Relaxation - Palming with Memory, Imagination. Seeing Black

[ClarkNight]

Relaxation pages; http://cleareyesight-batesmethod.info/id49.html





Relaxation techniques is main Bates Method practice.
Relaxation and removing eyeglasses is often all that's needed to bring the eyesight back to 20/20 and clearer.

The visual system knows what to do, the eyes shift... normally, perfect automatically on tier own when we do not interfere with its natural function.
Avoid eyeglasses. Avoid thinking-worrying about your eyes, vision.
Relax and get active, a positive state of mind and see the clarity return 'on its own'.

Read more in Dr. Bates book; 'Perfect Sight Without Glasses' and his "Better Eyesight Magazine.'

Free on Googlebooks; http://books.google.com/books?id=MilnrDg...&q&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=myBIOOP...&q&f=false

And the e-books download page; http://cleareyesight-batesmethod.info/id148.html

[ClarkNight]

CURED IN FIFTEEN MINUTES

Patients often ask how long it takes to be cured. The answer is that it takes only as long as it takes to relax. If this can be done in five minutes, the patient is cured in five minutes, no matter how great the degree of his error of refraction, or how long its duration. All persons with errors of refraction are able to relax in a few seconds under certain conditions, but to gain permanent relaxation usually requires considerable time. Some persons, however, are able to get it very quickly. These quick cures are very rare, except in the case of children under twelve; but they do occur, and I believe the time is coming when it will be possible to cure everyone quickly. It is only a question of accumulating more facts and presenting them in such a way that the patient can grasp them quickly.
A very remarkable case of a quick cure was that of a man of fifty-five who had worn glasses for thirty years for distant vision and ten years for reading, and whose distant vision at the time he consulted me was 20/200.
When he looked at the Snellen test card the letters appeared grey to him instead of black. He was told that they were black, and the fact was demonstrated by bringing the card close to him. His attention was also called to the fact that the small letters were just as black as the large ones. He was then directed to close and cover his eyes with the palms of his hands, shutting out all the light. When he did this he saw a perfect black, indicating that he had secured perfect relaxation and that the optic nerve and visual centers of the brain were not disturbed. While his eyes were still closed he was asked:
"Do you think that you can remember with your eyes open the perfect black that you now see?"
"Yes," he answered, "I know I can,"
When he opened his eyes, however, his memory of the black was imperfect, and though able to read the large letters, he could not read the small ones. A second time he was told to close and cover his eyes, and again he saw a perfect black. When he opened them he was able to retain complete control of his memory, and so was able to read the whole card. This was ten minutes after he entered the office.
Diamond type was now given him to read, but the letters looked grey to him, and he could not distinguish them. Neither could he remember black when he was looking at them, because in order to see them grey he had to strain, and in order to remember black he would have had to relax, and he could not do both at the same time. He was told that the letters were perfectly black, and when he looked away from them he was able to remember them black. When he looked back he still remembered them black, and was able to read them with normal vision at twelve inches. This took five minutes, making the whole time in the office fifteen minutes. The cure was permanent, the patient not only retaining what he had gained, but continuing to improve his sight, by daily reading of fine print and the Snellen test card, till it became almost telescopic.
September, 1919

1 -School Health News, published by the Department of Health of New York City, February, 1919.

[ClarkNight]

NEW EYES FOR OLD

By GRACE ELLERY CHANNING

EDITOR'S NOTE.—We are constantly hearing of patients who have been able to improve their sight by the aid of information contained in this magazine, or in other publications on the same subject, without personal assistance. The following is a very remarkable example of these cases, as the improvement was made while the patient was handicapped by having to wear her glasses a great part of the time.

