independent. No one eye sees what the other one sees; therefore, no one eye controls the other. Instead, each is independent of the other, and the brain fuses the image from both of them equally.

  In the past, I had no three-dimensional vision. I didn’t know if an object was close to me or far away from me. But as I improved my clarity, I wanted to be able to drive. Working with red and green glasses made it possible for me to have partial three-dimensional vision and to eventually see well enough to start learning to drive and to know where I was on the road.

  You may not have such a dramatic change, but having better three-dimensional vision and having a distinction between the two eyes is a great way to reduce your cross-sightedness.

  Object and Line

  The first step is to make a division between the two eyes completely and to unite them in the brain. Wearing the red and green glasses, you may see light with one eye and an object with the other. Some people will not see light or an object. The aim of this exercise is to get both eyes working together.

  For this exercise you will need a red pen or pencil, a piece of white paper, and a small flashlight with a red bulb. If you don’t have a red bulb, put some red masking tape over the flashlight lens to simulate a red filter.

  Draw a red circle on the white sheet of paper. Hold the paper out in front of you with one hand so that the paper is parallel to the ground, about a foot in front of your eyes. Turn the flashlight on and put it underneath the paper, shining the light up through it. Look down at the circle while shining the light up through the page. You should see the circle and also the light.

  Now close your red-filtered eye. The eye that looks through the green filter should see the circle but not the light, because the red light cannot penetrate through the green lens. On the other hand, the green filter does not stop you from seeing the red circle.

  Conversely, if you close the eye that looks through the green, and only look through the red lens, you will see the light, but you will not see the red circle. The eye with the green filter will only see the object, and the eye with the red filter will only see the light. This kind of division is very important because you see a separate image from the eye with the red filter and the eye with the green filter simultaneously.

  Now move the light, which is underneath the page, around the perimeter of the circle, like you are tracing around its edge. If your eyes can track together, you will be able to keep the light on the edge of the circle. If your eyes cannot track together, though you may think that the light is on the edge of the circle, it will actually be elsewhere. In my case, when I thought that the light was on the circle, the light was actually outside or inside the circle. So, a way for you to know what’s happening with your light is to suddenly close the eye with the green filter; when you do this, you will see exactly where the light is. When you open the eye with the green filter, you will see if the light remains exactly where it was when that eye was closed, or if it moved. Even if it moved, don’t correct it. Close your eye with the green lens and open it ten to twenty times or until the light remains in the same place as it does when you look at the light through the red lens alone. Once it stays in the same place, it means that your eyes are tracking. For it doesn’t matter if it’s in the circle or out; what matters is that the two eyes are looking together at the same spot.

  You may find yourself needing to palm in the middle of this exercise. Palm for as long as necessary to help you relax enough to return to the exercise.

  Figure 5.6. Turn the flashlight on and put it underneath the paper, shining the light up through it.

  Now change the gla
sses. That is, if you first put the red lens on the left eye and the green on the right eye, now put the green on the left eye and the red on the right eye; then repeat the exercise.

  Another exercise you can do with the red and green glasses is to have someone draw a line with the red pencil, and you try to trace the line with a red pencil while wearing the red filter over your strong eye. The reason for this is that through the red lens you will not be able to see red lines or red writing (unless you are in the 2 percent of the population who can see a red line or red writing through a red lens, in which case the other exercises are more appropriate for you).

  You will want to put the red lens in front of the strong eye so the weaker eye will read the red print, but the stronger eye will not read the red line or print. The two eyes will see most other colors together, but the eye with the red filter won’t be able to see whatever is red, and that changes domination for a moment, which could be five to eight minutes. The weaker eye will take a front seat, and, as a result, the brain will learn to use it more in your day-to-day activity.

  A variation of this exercise is to take some white paper, wear the red lens in front of the strong eye, and write in big letters anything you like, for example, your name and four other names of people familiar to you on one page and a few words of a poem that you like on another. Then trace what you wrote and see if you can match the original writing.

  Card Game

  This is a fun and effective way to help balance the two eyes because you don’t even realize that you’re doing an exercise, and you create body/eye coordination as well. Let’s say the left eye is weaker; it will now have to work no less than the right eye, which has no control over it in this situation.

  You start off with a special deck of cards (two decks, if you have a few people playing) specifically designed to work with the red and green glasses. The deck is made up of two different colored cards: half the deck is red with black letters, and the other half is white with red letters. You can only see the white cards with the green lens and the red cards with the red lens. As this game proceeds, you and others wear the glasses while you each simultaneously throw down a card from your own portion of the deck. When you identify certain numbers, you will react with a corresponding physical response. For instance, when you see a card with a nine on it, you clap your hands; when you see a seven, you tap your forehead; when you see an ace, you stamp on the floor and bang on the table, etc. The responses could match whatever four cards you would like them to match, and could be anything you are able to dream up. The point is to do something with your body in response to the numbers you have designated in the cards. The person who reacts the quickest when one of these cards is thrown is the one who gets to keep the pile. When it appears that about half of the cards have been thrown, reverse your glasses so that each eye has a chance to see through both the red filter and the green filter.

  Figure 5.7. Playing a variation of the card game War.

  It’s better, and more fun, to have two or three people playing this game along with you. Extra pairs of glasses are inexpensive and can be purchased at the School for Self-Healing, as can the cards themselves. As enjoyable as it is, this game has had significant results: there has been a temporary improvement in the vision of 50 percent of the people who have played it.

