August 26, 2021 - EyeClarity Podcast
In this episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing best-selling author, Dr. Lynn F. Hellerstein. We talked about her new book: Expand Your Vision: How to Gain Clarity, Courage, and Confidence.
Dr. Hellerstein is a pioneer in vision therapy and author of the award-winning book, See It. Say It. Do It!: The Parent’s & Teacher’s Action Guide to Creating Successful Students & Confident Kids (HiClear Publishing, LLC, 2010), has utilized vision therapy with children and adults with learning-related vision problems, vision perception deficits, or brain injuries, as well as enhancing visual performance for athletes. She has inspired thousands of people to improve their vision and enhance their lives. An international speaker, Dr. Hellerstein has published extensively on vision-related topics and is a faculty member at several optometry schools. She serves as a consultant to schools and rehabilitation facilities.
A Fellow of the College of Optometrists in Vision Development (COVD) and American Academy of Optometry, Dr. Hellerstein is Past-President of COVD.
She is a co-owner of Hellerstein and Brenner Vision Center, P.C., a full-scope optometry practice in the Denver, Colorado area.
Her books are available on Amazon!
Her contact information is: DrH@LynnHellerstein.com
https://www.lynnhellerstein.com
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
vision, visualization, learning, field, optometrist, people, burnout, therapy, patients, visual, optometry, book, brain injury, called, reading, life, problems, doctor, school
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.
Hey folks, it’s Dr. Sam and I’d like to welcome you to another EyeClarity podcast. So we have a very interesting guest today one of my colleagues, I haven’t talked to her in quite a while her name is Dr. Lynn F Hellerstein and let me give you a little background about her. She is a pioneer in the field of vision therapy. And she’s an award winning author. She’s written several books, and she has a new book out. I want to talk about that. And the book is entitled, expand your vision, how to gain clarity, courage and confidence. So, Dr. Hellerstein is really an amazing optometrist she is. Well, she’s a leader in the field of behavioral optometry, developmental optometry, and I certainly have had a great deal of respect. Watching her over the years in her career. She has utilized vision therapy for both children and adults with learning related vision problems, brain injuries, as well as helping athletes enhance their performance. At this point, she is helped 1000s of people improve their vision and enhance their lives. She’s an international best seller. And I’m so excited to have her on Dr. Hellerstein. Welcome to the program. How are you doing today?
01:44
I’m doing great, Sam. It’s so great to be with you. It has been ages since we’ve actually talked. So it’s it’s delightful. And I appreciate the invite.
01:54
Yeah, I want to introduce my community to you. They’re so hungry for another approach. And I care. I mean, I feel like I’m a voice out there, especially in social media, where, you know, it’s great to be able to bring on other holistic optometrists and have them speak about their perspectives. So let’s start with this. How did you get into the field? What What was your What was your starting point?
02:23
Sure. Well, my dad was an optometrist. And actually, my grandfather was an optometrist in the early days where jewelers double up and took a night course and learn how to prescribe glasses. And so, so I’m really a third generation apologist and my family, also the third woman in the state of Colorado, to be an optometrist. So, you know, I just, I feel like I’m a pioneer back then, where, you know, I was one of very few women in my class of optometry. But I got really interested, I’ve always been interested in medicine. And I was on the course to go to med school and be a pediatrician in last minute, I decided I wanted a family, I didn’t really want all those night calls as well. And so I switched optometry. And the reason I was really interested in that field is because of my own vision problems, it’s usually where it starts. I was a, I could see great, didn’t need glasses for seeing. But when it came to reading, and I knew how to read, I had all the vocabulary to read. But very early on your second grade, I’d start reading and before you knew it, my eyelids got heavy and the print started blaring and I was sound asleep. And it didn’t make any difference. What I was reading how long I was reading, just within a few minutes, I just couldn’t stand the book very long. So I spent all my years in school, avoiding reading. And luckily, luckily, I had other skills to compensate I listened Well, I organized Well, it’s a you can get through a lot of years not reading very much. You know, I went through eight years of college, doing everything I could not to read yet still excelled in school. So it’s been a struggle all along. And it wasn’t until I finally went to Optometry school, that I understood what was going on with myself and had focus problems needed vision therapy. So my passion was how can I reach more people that even if they see well, aren’t functionally doing very well. And that’s already started.