There was once a gentleman who attempted to sell new lamps for old ones. And another who tried to exchange, on Waterloo Bridge, perfectly good new shillings for sixpence. In both cases the wares were as advertised, but both fell under suspicion.
It is perhaps, then, not to be wondered at that an offer of new eyes for old should meet with a similar fate at the hands of a public early trained to suspect the worst—in a world where few things are as represented and nothing is to be had for nothing.
In no other way, at least, can I account for the fact that so much of the world is still in glasses, after a brief experience of my own. This is the story:
Something over a year ago, in one of those periodic fits of dejection common to those who abuse their eyes and then wonder at their failure. I chanced to take up a copy of the New York Tribune, open exactly at an article on Eyes, in the column devoted to scientifico-medical truth.
I may as well confess at once that I read this column chiefly to scoff: it is a privilege reserved to those born in doctor's families. Moreover the condition of my own eyes at the moment, after years of oculists and opticians, was one to make me particularly from Missouri in my mental attitude towards anything calling itself a new "cure." Still—I ran through the article.
It was brief, a mere review of another which had appeared in the Scientific American, and I grasped but a fragment of the principle—that defects of vision were not necessarily integral, but might result from defectively controlled muscles distorting the eyeball-pulling it out of shape. Hence nearsight, farsight, astigmatism, etc., might be curable through muscle-control. The treatment consisted in relaxation and re-education, intelligently applied.
As I grasped it, not being hampered by scientific pre-possesions, the thing appeared so simple that I exclaimed to myself: "How sensible!”—hastily qualifying it with, "How much too good to be true!" For here was something rational—something you could do for yourself without either being cut up or poisoned. The article mentioned that patients went home and taught their families—it was so simple. There was nothing to prevent one's at least trying it on oneself.
The only detail of treatment set forth—or which I grasped—was that the eyes could be relaxed most conveniently by looking at black, and that by covering the eyes with the palms of the hands ("palming") black could be retained as a mental vision, or memory, during which the eye was at rest. By practice, one could learn to "remember black" with the eyes opened, at will, and when it was not there. Thus muscular control could be re-established.
It was at least worth trying, and I tried. (Here it is interesting to remark that the moment you look at a black thing, you realize it isn't. A really black object is hard to find, but not necessary to success; the approximate will serve. Later I discovered that a black period—of printer's ink—was sufficient, but I am giving by preference the tale of my first blundering efforts.)
My first discovery was one which anyone may make for himself; it contains the crux of the whole. This is, that after looking at black, "palming," and seeing black with the eyes shut (at first one may see grey or red), and then opening the eyes, there is an appreciable instant of clear vision, in which letters or images previously blurred and hazy come out sharp and definite. For that brief instant I could read clearly; then immediately the old habit of muscular strain set in again and vision lapsed. But that instant was enough. For, if for any fraction of time at all vision could be reconquered, clearly the organ of vision was intact; the trouble was extraneous, functional, might be removable. All that was needed was to make that instant permanent, and that, evidently, was a mere matter of reeducating the exterior muscles of the eye and fixing a habit.
So far as I was concerned that first experiment was final. I was as convinced then as I am convinced now that I, or anyone else in my case, can recover vision virtually whole, with time, patience and training. The demonstration was, for me, complete. Nobody had proved it to me, I had, proved it to myself. Relaxed, eyes could return to the normal and see without glasses.
How to take advantage of my discovery was another matter. My days are largely spent in typing; my nights (too largely) in reading, both in glasses, which of course are framed to perpetuate the errors they confirm, so that every pair of glasses has to be farther from the normal than the one before. With a war on, I could neither stop working nor reading newspapers. Yet the first requisite for the new cure I assumed to be the abandonment of the glasses. (I have since heard of cases cured even while in glasses.)
