We have now looked at all the techniques of the Bates method. As already mentioned, you should experiment with each to find out which ones suit you best. You ought to be able to find at least one or two, and perhaps more, from each of the five main categories — palming, sunning, fusion, mobility, and accommodation. This selection will then form the basis of your initial approach to the method.
The techniques are nearly all of application in every case of defective eyesight. In some, such as visualisation or the accommodation drills, the emphasis is varied according to the kind of difficulty which it is desired to overcome; and the following are likely to be of particular benefit for specific problems:
Myopia — palming with visualisation, analytical observation, spending time outdoors;
Hypermetropia — long swinging, zooming;
Presbyopia — simple palming;
Astigmatism — all mobility techniques, especially dominoes, dice, etc., and edging.
The following may also be of special help in dealing with these other defects:
Floaters — sunning;
Squint — all fusion techniques;
Photophobia — sunning.
Try to budget half an hour each day for your practice; three-quarters would be better, or you can spend longer if you wish. The session can be split into two if this is more convenient. Needless to say, glasses should not be worn when practising any of the techniques.
The daily session is used for all those techniques which require either peace and quiet or some item of equipment. Unless you are one of the rare people who have trouble with it, palming should form the basis of your sessions: alternate periods of palming with practice of the other techniques. Aim to practise only those that you enjoy, or that seem specially relevant to your problem. Keep the programme varied so that you do not become bored, and remember to review regularly the techniques you initially rejected to see whether any can after all be incorporated into your schedule.
The eyes work as a dual organ and normally should be treated as such. If one eye is significantly worse than the other, however, and you suspect that it is being “carried” by the stronger eye, then cover the stronger eye with a patch and give the weaker one extra practice of the mobility and accommodation techniques.
Although it is recommended that time should be set aside for practice, awareness of the method must not be restricted to the daily sessions. Take advantage of any spare moment for a little palming or sunning, or for practice in shifting, edging, flashing, and so on. Carry also with you an awareness of the need to blink and breathe easily and freely.
The idea is to improve the use of the eyes, to replace bad habits with good ones. For this to happen the bad habits, acquired perhaps over a period of many years, must be consciously broken and the unconscious habits of good vision with which most of us start out must be actively learned and incorporated into everyday life.
An improvement in use will reduce one source of the strain that leads to refractive error, for “trying” to see will become much less frequent. Reduction of the other source, emotional disturbance, is not so simple. It may well be that your refractive error was caused by some crisis that has been and gone, and that, had you not worn glasses, your eyesight might already have returned to normal. On the other hand, it may be that your refractive error is merely a symptom — perhaps one of several — of some continuing problem. Whatever that may be, and whatever steps you may decide to take in finding a solution, visual re-education is likely to be of some help at least. Just as a negative mental state can affect the eyesight for the worse, so an improvement in eyesight can bring about an improvement in mental outlook. The direction of the vicious circle can be reversed; every small advance made in your Bates training will prepare the way for more and greater advances.
If you have not already given thought to other aspects of the use of your body (as well as to diet, exercise habits, and so on), this might be a good time to do so. It may be appropriate to mention here the Alexander Technique, which is a means of learning and maintaining correct use of the entire organism. Exponents of the technique frequently find that, parallel with improvements in such outwardly obvious aspects of well-being as posture, poise, and the ability to relax, there are corresponding inner improvements. An easy introduction to the subject is given by Michael Gelb in Body Learning (Aurum Press, London and New York, 1981). Teachers may be contacted through the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique, in London; the North American Society for the Alexander Technique, in New York; and the Australian Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique (AUSTAT), in Sydney.
It is impossible to say how quickly success will come, if indeed it comes at all. Erring on the side of caution, you should think in terms of one year at least and probably two. Nor is it possible to predict whether you will eventually be able to do without glasses altogether. The worse your eyesight now, and the longer (in years) and the more persistently (each day) you have worn your glasses, the harder it is likely to be. Much of course depends on your own motivation and self discipline. The rate of progress also varies with the individual. Some people, even with quite bad eyesight, respond quickly, while others with only minor problems are not so lucky and must be more patient.
Broadly speaking, the first results come within a few hours or days of starting, but these are so elusive that they are liable to be discounted. Your eyes will probably feel more comfortable and you may find that you are able to distinguish slightly more of the test chart.