04:35
And you bring up a great point about the functional aspects of vision because as you you know, as we know that in a regular eye exam, it’s just 2020 eyesight and eye health, and you’re out the door and you’ve devoted your career to helping people improve their learning. So I want to get into this topic called visualization because I know it’s you’re an expert in this. And so tell me about how you got interested in it, how you use it. I know my community is very interested in it as a visual skill. So tell me about visualization.
05:16
So when I started my vision therapy practice, teachers found me out. And this was back in the late 70s. Because they had all these kids that weren’t reading well and per handwriting are clumsy at sports. And they started sending me patients, and I got all the best equipment, I could help them learn to focus and coordinate their eyes. Some of the kids they sent me wouldn’t sit in the chair long enough to do any of the activities that we had learned in optometry school. And so I had to find some other ways to work with these kiddos to start, you know, I couldn’t improve their visual system if I couldn’t even get them to focus their body and be able to sit still and look at all these things. So it sent me on the course of starting to work with other professionals. And early on, my sister was an occupational therapist, joined my practice, I work with physical therapists, they would send me patients, because they didn’t know what to do with them after a stroke or brain injury or reading. And so I started very early in my career working with other professionals. And some of the school started asking me to come in and give them in services and teach them more about vision. And when school said, We want you to give us a seminar on visual perception. And then, like visual perception where we learned that once in school, what do I do with that? And it was through them extra study out of outside my schooling that I started really learning how I mind brain body works together, and was looking at my colleagues and learning from them, knowing my specialty and vision, and eyes lead the body, but how do we work together? And so that, again, started me on a whole new educational course of understanding this I mind body connection. As I got further along again, it was my community said, Well, this is great, you know, can you tell us more about and they were the ones who brought visualization in my life, you know, that used to be a voodoo. In fact, I remember I almost lose their job if they mentioned the word because it sounded like mine. congest true. Yeah, but it’s true. I remember I had a little patient, he came to me and I was teaching them how to visualize. For spelling, we have some great strategies, how to see the words in your head, right from your pictures. And when I told the mother I for home therapy, I said, you know, we’re going to use this great strategy on visualizing for spelling. She said, I’m pulling them out of your program. Oh, well, why it’s very effective. She says, You are not allowed to do any mind control with my check. I said, Well, I’m sorry, I’ve offended you. How about if we just see the words in our head? Would that be okay? Sure. Oh, yeah, that’s fine. So so that started me on the course of really looking at vision on the inside, as well as vision on the outside. That’s how I described, it would teach people how to see clear my budgets, clear focus, using my eyes together, appreciating space and periphery and all these other parameters of vision. And I started to look inward as well in our imagination and, and utilizing visualization. So that started me on the track of learning about visualization from my practice, then it really accelerated when I had medical a medical crisis in 2002, which totally changed my life and started working with a psychotherapist who utilize visualization as a treatment modality in in my stress and anxiety. And it was just so familiar what she was doing. It’s all the kind of visual languaging of what we’ve done in vision therapy, but just looking deeper inside. So that’s, that’s where it’s really set me on course to to help people improve their vision both externally as well as internally. And then thank you for it. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, like you, you know, people like Dr. Joe dispenza. JACK Canfield, and all these leaders now in the field. It was so familiar. I came to that understanding, really through my external vision work, but you know, it’s so integrated in to where I find the power of learning, reducing stress and creating your life.
09:57
Yeah, I mean, in my studies, I found That visualization helps improve my serotonin production, my serotonin and dopamine, and how that affects my mood and my energy and my ability to retain what I’m learning. So, so we’re here with Dr. Lin Hellerstein. She is behavioral optometrist vision therapist, best selling author. She has a new book out called expand your vision how to gain clarity, courage and confidence, best seller on Amazon. And I’d like to move now to burnout. This is a big issue, you know, even since COVID, it’s a different kind of burnout. But people on zoom calls all day kids online schools, how are you navigating, you know, and helping people eliminate these spiral burnouts, which we know in zaps our progress and are experiencing. I know you use visualization as one of the recovery strategies, share with our audience, how you help people with this.
