5. Techniques for Relieving Eye Stress

The first, and inevitable, question which everyone asks is, "How long will it take before my vision improves?" As the answer to this question depends on a number of factors—the seriousness of your eye condition, the time taken to relieve eye stress, your ability to acquire complete relaxation and mental con­trol, the steadiness with which you do your exercises —no definite period of time can be set. Every visual instructor has had cases in which an hour was sufficient to correct the visual defect, and cases in which months of patient effort were required to get the same result. As we learn more and more about the workings of the human mind, it will become possible to effect im­provement in a much shorter period of time. Funda­mentally, it rests with you. In many cases there are flashes of normal vision almost at once. It is our task to prolong those flashes until the normal vision is con­stant and not merely a momentary improvement.

There is no stimulus so effective as that of securing that first evidence that the vision is really there. Once you see that for yourself you are apt to become stead­fast in performing the exercises and drills.

Now, what are you to do about glasses? Take them off and leave them off—as much as possible. If you can discard them entirely, from the first day, your eyesight will improve more rapidly than if you remove them to do your exercises and then keep them on while you do your work.

Whenever you are wearing glasses, you are restor­ing the refractive error which your lenses are designed to correct. If, however, your work forces you to spend a great many hours at close work and you have been accustomed to glasses for years, you may find it dif­ficult to give them up entirely. There is no point in going to extremes about this. Try, at least, to give them up as long as you can comfortably, every day. The interval will increase in length. And you will dis­cover that you are able to give them up entirely much sooner than you expect. In some cases, it may take a few days, in others, a few weeks, in severe cases even longer. In the final analysis, again, it depends on you.

The worst mistake you can make is to decide, "I'll wait until I take my vacation—or until my work lets up—or until I have more leisure—or for some other period in the hypothetical future, before I take off my glasses and really get down to work."

We live always in today, never tomorrow. The only time that is of any value is the present moment—is now. The earlier any eye defect is corrected, the sim­pler the job. Tomorrow—or next month—or next year, it will be that much harder. No one's eyesight has ever improved tomorrow.

People are frequently timid about discarding their glasses. This is as true for the one who has purchased his spectacles by mail order or for the wife who wears her husband's glasses, thinking that what is good for him must be good for her, as it is for the person who has been carefully measured by an oculist. And yet the same person usually observes with surprise, if he breaks or loses his glasses and is forced to go without them for a week or so, that his sight begins to im­prove.

"I don't know," begins the timid soul, "whether I could get used to going without glasses."

Certainly, it is less of an ordeal than getting used to wearing them. Anyone who has struggled through weeks of accustoming himself to bifocals, or to the glare of bright light on the lenses, or their blurring from dust and mdisture, will find it easy to adjust him­self to the freedom of doing without them.

The peculiar mental reaction toward glasses was il­lustrated some years ago when the fad for wearing oxfords swept over the country. People wore them with full confidence that they were doing them good, although the oxfords were difficult to keep so adjusted that the eye looked through the center of the lens, and therefore vision was usually distorted.

The greatest struggle will come during the first two weeks when, after having worn glasses for a number of years, you make up your mind to take the plunge and discard them. Everything you do will seem fraught with difficulties. Even dressing and undressing will be an ordeal. You are like a person whose leg has been removed from a plaster cast and who tries to walk. The muscles which have depended upon the cast for their support must learn to do their own work. Even a step is an adventure. You are conscious of every movement, wondering, "Dare I risk that? . . . Can I walk that far? . . . Will I fall or bump into a table or strain the weakened leg?"

But the point is, of course, that a beginning must be made some time. And most of the difficulty is in your own mind. You are afraid of trying something that seems so new and daring.

Little by little, as your vision improves, you will acquire a feeling of zest for life along with improved eyesight. Every day will bring some new achievement. Slowly your world, which—if you are myopic—has been contracted into a small area, will begin to get larger and larger. The signs that were a blur begin to stand out so that you can read them; faces are clearer, the sidewalk is no longer an obstacle race but a safe place on which to stroll. Or—if you are far-sighted— you will begin to see more distinctly the headings of newspapers, magazine covers, and you will be able to hold your book closer.

Learning to master what Aldous Huxley terms "The Art of Seeing" is an exhilarating and a happy experi­ence and the exercises and drills should be undertaken in a happy spirit. Boredom, as we have pointed out, is a form of eye stress; do the exercises with an alert and interested mind, never with the martyred attitude of, "Well, I've got to do my exercises now," like a reluc­tant child being forced to practice tedious scales on the piano.

Keep at the exercises. Make an appointment with yourself to do them regularly every day and then keep that appointment. It is a truism that only busy people have time. The world is full of unwritten books and unpainted pictures and untried ideas which are wait­ing for someone to have time for them, and so they are lost. For the person who honestly wants to accomplish something can always make time for it.

If you are a gregarious person and dislike doing things by yourself, interest other members of your family in joining you or ask another friend who suf­fers from eye defects to share your exercise time. They will be diverted and gradually you and they will be­come nervously untied. Tired eyes will begin to feel as loose and free as though they were floating in space.

It must constantly be borne in mind that the purpose of every single technique and exercise is to secure relaxation. Only when that has been acquired is it pos­sible to re-train the eyes for improved vision. That is why your attitude in doing the exercises is so impor­tant. If you can learn to do them with laughter and with joy you will be helping yourself.