  Chapter 6

  Pathology Conditions

  Correcting Cataracts

  A cataract, put simply, is a cloudy spot on the lens of the eye. One theory is that cataracts are the result of a crowding of proteins within the lens, which prevents light from passing through. This in turn causes an obstruction that eventually makes vision blur or can make a person completely blind.

  Since the purpose of the lens is to transfer light to the retina, you can see why a cloudy spot on the lens would make seeing difficult. Most people experience fuzziness of vision when they reach their mid-sixties to midseventies. Upon visits to their eye doctors, they discover that they have cataracts.

  There are quite a few reasons for cataracts, including poor nutrition and poor metabolism in the body. It is important, therefore, to eat a balanced, healthy diet and to devote time to regular exercise, especially as we get older.

  Many other reasons for cataracts are unknown, and in fact most people don’t really care what the cause of their cataract is because the medical solution seems to work fine for most people, which is simply to remove the lens. Cataracts occur so regularly that we think it is natural, and there is no way to stop it or to save the lens. If the lens is removed surgically and an intraocular lens is inserted artificially, most people regain the vast majority of their vision. After all, you do not see with your lens—you see with your retina and your brain.

  In fact, that tends to be the treatment we like these days. We like to remove parts that are not essential to our daily functions and either replace them or live without them; then we hail conventional medicine for being able to do it. While I’m happy that cataract surgeries exist (especially because some people cannot manage their cataracts, and the lens needs to be removed anyway), I would like to propose that in 80 percent of the cases when cataracts begin, they can be stalled and even stopped for dozens of years, if not eliminated altogether. Moreover, cataracts can be prevented. The lens of modern life does not have the chance for full functioning. It becomes thick and opaque because it doesn’t move the way it was designed by nature to move.

  With the exception a child whose lens is opaque in infancy, in which case medicine has proven to be a great relief to many children, we need to fight for every lens when cataracts begin. My feeling is that if we did this, most of the people destined for cataract surgery these days would never actually have it. Often, surgery makes the eyes even worse because it causes scar tissue to build up on the lens. Other times, we have glaucoma attacks that could blind the eye, or there is bleeding in the retina as a result of cataract surgery.

  One of my patients, Brett, had diabetes. His left eye was operated on successfully and was at 20/20 vision. When his right eye was operated on, he became blind. I had partial success with Brett’s right eye using light therapy, but his doctor negated the results, and Brett lost the small progress he had made with me. Doctors’ suggestions can be very powerful. For that reason, I failed in my therapy with Brett, and it was heartbreaking because I liked this wonderful person, and I wanted very much to succeed with him.

  On the other hand, one of my best friends and clients, Hannan, had one eye that was sighted and the other nearly blind. We worked for ten years and were able to get the blind eye to see somewhat and the sighted eye to see better than he had seen since childhood. Then Hannan went to Bascom Palmer, one of the best hospitals in the United States, and had cataract surgery. There were complications in the surgery itself. But after the four-hour surgery that should have lasted for only forty minutes, his vision became 20/25, 95 percent of 20/20, to the amazement of all attending physicians.

  We never know what’s going to be the result of a medical procedure. Sometimes it’s worse than we imagine it would be, as with Brett, who had expected to see 20/20 in his right eye. Brett’s doctors didn’t take into consideration that his calf had to be amputated from the knee down due to diabetes-related gangrene and that his circulation couldn’t possibly be the same when they operated on his right eye. Therefore, the result of the surgery in his right eye was not nearly as positive as it was in the previous surgery in his left eye. But in Hannan’s case, where the physicians were sure there would not be any good results from the surgery, it was Hannan’s insistence that caused them to do the surgery after the cataract was in place for a great many years. He ended up seeing 20/25.

  What an amazing dichotomy: when they expect to succeed, they fail; when they expect to fail, they succeed.

  When one eye overworks and the other eye underworks because of a cataract, the brain works very hard to suppress the information that the underworking eye brings to it. The strain is immeasurable. The eye that overworks becomes fatigued; t
he eye that underworks becomes weak.

  If you experience a cataract, my advice is simply to work on yourself, first with the exercises recommended in this chapter. Remember to refer back to Chapter 4 for specific instructions for each exercise. The goal is to get both eyes to work together and to get the weaker eye to pull its fair share and not get dominated by the stronger eye. Only if your self-care fails to achieve the desired results should you seek help from surgeons.

  Exercise Program for Cataracts

  • Look into the Distance: 30 minutes daily, three intervals of 10 minutes, or 20 minutes once and 10 minutes once.

  • Look at Details: 10 minutes daily.

  • Palming: 60 minutes daily.

  • Bounce and Catch: 10 minutes daily.

  A Note about Cataract Surgery

  If you are considering cataract surgery, the purpose of doing these exercises is to see whether you can postpone or even cancel the surgery. When you do this program, you should ask yourself if you are improving. If you are, postpone the surgery.

  Many people have improved or have halted the onset of cataracts, so they didn’t need the surgery. Some, however, have not improved. But even for those who did not improve, the fact that they did the exercises was good anyway. So don’t stop the exercises even if you did not succeed in stopping the cataract.

  These exercises are good for the overall health of the eye. That is your goal. The goal isn’t to avoid surgery; it is the health of the eye. If you can prevent the surgery, that’s great, and that happens to more than half of the people who follow this program.