November 15, 2021 - EyeClarity Podcast
Today I’m playing some excerpts of a session I gave, somebody had a motorcycle accident, they fell off and they hit their head, they were concerned about trauma in their eyes. Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at:Â www.drsamberne.com.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
trauma, eyes, cranial, create, circulation, called, brain, exercise, cranial-sacral, glasses, good, acupuncture, neuroplasticity, people, prescription, sound, vision, practice, impact, area
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Hey everybody, in this episode, I play some excerpts of a session I gave, somebody had a motorcycle accident, they fell off and they hit their head, they were concerned about trauma in their eyes. So in this first clip, I give some background on my training, and how I became an expert at traumatic brain injury and vision. Just a little background here, you may or may not know this, you know, my first practice was in the Philadelphia area I just completed a year fellowship at in the gazelle Institute, which is a place where we work with autistic kids. And it was great. And I saw I opened a practice in Philadelphia, a very convenient area, mainline and I couldn’t get any patients. So I went to one of the local hospitals and I volunteered my time to work with traumatic brain injury, the outpatient areas because none of the eye doctors really knew about it, you know, and so within three months, I had such a great success. I got contracts with other hospitals.
And that’s how I built my practice in Philly, build it up, sold, it moved into Mexico, and I did some research on traumatic brain injury and vision, which I published and so have, over the years developed, a really great understanding of trauma, you know, studying Peter Levine’s work and cranial sacral and continuing movements, and just the relationship between getting hit in the head, and how it affects the muscles and nerves in the eyes. Because in the regular world of what we just say, I care, it’s a glasses check and an eye health check. And then you’re gone, right? And that’s really your eyesight and eye health. So it’s not looking at the functional aspects, or how does trauma impacts us.
And when I was on the staff at Esalen Institute, we used to do a lot of back and forth and the cranial people on trauma and neuroplasticity. And so 35 years later, I have some track record on what has happened to you how it’s impacted you and how you can repair it. So whenever we have a trauma, as you probably know, the body immediately will freeze up in that particular area as a way to protect it. But when it freezes up, it creates kind of a hole in the connection, the energy that flows, you know, from one part of the body to another as a protective mechanism. So in the nervous system level, what happens is we go into an immediate fight flight or freeze response. And the impact affects us in that particular area. So the tissue begins to compress, and it can deaden, there’s less circulation. So there’s that going on. And then we know because the eyes and the brain are so interrelated. If we look at prenatal development, very early on the eyes originate from the brain. So every tissue of the eye is brain tissue. So you know, the retina, the cornea, the optic nerve, the lens of the eye, all of those are basically just an extension of the brain. And the brain is about 70% Water 60% fat
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and it’s floating in the cerebrospinal fluid. So when you get hit in the head area, it can reduce the circulation in that particular area. And so you need to be careful about you know, the flow of cerebral spinal fluid in the brain, and also the circulation then the oxygenation. That being said, the brain has an incredible capability of regenerative potential. This is why the neuroscientists are all always publishing papers, on you know, the neuroplasticity potential even in dementia and Alzheimer’s. In certain cases, there can be some renewal, if you give the brain proper nutrients if you know, do some things that create better circulation, and dietary absorption, and so on. Just so happens right now I’m teaching a class on vision and neuroplasticity. And it’s two parts I just did the first part the second part in November.
And there were a lot of people in that class who had some level of an accident like you, you know, wasn’t it like you didn’t lose consciousness? Maybe you just got, like, as you say, you know, a little jolted. But it definitely affected you. And so whenever you get a blow to that area, whether you get stuck or you fall, it does rattle the muscles and the nerves that attach in and around the eyes. So the good news about the neurologist you went to is, it doesn’t seem to have impacted you say, on a structural level or a physical level, like, you know, getting some kind of a retina problem or developing glaucoma or anything like that. But there is still that soft tissue experience that you had, that would be great to unwind. And again, working at the hospitals, I realized that if we could help people heal the soft tissue, part of the trauma, that it would help you regain both your cognitive, your motor balance, and also your visual information processing. So it doesn’t sound like that there, there are some major long-term things that we have to work with.
But there are some possibilities for things that you could do to heal the trauma. And, you know, reclaim your eyes and vision before what you had before the accident. So in this next clip, I talked about the relationship between the ketogenic diet, and our eyes, I get this question quite a bit. And then I talked about cranial sacral therapy and how that can impact our high Brain-Body relationship. Yeah, totally. I get that question a lot about ketogenic and eye health. And, you know, it’s so individualized. But generally speaking, the keto diet is really great for Eye Health. And, you know, aging occurs when the blood sugar levels start to rise as you get older. So longevity occurs one in one way when you can lower those blood sugar levels.