This slow, unremarkable progress may turn out to be the general pattern, but, for most people, there will sooner or later (usually within a couple of months) come more convincing evidence. While practising with the test material, or perhaps at some other time, you may experience a brief flash of vision which, if not actually perfect, will be so much better than your usual standard that you will hardly be able to believe your own eyes. This flash will be the first of many, gradually increasing in clarity, frequency, and duration as you proceed. At the same time the quality of your other, “non-flash” vision will be improving.
Your progress may be smoothly continuous, or it may run in steps. In the latter case, progress will be very slow or even absent for several weeks, whereupon there will be a sudden advance. The eyesight then remains more or less static for another period of weeks before the next advance.
In either case, the object of the method is to reach the point where your “non-flash” vision is not greatly inferior to that experienced during flashes. Flash vision is the best that you are currently capable of; non-flash vision is being impaired by the influences that the Bates method sets out to minimise. Since it is not possible to eliminate these influences altogether, you should not imagine that, at some future time, your eyesight will be continuously perfect. It may achieve a very high average standard indeed, but the performance of the eyesight, like that of any human function, is influenced by such variable factors as mood, fatigue, and general state of health.
The Bates method is suitable for everyone but the very young. In the first few years of life the skills of binocular and foveal vision must be learned and the appropriate pathways laid down in the brain. In order for that to happen the optical axes must be correctly aligned, and it is most important to have your child’s eyes examined no later than the age of three to make sure that all is well. If the necessary skills have not been acquired by the age of six or seven the fault can never be remedied, for by then it is too late to establish the pathways in the brain. Any glasses prescribed before the age of seven should be worn exactly as directed. After this time, however, a child can benefit from the method in just the same way as an adult.
Children are often very responsive to the Bates method, especially if it is presented in an entertaining way. They usually like to have the letters on the test chart pointed to for them to read; and the more experience of the method you have yourself the better, so that you can not only teach from a position of knowledge but also adapt the various techniques to the child’s needs and interests. Right from the very start parents should set a good example with their own visual habits, which, like all other aspects of behaviour, are closely copied by the child.
Many children’s games are excellent for the eyesight. “I Spy” is an example; so is the game in which parent and child take it in turns to draw, line by line, some object in the room or visible outdoors which the other has to guess. Car journeys can be enlivened with numberplate games — making words or phrases from the letters, say, or finding particular sequences or combinations. Children are naturally observant and love to exercise their powers of vision, and this should always be given full encouragement by adults.
When I started my own Bates training I had no guidance except Bates’s book, and knew no one who had achieved any success with the method. It would have been of enormous help to me to have seen a record of someone else’s progress and I am including an account of my own, not because it is of any intrinsic interest, but so that you may have something to compare with your own experience.
As a small boy I had excellent eyesight. By the age of 17, though, at a time when I was working hard to qualify for university entrance, and when my studies were in the charge of a master in whom I had but little confidence, I developed very mild myopia in both eyes and was given a pair of glasses. These I wore only when I needed especially sharp vision — for seeing the blackboard, while watching television or at the cinema, and while driving at night. On average I suppose I wore my glasses for an hour or two every day. I kept this same pair for nearly 12 years, during which period I had no eye test: my eyesight had deteriorated no further and was more than adequate for everyday purposes.
At the age of 28, however, during a difficult period in my career, there came an emotional crisis in the form of an acutely unhappy affair; shortly thereafter I began to notice that my old glasses were no longer adequate, and I visited an optician, who prescribed a pair that was very much stronger.
The new glasses were so uncomfortable that I returned to him and asked to have the prescription checked and the test repeated. He assured me that both had been correct and that I would have to learn to get used to the new glasses. I faithfully tried to do so and, although I could never wear them for longer than a couple of hours before developing a headache, I kept this pair for almost two years before going to another optician. This man, while not accepting that his colleague had prescribed glasses that were too strong, nonetheless gave me a pair which was a good deal weaker. The new pair, however, had correction for astigmatism as well as myopia, which the others had not. At that time my vision was about 12:20 in either eye (see Appendix A for the method of measuring visual acuity).
Four months later I happened to notice a copy of Better Eyesight Without Glasses in a bookstore. Despite an immediate scepticism, I picked it up out of curiosity and, since I was concerned about the state of my eyesight and was willing to try anything to improve it, I decided, against my better judgement, to buy the book.
My scepticism remained firmly intact as I read it, but, because the practices described seemed harmless enough and there was nothing to lose, I tried some of them out anyway.
