Eye Exercise Guide

Yesterday I read bits of this blog at the Artclash Collective's annual Fun-A-Day event in Philadelphia. I also had people trying out some if the eye exercises that I posted on this blog each day during the month of January. Several people (and if you're reading this, maybe you're one of them) asked me more about the blog because they or someone they know has difficulty seeing.

I realize that it can be intimidating to jump on into this corner of the Blogosphere and sift through 31 posts instructing you to do 31 weirdo rituals that may or may not help you see better. This Valentine's Day addendum is a way to sort that out. Below are all 31 exercises, categorized and described in brief. Look 'em over, pick one or two, try 'em out, and let me know what happens. You can also use the entry entitled "Your 5-Minute Regimen" as a launching point for exploring this stuff.

Eye Exercises:

• Sunning: Uses light, warmth and movement to help the eyes adjust to different lighting conditions.
• Palming: Uses darknes and warmth to help relax the eyes and brain.
• A Better Blink: Works to relax the eyes and face.
• Directionals: Eye movements to help strengthen the muscles around the eyes.
• The 3-Finger Game: Strengthens the ability to quickly focus on objects at different distances.
• The Phantom Finger: Uses optical illusions to work stereoscopic vision.
• Swaying & Swinging: Using movement of the head and body to help the eyes adjust to a world of motion.
• Sketching: Uses movement of the head to help define and sharpen images.
• A New Vision For Old Flyers: Uses printed words to help bring things into focus.
• Describing: Partner exercise that helps one see more detail.
• Seeing The Invisible: Works with the other senses to increase visual perception.
• Look Out: Relaxes the eyes by looking far away.

Breathing, Massaging and Stretching:

• Breathing: Basic technique for taking deep breaths during all eye exercises.
• Neck Stretches: Reduces tension in the body caused by eyestrain.
• Orbital Massage: Relieves eyestrain and headaches.
• Massaging Meridians: Explores pressure points around the body to help improve the eyesight.
• Buzzing: Yogic breath technique that brings relaxation to the eyes and body.

Shifts in Habit, Perspective and Attitude:

• Reading: Instructions on how to read and use computers in a way that reduces eyestrain.
• Changing Views: Using an apple (the fruit, not the computer) to see the world in many ways.
• Make Art: How art can help improve vision.
• See What You Want: Describes how vision loss can be linked to bad experiences and ways to overcome this.

Playing Games:

• Spooning Bubbles: Increases spatial awareness and improves depth perception by blowing bubbles.
• Ping Pong: Works focal ability by playing ping pong, tennis, or soccer.
• Skipping Rope: Strengthens peripheral vision with a jump rope.
• Anagram Games: Improves the eye-brain connection with a variety of word games.

Nutrition:

• Herbs: Lists herbs linked to vision improvement and how to use them.
• Listening to Color: Lists a few foods purported to be good for the eyes.

Essays:

• Light Text, Dark Background: Suggests adjusting your computer screen to help with reduce eyestrain.
• Contradictions: Details how and why different eye experts disagree with one another.
• Tears & Resources: List of books and other resources related to improving vision (and society).

...and for specific topics and eye conditions, look at the "areas of interest" on the sidebar to the left.

31. Tears & Resources

I've been playing catch-up, filling in the blanks on this blog that I'd vowed to do every day for a month, and getting a bit teary-eyed in the process. Tears are a great ally to the vision: they lubricate the eyes with water and minerals, as well as provide emotional release that might be blocking the brain from seeing certain things (see the "See What You Want" posting from a few entries back). Today's tears weren't spurned by any sort of sentimentality—blogs and the internet and my process relating to them don't do that for me. Rather, these tears were jostled by the people who have found victory through their own path of self-healing, often through struggles within their own personal health and the deterrent forces of America's busted capitalist healthcare system. I live in the richest country on Earth, and yet the quality of healthcare that a person receives here is proportional to the money that they have. Couple this with the stranglehold that certain kinds of medicine have usurped in the past century—pharmaceutical, surgical, and slap-the-glasses-on-the-kids-and-send-them-to-school optometrical—and it is a wonder that I've found anyone out there making a decent go at providing affordable acupuncture, massage, yoga and other such treatments at rates that folks can actually afford. Luckily I have found them, and this blog is an attempt to share their resources with you, as well as to add my own experiences in natural vision therapy to the wealth of resources in my community.

Below is a list of resources that I've used to put this blog together. It's divided into two parts, the first being "media" resources that you can order by mail or maybe find in a bookshop, and the second being a collection of local resources from my own community. If you cannot access these resources directly you can at least be inspired by them:

Media Resources:

• Meir Schneider has made a number of audiobooks and videos of eye exercises, some of which were the first to really get me inspired to pursue this stuff. my favorite is the Miracle Eyesight Method because Schneider gives such clear explanation of the exercises and why they work, as well as sharing incredible and inspiring stories from his own life. Scheider also had the smarts to do what many other authors on natural vision seemed to miss the boat on: his books are totally audio—no reading required for the visually impaired!
• Marc Grossman regularly teaches workshops at Kripalu Yoga Center in Western Mass and run a functional optemetry/acupuncture practice in upstate New York. He's a nice guy, full of knowledge and creativity, some of which comes through in Greater Vision and other books.
• Tom Quackenbush's textbook Relearning to See is a fascinating melange of basic biology with total devotion to Dr. William Bates and his methods. Quackenbush spends dozens and dozens of pages quoting entire passages from Bates' books and periodicals. I take issue with Quackenbush's fanboy fervor towards Bates' teachings-as-doctrine (and unlike the skeptics on Wikipedia, he does sweep some of Bates' mistakes under the rug), but this book is full of beautiful science and clear diagrams of how many of the exercises can be performed—a really great reference.
• Aldous Huxley's The Art of Seeing has a great beginning where the author details his own journey in and out of blindness and then goes on to quote some guy who worked for General Electric's Lighting Research Laboratory: "Suppose that crippled eyes could be transformed into crippled legs. What a heart-rending parade we would witness on a busy street! Nearly every other person would go limping by. Many would be on crutches and some on wheel chairs." Beyond that, Huxley's book is disappointingly clinical coming from one the 20th century's great authors. The Art of Seeing mostly serves as a testimonial by someone that people have actually heard of.
• This list cannot be written with the inclusion of better Eyesight Without Glasses by William H. Bates, M.D., a book for which Bates was barred from practice by the American Optometry Association, for if the nation took Bates' advice (got rid of their glasses and followed his regimen) every optometrist would be out of a job. An important piece of history and the inspiration for much of what you see on this blog.