I postponed, then, all hope of my own cure to some date "after Peace." But I was too interested and fascinated to quite let the matter drop. Accordingly I began to play with the small fragment of theory I had assimilated (very inaccurately, I now realize), in the scant leisure of my daily outings. I practiced "seeing black" on the coat-backs of pedestrians, and "central fixation" (which means seeing what you look at where you look at it, and not its edges instead,) on the street signs and advertising bill-boards. My companions began to recognize my "seeing black" expression. As a skeptic, I am something of a trial to them and they enjoyed, perhaps, seeing the biter bit. But I was getting results-undoubing the long-doubled stars, making one moon grow where the proverbial two had grown before. Blurred letters of fantastic height I was reducing to neat, clear rows, half as high; I who had not read a headline, with just eyes, for years, was reading them all. Thence I passed to the higher literature; probably nobody has ever been so stirred by the genius of Mr. Shonts as I, when first I could untangle his lines. Next came the gems of verse in street-car advertisements. Now I read them all alike, indifferently, negligently, as being no great thing, down to the quite fine ones, if the vehicle is moderately light.
The first really startling intimation of gain, however, came to me one hurried morning when, taking my mail from the box, I read my letters one after another, on the way to the bus, and only realized later, as I was rolling downtown, that I had read them all without glasses—and without noticing it. It was fully ten years since I had been able to read a line of a letter without glasses, frequently to my extreme inconvenience.
This is as far as I have gone—except that I am still going. Month by month, I recover a little and a little more of my ability to see normally, and meanwhile, as a most important by-product of the gain, I lose the old fatigue and ache which, with its accompanying depression, made my hours without glasses periods of strain. Here I should explain that my eyes are always under a twofold strain—for I listen with them. Only the partly deaf will fully understand this, but it makes the importance of this new treatment, for them, incalculable. And the deaf are as the sands of the sea.
Now, if gains so real and so appreciable can be made in quarter-hour and casual applications of a partially-grasped theory, and while with both hands one is engaged in undoing for the remainder of the hours what one has done in the quarters, is it not fair to believe that a proper, steadfast, continuous application of the theory would work miracles for those multitudes of mankind who suffer every form of disability and handicap now covered by the term "eyestrain"? We are told that pretty much everything from flat feet to baldness can proceed from eyestrain, and for my part I believe it; I know what earstrain can do. We are also assured that children in our schools suffer, by tens of thousands, from defective vision, and are turned into truants, invalids and criminals. Almost the largest percentage of physical disqualifications in our Army were optical-and that under an incredibly low standard. Eyes, then, are not an academic but a vital issue. How is it possible that we fail to investigate to the last point any and every possible means of relief from an evil well-nigh universal?
This is the question I have naturally been asking, north, south, east and west, for a year past. It seems time now to ask it out loud—in print. Of course I have found excellent people to tell me that my discovery "isn't so," and other excellent people to tell me that "everybody has always known it" anyway, which does not explain to me why "everybody" is still wearing glasses. I was sufficiently interested myself to go and talk with a few of the cured enthusiasts; their attitude is about what mine would be in their case—that of those who were present at the Pool Bethesda and saw the miracle effected. I also had the curiosity to go and talk with the author of the revolutionary theory that eyes can be cured without glasses, himself—Dr. Wm. H. Bates.
I went to Dr. Bates through streets filled with people wearing glasses, and punctuated at intervals by the signs of oculists, opticians, and makers of optical devices for the near-blind. My own oculist's and optician's offices are usually thronged with a waiting list; it occurred to me that I might find cordons of troops keeping order about Dr. Bates'. I found neither the cordon nor the crowds. Why?
Here is a man who is either an absolute benefactor of humanity, or who makes an unfounded claim. He should be given, not for his own sake but for ours, the widest opportunity and the heartiest encouragement to prove or disprove his theory, past all possibility of question. It is indeed so extraordinary that he has not been forcibly summoned to do this before now, by an impatient public, that it can only be accounted for by that ancient disability of the human mind to accept new things if strange—new lamps for old, real shillings sold for sixpence, or truth that is as simple as a lie. Yet, actually, of course, truth is always simple-the only simple thing there is.
New eyes for old, ladies and gentlemen! Who wants them?

