Vision for Life

by Meir Schneider

  Like the poet said, “The eyes are the windows to the soul.” By connecting with our vision, we connect with light and darkness, with nature, with our physical environment, and with each other in fundamental, simple, and beautiful ways. Going for a jog doesn’t have to be just good physical exercise; it can also be a welcome relief for the mind. It is a way to reconnect with your neighborhood, to break out of your routine, and to expand your psychological comfort zone. And the same can be said of learning how to blink correctly, practicing the scrutiny of details, looking far into the distance, and nighttime walking.

  Computers have certainly done much to advance the quality of life in our culture. Yet, every year, as hundreds of millions more people worldwide incorporate computers into their routines, they expose their precious eyes to constant, unnatural strain and poor lighting. By straining their central vision to stare blurry-eyed at the screen, people forget to utilize their peripheral vision. They forget to blink. They forget to breathe correctly. They scrunch their shoulders and tense their necks. They squint, trying to analyze digital data. And instead of using the natural human ability to scan for images, they simply sit and wait passively for the flood of constantly changing images to come to them. Remember: the mountain did not come to Muhammad; Muhammad had to go to the mountain.

  It is our joy and responsibility to personally make the effort to connect with nature and with our own human potential. We each must make the commitment to claim our heritage and our birthright, which is health, happiness, and a long-lasting, balanced, productive life. And it all starts with our eyes!

  Our senses connect us intimately with each other, with our environment, and with ourselves, perhaps none so much as our sense of vision. When a person loses his or her vision, there is no end to what he or she will pay for a doctor to correct the situation. Sadly, however, many procedures performed on people’s eyes today, including Lasik surgery, do more harm than good.

  Compounding the problem even further is that many people’s eyesight ratings are misdiagnosed at the optometrist’s office because of the stress and nervousness people feel while they are having their eyes tested for glasses. Often, people are understandably stressed, and strain their vision out of fear that it may have declined. Their visual capacity on an average, relaxed day differs greatly from that when they are fearful and stressed. But when have you ever heard of an optometrist confronting this reality? When has your optometrist massaged your shoulders and asked you to breathe deeply before measuring your eyes? When has your ophthalmologist asked you to pray or meditate (sing or dance) prior to measuring your eye pressure?

  Most optometrists make no effort to test their patients’ vision under normal, less stressful circumstances. And most people have no capacity to test their own vision when they are in a friendlier environment. Consequently, most people’s eyeglass prescriptions are incorrectly based on stressed vision! The result is that the eyes, having no choice, learn to accommodate the incorrect prescription, adjusting gradually in the wrong direction toward worse, not better, vision. In fact, most optometrists don’t even think stress relates to poor vision at all.

  My personal experience in working with thousands of students and patients contradicts what these doctors think they know. Stress and poor vision do indeed go hand in hand.

  So I advise my patients and students to sometimes take their lenses off while practicing the techniques I teach them, and I advise readers of this book to do the same. When you are in a safe environment, do the exercises in this book with your glasses off periodically. It is no different from learning to walk again after a leg injury. If you never let go of the crutches, your legs can never regain their strength and improve to their full potential. Therefore, work out your eyes the same ways in which you work out the rest of your body at the gym, but remember to do it with great relaxation.

  The exercises in this book are intended to help you to create a basic, fundamentally healthy routine that you can incorporate into your life immediately. If enough of us practice these exercises diligently and follow the advice in Vision for Life, we can avoid the coming epidemic of cataracts, macular degeneration, and other degenerative conditions of the eyes that scientists predict are speeding toward our culture like a freight train.

  Ask yourself what is in the medical establishment’s best interest. To restudy the eye field and allow new ideas to penetrate from outside of the establishment, or to continue learning new methods with the old way of thinking? Is it to help you to heal yourself with only a minimal investment of time and effort, or to tell you it is okay to have unhealthy habits, because they know how to fix you when you break? I am not trying to be accusatory or conspiratorial. I am simply attempting to rephrase the wisdom of an old adage that says you should never ask a barber if you need a haircut. Therefore, never ask an optometrist if it is possible for you to correct your own vision. The medical establishment is so dependent on technology and chemicals that it has little incentive to embrace a simpler, less expensive, personal, holistic approach to vision maintenance and repair.

  This book is my response to this serious problem, and it is also my attempt to give human beings an alternative to becoming the playthings of profit-driven, surgery-obsessed mad scientists. You are your own patient first. Heal yourself using the techniques in this book and other books like it. Only as a last resort, or in the most serious of situations, should you seek the aid of chemicals and surgery.

  For those of you who have perfect vision, or even better than perfect vision, now is the time to incorporate simple habits into your life to ensure that your extraordinary vision will be maintained for as much of your life as possible! It is my dream that all of us will have good vision for our whole lives.