Local Resources:

• Philadelphia Community Acupuncture provides sliding scale acupuncture treatments from $15 to $35. They are part of a growing global network of similarly structured acupuncture clinics.
• Studio 34 is a yoga, healing and arts space that I work at in West Philadelphia. Drop in class are no more than $10, and many are $5 or pay-what-you-can. Studio 34's mission is driven by community rather than profit.
• Mill Creek Farm is a chemical free farm operating in the heart of the city. They strive to provide city dwellers with the autonomy to access healthy food that's grown right in their own neighborhoods.

I could make these lists continue indefinitely, though I'd rather just offer a few examples of the people and projects that inspire me to do this work. If there are others that you know of, leave them here.

Thanks for reading. See you soon.

30. Massaging Meridians

The Idea: In Chinese Medicine, 11 out of the body's 12 major meridians run through the eyes. Attention to these meridians and their corresponding organs can help maintain and improve the health of the eyes.

How To: Ideally, go and find yourself a good acupuncturist. In my neighborhood there is affordable community acupuncture with sliding scale rates of $15 to $35 and I go there nearly every week. Beyond this, I've found acupressure—the massaging of the same meridians that acupuncturists use to maps the flow of energy around the body—to be helpful. My favorite meridian to massage is the gall bladder meridian just under the muscle on the outer edge on the leg, starting just below the knee joint (point GB34 on the diagram on the left) and curving down to just above the ankle (point GB 39). Running a thumb along this meridian line and applying pressure from the back of the muscle's edge has brought tremendous relief to my eyes, as well as other parts of my body that have experienced pain. This has been my own experience, and of course yours will be different. Doubtless acupressure and acupuncture can bring great relief to any body.

More Info:

• The Community Acupuncture Network lists and maps sliding scale clinics on their website. Take a look and find some affordable acupuncture in your area!

29. Contradictions

This is the heftiest entry in here, both lengthwise and in its subject matter. If you're just tuning in, I recommend looking at this other post as a launching point for doing some eye exercises.

In all of my research that has led me to writing this blog, I've read writings by and visited people who all claimed to be "experts" in the field of something related to the eyes and their health. Some of these people have the clout of the Western Optometrical Complex to back them up, many others ousted themselves from that institution because they felt that prescribing stronger and stronger leses for people was hurting, not helping their eyesight. Others still were never professional optometrists, but people who entered into this work through a route of holistic and natural healing. With so many "experts" coming from so many philosophies, traditions and experiences, it is inevitable that their statements contradict one another.

Below are some of the contradictions that I've come across in my own experience with natural vision therapy, as well as how it relates to the Western Optometrical Complex. Nothing here is conclusive because I can only put myself out there as an expert regarding my own experiences with vision—not yours or the billions of others who live and have lived on this planet. Also, healing practices must be in constant dialogue, never set in stone, for there were many certainties that doctors had for centuries that we now know to be false. Who's to say that certainties of today's doctors, pharmacists, scientists, and drug company executives are any more true than those who believed that the common cold was caused by evil spirits? Read on, try things out, question everything and let me know what you come up with:

1. "Corrective" Lenses vs. "Opposite" Lenses: Mainstream western optometry works like this: you go to the eye doctor and get a prescription for lenses. Over the course of the year, your eyes adjust to the lenses and then you need a stronger prescription. In functional optometry (though it's difficult to find documentation of this in any book) doctors will have patients wear "opposite glasses"—lenses that actually make the vision "worse." This means that a farsighted person would be given a negative or nearsighted pair of glasses, and a near sighted person would be given a pair of positive or farsighted glasses. The glasses are only worn for about 20 minutes at a time, maybe once or twice a day, the vision is only worsened for this short time. But when the glasses are removed, the vision might actually be better. The theory is that if a pair of "corrective" lenses pull a nearsighted person deeper into nearsightedness and a farsighted person deeper into farsightedness, than "opposite" glasses can do the opposite.
2. Staring vs. Shifting: In Ayurvedic, yogic, and many martial arts practices, there is this idea of gazing at a fixed point or a flickering flame to relax the mind and improve the vision. Dr. William H. Bates and his protégés protest against this, saying that the eyes should be in constant movement. this is one of Bates' key principles, just as finding one's drishti is a key principle in many schools of yoga.
3. Centralization vs. Peripheralization: With the tradition of Batas and post-Bates natural vision therapy, I've come across a couple of different recommendation regarding the role of peripheral vision. According to Thomas R. Quackenbush, much of our culture's eyestrain comes from trying to see everything at once—the "Big Picture" with everything in equal focus.
   
   Quackenbush posits that only the central vision—where the cone cells are concentrated in the fovea—should be clear, and that the peripheral vision—where there only a smattering of rods to indicate base might, shadow and movement—should be blurry. He goes on to state that it is this trying to get the rods to pull in a sharper image that puts strain on the eyes and makes the whole vision go blurry. Meir Schneider, on the other hand, promotes exercises that strengthen the peripheral vision. Both men are followers of the Bates Method and both have succeeded in improving their vision through its practice, though their individual experiences are different and perhaps this is why they differ on this particular aspect of Bates' teaching.
4. Lutein vs. Beta Carotene: The irony of this one is that both of these nutrients have been shown to support the vision, yet each blocks the other's absorption! Dr. Marc Grossman, with his experience both in functional optometry and Chinese Medicine, says that beta carotene is best absorbed in the middle of the day (11 AM to 3 PM) and lutein in the middle of the night (11 PM to 3 AM). IT's a pretty weird regimen to follow, but really not any weirder than any of the exercises I've posted on this blog, right?

