March 17, 2022 - EyeClarity Podcast
Here is a peek into my latest Intensive Session. I work with attendees one on one to help them craft their own visual journey. In this session, I work with attendees on how to use the animal eye chart. I talk about where it came from and how it helps your vision over time. Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
eye, chart, blur, vision, nearsighted, clearer, exercise, stretching, glasses, awareness, put, left, occlude, cataract, patch, create, brain, eyepatch, animal, experiment
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.
All right. So basically, what are your goals and objectives? And this would be for everybody. You know, as I work with you, Wendy, what are your goals and objectives? What do you want to get out of the investment and energy that you’re putting into your vision? Vision therapy?
00:18
Okay, I have made it, what happened was the first operation wasn’t done well or properly. So they went in again and did a much more thorough job to do the retinal reattachment. I’m definitely not having another one of those operations, whatever happens, I’m not doing that, again. A cataract has already started forming in their tie, which they said would happen. And it’s, you know, if you take away all the gas exchanges by putting a gas button in, I suppose that’s entirely logical. So my I got vision, it’s very blurred, my, my goal would be to strengthen my unoperated eye so that I don’t get these problems again, and to create a vision that’s functional in my right eye, rather than being very blurred, and I’d take away the circumstances that are causing the cataract. Okay.
01:24
All right. So I think where, where I would start with you, there’s a couple of places in this, looking at everybody in the group, I think the first exercise that you should do, and this would be, everybody should do this one. And I will send you directions video and a chart. It’s called the animal eye chart. And it’s a chart that I came up with, that helped you develop better circulation and oxygenation in the eye by stretching the eye. So let me give you a little backstory here. Many years ago, I had a Tibetan patient come and see me and showed me this chart. That said it was the Tibetan eye chart, and it was a stretching chart. And so I experimented with it. And I did some research and actually found out it wasn’t a Tibetan eye chart. But the stretching part of it was actually really beneficial. So I came up with my own chart, which involves working with a patch. And I think everyone here should be working with an eyepatch, or working with each eye separately.
Now there are different ways that you can address this one is either go to the pharmacy and get an eyepatch. Another way you could do it is just get like a scarf or a bandana and occlude one of your eyes. But there’s real value in working with each eye separately. And the reason is, is because when you isolate the eye, and in this case, the right eye, because when both eyes are on the left eye is doing most of the work. And the brain is what we call suppressing the right eye. And so we want to engage the blurry eye. And so this animal eye chart is a chart that I will send you all. And the way it works is you take the chart and you hold it right up to your nose, which is kind of odd. It’s not about seeing something it’s about making a movement, initiating movements in your eyes that are different than what you normally do. That’s kind of one of the arts of neuroplasticity is being able to create new pathways to stimulate new axons and neurons.
And when we speak of the eyes, we’re really speaking of the brain because the eyes are just an outer extension of the brain. The eyes start developing in utero about two weeks after conception and every tissue of the eye retina, cornea, eyelid, lens, eye muscles are all brain tissue, which means and this is an important concept for you and everybody else is that the eyes have the capability to be the regenerate or to create new pathways and seeing I don’t care what the eye doctors say. They’re wrong. The neuroplasticity the neuroscientists all say that when you stimulate vision differently, you’re going to open things up in your awareness in your brain in your movement in your posture and body. Now, another point here and then we’ll get to the animal eye chart is that about 60% of vision is in the brain. I think it’s even higher. I think it’s 90% but all eye exams only look at the 10% of the vision that’s in the eyeball, they are not addressing the 60 or 90%.
That’s what we’re going to be addressing here. Okay, so with this animal eye chart, what you’re going to be doing is no glasses, no contacts, this is for everybody, you’re going to sit comfortably, and you’re going to put that chart right up to your nose. And it’s going to have a lot of little squiggly lines that are like o’clock, 12 o’clock, one o’clock, two o’clock, and at the end of the line is an animal. And what you’re doing with your eye is your, as best as you can, it doesn’t have to be perfect, you are tracing the line all the way up to the 12 o’clock animal, and back down.
Now you’re doing this while the left eye is covered. And you’re bringing a level of body mind awareness, which means and this is another principle that’s so important that I want you all to practice, not only in this session, but throughout your days. And that is this, every time you start using your eyes, I want you to remember to feel your body to to feel your body and then look with your eyes. When you do that two things happen, you open up periphery, and you’re not putting all of your energy of seeing through the eyeball, that’s what stresses the eyeball out and gets you into tunneling. And because you are nearsighted to begin with, you’re already doing that at a high degree. And so you need to get more out into the periphery. So you back to the animal chart, you go up to 12 o’clock back to the center, which happens to be a heart, then you move the eye to the right, and you go to one o’clock and you bring it back down.