  List of Materials for Getting Started

  Four pieces of dark construction paper cut 2 inches x 2 inches, 2 inches x 5 inches, 2 inches x 7 inches, and 2 inches x 9 inches

  Masking tape

  Tennis balls—at least two (preferably used—your local tennis club would most likely give you a few!)

  Obstruction glasses (described in Step 8)*

  Red and green glasses*

  Red pencil or pen (use a red felt tip pen if vision loss is extreme)

  Plain white copy paper

  Small flash light with red bulb or red tape over lens

  Red and green playing cards (optional)*

  Ten-foot and twenty-foot eye charts (charts included in this book)*

  Flashing lights (when working with severe vision loss)*

  Glow in the dark ball*

  Beads on a string*

  Pinhole glasses (optional)*

  * These items can often be made at home from materials found locally, but you can also order them from the School for Self-Healing (www.self-healing.org). Email the School for Self-Healing at officemanager@self-healing.org to order or if you have any questions.

  Introduction

  At one time, this book was to be entitled From Blindness to Vision, because I was born blind but, through years of effort and exploration, have taught myself to see. Today, because of this miracle, I can read, write, and drive a car.

  The idea behind the original title was that my seemingly miraculous progression from blindness to sight would signal to readers that within this book are the resources anyone can use to improve their vision, regardless of their current situation.

  In reality, I believe the great majority of this book’s readers will not be those who are declared, as I was, legally blind. Rather, they will be people from all different points on the continuum of vision, including some with “perfect” vision who want to keep it or even build upon it. As dramatic as the first title sounded, I wanted to make certain that readers would not mistake this for a handbook only for the blind or severely impaired. So I gave up my attention-grabbing idea and looked for another title.

  My unrestricted California driver’s license.

  Nonetheless, my personal experience in overcoming blindness remains at the core of this wo
rk. To anyone who doubts that improving his or her vision is possible, my story is a true testament to hope. Therefore, it was important to describe briefly just how this transformation happened. A detailed account of my life can be found in my earlier book, Movement for Self-Healing, which chronologically addresses the physical challenges I faced, as well as the long series of steps, discoveries, and exercises I underwent to overcome them.

  Now I wish to summarize this same process with more emphasis on the psychological aspect. These emotional and spiritual challenges were central to the process of my learning to see.

  The key obstacles that you, the reader, will face—whether you’re legally blind or have the eagle eyes of an Air Force fighter pilot—will be similar to mine, even though the circumstances of our lives probably differ dramatically. The central challenge is for you to make a commitment to invest the necessary time to improve your vision and to expand your world.

  It was difficult enough for me to do this in the 1970s in Israel, even with the burning, intrinsic motivation to rid myself of my blindness. For modern readers to make this kind of dedication of time in our hectic, hyper era, may seem impossible. Yet a commitment to doing it can pay off in two extraordinary ways: you will improve your vision while opening up your life.

  Free yourself from the grip of a stressful routine. The amount of time and dedication I have devoted to improving my vision was extreme compared to what most people need, but that is exactly the point. Dedicate as much time as possible to these exercises, and remember that although your life may seem busy, making your vision a central priority is of the utmost importance.

  Chapter 1

  Healing Myself of Blindness

  I was born in the Stalinist Soviet Union under difficult circumstances. My father was involved in an illegal business, taking and printing photographs for churches. This work could have resulted in his being sent to Siberia for twenty years. Furthermore, both my parents were deaf.

  My grandparents on my father’s side were opposed to another child coming into the family. At first, it was my paternal grandfather who had noticed that something was wrong with my eyes. After an examination by doctors, it was revealed that I had been born with cataracts. And although many people develop cataracts later in life, very few are born with them. I was, for all practical purposes, born blind.

  In search of a better life for all of us, my family decided to flee the Soviet Union and to relocate to the new country of Israel. During this time of transition for my family, five surgeries were performed on my eyes. The first, done in Poland on our way to Western Europe, was unsuccessful. The other four surgeries—all performed in Israel—had scarred my lenses to the point that 99 percent of them was scar tissue, effectively preventing light from getting through. As a result, I was issued a blind certificate by the state of Israel, and most people in my life had resigned themselves to the idea that I would never be able to see.

  Figure 1.1. My father, Abraham, mother, Eda, and me, age five, looking and seeing next to nothing.

  I was raised reading Braille, although I attended a standard school with normal-sighted children. I experienced much loneliness and isolation because of this situation. What do you do when you are blind, surrounded by normal-sighted people, and your parents communicate mostly with sign language that you cannot see?

  Figure 1.2. Blind certificate declaring me permanently blind by the state of Israel.

  My father, who was very interested in current events, often wanted me to listen to the radio and to explain to him what was happening around the world. He would have me listen to the news and repeat it to him, which confused me at first. I didn’t understand why he had always lifted my head up when I tried to tell him what I had heard. I later realized it was because he had wanted to read my lips. But how would I know that reading lips was so important when I couldn’t even see lips moving? This tragic comedy more or less captures the early days of my life. I was surrounded by confusion, frustration, and struggle. But I was also learning that there are many ways to overcome the challenges people face due to the circumstances of their lives.