I am very interested in healthy debate in the interest of actually making people healthier rather than the "I'm right, they're wrong, and I've got all these books and fancy degrees to back me up" sort of thinking that gets thrown at me by almost anyone wearing a lab coat. I've have several conversations with doctors about eye exercises like Sunning, and practices such as wearing pinhole glasses, that went absolutely nowhere. If you've had any experience with this stuff, or have questions about anything here, leave your comments here.

28: Eating for the Eyes, Part 2: Listening to Color

The Idea: Our bodies know what they need and we send ourselves signals in interesting ways. One is through color: the colors that we are drawn to may indicate what foods we should be eating. Foods of certain colors contain certain nutrients linked to their pigmentation. The most well known example of this is with carrots and the beta carotene indicated by their orange hue.

Carrots are always put forth as the quintessential eye food. True they are good for the eyes and the rest of the body, and they are not alone. Here's a list of other foods that I've ben told are good for the eyes:

1. Collards and Kale: These dark leafy greens from the brassica family are rich and vitamin A and lutein. Cook them any way you like, or chop them finely to eat raw as a salad or mixed with other stuff.
2. Dandelion: The bitter greens of this common weed are the highest in vitamin A, as well as calcium and iron. Baby dandelion greens are good in salads, bigger greens are best sauteed with a little salt to draw out the bitterness. Dandelion also strengthens the liver, which strengthens the eyes. See my post about herbs for more info.
3. Apricots: Their orange pigment alludes to bioflavonoids that support retinal function. Dried apricots are more potent for their ability to do this.
4. Yellow Pigmented Vegetables: Yellow and orange bell peppers, winter squashes, orange sweet potatoes and yams are all up there with carrots for their high concentration of vitamin A in the form of beta carotene.
5. Blueberries: Actually yellow under their skin, they've been touted as "superfoods" in recent years. They contain certain bioflavonoids that adhere to the cone cells in the retina to at least temporarily improve vision. I wrote about both blueberries and bilberries in my post about herbs.

Testimonial: Orange has always been my favorite color and I believe that this is my body's way of letting me known what I need to be eating. Growing up around processed foods meant that I responded by eating a lot of artificially colored cheese products, but as I listened to my body further and moved toward a diet based more on fresh vegetables, it meant eating the foods listed above. My taste in color also changed—in recent years I've been more drawn to green than orange, perhaps indicating the need for more lutein than beta carotene to support my eyes as well as the other systems in my body.

27. Eating for the Eyes, Part 1: Herbs

Over the years many natural vision practitioners have advised me to take various herbs to improve my vision. All of these herbs are listed here in the order which they were prescribed to me, along with the reason for and source of their recommendation.

1. Turmeric: In Chinese medicine there is a strong connection between the liver and the eyes. Bitter herbs which boost liver function are touted as being good for the vision. The Cambridge acupuncturist who recommended this to me had a strong Ayurvedic background, and turmeric root is a key herb in Ayurveda. It's also a yellow pigment and yellow pigmented foods are good for the eyes. Turmeric also has the advantage of being easy to use in cooking and is a powerful antioxidant.
2. Dandelion: Any liver booster first recommended by the same acupuncturist noted above. The leaves are perhaps the most nutritious greens on the market, being far richer in iron, calcium and vitamin A than even real champs like collards, kale and watercress. In an herbal context, it is dandelion root that is used as the plant's most potent form. The bitter root has an underlying sweetness that really pops out when taken as a glycerine-based tincture or roasted and then consumed as a tea.
3. Milk Thistle: Prescribed to me by the same acupuncturist that first recommended dandelion and turmeric for their liver-boosting powers, milk thistle seed was hard for me at the time and I never used it.
4. Eyebright: As the name suggests, eyebright leaves are purported to better one's eyesight. Eyebright can also help to alleviate allergies and has done wonders for my itchy eyes during hay fever season. Natural vision therapist Rosemary Gordon first told me about eyebright along with many other herbs and foods for vision.
5. Bilberry: During World War II, British pilots reported improved night vision after eating bilberry jam on toast. The stuff hit the market in the U.S. 50 years later, first as bilberry leaf powdered in capsules or tinctured in bottles and priced pretty high. A few years after that the Italian company BioNaturae began marketing bilberry jam and juice in the States and I consumed a lot of it as it was affordable and damn tasty. I also ordered a sack of dried bilberries, which are about the size of peppercorns and a slightly sweet. Rosemary Gordon first brought this European superherb to my attention.
6. Blueberry: Years after I first bought into the bilberry craze of the 1990s an acupuncturist in New York told me that the bilberry's American sibling—the blueberry—did the exact same thing, and I began using blueberries instead because they are cheaper, bigger, sweeter, more local and easier to find. Have you ever peeled a blueberry? They're actually bright yellow inside and thus fall under the category of yellow-pigmented foods in the eway that they support vision. Eat the fruit in any form and take the leaf as a tea.
7. Ginseng and Astragalus: Marc Grossman, who is both an acupuncturist and a functional optometrist, prescribed these two roots be taken together in tincture form as a support for the kidneys and, by extension, the eyes. I insist on taking them in a glycerine base because I don;t do alcohol and glycerine tincture taste better, but alcohol tinctures are cheaper, easier to find and are also more potent. Ginseng and astragalus are two of the most common herbs in Chinese medicine and I'd be smart to just go to Chinatown and pick some up. Astagalus can also be eaten in a vegetable soups. and I've had a vegetarian ginseng and "chicken" soup at Harmony Vegetarian Restaurant in Philly.
8. Calendula: Marc Grossman was also the first person to tell me about the vision-healing powers of lutein. I went out and bought a bottle of 50 lutein vegicaps for a whopping $20. Then I looked at the ingredients and saw that each pricey little capsule contained just one thing: calendula flowers. Calendula is so common as a garden flower and also as an herb used to maintain healthy skin. It doesn't taste so good, but can be dried, ground up and mixed with something else (a smoothie for example) for easier consumption. Lutein can also be found in dark leafy greens. See my posts on food and on diagnostic contradictions for more info.

There are other herbs that I'm forgetting. The acupuncturist in Cambridge touted a 4th liver-booster and the acupuncturist from New York had me go to a Chinese herbalist and get a patent medicine in pill form. I chewed a handful of these pills at a time and they followed them with water. There are countless other herbs and the one listed above how many more details about their function. Leave a comment if you have something to add!

