With the paper on your face, throw a ball from hand to hand for five to ten minutes. You will see the ball in your right hand with your right eye, and when the ball crosses in front of your face, you will see it with your left eye as you catch it with your left hand. Only one eye can see the ball at one time. Throw the ball from hand to hand, allowing each eye to work separately as you try to catch the ball. If you have access to a trampoline, it is wonderful to do this exercise on it while you bounce.
Many other variations of the Melissa exercise are covered elsewhere in this book, but this is the basic starting point: throwing a ball from hand to hand while the paper is taped to your forehead and chin.
You may find that this eye-hand coordination, with a clear divider between your two eyes, can make a big difference and can help you to relax your eyes. Keep doing the shifting exercise, which will also stimulate the macula. When you are refreshed, the macula works better, and all other parts of the eye work better as well.
Figure 2.25. The Melissa exercise.
Figure 2.26. Throw a ball from hand to hand while the paper is taped from your forehead to your chin.
Enjoy the View
Often, pleasant scenery appears in front of us—faraway places with beautiful views. But even people on vacation are entrenched in the habit of not looking. They will only spend a few minutes, here and there, actually looking at the view. Then they will go on to deal with their vacation plans and work-related issues involving computers. A reason for this is that they are not used to looking at the beauty that attracts one’s vision on a daily basis.
Some people do not have anything beautiful to look at in their workplace. Nor do they have anything beautiful to look at in their residence. But most people in the world do have access to beautiful places to look at, somewhere in their lives: a nice garden, beautiful plants, lovely pictures, and even changing clouds.
Develop the daily habit of looking at something pleasant. We should devote twenty minutes a day, divided into four-minute increments, to looking at something beautiful. It could be combined with the looking into the distance exercise, or it could be apart from it. Spend a few minutes every single day looking at beautiful scenery, and it will slowly instill in you the desire to look at details. Then, when you go for a vacation, instead of spending twenty minutes looking at nice details in nature, you may end up spending two or three hours doing just that, and still enjoying yourself.
Figure 2.27. Looking at the distance relaxes the eyes if you don’t strain to see.
We are creatures of habit. Whatever we do now will perpetuate what we will do later. Create new habits of looking at details: first with your lenses, then without your lenses, then with reduced lenses, then again without your lenses, then maybe with pinhole glasses (discussed in the next chapter) that help the pupillary contraction, and finally without lenses or glasses again. If we enjoy looking at details, we will develop a skill that is lost by modern life, and that skill is the ultimate fortress of strength for our visual systems.
If you have vibrant, healthy, and mobile eyes, as you look at objects, you will also relax your whole body, which will feel vibrant and thus looser and more mobile. Because the eyes lead the body, the body’s posture arranges itself around the way the eyes see. Therefore, making your eyes more alive can trigger your whole body to come alive.
If you focus on your breathing and visualize expansion and contraction, you mimic the movement of the whole universe, which is in constant motion, expanding and shrinking. When you begin to sense this, and move in that direction, it can give you a pleasurable relaxing sensation that you may never have had before. If you combine the visualization of blackness with the expansion and contraction of your body, you start to have a sense of an inner rhythm that you never had before.
Repetition of these exercises gives you a pleasant sense of relaxation that augments your sleep, but the benefits go much deeper. When your conscious brain learns to relax, not only will it relax when you palm, it will relax anytime you look. And that is exactly what you want to do: consciously relax so that your subconscious will start to work in a whole new way.
Don’t Squint
Your tendency to squint is one of the highest hurdles on the path to vision improvement. Squinting is a manifestation of physical and mental resistance toward improvement and change. If you do not squint your eyes much in the light, your brain demands that the pupils contract; when they do, your vision becomes much clearer. If you do not squint when you read, you will start to look with a soft eye at the print on the page.
Ready to Move On
I would like to congratulate you if you have earnestly worked on yourself using all the principles and exercises we’ve discussed so far, because it means you are devoted to your health and to your life. And who is going to help you if not yourself?
There is an old Jewish proverb: if not now, when? If I am not going to take care of myself, then who will? It is an illusion to think that others can do better for you than you yourself. So continue to practice with my suggestions, and you will feel the difference. Your vision will improve, and you will maintain your vision for life.
Chapter 3
Computer Use and Relieving Built-Up Fatigue
When working at a computer terminal, it’s critical to be aware of your position, the lighting, and your overall surroundings. First of all, you should sit at a distance from which you can comfortably read the screen. There should be adequate lighting (natural light is best), but it should not be shining directly into your eyes; nor should it be reflecting off the screen, creating a glare. Finally, the computer itself should be positioned where you can easily gaze into the distance: next to a window or a long hallway would be a good location.
You can use the features of a computer to your benefit by following data as it appears on the screen or by visually keeping track of the movement of your fingers across the keyboard. Look at the actual shapes of the letters you are typing and be aware of the spaces between them.
Often, however, when we work at computers, we create an “invisible strain” that we don’t really feel. This is the worst kind because if you don’t recognize the strain, you will do nothing about it. And if you are actually straining, then by the end of a day of computer use, your eyes may be red and you will be unnecessarily fatigued.
So, what is it that actually makes you strain as you look at a computer screen? First is the weariness of looking from so close. If you look into the distance three times a day for eight minutes, it can help to alleviate this. Not everyone, however, has this amount of time, so even twice a day would suffice. This can occur before you start to work, after two hours of working, or at the end of the work day (if your eyes are not too tired). The main thing is not to strain: do not try to see the distance; instead, scan the distance. From time to time, use the obstructive lenses described in Step 8 to obstruct the eye that sees better from far away, even if the other eye sees better from near. Then take the glasses off and keep looking into the distance.
Every hour that you use a computer, you should do something different. If you focus on the rush of information coming from your monitor for very long, it’s very easy to disregard your peripheral vision. When this happens, your central vision becomes overtaxed, a situation that may contribute to glaucoma or lead to a loss of clear vision. So it’s imperative to provide your central cells with some rest by stimulating your peripheral cells. You can accomplish this by doing the peripheral vision exercises, which will enable you to notice the periphery more: you acknowledge the floor, the wall, the ceiling, and your general work environment. When the periphery is being used, you won’t tense your eyes as much.