On 10 January, the day I bought the book, I put my glasses aside. On 13 January I palmed for a total of 10 minutes. The next day I did the same, and found to my utter amazement and consternation that, after palming, the test chart had become momentarily and marginally easier to read. This was a scientific impossibility, sheer heresy!
Each day I palmed for a total of 10 or 15 minutes and practised shifting with the test chart provided. By 17 January my best vision had improved from 12:20 (60 per cent of normal) to 12:15 (80 per cent). I began to notice that my eyesight seemed clearer and more relaxed generally, both indoors and out. On 27 January I recorded an optimum acuity of 120 per cent, although this lasted only a moment. During the first week of February there came a more marked improvement, and I measured my acuity at 120 per cent several times. My refractive error seemed to be resolving itself into two distinct components. First there was simple myopia, the kind of short-sightedness I had developed at school, in which I was reluctant to look into the distance and everything there seemed uniformly blurred. Then, overlying the simple myopia, was myopic astigmatism, which affected only my distance vision and made vertical lines more blurred than horizontal ones. The first component, the simple myopia, seemed to be responding much more quickly than the astigmatism.
On 7 February I wrote in my notebook:
After palming twice [for 5 minutes at a stretch, and with the test chart 12 feet away] the whole of the bottom of the chart came out quite distinctly for the first time. The 10’ and 15’ lines were clear and solid black; I felt as if I could have read the 10’ line at 20’. This clarity lasted perhaps for 3 seconds — long enough to be appreciable … The third palming produced no such clear result.
My next note came on 27 February:
Since making the last entry I have been palming every day for 2, 3, or 4 × 5 minutes, then looking at the chart and sometimes shifting. There has been a consistent improvement in my eyesight; on sunny days in particular, outdoors, I can see such things as the pointing on distant brickwork, twigs high in a tree, etc. I am noticing features of the district which I never knew were there — unusual roof-tiles, leaded windows which I previously thought were of plain glass, and I am seeing and reading notices, signs and lettering of all kinds … Today, after palming, my eyes were 20:20, and probably slightly better, for an appreciable time. When they revert to the “pre-palming” state I can distinguish 12:15 without difficulty and a greater or lesser portion of 12:10 — representing vision of about 85–95%. This has been achieved since 13 January; on that day I measured my vision as 60%. Thus, taking the lowest figure now (85%), there has been a 40% improvement since then.
23 March. For the past four weeks I have been continuing to palm daily and use the test chart. My general vision has slowly improved, and, especially out-of-doors and when the sun shines, I see well at the distance. Four or five days ago the frequency of “clear” flashes when using the chart began to increase — once, then twice each session. About 20–21 March I began, besides palming and shifting, to use the technique described by Bates as “flashing”. Almost immediately the clear flashes began coming regularly, among a whole series of minor distortions and of the usual faintly blurred, astigmatic images. Yesterday I found that by blinking I could induce clear flashes — lasting only as long as my lids remained open (i.e., before the next blink) — almost at will. Last night I managed to do this, reading clearly the gilt lettering on the spine of my French dictionary while standing on the opposite side of the room, so well that I felt as if I had entered new territory — passed some important and crucial stage on the way to recovering my vision. This morning on rising I was able to “blink” again. The whole garden, the entire view from my window, was brought for a moment into perfect focus. The colours — of the grass, the distant daffodils, everything — were incredibly fresh, vibrant, rich, yet also wonderfully subtle and soft. Each detail of the wrought iron gate [40 metres (45 yards) away] became, in that instant, a model of clarity. No; not a model — the gate was itself, nothing more or less. I had seen it as if for the first time. The world had become a new and marvellous place. I closed my lids, reopened them, and the familiar, blurred, second-rate version returned.
At this date my eyesight at reading distance, which I had previously imagined to be good, also improved dramatically: I was able to perceive extremely fine detail, and my near point was at about 10 centimetres (4 inches). Plainly, 10 weeks or so of palming and shifting had finally brought about a sudden improvement in my scanning action. A few days later I measured my acuity during a clear flash as 12:6 — twice the normal standard.
So intrigued and excited was I by all this that I read whatever I could about the Bates method and the human visual system, in an effort to find out what was happening. I found that the teachers who had come after Dr Bates had refined his techniques and developed new ones, some of which I introduced to my own practice: domino drills, analytical observation, and various sorts of fusion. Palming, however, with and without visualisation, together with outdoor sunning and use of the test chart for shifting, swinging, and accommodation, remained essential to my daily sessions.
