There are two camps of thought when it comes to viewing the body. 1- Your body is like a machine that wears down over time, or 2- Your body is like a plant, that needs the optimized conditions to thrive. The body is likened to a machine very often in many facets of our culture- the brain is a computer, the heart is a pump, the blood vessels are valves etc. I like to call this organic language vs. mechanical language. (insert graphic)
The ability of the body to “grow” and “heal” and “flourish” has become evident to me in my own work with Structural Integration. Our fascia is our largest sensory organ, and is in constant interaction with the brain telling us where we are in space, and shaping our body to whatever environment we are putting ourselves in. Some people have occupied the same shape over and over again. People usually call this “bad posture”. So when the nervous system gets new inputs through bodywork or movement work, a new signal is received and the body morphs into a different shape. People call this “good posture”. Neuroplasticity plays a huge role in this, the brain literally has the ability to change itself, and the rest of the body.
So how does this relate to vision?
Well I don’t know about you but for me, up until about 6 months ago, I totally had this mindset with everything related to the body…except my eyes. I had worn corrective lenses for 14 years. I just assumed my vision would keep getting worse and worse. There really didn’t seem like any other options except for my “broken” eyes to just get more and more “worn out”.
I had really just stumbled upon a podcast from Wise Traditions Podcast entitled “ImproveEyesight Naturally”. What, what?! It didn’t even occur to me that there was such a thing! At the time I was learning how to help ease things like scoliosis and hyperextended kneeswith Structural Integration, so I should have known that your vision could be healed as well. lol
I contacted the person on the podcast episode, Carlos Moreno of centeredvision.comand started doing classes with him in the Bates Method. The Bates Method was a method started by Dr William H. Bates in the 1930’s. He was a prolific doctor, writer, and a researcher in all realms of science. It is Dr. Bates who discovered adrenaline, and actually invented lasik surgery. Although he admitted it actually didn’t work since it didn’t solve the main problem. Through his work with studying vision, he made the shocking discovery that vision was 9/10ths mental.
Bates found that most vision problems “are due not to an organic change in the shape of the eyeball or in the constitution of the lens, but to a functional derangement in the action of the muscles on the outside of the eyeball, and therefor can be eliminated.” (1)
Just read that section again and let it sink in.
So it is not about your lens getting more brittle with age. Or even spending too much time on the screen. Even though those may be factors that you can influence through proper hydration and changing your movement habits. It is about how your brain interacts with the muscles around the eyes. This concept is why glasses won’t cure imperfect vision.
What about corrective lenses?
How many people have worn glasses for a bit and then didn’t have to wear them anymore because the glasses cured their vision? Corrective lenses don’t fix the root cause of imperfect vision, they just cover up the underlying problem….and actually make it worse.
Imagine if you have to wear a cast on your arm. When it is time to take off the cast you may notice that the arm the cast was on seems a lot smaller and weaker than the arm that has not been in the cast. Why is that?
Well, as opposed to the theory of mechanical breakdown, the brain actually has a different rule it goes by- use it or lose it. This has been demonstrated extensively in research and there are entire books written on the subject. You can think of the brain as an extremely frugal minimalist when it comes to brain space. If something doesn’t seem worth keeping, it will get rid of it. Which is why you probably don’t remember anything from high school anymore…
So if something is not being used, like your arm in a cast, the brain will just kind of assume you don’t really need that arm so it will stop keeping a bunch of detailed arm information in its brain space.
So you can think of glasses and contacts as kind of like a cast for the eyes. As you are using your eyes without glasses or contacts, the muscles of your eyes are moving through many different shapes in order to help you to see at different lengths. Wearing glasses actually locks your eyes at one length, whatever your prescription is, and keeps your eye muscles from moving through their whole range. So, as you lose the brain connection, you lose the control over that area and need stronger glasses and on and on the cycle goes.
The Bates Method is basically a neuroplasticity method that gets you to “exercise” the connection between the brain and the eyes.
The Root of Imperfect Vision
So you take off your glasses and you still can’t see…now what? Just will your eyes to relax and be cured? Not exactly. So now you know that it is possible to heal your vision naturally, and you know that wearing glasses or contacts don’t fix the problem but actually make it worse. But what is it actually making worse?
The more simpler way to describe the true root cause of imperfect vision is eye strain. Because the eye muscles are tensed up and short, it is causing dysfunction in the eyes, and really in the brain since the eyes are the only visible part of the brain.
Think of our posture example from earlier. If someone has forward head posture, the muscles of the back of the neck are short, because the head is anterior shifted, the back of the neck muscles have to contract in order to keep the eyes on the horizon so you can see. Maybe someone has neck pain, or shoulder pain from those muscles being shortened. Another symptom they may have is headaches.
Imperfect vision feels like having a headache in your eyeballs.
Sure you could take a pill for some pain relief for your headache, but is that really solving the problem? No, because it is not addressing the root cause. We are seeing a lot of these days with shortening of the muscles in the back of the neck, lack of thoracic extension, anterior pelvic shift, etc.
Glasses don’t fix the problem of imperfect vision, you actually become dependent on them. Your vision will either stay imperfect or get worse over time. It is better to learn techniques to improve your eyesight now that can affect you for the rest of your life.
The simple idea of finding perfect vision is to get the mind to relax. In a sympathetic state, the body is in survival fight/flight mode. Unfortunately that is the branch of the autonomic nervous system that most people are being governed by. The ability of the body to repair itself comes with the parasympathetic state. If you are able to get your mind to relax and are able to train your brain to direct your eyes into relaxation, you will be able to train your brain back to having perfect vision as your vision once was.
Healing your Vision with Movement
It is extremely difficult to describe how to exactly do this with words….everything I read before I trained with Carlos made no sense. It is really something you have to experience and have kinesthetic knowledge about the phenomenon instead of learned knowledge (initially).
If you would like to hear more of my experience with Carlos check out this interview I did with him:
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