[ClarkNight]

BETTER EYESIGHT

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE PREVENTION AND CURE OF IMPERFECT SIGHT WITHOUT GLASSES
January, 1920

THE PALMING CURE

One of the most efficacious methods of relieving eyestrain, and hence of improving the sight, is palming. By this is meant the covering of the closed eyes with the palms of the hands in such a way as to exclude all the light, while avoiding pressure upon the eyeballs. In this way most patients are able to secure some degree of relaxation in a few minutes, and when they open their eyes find their vision temporarily improved.
When relaxation is complete the patient sees, when palming, a black so deep that it is impossible to remember or imagine anything blacker, and such relaxation is always followed by a complete and permanent cure of all errors of refraction (nearsight, farsight, astigmatism and even old sight), as well as by the relief or cure of many other abnormal conditions. In rare cases patients become able to see a perfect black very quickly, even in five, ten or fifteen minutes; but usually this cannot be done without considerable practice, and some never become able to do it until they have been cured by other means. When the patient becomes able after a few trials to see an approximate black, it is worth while to continue with the method; otherwise something else should be tried.
Most patients are helped by the memory of some color, preferably black, and as it is impossible to remember an unchanging object for more than a few seconds, they usually find it necessary to shift consciously from one mental picture to another, or from one part of such a picture to another. In some cases, however, the shifting may be done unconsciously, and the black object may appear to be remembered all alike continuously.
When palming - remember, imagine a happy scene, objects, people in motion, color, clear like a real life movie in the mind.
Shift on objects in the imagination and remember, imagine they are clear. Relax; dynamic and deep relaxation.
Famous scientists, artists, and others use this method when awake and before they drift off to sleep, working with the conscious and subconscious mind to visualize, work on a goal; art, science creation, invention, formula, health improvement, new home, job, business…
(Shift part to part on the flower on the right. Shift on the green dots: top and bottom, left and right, middle and in any direction.)

[ClarkNight]

WHAT PALMING DID FOR A BLIND MAN

(Pop, The Blind Barber)

By EMILY C. LIERMAN

I HOPE and trust that our readers will forgive me for not waiting until my dear old patient could see a little better, or until I was able to accomplish a little more for him, but in this particular case I feel very much like a child, eager to tell of the most thrilling thing that ever happened in my life.
A few months ago, some time in November, this dear old man came to our clinic, led by another man much younger. They had been told by the clerk that he could not receive treatment there because he did not live in the district. However, the nurse in charge, who is dearly loved by all the patients, did not send him away, but asked him to wait until Dr. Bates had finished with his patients and see what could be done. After our patients had been attended to, Dr. Bates had a talk with the old gentleman.
The doctor examined him and found that he had all sorts of trouble with the nerves and muscles of his eyes. Dr. Bates then called me and asked me to look at the patient's eyes and also asked me what we could do for him. There he was, absolutely with no sight whatever, but with a smile that went straight to my heart.

A Faith That Will Not Be Denied

Before I go any further I would like all who read to know that if it had been at all possible, Dr. Bates would not have hesitated for one moment, but would have offered to treat the man himself. But it could not possibly be done because Dr. Bates labors daily, Sundays included, at the rate of sixteen hours a day. These poor people, when they hear of Dr. Bates., come from all over the United States, and we do the best, the doctor included, of course, we can for them.
As the old man held his head up toward our faces waiting to hear us say that he would be able to see again, I made up my mind to make time myself to treat him at our laboratory. Every moment of my time is taken up with our work but there was my lunch hour before clinic on each Saturday that I could devote to his case. I had not the slightest idea that I could ever give him even perception of light or that I would have the intelligence to ever help him see like other people. One could see no iris whatever or pupil in either eye. Each eye had a thick, solid-looking white mass where the iris and pupil should be. But that day we arranged that he should come to see me each Saturday, and that I was to treat him for one hour. I made no promises to him, but said only that I would do all I could for him if he would do his part and carry out the treatment at home.
His age is seventy-four years, I learned, and he is an inmate of the home for the blind in Brooklyn. He said that he was first stricken with blindness in the left eye in the year 1889, and the trouble was neuralgia. In 1898 he was stricken with blindness in the right eye after suffering with chills and fever. During the year of 1898 he could see slightly with the left eye, and until 1920, when his sight gave out completely. He had been treated by noted eye specialists without success.
The first week in December he came to our laboratory, and without thinking, he said, "I am very happy to see you," and I answered very promptly, "And I am happy to see you, also." I found that he was under a terrible tension. The muscles of his arms, especially at the elbows, were so tense that I made up my mind that he would go through some sort of calisthenics with me before we started with the treatment.