26. Changing Views

The Idea: Vision is more than physical eyesight: Our experiences inform our vision. By tapping into our experiences, we can heighten our sense of vision. By widening our experiences, we can increase visually ability exponentially.

Set Up: For this exercise you'll need an apple or some other object. The example given here uses an apple.

How To:

1. Imagine that you are hungry and look at the apple. Look at it with feelings of desire you sink your teeth into it and biting off a chunk of its sweet flesh. As you look at the apple, think about its taste and its power to nourish you and satisfy your craving. Look at the apple through this lens of desire. Now close your eyes and let that go—you are no longer a hungry person.

2. Open your eyes and look at the apple through the perspective of a painter. Your desire for this apple is no longer about flavor or nourishment, but about line, color, contour, texture, light an shadow, and how these aspects can be translated into an image with oils and a brush. Though your desire for this apple is purely aesthetic, feel it just as strongly as you did when your were hungry. Now close your eyes and let that go—you are no longer a painter.

3. Put your hands behind your back and open your eyes. You are now 7 years old and at a Halloween party and this apple is floating, with others, in a barrel of cold water. Your desire for this apple is now strategic: How can you clamp your little mouth around this big round fruit and pull it ou of the water before your face freezes off? That is the objective in a game of Bobbing for Apples and therefore your strongest desire in this moment. Now close your eyes and let that go—you are no longer a little kid.

4. Open your eyes and look at the apple and imagine that it is huge—looming up in front of you. Now you are a tiny worm, preparing to burrow into the side of this apple. Look at it from this perspective: Where would be the best place to tunnel in?

5. Continue closing the eyes, shifting perspectives, and looking at the apple through the lens of different desires.

What's Going On: Each time we look at something with varying intentions, we inevitably pick up different details about that thing. The same automobile will look different to a mechanic, a chauffeur, a meter maid, and a car thief, but someone who's been more than one of things will notice more aspects of the auto. This exercise uses the brain, as well as the eyes, to improve the vision.

Testimonial: I've led this exercise with friends and students, bringing apples into my classes (yoga and theater) and giving one to everybody. It's a great meditation to begin a lesson with, and then to return at the end with people possibly choosing to eat their apples.

More Info:

• I took this exercise from Marc Grossman's book Greater Vision.

25. Anagram Games

The Idea: Word games require a variety of skills: the ability to spell and having a wide vocabulary are the most basic. Many word games also require the ability to look at things with the eyes and then re-envision their configuration with the brain—to derive words from jumbles of random letters. This is very useful for working the eye-brain connection and improving the vision. Here's are a few games with variations for improving the vision. Some are based on games commonly found in stores and people's homes, others require only pencil and paper:

Boggle: 16 or 25 letter cubes get mixed around and then fall into place in either a 4x4 or 5x5 grid (the 25-cube version is the best). The object of the game is to make as many words as possible by connecting adjacent strings of letters. In competitive play, this is done with a timer, but the game can be played solo and in a relaxed manner, simply by looking at the grid of letters and finding words. You can also do this just by typing or writing out a random grid of letters, or using letter tiles from other other words games (see below).

Bananagrams or Speed Scrabble: Bananagrams is fun and simple game sold as 144 tiles in a banana-shaped pouch. Players draw 21 tiles and make crossword configurations and try to use all of their tiles. If stuck, a player can say "Dump" and exchange 1 tile for 3 others in the pool. A player using all their tiles calls "Peel" and each player must draw 1 tile and continue playing until all the tiles are used. The game can also be played using the 100 tiles from a Scrabble set, 200 tiles from Super Scrabble, or just by writing letters on little slips of paper.

Secret Letters: You can "up-level" the above games by playing this variation where words are formed from a jumble of letter tiles, but the tiles remain jumbled in the center of the table. Here's how:

Step 1: Form a pool of 20 face-up tiles in the center of the table.

Step 2: Each player receives a face down tile, called "Secret Letters," which only they may look at.

Step 3: Without touching the tiles in the middle of the table, players take turns forming words of 4 or more letters, keeping track of which letters have been used. Words cannot be formed from tiles that have already been used.

Step 4: A player may turn over a Secret Letter to use it as part of a word—or to join with the letters of an already existing word, thereby forming a new word.

Step 5: When no more words can be made, the round is over. Each player scores 1 point for word created.

Step 6: Deal out the next round, increasing the number of tiles in the pool by 1, and the number of Secret Letters in each player's hand by 1.

What's Going On: The ability to conceptualize things that make sense out of jumbles of nonsense increases our ability to see and think clearly.

Testimonial: I've always been drawn to these kinds of games and find that one gets better at them with practice. They helped me stabilize my vision, boost my vocabulary, and have fun with friends and family.

More Info:

• Secret Letters came from Marc Grossman's book, Greater Vision, where he explains more about how these games improve the vision.

• David Parlett has some awesome books about word games, most of which don't require any equipment to play. He's also posted some online here.

24. See What You Want

The Idea: Blurred vision can be caused by traumatic experiences. Many people cannot see clearly when they are upset, and in some cases, there are certain things that are literally less clear when viewed by some people—particular colors or patterns that are trigering, foods or animals or household objects that are linked to a person's trauma, and individuals that are bound up in painful experiences. That this blurring occur for some may seem irrational, but its manifestation in the vision is as real as the pain itself. Conversely, one can see things more clearly if one really wants to see them.

How To:

Step 1: Look at something that you really like—maybe a delicious meal that you are about to eat, a pet, a favorite shirt or a person who is dear to you. Get excited about whatever or whomever you're looking at. Notice all of the visual details and associate these with the qualities of you're appreciation. Do this whenever you see someone or something that you like.

Step 2: Practice looking at something that you feel relatively indifferent about—a building, a semi truck, a fire hydrant, a blade of grass. Can you bring that same level of interest and excitement into seeing this thing? Notice each and every detail of this thing and appreciate its qualities. Think about the functions of these details—gutters on the building, axles on the truck, spigots on the hydrant, ridges on the blade of grass. Can you marvel at these things, celebrating them for what they are? Can you learn to love even the most banal of objects?

