It was at this time that I was taught the connection between the health of my eyes and that of the rest of my physical body. Another friend, Miriam, the librarian, taught me a series of exercises to improve my body. I began to practice movement techniques and learned that movement is life. Whenever circumstances block possibilities of improvement, there are always other possibilities that can help you to move forward. I learned from experience that the human body is capable of improving and healing itself. We forget that we have the potential to improve our vision. The world is so engaged in the myth that poor eyesight cannot improve, especially in a case like mine, that it is difficult to imagine a story like mine being true. I’ve proven the conventional wisdom wrong and have shown the power of healing exercises.
I am grateful that Miriam and Jacob taught me eye exercises and body movement and encouraged me to share these exercises with other people. I have met with people who have improved their body even from major conditions such as paralysis from polio, motor neuron disease, muscular dystrophy, spinal injuries, arthritis, strokes, and many other ailments.
Figure 1.5. We forget that we have the potential to improve our vision.
I knew I had found my calling: to bring this consciousness to others. Most people have little faith in their own healing ability. My faith in their ability is great because of my faith in my own ability and my success.
There are two ways for me to describe how you can improve. One is to explain that the body has a greater functional potential than most people ever experience in life. The other is to demonstrate how to meet that potential through exercise. Whenever I work with people, I demonstrate to them that they can do more than they think. When they have pain, this means helping them not to let the pain restrict them too much. When they have tension, it means first helping them recognize the tension to its fullest extent, then decreasing it.
My own process was not smooth. My eyes used to move involuntarily three hundred times per minute until I learned palming: rubbing my hands, putting them around my eye orbits very gently, and visualizing darkness. This would calm and relax my eyes. In one strange way, it actually helped me to have deaf parents in my teens. I could play loud rock and roll music, and relax with it. In spite of our thin walls, my parents couldn’t hear it! Whenever I played this music, I would place my hands very gently around my eye orbits to relax my eyes. The movement of my eyes decreased to sixty movements per minute within three months. That’s when my vision started to clear. The additional exercise of sunning warmed my eyes and started to activate my irregular pupils.
Although I could not exactly see, I gradually learned to look, even though it was sometimes painful. I had been taught by my Braille teacher to “feel the Braille and not look at the page. For God’s sake, don’t look, because if you look, you’ll confuse your senses. You’ve got to feel and not look.” That order was so vigorous that I had learned to live a life without looking at anything. Looking was a new order to my brain. The result, even though I was starting to see more, was that my eyes hurt. Palming and lying down for a long time had helped me. Sometimes I just didn’t want to see anything; it was just too much. But I kept looking.
Figure 1.6. My eyes used to move involuntarily three hundred times per minute until I learned palming.
When I arrived in the United States, I met some people who were very interested in my work. They offered to help me train other people in my methods. It was new to me to have people embrace my experiences. I learned how to teach individuals—Miriam always taught me to work only with individuals—and how to teach classes in a way that would enable each individual to learn how to work with himself or herself. From this I learned that the greatest difficulty most people have is that they don’t believe they can find the time to work on themselves. Most people think they are too busy. Others feel impatient and aren’t willing to invest the effort it takes to quiet and to relax their minds and bodies. I teach them how to incorporate these exercises into their existing routines. I teach them that looking at details is something they had stopped being motivated to do a long time ago and that to do so stimulates the macula—the central part of the retina—and can prevent macular degeneration. I teach them that sitting with a loose neck is worth the investment of moving the head in a rotating motion before sitting in a chair. I teach people that while they use their computers, they should look far away from time to time to rest their eyes. These are simple habits that are easily incorporated into day-to-day life.
My own two children were born with cataracts, which was traumatic for me and for their mother, as we knew from experience the struggle they would face. At the age of two weeks, they went through cataract surgeries that allowed the visual brain to develop normally. This was not known in my generation. Because their surgeries were successful, they did not have to deal with the scarring that I dealt with when I was young. Using the techniques you will read about in this book, their vision has improved tremendously. Throughout their childhood and adolescence, my children have covered their strong eyes and looked with their weak eyes at objects in order to ease the strain of looking with the strong eyes all the time.
With an artist’s mind and an artist’s heart, my son is often in his own world in many ways. While in his world, however, he looks at details with great interest. Because of his powerful capacity of observation and love of detail, he sees much that others don’t see. He has developed the best vision of any kid who was ever born with cataracts. He now sees at 20/40 without glasses. This is 80 percent of 20/20 vision, without his natural lenses. Anyone else without the natural lens of the eye would be seeing 20/400 (5 percent of normal vision). He sees 20/15 with glasses. Most other kids who were born with cataracts and had successful surgeries see 20/80 or 20/100 using much thicker lenses; 20/40 is unheard of for someone who has no natural lens of his own.
My daughter has also passed through many transitions. We used to play a lot of games in our living room, where she would cover her strong eye and play ball with me using her weaker eye. Seeing that ball as it rolled close and far made a huge difference for her, and her vision greatly improved. At the age of twelve, she developed elevated eye pressure. Immediately, the doctors wanted to give her eye drops to reduce her pressure. We declined the doctors’ recommendation because we believed the drops could be damaging. I worked with her instead, and in spite of incredibly demanding middle school and high school schedules with many extracurricular activities, she found some time to work on her periphery, which reduced eye pressure. She also found some time to work on her neck. She saw acupuncturists and homeopathic specialists, took vitamin treatments, and got massage treatments to reduce the tension in her back and neck. I taught her how to relax her whole body in many different ways in order to bring more blood circulation to her head. Her pressure was reduced enormously.
The process was long, hard, and cumbersome, and had its ups and downs, but it worked. With high pressure, some people have a tendency toward developing glaucoma, and glaucoma expresses itself by damaging the optic nerve and diminishing the field of vision. So our success with her is partial but good; her vision is 20/20. Though her tendency is for high pressure, her optic nerve is very healthy, and her field of vision is excellent.
From these experiences with myself, with my children, and with thousands of patients and students with whom I have worked, I have come to truly believe that people can improve their vision and find the time to do so, whether they’re in school or in the workplace.