Calisthenics at Seventy-four

I called him "Pop" right from the start, and he seemed to like it. Well, you should have seen the poor old fellow throw his hands over his head and try to touch the floor without bending his knees. Of course, he only got half way. Nevertheless, it was a good start. We were very serious in our exercises and to make it appear doubly so to him I went through the exercises with him, guiding him as best I could. I taught him how to palm and to swing his body from side to side as I stood before him, holding his hands, reminding him always to loosen up at the elbows. I told him that anyone could see that he was blind because he stared so much and never seemed to close his eyes, which made his condition worse. So the next thing I taught him was to open and close his eyes often, which we call blinking.
The hour was over and the next time I saw him he was a very happy man. "I have so much to tell you," he said. "The other day, as I went to the washroom I did not feel for the wash basin, but I saw it and I walked over to it. But in my happiness and excitement my vision left me. Why was that, please?" I answered, "You began to strain in your excitement and caused your blindness to return." I encouraged him by saying, "Don't worry, you will be able to see more next time when you are not straining!"
Then, to my surprise, I learned that this dear old fellow has been shaving men's faces by the sense of touch. Before he became blind he was an expert barber. He loves to repeat again and again how he shaved ex-President Taft and other notable men.
Next time he came he was even more interesting. He could not wait to tell me how young he feels now and how he loves to exercise. He gave me a demonstration of how he could touch the floor with his finger-tips without bending his knees, and he did it quite successfully. I was just in the act of praising him for the ability to do such a wonderful trick for a man seventy-four years young, when all of a sudden there was an accident … a button went flying to the opposite side of the room!
It broke off from the back of his trousers as he touched the floor with his finger-tips, and poor old "Pop" was more embarrassed than I was.

But the Treatment Goes On

However, we soon remedied the trouble and started in with our treatment. As he had no perception of light in the beginning I was quite thrilled when he pointed to both windows of our room and showed me just where the curtains were fastened. I placed him in another part of the room and I was thrilled again when he pointed with his fingers to a sunbeam shining on the rug. With this progress to encourage me, I now am striving with him to give him his greatest desire—his real eyesight. I cannot understand as yet just how he does see, but I do notice that the white mass in front of the iris is not quite as thick as formerly. The last time I saw him he told me that while he was shaving a man he suddenly saw the man's face and that he also saw another man walking past him who had entered the room quietly. He also told me that the matron of the home had entered his room and as she passed out, he asked the maid if the matron had on a blueish-gray gown, and the maid, knowing that he was blind, was surprised, as she answered, "Yes, it is a blueish-gray color, your sight must be coming back."
What my poor old "Pop" says now that he is most anxious about is that he may have the pleasure of seeing my face some day. There is a great deal of refinement about my dear old "Pop" and I am always anxious for the hour on Saturday to come to be with him and help him. But, of course, I merely tell him that he must not hope too seriously to see my face for it might make him blind again!
Perhaps some day I will report some further progress made in restoring of this dear old man's eyesight.

[ClarkNight]