11:09
Again, it starts with my personal journey, journey. Everything I utilize with my patients, and a lot of that is what they’ve taught me, of course, but I’ve experienced myself. And you know, in 2002, is when I had a major burnout, because my health crisis actually had a tumor in my colon major surgery. Luckily, I didn’t not need chemo, because we found it very, very early. But what happened was, I became allergic to all foods. And I couldn’t eat, I was working with alternative care folks on this. I couldn’t digest food, and it became really kind of representative of my life. I couldn’t digest life, you know, my whole life was being described to digestive terms. A bunch I mean, what, you know, and, and I was burned out from the office, you know, before this crisis, I kept having dreams that I was on this fast freight train, speeding out of control, ready to crash. And I kept thinking, How do I get off the train? How do I stop the train, and I didn’t know how to and I, I believe the universe stopped it for me. And that’s what I, you know, I was truly knocked down, I couldn’t work for months. And even though it was a digestive issue, and I had surgery on my colon, I felt like I was a brain injury patient couldn’t, really couldn’t go back to work. And, and I knew there had to be more to life, you know, no longer were the labels of doctor and mother and speaker and writer, none of that made any difference. This all this burnout threw me in the crisis of Who am I What is my purpose of life. And it was on that journey, that I met this psychologist who was not a traditional psychologist, she had thrown all that work out. And she was creating her own body of work called rim with leasing in our memories. And it evolved all this visualization in the body. And so that is where I started learning the power of visualization, but that it wasn’t an isolation. At that time, you’re I changed my diet and exercise became really important functional medicine and supplements. It was really a whole basket of goodies that I was utilizing to recover my own health. And as I’ve covered more and more, you know, visualization, meditation, yoga, all those things became part of my life. So I don’t believe there’s a simple I wish there was a simple pill, there isn’t. Yes, no, it’s what you talk about on this podcast all the time. It’s a multi sensory motor group of activities to be Well, sure.
14:11
Of course, and, you know, when we talk about, you know, what you’ve been through, I’ve certainly had health challenges as well. You know, we take a look at what’s going on on a cellular level. I you know, I remember one of my mentors who was actually practicing Colorado, who you knew him quite well Dr. Al Sutton. And I remember being in his office in Miami Beach and Dr. Sutton, said, you know, one of the things that I like to do is, explore what’s going on in the biochemistry of a person and support that and then apply visualization, vision therapy, and so on. And what you’re speaking about is a you know, the holistic model, the integrative medicine, model, and by you going through it and I went through it also, you can help your patients so much more. And in this book you wrote, which I love. You bring in some case histories. And there are a few of them that I was really inspired by one was Trevor, who suffered a brain injury. Do you remember him? Can you speak a little bit about what you did for him?
15:26
Trevor was one of my favorite patients. And I’ve had the opportunity to work with him over 30 years. He was chief today. Yeah, he was referred to me when he was like either seven or nine years old. He suffered a severe, very severe brain injury from motorbike accident. And he was one of those patients, they didn’t know if he’d live, then they didn’t know if he’d ever walk, talk be functional. And Trevor defied all odds from day one. But he had a relearn all his skills. And he ended up with severe visual problems where he lost about two thirds of his visual field, meaning most of his lower visual field and part of one side were destroyed and damage. So if he wouldn’t look straight ahead, he wouldn’t notice things on the ground, or he bumped into things. All right. So he had a severe field loss, he had double vision. And those are just the visual problems. He had all the other motor and language another issue. Yeah, so I saw him when you know, he was just getting back to school, which they wondered if ever, if he would ever read even, you know, finish school. Well, what they didn’t know about Trevor is he was a kiddo who had been identified as being gifted. So he was one very smart little kid, who was also very motivated. And he came into therapy, we work with him out probably nine months to a year. By the time we were done, he was caught up in school. He was advanced in school. And his favorite sport to play was baseball, which was so shocking to me, because I guess he was a great pitcher, so that nobody would hit the ball back to him, because if he got a line drive, he would have no idea where the ball was coming from. And all through high school, if you can imagine that. So Trevor, again, defied all odds, he graduated