Step 3: Do the above with something you do not like—a vegetable you hate, a ugly piece of art, a publication or business that you despise. Look at this thing. What are its positive qualities? What is likable to others in the design of this thing? Get interested in how others see this thing and what purpose it serves. Actively want to see it despite your aversion to it. Does this change your relationship to this thing? Does it change the way that you see this thing—or the way you see in general?

Step 4. Follow up looking at things you dislike with looking at things you like. Can you you see all these things with equal clarity?

Inspiration: I was reminded of this practice by a new friend who performed reiki on my eyes this afternoon. Later on she told me that what she'd picked up about my vision is that sometimes there are things I do not want to see, and that wanting to see things is part of the process in learning to see. It was a welcome reminder and something that a lot of us could stand to do as part of our saily practice, even if we're 20/20.

I also draw inspiration on this one from Erik Ruin (his art is pictured here) who takes the ugliest of things and situations in the world and make them utterly beautiful. Erik's Mix-A-Days have also served as the soundtrack for my writing this blog.

23. Spooning Bubbles

Okay. . . I realize that this blog is a bit odd—esoteric, eccentric, new-age-ish, wingnutty, and even smacking of quackery at times. The idea of doing eye exercises every day that may or may not improve the vision may not seem like everyone's idea of "fun," and writing about them so diligently definitely takes a certain brand of dedication to something that most folks just do not do or even validate.

And Yet . . . This stuff can be fun. These bizarre little activities do help people to relax into seeing the world in new and improved ways. And some of these exercises can be done in the name of playfulness—like this one:

Set Up: You'll need a a container of soapy fluid, a bubble wand, and a spoon.

How To: Blow bubbles and catch them with the spoon.

What's Going On: Bubbles are beautiful and chaotic in their size and movements. By trying to catch them the eye-brain connection works to deal with perception of similar objects (bubbles) of different sizes, at different distances, moving at varied rates. The aesthetic of watching and catching bubbles is also fun and relaxing, and this aids the vision further.

More Info:

• Marc Grossman describes this bubble game as a vision exercise in his book Greater Vision.

22. Ping Pong

The Idea: Yesterday's post described how the process of play can stimulate the eye-brain inter-sensory connection. Here are some more eye exercises in the form of games that kids and adults play all over the word.

Set Up: You'll need a smooth wall, a ping pong paddle and ball. If you're doing this with a friend, you might as well play a proper game of ping pong on a table. If your vision prevents you from playing ping pong, try something with a bigger racquet and ball—tennis, squash, badminton, etc. If this is still too challenging, use a soccer ball and a wall outdoors.

How To: This exercise has several variation based on the above options. All work best as vision exercises if they're done regularly—more than once a week:

• Ping Pong (or Tennis/Squash/Racquetball) for One: Practice hitting the ball with the paddle or racquet so that it bounces off the wall, intercepting it as it comes back, keeping score by seeing how many consecutive hits you can make.

• Ping Pong (or Tennis/Squash/Racquetball) for Two: Simply play ping pong on a ping pong table or any of the other sports on their usual courts.

• Soccer for One: Stand about 3 meters (10 feet) from a wall and kick the ball so that it bounces off the wall, intercepting it as it bounces back. Gradually work you way down to balls of smaller sizes, kicking, throwing, or paddling the, back and forth.

What's Going On: The movement of the ball traveling quickly toward and away from the eyes exercises focal abilities and depth perception, as well as stereoscopic vision.

Testimonial: One of high school teachers had become more myopic from all the reading she had to do in college. She knew this because as the semester dragged on, she had to sit closer and closer to the front of the room during lectures. She took up playing ping pong and tennis every day and soon regained her distance vision. Likewise, when I was a kid struggling with an eye disease that I did not yet understand, I played the soccer-ball-against-the-wall game outside and also practiced throwing and hitting a tennis ball against the walls in the hallway of my mom's apartment. I did these things intuitively, some piece of me knowing that that this was what I needed to do to preserve my vision. It worked, to some extent.

21. Skipping Rope

The Idea: "Playing" is an exhibition of intelligence: the smarter an animal is, the more that animal plays. By playing, we test out ideas and learn from the results—both failures and gains. The challenges and rewards of playing is part of what keeps us motivated to play. All play stimulates the brain, and many everyday forms of playing work the eye-brain connection that we call vision. The next few episodes of 31 Eyes focus on common kids' activities that can help the vision.

Set Up For Skipping Rope:

All you need is an ordinary jump rope, or a length of cord a little longer than your arm span. Work outside with plenty of space for jumping and looking off into the distance.

How To: Twirl the rope from the back of your heels and over your head. Look straight ahead—don't look at your feet or at the rope. Practice skipping rope just by knowing where the rope is. From here you can "up-level" by:

• Alternating with foot you skip with

• Jumping with both feet simultaneously

• Speeding up the swing of the rope

• Changing the direction in which the rope travels

For this exercise, be sure to keep looking straight ahead, working to skip the rope without getting your feet caught before progressing on to another stage.

What's Going On: By looking straight ahead while skipping rope, peripheral vision is strengthened, as well as spatial and movement awareness. The sense of vision also works with the senses of hearing, touch, and kinesthetics, getting the brain to work with all the senses integrally.

More Info:

• Marc Grossman describes skipping rope as a vision exercise in his book Greater Vision.

20. Look Out

The Idea: With more of us spending more and more time in front of screens, the tendency towards myopia is on the rise. Doing paperwork and computing is often associated with stress: when the eyes are continuously focusing on near, detailed things, the eyes and the mind tend not to be relaxed. Meanwhile, being outside and enjoying the beauty of nature is generally thought of as relaxing. When we see beautiful things, especially at a distance, the eyes and the mind have an easier time relaxing. This exercise brings consciousness to that tendency.

How To:

Step 1: Stand somewhere outside. Relax the faces, neck and shoulders. Breathe deeply.

Step 2: Pick 6 points to look at: 3 on the horizon—one to the left, one in the middle, and one to the right—and 3 more points to the right, middle and left, still off in the distance, but a bit closer than the first 3 points.

Step 3: Let the eyes rest on one of the points. Take a deep breath, inhaling and exhaling, and then move the eyes to another one of your points. Keep doing this, establishing a pattern of moving the eyes from one point to another.