  It was obvious to me that my parents loved me. Still, our life was marked by fear and insecurity, having escaped the repressions of the Soviet Union, only to move to the young state of Israel, which was ravaged with war. Because of their deafness, my parents could not study Hebrew, which was so different from the Russian they had spoken before. Additionally, my maternal grandparents lost all the money they had brought with them from the Soviet Union on bad investments in Israel. Yet through it all, my grandmother steadfastly believed in me and was able to find ways to help me. She stayed with me in hospital beds after surgeries, when I was traumatized and feeling insecure from hearing many other kids crying.

  Other members of my family believed that I should depend on social services. Although I didn’t mind asking for money from my family, somehow I did not want to take it from the government. It was a deep instinct, the origin of which I understood later on as I matured. It is easy for a person who receives help from the government, as many with disabilities do, to develop a poor self-image as being needy or pitiful; it comes automatically, like it or not. But when you do not rely on that help, the image you have of yourself becomes stronger, and you are forced to become self-sufficient.

  I was determined not to have the stigma of being a blind person. That basic resolve was the beginning of my transition and change, without which I would not have gotten to where I am today. As a response to the lack of security and uncertainty that filled my early life, I developed a sense of commitment. Kids often did not want to play with me. Girls would not dance with me at parties. I sometimes became lonely. But I understood the choice was with me to be depressed or to be happy.

  Figure 1.3. As of the seventh grade, I was the fastest Braille reader in Israel.

  So I escaped into my Braille books. With my books, I was in a different world and would read for hours on end. Even when my mother said, “Time to sleep, lights out,” I would just hide the books under my bed. Although our walls were thin, as soon as the lights were out and I knew that she couldn’t see me anymore, I pulled out my books again and kept reading.

  Whenever more of my Braille books arrived at the post office, I would hurry to pick them up. The books were huge. I was something to marvel at, a small kid carrying a very large school bag on my back, tied and strapped to my shoulders, with a Braille typewriter squeezed under one arm and a sack of Braille books under the other. More than once, the typewriter fell and broke, and we would need to pay to get it repaired. My father always resented the price, and I felt guilty about having let the typewriter fall.

  Slowly but surely, my muscles built up. Many a passerby felt I was engaged in too much lifting and carrying. But that lifting, in many ways, formed my character. I imagined that, one day, something would liberate me from my blindness, and I acted by it.

  I went from doctor to doctor, on my own.

  I struggled against the resentment of the other children in school who thought I was receiving too much special treatment. They resented the fact that they had to explain to me what was on the blackboard. And I agreed with them! I wanted to be able to see the blackboard with my own eyes. I wanted to work on my own. I even had teachers that were mean to me because they felt I was not behaving right. They believed a blind kid was supposed to be submissive and passive—something I never was and, most likely, never would be.

  I desperately wanted to be liberated from my condition. But all the doctors told me there was nothing I could do, that legal blindness was going to be my life, and that my vision would never be more than half of 1 percent without glasses, nor more than 4 or 5 percent with glasses. They said that I should accept the sight I had and that I should be happy with it. Those were nice words, but they did not work for me.

  Discovering the Bates Method

  My father was openly upset at the fact that his deafness prevented him from succeeding in life. My mother also felt like she was
put down by the hearing world. I understood the prejudice they had experienced but, nonetheless, felt I had a bright future, though I did not know what it was.

  Then one day I met another young boy named Jacob, who had dropped out of high school. He showed me eye exercises based on something called the Bates Method. I learned the eye exercises and started to work with them diligently.

  To my amazement, as I practiced the Bates Method and experienced improvement, I received more complaints than ever from the authority figures in my life. You see, a part of my practice was to look from detail to detail; the purpose of this exercise was to stop my brain from being lazy. But my geography teacher would get upset as I moved my eyes from each bell beside the chalkboard to the other, looking at the details during class. She went all the way to the vice principal. Thankfully, the vice principal heard my case and told her that the exercises may help me, and that they did not disturb my ability to listen to her lessons.

  My Bible studies teacher was upset that when my class sat in the yard reading biblical verses, I would close my eyes and face the sun, moving my head from side to side. When I faced the sun, my pupils would contract; when I moved my head to the side, my pupils would expand. My teacher said that it bothered him to see me moving my head from side to side, even though he recognized that I understood everything he was saying. He said that even though I was the best student in the class, I should stop doing the sunning because it bothered him.

  Despite these reactions, I persisted. My retina started to wake up to light, and that was my vehicle to removing the thick, heavy, dark glasses that had made the world dimmer for me.

  My mother was upset with the fact that I would run, ten times a day, up to the roof to do sunning. She said, “You are taking time out from your homework.” Then she was upset that I would for sit three hours a day and do palming, an exercise to rest my eyes and stop them from moving involuntarily.