I had developed, soon after being given my strong pair of glasses, a chalazion (a kind of cyst) inside my lower left eyelid. An operation to remove it at the local eye clinic was a failure, as was another performed by a surgeon I went to see privately. The chalazion remained, and I was advised by the second optician that it would eventually need to be removed surgically.
Within two months of starting my Bates training, the chalazion had shrunk to nothing, leaving only the scar tissue from the operations and a redness inside the eyelid. The redness too subsequently went. Except for the very slight thickening caused by the scar tissue, the eyelid now appears perfectly normal.
My eyesight continued to improve fairly steadily. The clear flashes began coming with greater frequency, but, more importantly, my non-flash vision was improving also. A year after starting, my simple myopia had virtually disappeared. The myopic astigmatism was the main cause of imperfection. I could see horizontal objects clearly into the farthest distance, but still had a little trouble with vertical ones, except during clear flashes, when my vision was perfect. A year after that the gap between my flash and non-flash vision had closed still more, and it still continues to close. My non-flash vision now never seems to drop below about 85 per cent, and is usually considerably better than that. At the age of 35 my nearpoint remains at 10 centimetres (4 inches) and my ability to perceive detail is, if anything, increasing.
I feel that the worst damage was done to my vision by the overstrong glasses I was prescribed. Had it not been for those — had I learned about the Bates method when still wearing my first pair — I doubt that my recovery would have taken so long. On the other hand, I count myself fortunate indeed that I was not in the habit of wearing my glasses continuously, that I was able to do without them from the first day, that I was comparatively young when I started, and that my problem was so mild to begin with.
An individual’s Bates training is rather like a voyage of discovery. The final goal will probably be rather different from the one imagined at the outset. Before embarking, however, it helps to have some idea at least of what one is hoping to achieve. “Freedom from glasses” is the short answer, but what does that imply?
The practical disadvantages of glasses are many and various and need not be listed here. Of more concern are the effects, in the long term as well as the short, that glasses have on vision.
Each air-to-glass surface reduces the transmission of light and alters the perception of colour. Everything seems much harsher when viewed through glass or plastic. The image is further degraded by the difficulty of keeping the lenses clean.
Whether their lenses are concave or convex, glasses alter the apparent size of objects and seriously cut down the field of view, both by physical obstruction and by preventing free rotation of the eyes in the head, for one must look through the optical centres of the lenses in order to see clearly. This in turn leads to problems. Compared with the engineering of the eye, spectacle frames are of decidedly inferior construction. They are far too clumsy to allow any but an approximate alignment of the optical centres of the lenses with the optical axes; and, even if the best possible alignment is achieved when the glasses are first fitted, ordinary wear and tear soon knocks them out of true — to the detriment of the functioning of the eye.
Most of these effects can be mitigated by using contact lenses, but contact lenses share with glasses the most serious disadvantage of all: the perpetuation of refractive error.
If it is accepted that the eye does indeed change shape during accommodation, and that the eye has evolved to work in the absence of refractive error (that is, that the eye should shorten and lengthen only within fairly narrow limits), it follows that an eye with refractive error, especially an error which is being perpetuated by the use of glasses, is being subjected to continuous distortion.
The blood supply inside the eye and the drainage of excess intraocular fluid depend on the free operation of exceedingly fine vessels and channels. As much as the eye is distorted, these will tend to be restricted. If the supply of nourishment and the removal of waste are impeded, the health of the tissues is bound to decline and ageing processes such as hardening of the lens are likely to progress more rapidly. If the drainage of the eye is impeded, there may well be an increase in intraocular pressure, of just the kind associated with the condition known as chronic simple glaucoma.
Thus, if the Bates hypothesis is correct, glasses and contact lenses are not only a nuisance, but also represent a potential threat to the long-term health of the eye. For this reason the Bates method can be looked upon as a form of preventive medicine.
Beyond the purely practical benefits of going without glasses lie others, less obvious, but real enough all the same. The eyesight is one of our two most important senses. Through it we gather much of our knowledge of the world. To interpose an artificial barrier between our eyes and our environment represents a fundamental interference with the natural process of perception. If our perception is faulty, so too in equal measure will be our whole attitude to life, our behaviour, and our beliefs.
As the vision slowly improves, one finds one’s personality subtly changing — or rather, one finds some of its hidden potential being realised — in the direction of balance, reason, and independence. In the later stages of the Bates training such considerations as these can become even more rewarding than the unalloyed and life-enhancing pleasure of better eyesight.