Step 4: Repeat the pattern a few times, continuing to breathe and relax.

Testimonial: I was once with some friends at a house on a lake in Vermont. While everyone else sat on the dock, enjoying the view of the lake, the trees, the sunset and the clouds over the mountains, I was unable to relax. I wanted to be inside reading, playing boardgames, or doing puzzles. My mind could not relax and it demanded myopic stimulation. This habit of not relaxing was fed by the intense myopia from which I suffer, and my myopia gets perpetuated by this same habit in a vicious cycle.  I find that when I spend some time consciously looking off into the distance, I break this cycle. My eyes and my mind relax and my vision improves.

More Info:

• Meir Schneider recommends these practices in his audiobook, Meir Schneider’s Miracle Eyesight Method (published by Sounds True, 1996). Schneider talks about this in a video posted at the bottom of my blog entry about Reading. That post also has more info about developing better habits to counteract myopia.

19. A New Vision For Old Flyers

The Idea: Sight is a function of the eyes, vision is a function of the brain. When the brain knows what it's looking at, the more accepting the eyes are of seeing. This simple exercise works with the eye-brain/sight-vision connection. It is, in a sense, a one-person version of the Describing exercise.

Set Up: Have 2 copies of a flyer that uses various sizes of print (it can also use various fonts, colors and contrasts—just so long as the 2 flyers are exactly the same). Tape one of these flyers to a wall and have the other in your hand. If you are nearsighted, sit or stand so that the wall flyer is just out of focus and hold the hand flyer at a distance where it's legible. If you are farsighted, sit or stand as far away from the wall flyer so that you can read it clearly, holding the flyer in your hand at a distance where it becomes blurry.

How To: Read the largest font on the flyer that's in focus, then look at the same line of text on the flyer that's out of focus. Can you read it? Do this while breathing and relaxing and without squinting. Go through the various styles of print on the flyer, switching from reading the copy you see clearly to the copy that you can't see clearly.

What's Going On: When we look at something that's not in focus, the clear image of that thing is still entering the eyes. By knowing what that thing looks like, the brain can work with the eyes to bring it into clarity. Because the brain knows exactly what the out-of-focus flyer looks like, it can bring it into focus. The clarity of the flyer can increase with regular practice.

Testimonial: I did this exercise while traveling across the U.S. staying with people who were always having events and so they had lots of flyers around. There'd be one on the fridge or a bulletin board and other copies for distribution, and I'd sit and talk with my hosts while doing this exercise. It really helped my vision as well as making me invested in the stuff that my hosts were doing—protests, punk shows, puppet shows, Food Not Bombs events, bike rides, etc. It broadened my scope of possibility in ways which people can come together. I've put together many events—and flyers—ever since.

At the top: A poster I made for a puppet cabaret in Philadelphia, right after a series of police raids had targeted activist artists.

Above: A flyer for one of my theater workshops.

18. Seeing The Invisible

The Idea: Things are easier to see when we know where they are. We can use senses other than vision to do this: we have two ears to be able to discern where in space a sound comes from, and our skin sends us messages about the location of different textures and temperatures. These other senses actually help us to see. Here are two exercises that help build on this ability:

How To:

Step 1: Sit or stand in a relaxed comfortable position. Raise one hand to eye level and rub the thumb and forefinger together.

Step 2: Keeping the eyes closed, look at your hand. Even though you can't actually see it, focus the eyes to where you know it to be.

Step 3: Keep rubbing your thumb and forefinger together as you move your hand around—down, up, right, left, nearer and further from the face. Follow your hand's movements with your closed eyes, switching hands if your arm gets tired.

Variation In Pairs:

The above exercise can be done with one person having eyes closed and another snapping fingers. The person with closed eys loks toward where the snapping sound is coming from.

What's Going On: When your eyes are closed, your brain has a general idea where in space your hand is. By rubbing your fingers together, your sense of touch feeds your brain more information about where your hand is. By keeping the eyes closed and directing them to your hand, your brain is sending your focus to a particular spot. This strengthens the ability to do this when the eyes are open. In the two-person variation, the same thing is happening via your sense of hearing instead of touch. Also the two-person variation is dealing with an unknown object—the other person's hand is not attached to you, so you cannot be certain where it is—whereas when you do this exercise with your own hand, the object is known. By doing both versions of this exercise, one can hone the coordination of the senses.

More Info:

• This exercise, and many others, can be found in Marc Grossman's book Greater Vision.

17. Breathing

The Idea: All the systems of the body need oxygen to function properly. This is especially true for the eyes. By focusing on the breath we set an intention to bring oxygen to the eyes and brain. Conscious breathing also helps the body and the mind to relax. This is essential for developing greater vision.

How To:

Step 1: Sit, stand, or lie down in a comfortable and relaxed position. It can be helpful if you can look off into the distance.

Step 2: Notice the shoulders—are they relaxed? Relax them. How about the neck? The jaw? The face? Relax these too.

Step 3: Notice the breath. Inhale fully, expanding the ribs outward and upward. Exhale completely, drawing the navel toward the spine. Keep Keep relaxing shoulders, neck, jaw and face as you inhale and exhale.

Step 4: Deepen the breath. Make each inhale and each exhale a little bit longer than the one before it.

Step 5: Pause at the top of your inhales, holding the breath in and filling the full the expansion of the lungs. Pause at the bottom of you exhales, feeling the effects of tucking the navel in toward the spine.

Step 6: While you do this, look off into the distance, allowing the eyes to relax as they breathe.

When to Practice Deep Breathing: Do this breathing exercise every day. Practice deep breathing while practicing any other eye exercises. Also remeber to breathe deeply while doing other things that work the eyes, such as reading and writing. Are you breathing right now?

More Info:

• All forms of yoga and meditation highlight breathing as a core principle of their practices. Some of the cues given above come from Ana Forrest, founder of Forrest Yoga.

• All natural vision teachers also highlight breathing as a key to greater vision. Marc Grossman, Meir Scfneider and Tom Quackenbush all put breathing first in their instructions for working toward better eyesight. Even skeptics of natural vision therapy attribute improvements in people's sight via these methods to the practives of breathing and relaxation.

