Relax Your Eyes

Come and say hello to us at the Toronto Women’s Show!

We’ll be at Booth #1232, Friday through Sunday, October 23, 24, and 25, 2009, at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on Front Street. (Friday 12 noon – 9 pm, Saturday 10-6, Sunday 10-5.)

While you’re there, enter our FREE RAFFLE for a delicious organic chocolate bar (dark chocolate, of course!) and a copy of our book, How to Stay Healthy and still Eat Chocolate.

On Sunday, October 25th, at 12:30, Kathy will speak about “Why Everything You’ve Learned About Your Digestive Problem is Wrong, and What To Do About It.” Join her at the Workshop Stage and listen in.

We look forward to seeing you there!

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How to Relax Your Eyes:

Here’s some advice about eyesight from Dale Carnegie, in his 1940’s book, How To Stop Worrying and Start Living. Without knowing it, Carnegie was advocating one of the basic principles of Natural Vision Improvement: the importance of relaxing the eyes.

In Chapter 24, he says:

Tension is a habit. Relaxing is a habit. And bad habits can be broken. Good habits formed.

How do you relax?…You always…begin with your muscles!

…Suppose we start with your eyes. Read this paragraph through and when you’re done, lean back, close your eyes, and say to your eyes silently, “Let go. Let go. Stop straining, stop frowning. Let go. Let go.” Repeat that over and over very slowly for a minute.

Didn’t you notice that, after a few seconds, the muscles of the eyes began to obey? Didn’t you feel that some hand had wiped away the tension? Well, incredible as it seems, you have sampled in that one minute the whole key and secret to the art of relaxing. You can do the same thing with the jaw, the face, the neck, the shoulders, the whole of the body. But the most important organ of all is the eye.

Dr. Edmund Jacobson of the University of Chicago has gone so far as to say that if you can completely relax the muscles of the eyes, you can forget all your troubles! The reason the eyes are so important in relieving nervous tension is that they burn up one fourth of all the nervous energies consumed by the body. This is also why so many people with perfectly sound vision suffer from “eyestrain.” They are tensing the eyes.

That was written over 60 years ago, yet it applies even more to our lives now. If you spend much time on a computer, it’s especially important to give your eyes a 30-second relaxation break several times a day. Try Dale Carnegie’s relaxation tip and let me know if it helps.

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Is it really possible to have better eyesight?

Yes! We are used to thinking that, once we get glasses, we are stuck with them for life because there is no natural way to improve blurry eyesight. Does this make sense? All the other parts of the body are self-healing, so why not the eyes?

Perhaps it’s our belief systems rather than our eyes that keep us stuck. If we pull a muscle or sustain a sports injury, we don’t expect to wear a tensor bandage or a cast for the rest of our lives. We allow the injury to heal and go for physiotherapy or rehabilitation to restore proper functioning. Once we are healed, we put away our crutches.

We can think of the eyes the same way. Whether we are nearsighted, farsighted, have astigmatism or wear reading glasses, we need to allow our eyes to heal so they can return to natural good vision.

Here’s some news that may be surprising: even the best eyesight is not “perfect” all the time! Eyesight is affected by a combination of factors including the amount of light available, how tired we are, and how long we have been staring at the computer. Chronically tense eye muscles, physical and emotional stress, poor nutrition, exposure to food and chemical toxins, and poor lifestyle habits including lack of exercise, rest, and relaxation all play a role in how well we see. So does opening up our perception of ourselves and the world around us. What we believe is what we see.

In Natural Vision Improvement (NVI), we learn activities to relax tight eye muscles and release chronic patterns of tension from body and mind. We also need to unlearn poor vision habits that contribute to blurry eyesight, and learn good habits that support our vision.

The concepts of NVI and the activities for improving vision are simple, yet they are also complex. This is because, although the eyes are physical sense organs, vision is a learned skill. Yes, you read that right. We learn to see.

In cases where a person with lifetime blindness regains their sight through surgery, that person has no idea what they’re looking at until they learn to identify, classify, and remember it. They must learn to recognize colours, shapes, street corners, the faces of their own family members, the rooms in their own house, and the subtle, visible expressions of emotion and social interaction so familiar to sighted people.

When we are born with functioning eyes, we learn to see and we learn not to see. We sometimes restrict our vision to push away or escape from painful situations and feelings about ourselves or the world. When we set out to improve our eyesight, these old, stored beliefs and emotions may surface and will need to be released, causing some discomfort as we move towards a new way of seeing.

NVI has been around for centuries, particularly in India and China. Yogic and acupressure traditions both have techniques for improving eyesight.

In North America, Dr. William Bates is considered the “father” of vision improvement. Dr. Bates, an ophthalmologist in New York in the early 1900’s, found that teaching his patients to relax the eyes and the mind had a permanent beneficial effect on vision, whereas prescribing glasses resulted in patients needing increasingly strong prescriptions. He helped thousands to throw away their glasses and see clearly, and was even able to help patients straighten a turning eye without surgery. Despite, or perhaps because of his success, he was reviled by his medical colleagues.

What happens in classes or private lessons in Natural Vision Improvement? No one is asked to throw away their glasses! The glasses are a tool to be used when needed.

The eyes love movement and relaxation, so we learn activities that help them move correctly and relax deeply. Good reading techniques, good computer habits, and nutrition for the eyes are part of the program. Nearsighted students work with gently expanding their range of vision. Students with reading glasses work with relaxing and clarifying near vision.

Some of the activities may seem “too easy” or even silly at first, but they are designed to engage more of us than just our judgmental, logical minds. In fact, some activities require moving the whole body, so it’s a good idea to wear comfortable clothes. Students find they have better results when they avoid wearing fabric softener, perfume or cologne and other scented products, as chemicals in these products may be neurotoxins that interfere with some aspects of vision improvement.

Vision improvement classes allow us time to connect with our eyes, with all they do for us, and with what we believe is possible. How we see is part of who we are as individuals in the world. When we change our vision, we change our lives.

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