STORIES FROM THE CLINIC

Eyestrain

By Emily C. Lierman


A girl who had worn glasses for more than twenty years, came to me to have her eyes tested after she had been to an oculist and had had her glasses changed. She complained of constant pain in her eyes. Her vision with each eye separately was 15/30, or one-half of normal vision. While reading the letters of the Snellen test card at fifteen feet, she did not blink, until she began to read the letters on the line that should be read at thirty feet. Then her eyes began to water and she complained that they burned like fire.
Palming
I told her to sit down and close her eyes to rest them. I made her comfortable with a cushion for her elbows while palming, and a foot-stool to raise her feet from the floor. I asked her to remember something perfectly and then let her mind drift to something else. She was told that it was necessary to remember pleasant things; that otherwise her mind would be under a strain and her vision would not improve. Like many patients, she began to question me about what the mind had to do with the eyes. She was told that when the mind is under a strain, all other parts of the body are also under a strain. When the mind is relaxed, the eyes are also relaxed and things are seen without effort or strain. Mind strain is always associated with eye-strain. You cannot affect one without affecting the other.
While she was palming, the patient described many colors that came to her mind. She described their combinations in making beautiful paintings and fancy draperies. After palming for more than ten minutes, I told her to remove her hands from her eyes, to stand and sway her body from left to right. By glancing at only one letter of the test card at a time and then looking away, she read 15/10 or better than normal vision in ordinary daylight.
I tested her sight for the reading of fine print, and she read it with perfect ease, first at four inches and then at ten inches.
When I saw her again, she had discarded her glasses, her pain was gone, and her eyes no longer troubled her.


Fundamentals

By

W. H. Bates, M. D.



1 - Glasses discarded permanently.
2 - Central fixation is seeing best where you are looking.
3 - Favorable conditions: Light may be bright or dim. The distance of the print from the eyes, where seen best, also varies with people.
4 - Shifting: With normal sight the eyes are moving all the time.
5 - Swinging: When the eyes move slowly or rapidly from side to side, stationary objects appear to move in the opposite direction.
6 - Long swing: Stand with the feet about one foot apart, turn the body to the right—at the same time lifting the left foot. Do not move the head or eyes or pay any attention to the apparent movement of stationary objects. Now place the left heel on the floor, turn the body to the left, raising the heel of the right foot. Alternate.
7 -Drifting swing: When using this method, one pays no attention to the clearness of stationary objects, which appear to be moving. The eyes move from point to point slowly, easily, or lazily, so that the stare or strain may be avoided.
8 - Variable swing: Hold the forefinger of one hand six inches from the right eye and about the same distance to the right, look straight ahead and move the head a short distance from side to side. The finger appears to move.
9 - Stationary objects moving: By moving the head and eyes a short distance from side to side, being sure to blink, one can imagine stationary objects to be moving.
10 - Memory: Improving the memory of letters and other objects improves the vision for everything.
11 - Imagination: We see only what we think we see, or what we imagine. We can only imagine what we remember.
12 - Rest: All cases of imperfect sight are improved by closing the eyes and resting them.
13 - Palming: The closed eyes may be covered by the palm of one or both hands.
14 - Blinking: The normal eye blinks, or closes or opens very frequently.
15 - Mental pictures: As long as one is awake one has all kinds of memories of mental pictures. If these pictures are remembered easily,
perfectly, the vision is benefited.

#2 – Central fixation - Place the object the eyes are looking at in the center of the visual field.
#5 and 9 – Oppositional movement.
#6 – Long swing - The head, eyes do move with the body, in synchronization, at the same time, in the same direction.
#8 - This can also be done with the finger 6 inches in front of the face/nose, between the left and right eyes.
#10, 11, 15 Memory, imagination, remembering, imagining objects, mental pictures clear.
#13 – Palming and other activities, correct eye functions listed above and in this book are described with diagrams on http://www.cleareyesight.info and in the E-Book: Do it Yourself – Natural Eyesight Improvement.


Seven Truths of Normal Sight

1—Normal Sight can always be demonstrated in the normal eye, but only under favorable condition.

2—Central Fixation: The letter or part of the letter regarded is always seen best.

3—Shifting: The point regarded changes rapidly and continuously.

4—Swinging: When the shifting is slow, the letters appear to move from side to side, or in other directions, with a pendulum-like motion.

5—Memory is perfect. The color and background of the letters, or other objects seen, are remembered perfectly, instantaneously and continuously.

6—Imagination is good. One may even see the white part of letters whiter than it really is, while the black is not altered by distance, illumination, size, or form, of the letters.

7—Rest or relaxation of the eye and mind is perfect and can always be demonstrated.

When one of these seven fundamentals is perfect, all are perfect.