And I don’t care if you can see the animal or not, I don’t care if you’re not exactly precise about staying on the squiggly line, you’re just going back and forth, be aware of your body and your breathing. As you move the eye you go all the way around, you’re going to do now when you get to this is now let’s say this is how I’m doing this. On this side, I can see the animals pretty easy. But on my opposite side, I’m going to have to tilt the paper away from me so that my eye can see to the left and move to the left. And so basically, you’re going to go all the way around the chart with the right eye,
07:43
then what you’re going to do is you’re going to put that chart down. And you’re going to close both eyes. And this is really important here. Because we want to go beyond the mechanics of the exercise. Oh, I did the exercise. No, that’s not it. The exercise is there for you to develop more internal awareness, inner vision awareness, which is going to change the outer seeing. So once you put it down the chart down, you’re now closing both eyes. And I want you to make a comparison between the eye you just stretched and the eye that was behind the patch. This is going to be valuable to you because you’re going to start to feel into your eyes a little more deeply.
And you may notice that the eye you just stretched, feels bigger, more relaxed. Here who knows that there’s going to be I want that comparison, it’s similar to what happens if any of you have taken a yoga class. And in the yoga postures, you’re doing one side, and then you go wow, that side is a lot longer, it’s a lot more open. So that’s what I want you to connect with. After you’ve stretched the right eye. Now the eyes are closed. And then what you’re going to do is you’re going to open the eyes, you’re going to take the occluder away. And I want you to take about 10 seconds. And I want you to look around the room and what you’re going to notice is the things are going to be brighter, and they’re going to be clearer. Whenever you occlude an eye, and then you reintroduce it, the light pattern is now going to be different than habitually how you bring light into the eyes. So vision is about bringing light into the eyes, which goes to the brain, which allows us to see light as the food. It’s the currency that we need in order to use our vision.
And when you change the light pattern, what you’re doing is you’re creating a whole new neural pathway experience that’s going to make things brighter and clearer and more open. And it’s really great for your brain to have that experience. because then whatever mental resistance you may have, that’s gonna start to dissolve, because you’re gonna say, Wow, I just worked my right eye for a few minutes, I took the patch off the left I am, I actually see things clearer and better, I might even see things clearer out of my left eye, I don’t know. Okay, then you do the other eye, we usually patch the left eye, do the stretching, and then we patch the right eye and do the stretching. That is an exercise I’d like you to do once or twice a day. So here’s the deal. The more time you can invest in these exercises. During this time period, the faster you’re going to see results. And, you know, there there is a thing around engagement, the more engaged and motivated you are, the better results you’re going to get. So bottom line, I want you to do the animal I chart, that’s the first one.
The second one I want you to do. And this is for all the people that are nearsighted, all the people that are nearsighted, you’re going to do this one as well. Even if you’re mildly nearsighted, you’re going to go to the drugstore, and you’re going to get yourself those reading glasses that I’ve talked about the blurry glasses. And what you’re going to do is come home, and I want you to go into a safe place in your apartment or your house. And you’re going to sit in the chair. And you’re going to do again occlude the left eye, and you’re going to get a baseline on your blurriness. And then you’re going to put those blurry glasses on. And I want you to watch your initial thoughts and feelings on what the blur means to you. And your job, your, your intention for one minute, is to see if you can relax into the blur. So in your case, you had the surgeries, you’ve got this extremely blurred vision in the right eye.
12:20
So what I want you to do with the blurry glasses is I want you actually to go more into the blur, mentally. And what that’s going to do is that’s going to relax your mind to say, oh, I can actually go into this blur. And that’s going to be one key for you to start making things more clear. And that goes for everybody. So you put the glasses on for that minute, you go into the blur, you take them off, and you look again out of the right eye, and you go you know, it might be 5% clear, I’m seeing things differently. So you want to look for what’s different. If your attitude is nothing changed, everything’s the same, then you’re not going deep enough in your awareness. And I want you to find at least one thing that’s different. When you prompt yourself. Okay? Then you do it again, you put it on the second time, take it off, and you do it a third time.
So you’re going to do it three times, each time, you’re going to go more deeply into your resistance into your blur into what you don’t like about it. And then after that third time, get a final baseline on the eyesight, and then take the patch off. And you’re going to notice that things are a lot brighter and a lot clearer, you’re going to notice that then you cover the right eye and you do the same thing with the left eye. It’s going to be very different. It’s a very different personality, very different experience. All we’re trying to do is get your two eyes to work better together. And this particular blurry vision exercise we call plus lens to blur is a good way to do that.
Okay, the last thing I want to say is that as an experiment, and again, this is for anybody out there with prescriptions. If anybody is wearing contact lenses, and they can do this, like in your case, I would wear a 2.25 over the right eye and the left eye. And this is an interesting exercise to wear the same lenses on each eye. You know when you go to the eye doctor, he or she is optically freezing your vision in a certain position. And it’s reinforcing the symptoms that we have why you go there? That’s all he or she is doing. And when they make the lenses different It’s going to induce more difference to occur, it’s going to reinforce that. So when you start wearing the same lenses, it’s going to give you more integration and more balance, even though the right eye might be blurrier. Maybe do it in a non demanding and non threatening situation as an experiment, just to experiment with that symmetry, that integration.
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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