SUNNING

Where do we start? We are going to start by relax­ing the eyes as completely as we can. Remember that we are not going to make an effort to see; we are sim­ply going to allow vision to enter the eyes, which it always does when the eyes and mind are at rest.

The first step in relaxing the eyes is called sunning. Ideally, this should be done out of doors, or at least in a window, facing the direct rays of the sun. If your apartment faces north or if you live in a climate where there is little sunlight, you may substitute a 150-watt spotlight bulb. If you use the light bulb instead of the direct sun, sit about six feet away from it.

Contrary to popular belief, sunshine has great thera­peutic value for defective eyes. Eyes function only in light. It is darkness and not light which damages eye­sight. In recent years it has become fashionable for people to clap dark glasses over their eyes as soon as they venture out into the street, as though the eyes of a man, like those of a mole, were designed for burrow­ing underground.

Many nervous people, particularly those suffering from the eye stress which causes far-sightedness, dread the light. In some cases, known as photophobia, this fear is often accompanied by pain, but the sunning treatment relieves the condition.

When we recall that man, originally an outdoor animal, accustomed to sunlight as strong as 10,000 foot-candles, has come indoors where he frequently works under conditions of ten foot-candles or less, it is a wonder that he can still see at all.

Living in dark rooms has been regarded as a cause of ulcers of the cornea. A morbid fear of light, result­ing in covering the eyes with dark glasses, does harm rather than good because it deliberately subjects the eyes to abnormal conditions.

A noted ophthalmologist from Vienna was "thunder­struck" on his first visit to this country when he saw so many people wearing dark glasses. He remarked, "You will be a nation of blind people if this fad con­tinues."

It has been estimated that some 40,000,000 pairs of sun glasses are sold every year in the United States. For the most part these are purchased with a view to price, to design of frame, or to tint, and with little consideration for their effect on the vision.

If you are one of those persons who never faces a bright day without dark glasses, it will be a revelation to you to discover the beneficent effect of sunning. The sun is to the eye what the air is to the lung. One woman who had always distrusted sunlight tells me that she can hardly wait to get to the roof of her hotel in the morning where her eyes "drink up the sun" like a sponge.

A man who had recovered from cataracts went to Atlantic City where the sunshine is unusually bright. As he had long worn dark glasses, he was afraid of the light for several days. After sunning for a couple of days, the light ceased to cause him any trouble, and he experienced greatly improved vision as well as a sensation of general well-being.

During the war, a young lieutenant in the Navy came to me suffering from photophobia. This was tor­ture to a man whose work forced him to spend his days out of doors facing the glare of the sun on the water. Up to the day when he had joined the Navy he had been unable to endure even the light of a sunny room.

"It is not a pair of dark glasses you need," I told him, "it is more and more light." After several sessions with sunning he was rid of his photophobia.

One reason for this fear of light, and for the growing belief that light is not good for us, is the fact that people with tense eyes experience physical discomfort at times when they make too abrupt a transition from darkness to light, or from light to darkness. They have known the unpleasantness of leaving a brightly lighted street and groping through stygian darkness in a movie theater or the discomfort of coming swiftly from a dark room into brilliant light.

They leap to the mistaken conclusion that light is dangerous. The real trouble is that the change from light to dark or vice versa is too swift to allow the tense eyes to adjust themselves. Most of the dis­comfort can be avoided by making the transition more gradually. It takes the pupil a little time to adjust to the amount of light it is receiving; in a bright light the pupil contracts to a mere pinpoint; in a dim light it expands to permit more light to enter. So, if you come into a bright light and experience this discomfort, it is a sign of tension in the eyes. Take the sun treatment and rid yourself of the cause but do not resign yourself to wearing colored glasses, whose net result is to weaken the eyes and cause eye trouble.

The sunshine treatment can be abused or misused, but if you read the instructions carefully and use your own common sense you will derive nothing but benefit. We are gong to approach this business of sunning in­telligently and moderately. There are two rules:

1. Never sun hoth eyes at the same time.

One eye must be sunned and then the other. Cover the eye which is not being sunned with the palm of the hand.

2. Never stare at the sun (or spotlight).

We are ready to begin. Seat yourself comfortably in a straight chair, back straight, not slumping, feet firmly on the floor, without crossing the legs or the ankles, hands lying loosely on the lap.

Now close your eyes. Drop the lids gently so that they do not squeeze shut and no frown puckers the forehead. With your eyelids lightly closed, face toward the sun, move your head slowly and evenly in a lateral swing of a few inches. This rhythmic movement should be done at the rate of about thirty times a minute.

As you move your head from side to side, you will feel the warmth of the sun on your eyelids, relaxing the tense nerves, actually bathing your closed eyes in sunlight. As your head swings gently, imagine that the sun is moving in the opposite direction. As your head swings to the right, the sun swings to the left. This keeps the eyes in motion under the closed lids and prevents staring (for you can stare with closed eyes just as you can stare in your sleep), and it also spreads the light evenly over the retina. After a few moments the rhythmic swinging sensation will make you feel rested, free and relaxed from tension.

After a couple of minutes—not more—cover one eye with the palm of the hand. The heel of the palm should rest on the cheekbone while the fingers extend over the forehead, the hand so cupped that it does not actually touch the eyeball. You must use the palm, not the fingers, to cover the eye, for the palm, with its thousands of nerve centers, has a healing quality in itself which the fingers lack.

Continue to move the head from side to side and, blinking rapidly, open both eyes. The one that is cov­ered must be open too. With the eyes relaxed, look at the... [Chapter Incomplete]

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