At this point, we should answer the question that has probably arisen in your mind.

"I am near-sighted," you say, "and another reader of this book is far-sighted. Still another may suffer from astigmatism or presbyopia. We all have different difficulties. Are we all to do the same drills?"

Special needs for special cases will be considered later, but here we must point out that, while each of the above conditions represents a different eyestrain, the method of relaxation is the same in all cases.

What are these eyestrains and how do they affect us?

MYOPIA

Myopia, or near-sighted disease, as it is popularly called, is one of the most common and annoying eye ailments.

It is due to muscular imbalance. The myopic near-sighted eyeball is elongated by pressure of the two oblique muscles which bind the eyeball about the middle. Because of the tightness of these muscles, the parallel rays of light are brought to a focus at a point in front of the retina. The result is blurred, distorted vision when attempting to see a distant object. Myopia, in other words, involves a strain to see at the far point and it is our task to stretch the vision.

When the near-sighted eyes are fitted with lenses, the light rays focus on the retina as in normal vision. But—since the shape of the eyeball remains unchanged—the cause of the difficulty is not remedied. On the con­trary, the eyeball becomes more elongated as time goes on, and lenses must be made stronger and stronger to counteract the increasing myopia of the eye.

Myopia usually appears in school children between the ages of eight and fifteen. The reason appears to be that during puberty the child's physical and nervous system is undergoing such drastic changes that the anxieties and fears often accompanying the confine­ment and competition of the school room create an entirely new series of strains. These strains, in turn, are potent factors in the development of myopia and other visual defects. The effort to see words on the blackboard, fear of being unable to solve the prob­lem as quickly as Mary or Johnny, dread of failure—all of these elements give rise to certain mental and physical tensions that, more often than not, result in the child's inability to see what is on the blackboard and they became near-sighted.

The result is that the child begins to strain to see, to develop a stooping posture as he crouches lower and lower over his book or walks with head down, trying to see the sidewalk. He develops headaches and nerv­ous habits. Half-closing his eyes, he squints in an endeavor to clear his vision. Little by little he begins to reveal the emotional characteristics of near-sighted disease. He withdraws from competitive games and stays by him­self. He draws into his shell, contented with his con­tracted world. He emerges from it only reluctantly and after persistent effort on the part of his anxious parents.

Too often the well-intentioned parents hustle the near-sighted child off to the ophthalmologist who fits him with glasses. It is always an unhappy sight to observe a child's face behind spectacles. Automatically, they cut him off from many games and forms of exercise which the growing body needs. But aside from that, the vision generally gets worse and the glasses are in­creased in strength until, some ten or fifteen years later, the patient's eyes have lost much of their power of accommodation. The nerves and muscles of the eyes, depending on their glasses, have lost all flexibil­ity of movement.

Carry your arm in a sling for a couple of weeks and you will discover how lazy your muscles can grow from enforced inactivity. Lie in bed, recuperating from an operation or a serious illness, and the legs will have to re-learn the simple process of walking. Can we expect the muscles of the eye to have greater powers of resistance or stamina?

Because every part of the body reacts on every other, it is important—especially so with myopia—to check on your posture. This business of stooping over as you walk and bending forward as you read does not help your near-sighted eyes to see. Actually, it impedes vision because the cramped neck muscles cut off the circulation of blood to the brain and the eyes.

Another effect of the stooping posture of myopes is that it tends to create an attitude of inferiority and failure. With your head bent down and your near-sighted eyes peering up you are constantly in the physical position of a person looking up at a situation which is too big for him. Naturally, this creates a sensation of inade­quacy. Stand erect and look straight ahead. It gives you a new focus. You see better because you have the proper circulation to the eyes, and along with it you have gained a feeling of confidence. The situation is not too big for you—you are now on a physical par with it.

We have all seen the little myope in the making, a child crouching over a book in a dim light, his eyes close to the page, shoulders rounded, head almost on his chest. "I can't get the child to go out and play," his mother exclaims, half in pride, half in foreboding. "He's such a bookworm."

But perhaps, as often happens, the book is a refuge from a sense of inferiority, a shrinking away from peo­ple, the first sign of the development of a neurosis. Will glasses rectify the situation?

This is not a book on beauty or improving your looks, but no one is utterly immune to his physical appearance and, since your awareness of your appear­ance has much to do with the confidence with which you approach life and other people, it is worth point­ing out that the stooping posture always creates a bad impression of your moral as well as your physical stamina, while a fine posture not only makes you feel better—it is an essential, indeed, to proper body func­tion—but it will make even an overweight body more attractive and add grace to any figure.

So keep your body erect and your eyes ahead. If you have got into the habit of stooping, your lazy muscles will object to standing upright. If you keep at it, however, you will discover how much better and less tired you feel, how much vigor you have and to what an extent you have managed to reduce eyestrain and eye fatigue.

Near-sighted eyes can be re-educated through exercise. Here a word about this business of exercises, as there appears to be considerable confusion in regard to them. The type of exercises employed in the Bates method is altogether different from the type used by orthodox ophthalmologists, called orthoptics. The lat­ter are based on the use of mechanical devices, electric spirals, stereoscopes, and so forth, which the eye fol­lows, thus providing artificial exercise for the con­vergent muscles, which are voluntary and have no part in accommodation.

The exercises advocated in this manual, as you will see, deal entirely with the smooth part of the muscle, and they combine mental as well as physical drills.

Near-sighted eyes, even after having depended upon glasses for many years, can be re-trained to a remark­able degree. When the condition is serious, the aid of a competent visual instructor will help to speed the process, but in the long run improvement will depend upon your own persistence.

The near-sighted eye is a staring eye. In its constant effort to see the distant object clearly, it tries to force sight, to see all parts of the object at the same time and with equal clarity. The result is that the eye fails to shift easily and naturally from point to point as nor­mal eyes do.

In other words, the near-sighted eye has lost the faculty of central fixation. The purpose of many of the exer­cises is to restore this lost art of central fixation.

It is my own conviction that near-sighted disease starts with emo­tional upsets in childhood. The foundation of the mus­cular imbalance frequently goes back to babyhood. How often do you see a baby lying in its crib, staring fixedly at a bright object that has been hung over its head "to keep it quiet." The tiny muscles become set and no one notices the damage that has been done until the child is old enough for school, where the teacher discovers that the child cannot see the black­board.

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