September 1, 2022 - EyeClarity Podcast
Here is an excerpt from a class I help earlier this year. We covered everything from how to negotiate an eyeglass or contact lens prescription and Color Therapy to the visual-vestibular connections. I led the class in The Berne Method®, helping to improve your vision and health. This unique blend of holistic vision practices was experiential, and we had some great discussions. Enjoy the show, and keep an eye out for more from this series. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
eyes, palming, humming, sound, poll, feel, self-regulation, people, humming sound, cataracts, vision, open, clearer, vote, doctor, attention, movement, eye exam, practice, bates
00:05
Hello, everyone. It’s Dr. Sam, I’d like to welcome you to my EyeClarity podcast. This is a show that offers cutting-edge information on how to improve your vision and overall wellness through holistic methods. I so appreciate you spending part of your day with me. If you have questions, you can send them to hello@drsamberene.com. Now to the latest EyeClarity episode.
So we’re going to start off with a poll. So you get to vote if you want to. And this has to do with your last eye exam. Now, if it was with me, doesn’t count. But, you know, for most people, but I hear such incredible stories about when they had their last vision exam. So I’m going to launch this poll, this poll right now. And it’s a multiple choice. And the question is, how do you how did you feel about your last eye exam? And you’ve got three answers, didn’t like it neutral, elated. But we want to, we want to publish this in the Journal of American ophthalmology. jamma let them know what kind of job they’re doing. And so if you want to vote, here’s your chance. You know, if you got some emotions behind it, then this is a time for you to feel those and your passion and well, both the exams or the result, you know, either way, you know, for some, it’s the result or what the what the doctor said to you. For others, it’s the actual exam.
So still voting, almost. And I will, I will share the results with you in a second. So this is kind of the fun part where you get to participate. And so we’re getting a lot of a lot of participation. Wonderful. Thank you for your your vote. You’ve earned it just by taking this class. All right, I’ll give you about another 20 seconds. And then I’m going to end the poll. And we’ll look at the results together. Maybe that’s it. Okay, so I’m going to end the poll. And I’m going to share the results with you. How did you feel about your last eye exam? Well, 42% were neutral and 58% did not like it. And zero out of the poll. were elated. So I’m going to pass that on to the eye doctors. And, you know, if if I ran my business that way, where I didn’t even get any positive results. I don’t know if I could stay in business.
But the eye care field is kind of a cartel. And it’s kind of a monopoly. And part of the deal is that, you know, that’s the way we’re educated. And, you know, I’m part of that as well. All right, now we’re gonna go to the second question to question poll. And I’m gonna launch the poll if you want to answer what is your wellness philosophy? I’m curious to know, you know, what, what you do in your life, you know, do you eat organic? Do you take supplements? Do you do a spiritual practice and you know, spiritual practice could be things like gardening or, you know, relating to your children or your grandchildren. We don’t have to do some fancy spiritual practice. So let’s see how evolved this group is usually the people that I work with, have had some level of experience in the field of integrative medicine. I know some of you have taken another some health summits and other online workshops with you know, functional medicine doctors and
04:51
holistic doctors. So, okay, maybe just another Are 30 seconds or so? This is great. All right, so I’m gonna end the poll, and I’m going to share the results with you. What is your wellness philosophy? Look at that 4% answered organic 11% answered supplements 4% yoga 0% None. So and look at this 81% have experienced some level of holistic health. So that is like totally awesome. So you are so lined up with what I’m going to offer you today that we are going to take you to the next level, no matter where you are. So I appreciate the response. So one time I was giving a lecture to a group of about 200 ai doctors. And I asked them, I did a poll with them. And I asked them, How many of you take vitamins? And I would say, 95% of the room, Anthony answered, yeah, I take vitamins. And then I said, How many in here either take supplements, or make nutritional recommendations to your patients. And nobody raised their hand.
And I started to point out that there is a big disconnect in eye care where the doctors maybe know about nutrition, but they’re not even talking about it. And I think every eye doctor should take at least one course in functional medicine, to learn about the relationship between the eyes, the brain, and what we eat. And I’m going to spotlight this today because I know many of you have written you know about you have a certain eye disease, dry eye, cataracts, macular hole, we’re going to get to that. But I think the thing is, is that there, there are so many avenues to success here. And you don’t have to live out your doctor’s diagnosis. Okay, so in order to get us warmed up to get us attuned together, I thought what we’d like to do is an experiential process right now, just to get us all on the same page. And this is one of my signature exercises. Many of you know about it. It’s called the palm hum. And a little backstory about the palm hum is that, of course, when I first got into Natural Vision Improvement, one of the people that
07:51
I studied was Dr. Bates and you’ve heard of the Bates method. And Bates was an ophthalmologist who lived in the early 1900s. He practiced in New York, and he wrote a book on natural eyesight improvement. Aldous Huxley took his writings and you know, wrote more about the art of seeing. So in this particular exercise of palming, that’s the one where you rub your hands together, and then you cut them over your eyes with your eyes closed. But it never really worked well enough for me to continue using it. Until I met the somatic pioneer Emily Conrad. Some of you know Emily, she started continuum movement, and she was a visionary. She died, I think in 2014. And I, I became a continuum movement teacher. That’s an interesting combination, being a somatic movement, therapist, practitioner and an optometrist. You don’t see too many of those on every block or corner. But anyway, one of the things that Emily taught us was putting sound into the body. Why sound when we make a sound, a couple things happen. First of all, it resonates our bones and I have pulled a lot of people over the years in my workshops, especially in your childhood, you know where your parents say Shut up, you know, you’re seen but not heard, are you have to be quiet all the time. Those people in later life had more osteoarthritis osteoporosis, because sound is a great resonator for the bones. So that’s something you know outside the scope of the eyes, but sound is so important.
