Unbalanced vision/movement patterns create tension in the eyes and poor vision; thus, massage therapists can help clients improve their eyesight by working with them on posture. Midback, shoulder, and head posture are especially important—if the head is habitually tilted forward, for example, the brain assumes that distance vision is limited, and it does indeed get worse.
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The eye exercises teach relaxed use:
To adjust the eye through relaxation to all intensities of light;
To balance the use of both eyes together. Uneven use creates enormous tension; the domination of the stronger eye needs to be limited, and the weaker eye needs to be strengthened. If one eye, or part of one eye, is damaged—even to the point where it can do no more than register the presence of light—it should be stimulated; the stronger eye will relax, and its vision will improve when the brain senses greater balance;
To balance central with peripheral vision. By habitually gazing at books or computer screens for hours at a stretch, we tend to ignore peripheral visual information until the periphery actually shrinks;
To create a flexible, fluid eye so that the eyes move easily between near and far;
To stop freezing the gaze and shift the eye easily from one small detail to another, lightly skimming the world like a butterfly.
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You may feel that wearing glasses relaxes your eyes; some people say they feel undressed and unready to meet the world without them. They do create problems—they teach us that without their help, we can only see poorly. They also tend to make us lose peripheral vision, since we are used to limiting our reality to what is visible within their frames.
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Of all the eye exercises, palming—a visualization of blackness coupled with awareness of soft, expansive deep breathing—is the most important. A meditation in its own right, it can relax the eyes, quiet the senses, and bring calm to an overwrought nervous system. Palming can be done passively to clients, or you can massage their necks and shoulders while they palm. It is a powerful tool. Long palming sessions can be harmful with glaucoma. Massage is a good substitute. Combined with breathing and movement exercises, massage can create a deep awareness of upper-body tension, especially around the eyes, so that the client learns to release it.
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The “cone” cells of the retina supply daytime color vision in sharply realized detail. To supply central vision, the normally sighted eye is continuously moving, easily and accurately, from one small, clear detail to another—the behavior called shifting. The periphery is supplied by “rod” cells. Although our vision is incredibly high-resolution—we have 100 to 200 million rods and cones—we don’t all see all the parts of the visual field equally well. With normal vision, we see one small detail best, in a field of increasing haziness. Accepting this can be hard for near-sighted people, who often find blurriness unpleasant. Because the brain fills in what we expect to see, the entire periphery appears to have color, but it doesn’t. Try standing in an unfamiliar room with many small colored objects, looking straight ahead; you wont be able to identify the colors at the edges of your visual field.
Creating Controlled Stress on the Ciliary Muscle for Strength
Ideally, this exercise should be done outdoors on a bright day, with sunlight falling directly on the page. The next best method would be in bright daylight without direct sun. And the least ideal way would be indoors with strong light, which should still work.
Look at the pages with large and small print. Read the normal size print at a normal distance, where the letters are clear but not crisp, and not completely comfortable to read. You might not be able to make out a letter or two, or perhaps even a word or two, but you should be able to read most of it. Do not strain; just look at the letters. Make sure to blink and wave one hand around your periphery to ensure that you don’t strain. This will also help you to see well because it encourages the brain to notice more of the periphery and not to overstrain your central vision.
Next, obstruct your strong eye with a small piece of black paper (two inches by two inches) and look at the largest print. Bring the page all the way to your face until the page is almost touching your eyelashes, even closer than the tip of your nose. Read the print, letter by letter, or part of each letter, point by point, reading aloud and waving your hand in the periphery of the obstructed strong eye. Instead of moving your eyes the way you would when you normally read, you will move the paper so that each letter falls right in front of your eye, in your focal point. Wave your hand in the periphery to take the strain off reading so close. Do this for two minutes.
Figure 4.5. Bring the page all the way to your face until the page is almost touching your eyelashes.
Now hold the paper back eighteen inches and read the normal print again. This is an induced stress on the eye rather than one of which we are unaware and that strains the eye. Nevertheless, this will strengthen the ciliary muscle. In 80 percent of my clients and students, this works both momentarily and, with continued practice, long-term.
Unfreezing
It is amazing how much our patterns control us. If you tend not to move much because you watch television a lot, sit at a computer all day, or drive for a living, it can eventually lead to a frozen back, a frozen gaze, frozen looks, and, quite often, repetitive thoughts in your brain. Even if you are intellectually very advanced, you may freeze the way in which you look and the way in which you move.
If you are a long-distance runner, you may run with a constant sense of freeze, meaning that you tighten your shoulders, neck, chest, and lower back when you run. Or if you lift weights, you may tense every part of your body in order to lift them. So, a sense of freeze may be the starting point from which you function.
One of the most important things for you to learn is how to unfreeze yourself. Regardless of what your lifestyle is, you could be frozen.
If your lifestyle is one of sitting, it’s important for you to be comfortable when you sit, not just to think that you’re comfortable. You should be properly supported in your seat so that you do not damage your back and neck from freezing your posture. It’s likewise important to know that your eyes are relaxed, not frozen. How do you know that your eyes are relaxed? Simple: first of all, they blink; second, you have a sense of periphery when you look straight ahead.
Eye exercises are the beginning of unfreezing. Body movement is also the beginning of unfreezing. Unfreezing is more than a thing to do—it is a philosophy that you share.
Correcting Astigmatism
Astigmatism is caused by an irregularly shaped cornea or an irregularly shaped lens. It is difficult to describe what the world looks like to people who experience astigmatism. Oftentimes, people with astigmatism have the sense that they see several images of objects at once. For example, when they look at the moon they may see the image of a clear moon along with a shadow moon, two shadow moons, or several shadow moons side by side. Even if they close one eye, they may still see more than one moon.
Often astigmatism accompanies nearsightedness or farsightedness. Thus a progressive way of improving your eyes would be to simultaneously work on correcting the myopia or hyperopia while also addressing the astigmatism.
After practicing the recommended exercise program for astigmatism for two months, the astigmatism may disappear. It is then advisable to return to these exercises for one week every six months, for several years, in order to prevent the astigmatism from recurring.