by Leo Anghart
Praise for Improve Your Eyesight Naturally
The Leo Angart book is a wonderful resource. There are many practical exercises, although the one which had the most benefit to me was ‘Energy Exercise’. It combines the powerful use of visualisation with the Chinese life giving energy of chi. It opened my eyes (literally as well as metaphorically) to the power of chi and helped improve my eyesight from -3.75 dioptres to less than 1 dioptre in both eyes.
The instructions are clearly explained, taking you through each step in a logical manner. To aid comprehension there are also small images showing the ideal things that you should be doing at each stage. It was so easy that I only needed to read the instructions a few times before I had memorised the whole process and I could thus do the exercise whenever and wherever I wanted.
There is also much information about how the eye functions and specific exercises for various eye afflictions (such as astigmatism, myopia, hypermyopia, amblyopia, strabismus, etc.). It is therefore a practical and comprehensive tool for those looking to improve their eyesight naturally.
Anthony Barrett, NLP Trainer/Coach
Leo’s book sees far beyond clarity of vision. He gives you tools to recognise small changes that make a huge difference.
Through the knowledge in this book I am more able to understand the subtle changes and stresses in my body.
Belinda McKenna, Storyteller
Leo’s approach is so encouraging. I spend time reading smaller and smaller print so that I can restore my reading vision back to how it used to be. I wear lesser and lesser strength reading glasses and now have +1s. I am sure I will be able to give up reading glasses very soon. I tell everyone I know about Leo’s work and am determined to stop wearing reading glasses as proof of how wonderful his methods are.
Jean Kelly MA, MCIPD, Jean Kelly Consultancy Ltd
I have been organising Leo Angart’s London workshops since 1996. People tell me that just through reading previous editions of this book, a distillation of his many years of reading and practice in the field, they have changed limiting beliefs and improved their vision even without attending a course.
I have never worn glasses and would have expected to in my mid 40s, before I met Leo. The book is a mine of practical, readily usable information. I find it useful to direct people to the Vision Training Plan in the book so they can see immediately that there are 3 or 4 actions specifically for their vision challenges.
Katrina Patterson, INLPTA Certified NLP Trainer, Feldenkrais Teacher and Vision Coach
Long interested in investigating the seemingly far-fetched claims people have made that vision could be improved naturally, without glasses, I attended Leo Angart’s course, in which he puts the principles in this book into action. To my amazement, by doing the exercises over the several days of the course, my wife and I both found we needed, on average, between our four eyes, about 3/4 of a diopter less prescription correction per eye.
Both of us, who had been requiring increased prescriptions every couple of years, were now able to return to the prescriptions of several years before (about a diopter less per eye) and spend more time wearing no glasses at all within a few days. As important, we learned that some of the factors that make it hard for many of us to see clearly, also put long-term pressure on the eyes, setting them up for more serious problems in old age. Thus, some of the exercises Leo describes here not only improve sight, but also appear to protect our eyes over the course of our lives.
Norman Doidge, MD, author of The Brain That Changes Itself
I would like to dedicate this book to my special star, Rebecca Szeto, who has provided many valuable suggestions and has been a great support during the writing of this book.
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Dr. William H. Bates for his courage and determination in following his convictions and thus building the foundations upon which Vision Training rests.
I also wish to thank Master Choa Kok Sui for his dedication in developing the pranic healing approach. It was pranic healing that cured my eyesight. I realized early on that energy is a key factor if you want to have consistent success in regaining your eyesight.
A heartfelt thank you to my NLP trainers – John Grinder for inspiring me to start this adventure, and Judith DeLozier and Robert Dilts for teaching me to look for the difference that makes the difference. My approach is built on NLP methodology.
A special thank you goes to my dedicated sponsors, in particular Katrina Patterson in London, who encouraged me to put all this knowledge into a book. I also want to thank Lulu Heinse in Ireland and Monika and Maurice Cruz first in Manila and now in Melbourne for inviting me. Also a thank you to Wolfgang Gillessen in Munich for his valuable input in making the German version of this book a reality.
My proofreader put in long hours to make my manuscript much more enjoyable to read. Thank you to Candice Temple.
Finally, I want to thank the many people who attended my workshops and benefited from what they learned and I thank you for reading and benefiting from this book.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
2. How to Benefit From This Book
What is Vision Training?
A brief history of Vision Training
3. Regaining Your Eyesight – Is It Possible?
Have your eyes tested
Visiting the optometrist
Understanding your prescription
4. Anatomy of the Eye
The eye muscles
The cornea
Optimal dimensions of the eye
The lens
The retina
Photosensitive cells
The macula
5. Healthy Eyes
What’s needed for optimum eye health?
What can I do to maintain optimum eye health?
