Are your eyes your challenge?

by Rita Edwards

Over the next few months, I will be researching and sharing a lot of information with you about the senses. I am pretty much involved in the eyes because of my own challenges, and so I thought I would begin this month with vision.

Ask yourself:

• What are my fears and concerns about my vision?
• What am I struggling with right now?
• What are my hopes and dreams for my eyes?

In fact, why not just drop me a line telling me all these things! I would love to create a special course for you to take to meet all your needs!

One of my biggest fears is losing my sight over time.

I guess that it is based on what I have been told! I was told at the age of 18 that I would be blind by 35!

At 35, I was into really thick and ugly glasses and the decline had begun! Of course, I was hugely relieved that I could still see and very proud of the fact that the optometrist was wrong!

By 45, I had had 5 new prescriptions, each one a whole lot more dense and lower on the visual scale. I went from a -6 to -12 dioptres in ten years. In other words, my eyes had deteriorated twice as much in ten years. When I was 40, I decided to get contact lenses. They didn’t have contacts that would work for me, my eyes were too short-sighted!

In 1994, I did my first Visioncircles course with Carla Hannaford. Some of you may remember it – in the training room at my practice in Hout Bay!

I remember feeling very defensive, because Carla had said that I would really benefit from the course. My response was – it’s really only for people wanting to improve their visual integration. What I didn’t realise was that that was exactly what I needed! My sense then was that sensory integration was just for those kids who had had an assessment and were labelled with a sensory integration deficit.

The thought of actually working with my own eyes and getting them working more effectively for me was such a foreign thought!

Well, I did that first course and came home thinking that my glasses were dirty all the time – all the images were kind of blurry. When I took the glasses off, the images were still a little blurry, but I was able to make out shapes, something I was never able to do before! I also felt quite comfortable not wearing glasses.

Those of you who know me will understand what a big difference that was in my life – before, my glasses gave me vision to clearly see every detail. Now I was comfortable with the blur!

I have done many more Visioncircles courses, and each time I do the course, I again come home thinking – wow, I actually can see more clearly!

I went to see the optometrist recently for a check up – after not seeing her for three years. She was quite interested to find that my eyes are getting stronger, not weaker! This is contrary to what optometrists normally find!

When I told her what I was using – Brain Gym and Vision Gym – she became a little defensive. The thought that you can strengthen your eyes through movement was quite foreign to her. As she said to me, most people just accept that their eyes will get progressively weaker, and that they will continue to need stronger lenses as they grow older.

But it just doesn’t have to be! Dr. Paul Dennison exercised his eyes from being functionally blind to not wearing glasses – in five years. In his sixties now, Paul still does not need glasses to read or to drive! Well Done! Paul, and Well Done Gail for developing this work for Paul. I am just so thrilled to be able to teach you the same things that Gail taught Paul, so that you can also get out of glasses!

Your eyes need exercise, in the same way as all your other muscles need exercise.

Without exercise, your muscles, including your eye muscles, can begin to deteriorate. The less you use them, the more they go into decline. Soon you find that when you do need to use them for a period of time, like reading a good book, your eyes let you down!

By the way, Vision Gym exercises are great for all your muscles. I have come home from a VC course feeling quite sore around the belly area! I gave my tummy muscles a workout at the same time!

Actually, your eyes and your tummy have a lot in common. For one thing, they share sympathetic nervous system supply. So when we are in stress, this system gets the eyes to go peripheral to look for the danger, while the metabolism rate in the stomach turns down, so that the energy is available for dealing with the reason for the stress. So under constant stress, you will find it difficult to focus on details, and you start putting on weight!

If this sounds a bit like you, then think about what this course can do for you!

I will explore the deeper aspects of the relationship between the eyes and the stomach in another report. For now, I wanted to share this Vision Gym exercise with you. The Trust Belt works on both the stomach and the eyes.

The Trust Belt - Vision Gym exercise

In the standing position, place your hands on your hips with your fingers and elbows forward. Relax your shoulders. Drop your head forward, chin to chest, eyes closed.

This movement helps to relax the eyes, as well as releasing adrenal related visual stress.

The Trust Belt is a great movement to do when working on the computer. Every half hour or so, stop, stand up, walk around and take a drink of water. Then do the Trust Belt for about 30 seconds. You can do Belly Breathing as well – using the adapted Pelvic Tilt as you breath for more stomach tightening exercises!

Did you know that nearsightedness and farsightedness are so common in our high-tech, high-stress world that they are considered normal.

Our frenetic lifestyles reinforce these poor habits. Healthy three dimensional vision and the ability to interpret what we see depend on curiosity and experience. When we spend long hours looking at two dimensional flat surfaces at close range, such as when viewing books, papers, computer monitors, or television screens, our three-dimensional visual skills weaken from disuse.

Then, without the opportunity to release tension through movement, the eye and postural muscles become locked in a habitual state of tension.  All in all, our modern, computerized lifestyle supports the strain and overexertion of the eyes.

Vision Gym Movements help us to relax the eyes again, activating the various physical functions while integrating and stabilizing the body through balancing.

This course explores the relationship between primitive postural reflexes and vision, the vestibular system and vision, and the links between hearing and seeing effectively.

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