high school, the top of his class, he went to the Colorado School of Mines, which is a very high level engineering school. The only problem he had was doing the actual experiments with dangerous camp chemicals like Sofia, sulfuric acid, he could not really judge space very well and to pour chemicals from one beeper to another with a challenge. And so he finally he’d always have to work an advocate to get support that he could get somebody, he could tell them how to do the experiment, but not do the experiment himself. He never was able to dry because of his visual field loss. Yet, he performed at everything else engineering school wanted to do. He then was accepted at medical school and flew through medical school being able to do everything they needed him to do, scored very high and therefore landed a very high level dermatology residency, which again, with all the problems he had, the only way he could landed, he could pass all those kinds of labs and perform quite well. So Trevor’s now off to med school. I get a call in his first year of residency. It’s been only two or three months, and we’re following along for you know, glasses, contacts, general health, and I get a call and I can hardly hear him on the phone. He goes, ah, I need your help. I’m like, Trevor, Trevor, is that you? and Trevor was in the hospital. Because he couldn’t drive he walked everywhere. And he was walking across the crosswalk with the light. Some young kid texting while he was driving ran the light hit him and he suffered a second brain injury. I was just devastated as he was. Took, you know, time again in the hospital to recover as soon as he was out, he came back to the office and all of his visual problems got much worse. He had double vision couldn’t read. He also suffered hand injuries, inner injuries, a whole bunch of new injuries. And he was bound and determined to get back to medical school.
19:49
Very sad story in that the medical school didn’t understand the brain injury. In that he needed time to rest he needed he was so fatigued you know At the schedules of med students crazy. And so it was a battle for him to get back. And it’s a long story as we continue. But the essence, the really important part of the story is they ended up sending him for another eye exam for a second opinion. And the doctor did a visual field and saw the fields and said, You can’t go to medical school, you lost too much of your field division. And Trevor brought the fields in one day and he says I’m done. I said, Well, Trevor, let me show you your fields from 20 years ago. They’re the same. He said, Well, the doctor said, I can’t do that. So I said, Well, what have you been doing for 20 years? So Trevor, in his mind, always visualized himself as a doctor. And it changed in the matter of an hour, when one doctor said to him, you can’t do it. And that’s the power of our language. They showed him the fields, he goes where they haven’t changed that go, No. So that means I still could do this. Said, Trevor, you’ve proven yourself you can do it with these terrible visual fields. But it just shows you how powerful words are, and the power of his visualization, overcoming the wounds. So he continues on his journey throughout all of this.
21:21
Yeah, very, very inspiring. It’s great to have another doctor, talk about these kinds of success stories. I mean, I talk about them all the time. But there’s there’s power in numbers. So when a bunch of us get together and say, yeah, this is really happening. And you know, what you were able to do for him is, you know, show him what’s really going on. And it’s just, it’s just a really, it’s very inspiring, so. So we’re coming down near to the end of our interview, I’m here with Dr. Lynn Hellerstein. She’s a pioneer in the field of vision therapy, behavioral optometry. She’s a best selling author. She has a new book out called expand your vision, how to gain clarity, courage and confidence. It’s a really, really amazing book. And if you’re interested in my content, you need to get this book. So Lynn, how can people first of all, how can they order the book? And how can I get in touch with you?
22:24
Sure. Best way to get in touch with me. You can check out my website, LynnHellerstein.com, and I think there’ll be in the show notes. Is that correct? Sam? Yes, yes. I will be putting it in the show notes as your Spelling’s a little tricky. Yeah. The books available on Amazon. So all my books are available on Amazon and then social media. I don’t do Twitter much, but Facebook, Instagram.
22:57
Great. Great. Yeah. So everybody, I want you to follow Dr. Hellerstein on Facebook and Instagram, buy her book. And you’re also maybe you’ll be doing some workshops. I hope so. Because people need to learn what you’re teaching them your fabulous teacher and educator as well as a doctor. So you know, I hope you put those up on your website so that people can hook in with you. So I want to thank you so much for your your generosity of spirit your your inspiration for 1000s of people and thanks so much for being on the show.
23:42
My pleasure. Thank you, Sam.
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