6. Visual Acuity
Detecting small changes in visual acuity
Night vision
Contrast
What is a diopter?
7. Vision: The Mind Side
It’s a wonderful world out there
Where does your attention go?
Sensory alignment excercise
8. The Basic Principles of Vision Training
Updating your beliefs about vision
Your reality strategy
Your belief strategy
The belief change cycle
9. Exercise Your Ability to See
How to discover your internal vision
Find your dominant eye
Balancing your imaginary and physical vision
Are you avoiding what you don’t want to see?
10. Getting Energy to Flow
Chinese acupressure for your eyes
11. Check Your Eyesight
Relax and see
How to test your distance vision
How to check if your myopia is more than 4 diopters
Near vision test
12. Astigmatism
Vision Training principles for astigmatism
Exercise to loosen the eye muscles
Tibetan wheel exercise
Some objective proof
13. Myopia
What causes myopia?
14. Recovering Myopia of Less Than 2 Diopters
How to practice with the eye-chart
Swinging
15. Recovering Myopia from between 2 to 3 Diopters
Chart-shifting exercise
The domino exercise
16. Recovering More Than 4 Diopters of Myopia
Energy exercise
String exercise
Coming and going exercise
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7. Presbyopia
Bates’ road to discovering the cure for presbyopia
Stumbling on the truth
Vision Training principles for presbyopia
Do you have presbyopia?
Small print exercise
Lazy reading exercise
Circle exercise
18. Hyperopia
Vision Training principles for hyperopia
19. Convergence
Vision Training principles for convergence
How to test for convergence
Convergence and reading
Convergence practice exercise
20. Strabismus
How to test for strabismus
Vision Training principles for strabismus
The butterfly exercise
The long body swing exercise
The mirror swing exercise
The balance swing exercise
Tromboning exercise
21. Amblyopia
Vision Training principles for amblyopia
22. Color Perception
Opponent color theory
Hue discrimination
Color perception deficiency
Counting colors
Matching colors
Working with colors
23. The Visually Impaired
Gaining light perception
Relaxing your eyes
Mapping across your senses
Gaining object recognition
24. Beyond 20/20 Vision
Exercise to improve distance vision
25. Mono-Vision
26. Sunglasses
27. Surgical Eyes
28. Your Vision Training Plan
Appendix: The Science of Vision Training
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Copyright
1. Introduction
Vision is the most precious of our senses. You see the splendor of a sunset, you see the smile on the face of someone you love and you see the innocence in the eyes of a child. Mother Nature has made certain that this sense is perfectly developed as we grow up. It may come as a surprise to you to hear that eyesight acuity is actually a skill we learn as we mature, and that the eyes of an infant are not fully developed. A baby begins to recognize colors at the age of about 4 months. Hand and eye co-ordination develop next and then co-ordination between eyes and body. At about 12 months of age babies begin to walk and from then on their vision continues to develop in the way that nature intended.
I am writing this book based on my own experience of wearing glasses for more than 25 years. Initially, like most people, I believed there was nothing that could be done about failing eyesight. It seemed that it was just a consequence of growing old – the only thing in question being whether hair or eyes would go first. At the time, 1991, my eyesight measured 5.5 diopters of near-sight. That means it was necessary for me to wear glasses for most things, including reading. In fact I needed two pairs of glasses, one for reading and another for distance.
A friend of mine had been working on improving his eyesight, but he had been trying for three years and was still wearing glasses. Long-term projects do not appeal to me. I like to feel that I am making progress in 20 minutes or less, otherwise I am not interested. I don’t expect to have 20/20 vision after just one exercise, but I do want to sense that I am progressing and not just imagining that something is happening. So the approach I teach works fast.
In 1990 I became interested in something called neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). A seminal book in that field is Trance-formations, by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. The book is basically a transcript of a hypnosis seminar. On page 177 the authors describe a regression where they take a client back into their childhood. As we know, as children we generally have perfect eyesight. In a flash of inspiration, Grinder brought the client back to the present, but with the eyesight of his childhood. Suddenly the client was able, as in his childhood, to see without glasses.
I was very excited about this. Imagine what it would be like if you could visit a hypnotherapist and emerge, after a mere hour, with perfect eyesight. Unfortunately, the universe had other ideas, since I could not find anyone who could lead me through this process. However, my interest was aroused because I concluded that there must be a way of regaining one’s eyesight naturally.
Initially I played around with visualization exercises and they helped to a degree. However, I wanted to be completely cured and altogether eliminate the need for lenses. So I continued my quest for a way to recover my innate natural vision.