So eliminating and reducing simple carbs and lots of fruit is really, you know, very positive, even things like intermittent fasting, or water fasting. So I think that the keto diet is, you know, very positive for Eye Health. But I’ll talk more about specific nutrients in a few minutes because what I want to do is I want to start on the outside of the eye and work our way in so that you can have a certain roadmap to healing this. So if you haven’t already, maybe you have, I would highly recommend seeking out some kind of practitioner who does some subtle bodywork. And, you know, many years ago, I saw the connection in the brain and in the head area and the eyes. And I was working with autistic kids and a lot of them had birth traumas.
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And so I enrolled in our massage school here in Santa Fe, the only eye doctor of course, and I became certified in biodynamic cranial sacral therapy, also studied some of the Upledger things, especially in their advanced courses. So I began doing cranial work. And I saw that in the cranial-sacral world, it actually had a very high impact on eyesight and vision. What I used to do with people as they come in for an exam, and I would measure their prescription, and then my massage table was right next to my eye exam equipment. So I would do an hour of cranial on them. And then I re-measure their prescription and it was almost deuced by 20 to 40%. And that’s what I would give people and you know, I have people to this day that have the same prescription like you for 10 years because they’ve gone somewhere else. And the way the eye exam is calculated is very archaic, and you’re going to get a much stronger prescription than you need.
Because you’re sitting in a chair you know, in a dark room and the doctor flips errands and spends like three minutes with you and says, Here’s Here you go kid, you know, there’s your prescription. So, the cranial work or something in the area where you find a body practitioner who’s got some attunement? You know, the modality is less important. If it’s somebody that’s attuned and subtle, you mean even Reiki, you know, there’s like a biodynamic cranial sacral Association, find a practitioner, there’s the Upledger Institute, find a practitioner, you know, word of mouth is, you know, another reviews or, you know, testimonials. Yeah, sometimes it’s hit or miss. So I, you know, I don’t know that you need to do that, it would just be something that I would say, checking off your list, because the sooner you get the bodywork, as you talked to Charlie, Charlie had a fall about a month ago, and she broke her wrist, and she had surgery, and she’s good, you know, now, she’s getting physical therapy. But immediately, I hooked her up with some of my cranial colleagues. And it really accelerated the healing of the trauma and the surgery. You know, and I’ve had sports accidents and things like that.
And also with hundreds of 1000s of patients I’ve treated, I always get them in right away for some cranial work. So it’s just, you got into it. And if you feel like this gal is done it and you feel good about it, then we just check it off the list and move on. If you feel like maybe wouldn’t be good to check in with a cranial person, again, the brain floats in the cerebral spinal fluid. And also, because of the hydration that the brain needs, you know, and just making sure you’re getting the proper circulation. It’s something that I, I feel, really, I’ve seen clinically, how it changes people and it gets rid of the soft tissue stuff. And even working around the eyes with cranial-sacral is really fabulous. So we’ve got the sphenoid bone right here. Sometimes that’ll get torqued, if you fall a certain way, we’ve got the six extraocular muscles that are attached to the eyeball, that sits in the eye socket. And you know, you do have myopia, which is more of a fixed way of seeing. So there’s already this inherent tension that you carry in your eyes that you may not be aware of. So you’re already in kind of a little bit of a defensive position with your eyes from myopia. So that’s, that’s my number one, my number two would be to maybe do some simple eye exercises that would involve eye stretching. And also visual coordination focusing. And the third would be
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opening up the cervical spine, and also creating more circulation in the eyes. So I’m going to name those exercises now. And then I can send you the directions. And the first one is an eye stretching exercise, which you do without your glasses on. And you either patch an eye, or you use a covering to cover one eye because you’re going to stretch each eye separately. And it’s called the animal eye chart, I came up with it like 1994 When I wrote my book, and it’s a stretching exercise where you get this paper that’s got animals on it, it’s and I had an artist when I first moved here, I create these animal pictures. And so what you do is you take the sheet of paper and you hold it up to your nose. So it’s right up there. And then with your right eye, because the left is covered, you’re just following this, this line that goes all the way up to the 12 o’clock position, and then back down and then over to one o’clock, two o’clock, three, four, or five. And then you can, if it’s the right eye, you can tilt the paper away from you. So you can see the left side of the chart. But it’s not about seeing the animals, it’s about making these movements that you normally make. So here’s a principle. When you make numerous new movements for your eyes, you’re creating much more flexibility and health, and circulation, we tend to be very repetitive in our eye movements because of the screen. And so now this is a cranial sacral principle. It’s also a continuing movement principle of you know about continuing but I’ll tell you about that in a second.