And so when I learned about sound, it was actually a way that it penetrated the stress and tension in our tissue. And this particular area here the eyes, is a dead zone for most of us. That’s why we are developing cataracts and glaucoma and macular degeneration. And our eyesight keeps getting worse, because we’re not connecting to what we feel in our eyes. So the circulation gets shut down the oxygenation the hydration, and this leads to oxidative stress and inflammation. So, what I did was I combined the Bates palming with a continuum sound that we all can do, which is a hum a humming sound. Now, what happens is, is that when we start humming, we’re vibrating in our face and our jaw. And a little later on in this presentation, I’m going to show you an anatomy picture of the face. And you’re going to see the connections of the jaw, the teeth, the mouth, the lips, to our eye tissue. And if we start humming, we vibrate. And this begins to in our own time space process to start to loosen up the compression that’s here, you all including me, we all work on digital devices, that is probably the worst thing we can do in terms of creating compression in this area.
So by combining the palming with the humming, your hands are like tuning forks. And so when you place them over your eyes, you’re directing the sound into the lens, where you have a cataract or the macula, or you have a macular hole, or the cornea where you’re suffering dry eye, or the brain if you’re losing your memory. And when you do several of these hums, what begins to happen is you start oxygenating more, your breathing gets deeper, longer, slower, this is going to balance your nervous system. So the term is self regulation. You know, one of the keys in health that I see that’s missing in allopathic care is nobody is talking about regulating self regulating your stress level, take a pill, you know, get an injection, no way we don’t want to do that stuff because it’s just symptom symptom based. But this practice is a way for you to develop more self regulation in your eyes and in your whole body. So this is how it’s gonna go. You’re going to rub your hands together. So I’d like everybody to rub your hands together, you can see me and then I want you to close your eyes. And you’re going to cup the palms over your eyeballs, your eyes are closed, you’re going to keep your lips pursed. So you’re not going to open your mouth. Breathe in through the nose. And on the exhale, I want you to make a robust humming sound like I’m going to do it right now you can do it with me
13:07
so I want you to do eight of those at your own speed, eight of those and I’m going to watch you on the monitor to make sure you’re doing it. So eight Poms on the X eight homes on the exhale make sure to make it really robust low sound. So let’s do eight of those Um. Okay, I’d like you to finish on your own. And then what you can do is you can slowly take your hands down but keep your eyes closed.
14:38
So don’t open your eyes right away. And I want you to go into something called Open attention.
14:47
And this is I call the art of listening. Listen to your body’s response. Could be in sensation. It could be in temperature. It could be in Seeing a vision that your eyes are closed and go inside. And just feel what’s happening is there’s an unwinding going on inside of you, the sound has created this stimulation, so you can release
15:26
just keep following the sensation, just follow, follow where it takes you. I’m going to do this about another 30 seconds, you’re all doing so great at this, I can feel the energy. So transitions are really, really important. And so when you are finished, you can slowly open your eyes. And I’d like you to look above your computer around the room. And in the chat, I want you to write a word that you’re feeling you’re experiencing. I’m going to do the first one, mine is lightness. So we’ll just do this popcorn if you want to. And I’ll read it what you see what you feel, okay, calm and safe, relaxed, calmness, spacious, expansive, relaxed, movement. Love it. vibration. Joy, calm, release. List. vibration. brighter. Okay, as we’re finishing up here, this is a practice that I invite you to do five times a day, where you’re doing eight to 10 hums. And you’re going into a minute, thank you calm and brighter colors, you go into open attention where you just pause. And there’s a lot to open attention, which is about digesting your experience into integrating metabolizing you know, with our eyes, so you can rub your hands for about five seconds, and you only do it one time. And then you just keep them on your eyes, with your eyes closed, and then you do the series of humming. And if you want to do calm, thank you, if you want to do a layering of it, where you do eight or 10. And then you go into open attention for a minute. And then come back and do it again.
When you layer something, you get to go more deeply into your tissue. So there’s going to be even a deeper relaxation. And then you do open attention. And then you do it a third time I like to do three times in this practice. This is standard, while we do in our continuing movement classes. And by that third time, you’re open attention is the opportunity for your body to release the stress and tension that has been absorbed and accumulated probably for years. And you’re gonna notice when you’re finished. When you look out at the world, things are going to seem clearer and they’re going to seem brighter. And there it is. Yeah, this is weird. Seems like I’m clearing up all of a sudden. So it’s so exciting that this simple little exercise this practice, if you commit to it, and you do it five times a day, every day. Slow reactor. Well, you know, there’s something about slowing down. That is so nourishing. Because again in screen time and I feel this too. I get tons of emails and I got lots of stuff going on. I can feel my system doing that. That’s why I have to do the poem hum.
19:55
But the more you do this the clearer your eyes are going to become the clearer your mind is going to become.
20:09
Thank you for listening. I hope you learned something from the EyeClarity podcast show today. If you enjoyed the episode, make sure to subscribe on iTunes or Spotify and leave a review. See you here next time.
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