16. Your 5-Minute Regimen

Last night I was onstage and I asked the crowd if they had any questions. Someone said, "What are you doing for Fun-A-Day?" and I told them that I was doing eye exercises every day and sharing how others could do this via this blog. Someone straight-up laughed at me, which I found refreshing—laughter is good for the vision.

For those of you just tuning in, every day I post something here that you can do to benefit your eyes. Some of these things are "eye exercises" that you can do for a little time each day, others are "vision habits" that help the eyes relax through taking better care of them in general. Having a new thing every day might be a little overwhelming, so midway through this project let's pause to compile some of these exercises and habits into 5 minute routines that you can do morning noon and night. Try it out, then leave me comments (and laughter) about your experiences:

5 Minutes in the Morning

Do these exercises in a sunny spot:

• Sunning—2 minutes
• Sketching—1 minute
• Swaying—30 seconds
• Swinging—30 seconds
• Palming—1 minute

If you feel like going a little longer, repeat the exercises in the same order.

5 Minutes in the Middle of the Day

You can do these exercises sitting in a chair:

• A Better Blink—30 seconds per eye
• Orbital Massage—30 seconds
• Directionals—1-2 minutes total
• Neck Stretches—1-2 minutes total
• Palming—1 minute

Note that Directions and Neck Stretches can also be done simultaneously by combining Diagonal Directionals with Side Neck Stretches, or doing Rotational Directionals with Diagonal Neck Stretches, etc.

5 Minutes in the Evening

These exercises can be done right before going to sleep:

• The Three-Finger Game—1 minute
• The Phantom Finger—1 minute
• Palming—3 minutes

For a longer practice, continue Palming for as long as you like. Palming can also be combined with Buzzing.

Vision Habits to Remember:

• Eating well
• Breathing deeply
• Drinking water regularly
• Looking away every 2 minutes while Reading
• Getting plenty of exercise
• Making Art often!

15. Sketching

The Idea: Part of seeing clearly is the ability to discern edges. When vision is blurred, one might not be able to tell the definite shape of something, or exactly where one object begins and another ends. By paying attention to edges, we can teach ourselves to better define what we see.

How To:

Step 1: Use the tip of your nose to trace the edges of things, (some people find it helpful to imagine that there is an incredibly long pencil extending from the tip of the nose).

Step 2: Move your head and eyes as you Sketch the edges of things near to you or far away, moving gracefully from object to object where their various edges intersect.

Step 3: As you practice this Sketching, notice the finer details of various objects—the leaves on a tree, the grain of a wooden floorboard, the inner and outer rims of a water glass, the eyelets and laces and stitching on a pair of shoes, etc. Sketch these objects' interior edges, as well as exterior.

Step 4: As with all exercises and vision habits, breathe deeply, relaxing the face, neck and shoulders.

What's Going On: By Sketching and noticing edges, the brain becomes interested in them and helps the eyes to sharpen the vision, thus reducing blur. Over time, you can Sketch objects with incredibly subtle movements of the head and eyes (as many people from non-western, less myopic cultures tend to do¹). By Sketching regularly as an eye exercise, the eyes begin to do this naturally.

More Info:

• ¹Thomas R. Quackenbush mentions the tendencies for most westerners to lock their necks whereas people in non-western countries tend to be more expressive in their head movements. See Quackenbus, Thomas R. Relearning to See. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1997. This book also has a big section on Sketching.

The drawing above is by Philadelphia artist Jason Hsu and can be used as part of a Sketching exercise. I once saw Jason work on a single-line drawing—where he put his pen on a giant piece of paper and drew a picture without lifting the pen from the page—for 24 hours straight.

14. Swaying & Swinging

The Idea: Everything around us is in motion. Walking down the street I see other people walking in various directions, bicycles and trolleys zooming up the avenue at different speeds, tree branches swaying in the wind, birds darting above against a backdrop of clouds floating leisurely across the sky. Even stationary objects appear to move when one is in motion. Riding the trolley past the park, the lampposts in the foreground appear to move by more quickly than the trees in the background, as dogs and squirrels and children run to and fro across the grass. All these things, moving in various ways, can be a soup of muddled vision for some. By accustoming the vision to motion, the eye-brain connection can learn to discern and differentiate the ingredients to that soup.

How To: Here are 2 versions of this exercise, each focusing on different depths of the visual field. Try doing them back-to-back, keeping the eyes and shoulders relaxed, breathing deeply:

Swaying:

Step 1: Hold one finger up about 30 cm in front of the nose.

Step 2. Keeping the finger where it is, shift your weight to your left foot and swing your head gently to the left so that the finger is visible only in the right eye. Next, shift your weight to your right foot, coming back though center, and then swinging your head gently to the right so that the finger is visible only in the left eye. Keep moving the head slowly from side to side with the weight of the body, looking straight ahead—not at the finger.

Step 3: Keep Swaying for 2-5 minutes, noticing the perceived movement of the finger. When you Sway to one side, which way does the finger appear to move in relation to the background?

Swinging:

Step 1: Hold one finger up about 30 cm in front of the nose.

Step 2. Keeping the finger in line with the nose, shift your weight to your left foot and swing your body in a 90º arc over to the left, moving the arm with the head. Next, shift your weight to your right foot, coming back though center, and then swinging over to the left. Keep moving from side to side with the weight of the body, looking straight ahead, finger still 30 cm in front of the face.

Step 3: Keep Swinging for 2-5 minutes, noticing the perceived movement of the background. When you Swing to one side, which way does the background appear to move in relation to the finger?

What's Going On: Swinging works with adjusting to background movements while keeping the eyes focused on something at a near distance. Swaying works with adjusting to closer movements while keeping the eyes focused on things at a medium or long distances. Both exercises together help the eyes stay focused without getting distracted, encouraging the brain to pick up this habit as well. Swinging and Swaying also help the body to loosen up, relaxing the muscles and helping to relax the eyes.

More Info:

• Swinging and Swaying are principle exercises in the Bates Method, developed by Dr. William H. Bate in the early 20th century, and espoused by many vision therapists today.

• Thomas R. Quackenbush’s paraphrasal of Bates is also a good one in his textbook Relearning to See (North Atlantic Books, 1997).