Basically, when you make repetitive movements over and over creates deterioration in the structure and function of the anatomy of the body. And so when you make new movements, it’s neuroplasticity, a create some circulation is it’s just, it’s relaxing. It’s so there’s a lot of things with that. So you do the right eye, and then you do the left eye so it’s like a calisthenic where you’re stretching here Be my challenge. Take the next 30 days, you the animal I chart once or twice a day, morning and evening.
The second chart is called the Yin Yang peripheral vision exercise. And that’s a focusing exercise again, I’ll send you the chart Have you printed out, basically, you’re holding the paper up to your nose with both eyes, no glasses on, mentally look through the paper, push it out there, and you’re gonna start to see three images. When you get three images, the left eye and the right eye are working together. So it’s reclaiming the skill of visual coordination, peripheral vision, and visual relaxation simultaneously. So it neutralizes all the focusing that we’re doing when we focus on the screen, which is the hard focus. So that would be the second exercise again, two to three minutes twice a day. Again, the more you introduce it during the day in between your screen times, the better it is, because that will create a momentum that will get the muscles and nerves to be a more vibrant, vital return to their normalcy.
The third exercise is a relaxation exercise. It’s partly taken from the Bates method, it’s partly taken from sound healing is partly taken from somatic therapy. It’s called The End palm hub. And what you do with that one is you rub your hands together one time, cup your eyes with your eyes closed, and breathe in through the nose. When you exhale, you make a humming sound like this. So the harm is creating a vibration in your face. And the hands are like tuning forks. So the sound is going to go directly into the eye muscles really well. So you do like six or eight of those hums, close your eyes, keep your eyes closed, drop your hands, and then go into a pause, I call it open attention. And for a minute, you just sit with your eyes and your face and your body and you listen to the response of what you’re feeling what you’re sensing. And by giving yourself that opportunity, you are metabolizing or digesting the stimulation that you’ve given yourself with sound.
So the sound is one of the best ways to remove compression in the eye area. And it’s great for hearing trauma. You know, I’m a firm believer in sound healing and you know, lots of different ways. But in this way, you’re creating the sound, and you’re keeping the sound contained in your mouth. So it’s going to relax the jaw, the teeth, the mouth, the vagus nerve, the thyroid, the carotid arteries. So it’s a great rule. I mean, you’ll do it and go wow, you know, this is really relaxing. And I call it the end, because what you do at that point is you take your tongue, and you put it on the roof of the mouth. Now in Dallas medicine. When you do that, it’s creating the circuit in acupuncture of the human neon.
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And when you press the on the roof of the mouth, you are spreading the tissue and it actually activates the pineal gland, which is really great as the third eye and it’s the energetic part of our scene. So after you’ve done you know, after you’ve done the palming, and you’re open attention, put the tongue on the roof of the mouth, you just press while you’re quiet. And you know, you can press you can rest you can press. So it’s a really powerful Taoist practice of connecting all the circuits. The last part of this will open up the service, cervical spine because then you take your tongue, and you put it on the outside part of the upper teeth, and the inside part of the upper lip, like this. So I my eyes are closed, I’m doing the tongue clock off the tongue clock and I said, what you’re doing is on the exhale, you’re making a humming sound while you’re pressing on the upper lip. And when you press on the upper lip, you’re spreading Cone to C four in the back. And then you do the bottom at six o’clock, and you’re spreading C four to C seven. So you’re getting a cranial sacral treatment. And you’re also getting an acupuncture treatment because this is a very powerful acupuncture point. This is called the Governing Vessel. This is beyond Meridian and it goes all the way over the head down the spine to the perennial. And then when you do this, this is the Conception Vessel, it’s the end. It’s going down the body so it’s gonna activate this whole area so they need in the middle. So you do you know maybe three rounds of the upper lid lower lid.
So you’re getting acupuncture, cranial-sacral you’re getting pineal these are going to be really healing for any trauma. It’s going to expand your brain it’s going to create more circulation. And so you’re basically doing the self-care, self-regulation, you got it all at home by doing that. So again, these are kind of more spiritual-energetic practices around the vision. But the eyes are very spiritual Oregon. And, you know, so you’re working on physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual, and healing this trauma. So I’ll send you the directions to all of these. So you just have to go to school for a few minutes and watch the video, the directions, print out the charts. But these are great exercises to do, you know, just just as a proactive way of improving your eyes and vision. But in this case, it’s going to, you know, get rid of any residue from the accident. It’s all great for PTSD and cumulate trauma. Again, when I was in SLN, we saw a lot of people that will come in with PTSD and trauma at the workshops. And what I like about these exercises, what I observe is you are directing how quickly and how deeply you want to go internally, this is one of the criticisms of the practitioner training there is that you really have to be attuned to how quickly you move your energy in when you put your hands on somebody.