One Friday night I was going through the books I had acquired and happened to pick up one about healing with energy. In this book there was an exercise that was supposed to be good for near-sight. So I tried it and immediately felt that my eyes were becoming stronger. I continued doing this exercise every two hours and, eureka, the next day, after lunch, I was able to read without glasses. I have never needed reading glasses since. Throughout the weekend I continued with the exercise and on Monday morning I decided to go to work without glasses. I took a train and, as far as I know, there were no accidents that day! I was determined to keep the glasses off until after lunch at least. By lunchtime my eyes were very tired. If you have a high degree of near-sight you will know that taking off your glasses makes your eyes feel weary very quickly. However, I continued practicing the energy exercise and was gradually able to keep the glasses off for longer and longer periods. By the end of the week I was able to manage without glasses for the whole day. From then on I kept the glasses in my pocket, only taking them out to use as a magnifying glass on the A–Z if I needed to pick up someone from the airport. I did not want my subconscious mind to get any ideas that I wasn’t serious about this.
From then on my vision kept improving and after another two weeks I could recognize people on the other side of the street, so my social life picked up once again. I did nothing about my eyes for the next five years and more or less forgot that I had ever worn glasses. Then, in 1995, I attended a month-long NLP Master Practitioner training at the NLP University, Santa Cruz, California. During the program I mentioned to my friends that I used to wear glasses. They appeared to be very interested and urged me to tell them what I did to achieve this seemingly remarkable feat. So I planned an evening talk and no less than 60 people showed up. This was an eye-opener (!) for me. Until then I had not realized that so many people were interested in getting rid of their glasses.
The following year, 1996, I was back at the NLP University for another course. This time we were required to have a “modeling project” – some area of excellence that we could explore and then develop a way of transferring this knowledge to others. At the time I did not know anyone who had regained their eyesight so there was nobody I could ask to help me with this. I decided that I would model myself and use my own experience as the basis for a new approach to curing near-sight. At this time I started buying books on how to recover your eyesight, such as William Bates’ Seeing without Glasses (1920) and Janet Goodrich’s Natural Vision Improvement (1986). From these I learned about the techniques of palming, sunning and so on.
By this point, I had come to the conclusion that it was prudent to have an understanding of any underlying beliefs that could be getting in the way of having clear eyesight. This was probably because, by then, I had learned effective ways of regressing people back in time. I uncovered a lot of interesting information about the kinds of life experiences that could have an impact on one’s eyesight. Mostly it boiled down to innocent conclusions made by the mind of a child. For example, one little boy was moved from one school to another as an 8-year-old and as a consequence he lost all his friends. Another child uncovered a memory about taking a dislike to a teacher. Some of the experiences involved people seeing things they were not supposed to see. Others concerned events happening in their lives that they did not like but were powerless to do anything about. When I first started putting workshops together, I was convinced that about
half of those attending would need subsequent personal one-on-one sessions in order to help them to see their beliefs for what they are and become free of these limitations.
In the process of creating the workshops I started learning about other kinds of common vision problems. For example, at the time I had no idea what astigmatism was, much less what to do about it. In the process of learning about different conditions, I started figuring out what exercises could be of help.
Before the lunch break on the first workshop, one myopic participant found that he could read the 20/20 line on the eye-chart, as well as the small print. This was a great pat on the back and I realized that most of the participants could benefit from my program. Coincidences and small miracles kept occurring and I was invited to more and more places to present the workshop. Since 1996 I have presented about 25 workshops per year in cities around the world. For example, I have given the workshop more than 25 times in London. Often I meet people who tell me they had wanted to come to my workshop for years before an opportunity presented itself.
I prefer the workshop approach to one-on-one sessions. This is because in 14 hours you will experience and learn more about your eyesight than I can possibly teach in an hour. Group dynamics are helpful in encouraging and motivating people to go away and actually do the exercises. It is not only a matter of getting the information, but also about realizing that you have more power than you think over your own eyesight and that there are steps you can take to improve it. The intended outcome of the workshop is that participants will discover the fact that they have control over their own eyesight and will get to know exactly what exercises they have to do and what results to expect.
I do not intend to play down the amount of work that is needed, which in some cases will mean doing eye exercises for years. What I do promise is that you will experience progress – your eyes will show you that they can improve and change. Scientific research shows that your eyesight has improved if you can see and identify five letters one line lower than previously on the eye-chart. In my workshop many people report seeing three or even four lines lower at the end of the session. Incidentally, as you descend the eye-chart, each line that you drop represents a 5 percent improvement in visual acuity. Experiencing a 10 to 20 percent observable and measurable improvement in just two days is a considerable achievement. On one occasion, in Berlin, we had an optometrist measuring people’s eyesight before and after the workshop. One woman’s eyesight measured 2 diopters less on Sunday evening before she went home. What is remarkable about this lady is that she was 92 years old!