Here’s some advice about eyesight from Dale Carnegie, in his 1940’s book, How To Stop Worrying and Start Living. Carnegie was advocating one of the basic principles of Natural Vision Improvement and relieving eye strain: 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 “eye strain.” 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 what happens for you.

 Perhaps it’s your belief systems rather than your eyes that keep you stuck. If you pull a muscle or sustain a sports injury, you don’t expect to wear a tensor bandage or a cast for the rest of your life. You allow the injury to heal and go for physiotherapy or rehabilitation to restore proper functioning. Once you’re better, you put away your crutches.

You can think of your eyes the same way. Whether you are nearsighted, farsighted, have astigmatism or wear reading glasses, you need to allow your 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 you are, and how long you 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 you see. So does opening up your perception of yourself and the world around you. What you believe is what you see. (Or as Dr. Wayne Dyer put it, “You’ll see it when you believe it.”)

In Natural Vision Improvement (NVI), you learn eye exercises to relax tight muscles and other self-healing techniques to release chronic patterns of tension from body and mind. You also need to unlearn poor vision habits that contribute to eye strain and blurry eyesight, and learn good habits that support your 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 you are born with healthy, functioning eyes, you learn to see and you learn not to see. You may restrict your vision to push away or escape from painful situations and feelings about yourself or the world. When you set out to improve your eyesight, these old, stored beliefs and emotions may surface to be released, occasionally causing some discomfort as you 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 you 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 you than your logical mind. In fact, some activities get you moving your whole body, so it’s a good idea to wear comfortable clothes. Students find they have better results when they avoid wearing scented products – including scented shampoos and conditioners, and fabric softeners, as chemicals in these products can act as neurotoxins that interfere with the way signals are sent and received by your brain, so they may cause problems for your vision,

Vision improvement classes allow you time to connect with your eyes, with all they do for you, and with what you believe is possible. How you see is part of who you are as an individual in the world. When you change your vision, you change your life.