• This is a good exercise to pair up with the similar movements of Sunning.

13. Describing

The Idea: This 2-person exercise is best explained anecdotally:

Meir Schneider lived as a blind person up until his mid teens. He was able to discern light and shadow to some extent, but nothing else. He began working with natural vision teachers who would describe things that he could not see. "Do you see those buildings?" Meir Schneider could not see the buildings, but he could see a rough shadow of the buildings against the brightness of the sky above. Every day his teachers described the shapes of the buildings and each day Meir Schneider could discern more detail.

Then one day Meir Schneider was asked, "Do you see the windows on the buildings?" Meir Schneider could not see the windows on the buildings, but he could see brighter speckles in the shadow of the buildings from the light reflected off of the windows. Every day his teachers described the details of the windows and each day Meir Schneider could discern more visual information—how many rows of windows, how many windows in each row, and so on.

Next Meir Schneider was asked, "Do you see the air conditioners in the windows on the buildings?" Thus the therapy continued.

Today Meir Schneider teaches natural vision therapy in San Francisco. He has a drivers license.

How To:

• Work with a friend and look at something—a house, a tree, the skyline, a landscape—anything that you want to see. Ask each other questions about details of the thing.

• If one of you can discern more about what your looking at, that person becomes the Describer, helping the other to see things that were previously not perceived.

• Describing works best if its done consistently—preferably every day, possibly looking at the same subject, probably with the same Describer.

• If you want to switch roles, you can use technology—binoculars to zoom in on details, or mobile phones to relay information.

More Info:

• Meir Schneider shares many inspiring stories about his personal path toward visual rehabilitation in his Miracle Eyesight Method audiobook.

12. The Phantom Finger

The Idea: Our eyes are taking in every image in front of them—only the brain is selective about what it sees. Part of the work of natural vison therapy is training the brain what to see (eyes + brain = vision). We can also train our brains to see things that aren't actually there, therefore expanding the brain's ability to see what is actually there. And there's nothing like a common party trick to get the job done.

How To:

Step 1: Bring your index fingers to eye level, about 20 cm in front of the face with tips pointed at each other, about 1 cm apart.

Step 2: Look at the space between your fingers. Do you see a third, double-ended finger floating between them? Look for it.

Step 3: Once you've got your Phantom Finger established, move it around—bring the fingers slowly up and down to the edges of your visual field, move them closer and further away, close the eyes and then open them—always maintaining the visual belief that the Phantom Finger is still there.

What's Going On:

The eyes see two fingers, but the brain puts their back ends together to make a third, sausage-shaped finger in the middle. This works the eye/brain connection of stereoscopic vision and is a useful exercise for anyone who has a "lazy" eye or sees things more clearly in one eye than in the other. Step 3 of the exercise—using movement and closing the eyes—helps strengthen both the breadth of the visual field as well as ability to focus at different near distances, while training the brain to see what we want it to see.

More info:

• Dr. Marc Grossman loves using these kinds of eye-brain tricks to help people see. He's collaborated with artists on some "Magic Eye" books, saying that they're good for the vision—the eyes and he brain working together.

11. Light Text, Dark Background

The Idea: Because most of the world's books present black text printed on white paper, most web pages do the same—people are accustomed to reading black on white and so it's become standard. Yet a paper page utilizes reflected light to produce an image that the eyes can see. Light shines on the page and bounces off the white part and that it what we're seeing. Meanwhile a computer monitor uses projected light aimed right at the retina. Though the irritable strength of this projected light is considerably lower in a modern flat-panel LCD than with an old-school cathode ray tube, any light-emitting monitor is projecting light directly at the eyes and this can be harmful to the vision. By reducing the amount of light beamed into the eyes, the retina is spared some of a computer screen's ill effects.

How To: Try using inverted text (a lighter color on a darker background) on your computer monitor. There are several ways to do this:
• On a Mac: Hold down the 3 keys next to the space bar (⌃⌥⌘ or Control-Option-Function) and the number 8. This will reverse black and white, as well as all colors, so you may need to toggle back and forth to look at photos and other images. This function can also be accessed in the Universal Access section of System Preferences.

• In Windows: Open the Control Panel in the Start menu and select Accessibility Options. Click on the Display tab and select the Use High Contrast check box. All text will appear as white on black and in bold. This might mess up the formatting of some web pages and certain programs, but is doesn't invert the colors on images. You can also adjust your computer's high contrast function by clicking the Settings button.

• Microsoft Word: Under the Word menu, select Preferences and click on the General Menu. Check the box that says "Blue background, white text" and hit OK. The document's text will appear as white on dark blue paper, but will print as black on whatever color paper you put in your printer.

• Using Google: Some folks have set up an inverted text search engine called Blackle, based on the notion that projecting so much white light uses an excess of energy. If excessive white light is straining the power grid, what's it doing to our eyes?

More Info:

• There are lots of arguments both for and against the use of inverted text. A web search leads to several forums full of users advocating black text on a white background, saying that inverted text hurts their eyes. These web forums are, of course, on sites using black text on a white background, so it is more likely for their users to be attracted to and argue for this format. Try using inverted text for a week and then see how your eyes feel.

• Lighthouse International and the American Foundation for the Blind both advocate white or yellow text on a black background for older people and people with impaired sight.

• Other operating systems, programs and websites have options for inverting text (including the blog-hosting site that you're looking at right now). If you know of others, please post them as a comment below:

10. Buzzing

The Idea: I wrote about a certain kind of yogic breathing for last year's blog in reference to a dream that someone had about having a buzzing sensation in the back. This same breath (called "Bhramarī," named after the Hindu goddes of black bees) can also be applied to the eyes. The technique is described below:

How To:

Step 1: Stick your thumbs in your ears and rest middle and ring fingers on your closed eyes, letting the other fingers rest on the face above and below the eyes.

Step 2: Inhale deeply, then exhale through the nose, making a loud humming sound.

Step 3: You can adjust the pitch to feel the vibration more strongly in the eyes. Do this 3-10 times.

More Info:

• Take a look at what B.K.S. Iyengar has to say about bhramarī prāņāyāma in his book Light On Yoga, or watch this kid spell it out in the following video: