Accommodation: Capability of correctly adjusting images at any distance.
Accommotrac Vision Trainer: Patented system of visual reeducation by machine, which sets up a visual/sound biofeedback system, to let you get used to the correct adjustments at different distances.
Active, static stretching: Technique used in the Power Vision System; consists of contracting the agonist muscle and extending/stretching out the antagonistic one (referring to one single portion and one ocular movement). It is aimed at training the eyes at the maximum range of their movement, thus overcoming possible blocks in some parts of visual field (these parts show negative imbalance of muscular mass in the extrinsic ocular muscles).
Biofeedback: Technique that allows you to train so as to become able to control physiological functions that aren’t normally subject to voluntary control. It uses visual and/or sound feedback.
Blur-driven accommodation: Physiological response used in the Power Vision System to stimulate adjustment and gradually eliminate refractive error. It’s used in opposite ways in myopia and hyperopia.
Central fixation: Capability of a normal/emmetropic eye to make a focused image fall on the central part of central fovea.
Central fovea: The part of the retina where the image must fall so as to have perfect adjustment.
Ciliary muscle: A smooth-type muscle not subject to voluntary control. It is one of the causes of refractive errors.
Circular respiration: Particularly efficacious respiration for maintaining the body in homeostasis and psychosomatic equilibrium. This method is used in Rebirthing, Vivation, and olotropic respiration in order to lead a person into unordinary states of consciousness and further to lead him to a transpersonal sphere.
“Correcting” lenses: Ordinarily prescribed lenses for full (and transient) correction of any visual error.
CRB movement: Specific movement that allows us to stimulate and induce the process of accommodation by muscular work.
Flashes of clear vision: The people who carry out visual reeducation know this phenomenon well: it’s characterized by moments when a myopic person is able to see very clearly, much better than usual.
Fogging: See Blur-driven accommodation.
Gradual undercorrection: Procedure by which you gradually become used to wearing undercorrected lenses (compared with the normal prescription) so as to maintain the benefits of visual training without creating the negative state of undercorrection.
Homeostasis: Capability of the living body to maintain its stability and inner order, ensuring control of change due to external changes. The word defines a control system in physiological systems.
Hyperopic defocus: If dioptric stimulus is gradually being shifted beyond optical infinity (possible only using optical systems), the accommodative response is gradually being increased, moving away from tonic accommodation.
Laser refractive surgery: Also known as LASIK; surgical method for resolving refractive errors. The techniques and methods are constantly being developed, but they are very invasive and act over physiological structures that, once trained, don’t maintain their original characteristics of physiological functioning. The two greatest problems are that refractive surgery doesn’t act on the real causes of refractive errors (acting in merely a “mechanical” way) nor do they recognize the possibilities of self-modifying and ocular adaptation, which is of course the purpose of visual training. The long-term effects of LASIK are still unknown.
Myopia: The most common refractive error; when viewing distantly, the image of the observed object falls in front of the retina (therefore it’s blurred).
Myopic defocus: Occurs when an accommodative stimulus overcomes someone’s personal accommodation width for 1–2 diopters, creating greater underaccommodation and consequently an unfocused image. Beyond this point, the accommodative response becomes lower and lower, and gradually moves toward tonic accommodation.
Norms of visual prevention: Particular behaviors that prevent us from developing refractive errors. People who have obtained clear, distinct sight again, through visual training, can maintain it using these norms.
Overaccommodation (or overaccommodative stress): The main reason for sight deteriorating, according to the theory that sees the environment and someone’s visual habits as the reasons for refractive error development. Caused by either excessive near-work or wearing “correcting” glasses even at a distance where one normally can focus well and correctly.
Power Vision System: Currently the most efficacious visual training system; characterized by exercises that act over functional refractive disorders directly, but not in an invasive way.
Retinal defocus: A specific stimulus by which the eye is led to changing its refractive state, over time. There are two kinds of retinal defocus: myopic defocus (focus in front of the retina) and hyperopic (focus behind the retina).
SAID Principle: Specific Adaptation to the Imposed Demand; the basic principle for the Power Vision System. According to this principle, the eyes adapt their structure and functioning depending on a specific stimuli.
Strabismus/Squint: Condition where the eyes point in different directions, causing double vision or visual suppression of one eye (not the dominant one).
Training lenses: Used in Power Vision System to strengthen the accommodative stimulus. They are opposite in sign to the ordinarily prescribed ones: positive lenses for myopes and negative lenses for hyperopes.
Visual axis’ convergence: Ocular capability of maintaining the exact and symmetric convergence, fixing at near-distant objects and in all the sections of visual field.
Visual training: Techniques aimed at restoring refractive errors naturally in a noninvasive way.