I remember at one of the training, one of the therapists who’s a bodyworker, I was working with a severely PTSD person. And basically, he walked in the room, and he sat by the door, and the patient was like, that’s as far as I want you to go energetically. And then maybe five or 10 minutes later, he would get a little closer to get a little closer, it took about 20 minutes before he could enter her space so that he could actually put his hands on her and do some work. When you’re doing these practices, and you teach them, basically what happens is the person then is titrating the experience, we call it self regulation. And so you know, you might start off and say just do it once and see how you feel. I have PTSD patients, we can only do one home, and they’re done. They can’t do anymore, because it trauma is it reawakens the trauma that you see these practices penetrate the defense. That’s why they’re so great. Because here’s, here’s the metaphor, if I take an acupuncture meridian, if I’m doing acupuncture, and I move very quickly, and I push the needle in, aggressively, you’re going to require
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if we do some essential oil, massage on the ear lobes for a while, and we relax your system, and then maybe I palpate the point, and maybe just very lightly put the acupuncture needle in very gently, well, you’re going to do much better in the treatment. So it’s, it’s very individualized. And when you’re dealing with trauma and PTSD, you know, the tracks in the brain get set. And so just your mind takes you back to that time period. And you’re creating these neurochemicals that suppress things like serotonin and dopamine, and acetylcholine and norepinephrine. These are things that you need to create better brain health. I mean, that’s, that’s the science behind it. So these particular practices are one way to help a person manage their defenses and eventually heal the trauma. In this last section, I talked about PTSD, and how it affects our brain. And what is it that we can do? What direction can we go to eventually heal trauma and not have it overtake our life?
There is another technique we use to heal trauma, and that is color therapy. So the colors that you’re looking for would be blue-green, blue, and purple. Those particular colors can help heal trauma in the eyes. Now, where do you get those? There are many online sources of getting the colors like in glasses. Or you know, you’re gonna, again, it’s too hard to like try to send you color therapy sheets and all that our color machine, but I’m just putting that on your radar, maybe it’s meditating on those colors. You know, I don’t know if you can, but those particular colors were very helpful for people to heal the traumas in the hospitals, we did a lot of color therapy there. And to this day, I do color therapy. So it’s really, really good.
So that would be your, your kind of exercise program for the next month, where you want to plugin. Now in terms of nutrition. There’s nothing better than you know, the more life food you eat, the better. The more you know, colorful vegetables. That’s kind of a given. Probiotics are helpful for healthy fats, which are probably getting a variety of fats. Again, depending on your digestive health, enzymes, antitrust inflammatory, making sure you’re getting your trace minerals, magnesium is essential. Selenium is essential. You know, we tend to be more deficient in trace minerals and they’re really important for the eyes as everything.
If you want to avoid cataracts increase vitamin C glutathione. You know, there are some herbal things like ginkgo, which is great vascular health for the eyes, Tarim and amino acid, which are probably getting bilberry which is an herb that helps the circulation of the retina, and then your vitamin A Berek, beta carotene. Whatever you’re doing there in terms of diet and nutrition, you know, and if you’re, you know, if your diet is really good, then you don’t need to do supplementation if you feel like, okay, for the next couple of months, maybe it’d be good for me to take an AI vitamin. You could, you could look at that. If you’re doing seafood. The acid Xanthine is another coronoid that’s in It’s a pink color. That’s very helpful for the macula. That’s the center part of the vision where we see color and detail. Take breaks with your glasses on so going without them. Take walks without them, use them in non you know, take them off and non-demanding and nonthreatening situations just to give your eyes a break. And notice emotionally what’s what comes up for you around the blur. You know, do you feel safe in the blurred? Do you feel scared in the blur and see if you can get more relaxed in the blur.
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In circumstances where you’re safe, not when you’re driving, or, you know out and about by taking off the glasses is a good reset. And that’s really great to do get 30 to 60 minutes in natural sunlight every day. That’s very good for the circadian rhythm. The blue light is another issue with the computer. So possibly getting some blue-blocking glasses. Or getting a screen that covers there’s a company I’m working with now called ocular shield. And they are based in the UK and they make screen protectors for blue light. I mean blue light after 6 pm is hard on the body because it tricks the pineal gland to start producing melatonin. So asleep can be off. And you know, I wear my blue blockers, you know, after 6 pm and it does make a difference for sure when I go to sleep. So those are basically the things I would suggest. I think probably if you do some of these exercises eye exercises over the next month, I think that will assure you that the trauma is gone.
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And you know, just following the nutritional stuff. I’ll send you the contact lens prescription that’s great that hasn’t changed. So that’s a good sign. And
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you know you’re basically really healthy you’re just enhancing your baseline That’s how I would see it. I’m not sure you’re still carrying much trauma from the accident, but this would just be the last tentacles that you know might be hanging around and you’ll get more vitality, more energy and you’ll feel good in your eyes.
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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