The central tenet of the Bates hypothesis is that refractive error is caused by strain: the logical antidote is to rest the eyes by closing them for a while. This is something that everyone does when tired or when trying to get over an unpleasant experience. If the experience is sufficiently disturbing, the natural tendency is to cover the eyes with the hands as well.
Studies of the electrical discharges of the cerebral cortex go some way towards explaining this. The electrical discharges take the form of rhythmic patterns, or brain waves, which are of several kinds. Beta waves are generated when the visual field is patterned (that is, when the eyes are open in the normal way), but when the visual field is uniform (when the eyes are closed) the brain waves change to the calmer alpha type.
The simple idea of resting the eyes by closing them is basic to the Bates method. Dr Bates coined for it the term “palming”. The eyes are gently closed and covered with the palms in such a way that all light is excluded and no pressure is applied to the eyeballs. The heels of the hands rest lightly on the cheekbones and the fingers on the forehead. Palming is usually done while seated. The elbows should be supported, either on a table in front of you or on a thick cushion or two in your lap.
While palming, you should feel entirely comfortable, safe and warm. Choose if you can a quiet time and a place where you are not likely to be disturbed. Become conscious of and do your best to relax any undue tension in the muscles of your face, neck, shoulders, and the rest of your body. Listen to the radio if you wish, or just allow the mind to wander, keeping it away from anything unpleasant. If stressful thoughts intrude, push them aside to be dealt with later.
Remain with the eyes shut for several minutes. The exact period that suits you best has to be found by trial and error; five minutes is about right, and four should be regarded as a minimum. It can be difficult to judge the passage of time, and some such device as a non-ticking cook’s timer, or one of those electronic watches or pocket calculators which incorporate an alarm, is very useful.
Palming like this should be repeated from three to five times in succession and forms the basis of your daily practice period. Once or twice in the period you might like, rather than merely allowing the mind to wander, to try some visualisation. This is a powerful technique which relies on the fact that all mental activity is accompanied by corresponding physical rehearsal. Thus if you imagine that you are speaking, or even if you frame your thoughts in terms of words rather than abstractions, there are minute but measurable movements of the vocal apparatus; if you imagine you are clenching and unclenching your fist, all the muscles involved undergo fractional changes of tension. When you see with your mind’s eye, the real eyes respond in a similar way, except that, as the eyes are even more intimately related to the mind than, say, the muscles of the arm, the changes are likely to be more pronounced. The advantage of mental seeing is that the mind’s eye has no refractive error and forms a model for the real eyes to emulate.
Visualisation is also valuable exercise for the memory and imagination. With your mind’s eye examine some outdoor scene, remembered, imagined, or a mixture of both, that gives you particular pleasure. Allow your gaze to take in details both in the distance and near to, changing the focus swiftly and easily as various objects attract your interest. If you are short-sighted, pay special attention to distant scenes, and if you are long-sighted or presbyopic, pay special attention to objects close at hand.
It might be wondered why an ordinary night’s sleep does not have the same effect as palming and visualisation. The eyes are closed, and during dreams there is plenty of imagery to work on. If the sleep is sound, the eyes are indeed rested and the eyesight often tends to be better on rising, but for many people sleep produces a degree of eyestrain. While dreaming the eyes perform rapid and random movements, there is no control of the memory or imagination, and very often the dreams themselves are in some measure disturbing. In all, dreaming would seem to be associated with a turmoil in the cortex which is the opposite of the calm, easy state in which the eyes work best. If you suffer from eyestrain during sleep, the Bates technique of “long swinging” (see p. 63), practised just before retiring, may be of value.
Palming can and should also be practised for shorter periods at any odd moment. Even a few seconds of palming will help to keep the eyes refreshed and the mind relaxed. In circumstances where palming with both hands would be embarrassing, palm each eye individually, or, if you feel that even this would draw unwelcome attention to yourself, merely shut the eyes as if dozing. When watching television, make use of commercial breaks for palming.
The quality of the blackness that you see when palming is a measure of the state of your vision. Although in his book Dr Bates suggests that the imagination should be actively used to intensify the blackness perceived, this is a practice which can give rise to strain, and so was not advocated by other teachers, or indeed by Bates himself in the latter part of his life. It was found that it was better to let uniformity and blackness of the visual field develop of themselves as a response to general improvement of the eyesight. Nonetheless, it is worth experimenting briefly with “seeing black” while palming, for in a few cases this technique can be very effective indeed. Take as the subject of your visualisation the blackest things you can think of — black fur, black velvet, Indian ink, and so on — and picture them in rapid succession. Or rapidly progress through the letters of the alphabet, imagining each one as being very black and distinct before moving on to the next. When you reach Z, compare the blackness of the letter with the blackness of your visual field. If the letter is blacker, let it merge with the background and the whole should become blacker. This process can be repeated again and again to produce a yet deeper black.
A variant of it engages the eyesight as well as the imagination, and strengthens the use of the memory. Study one of the letters from the large test chart (Chart A), at whatever distance you see it best. For some reason an angular letter such as an F or H seems most effective for this. Memorise every detail of its form: the width of the limbs, their relationship with one another, the shape and pattern of the background of white. Above all remember how black the letter is. Then cover the eyes and see how much of your memory you can retain. Do not struggle at this; do not try to concentrate. If the letter disappears at once, so be it. But, if you find it remains, go on to the next stage, which is to imagine the letter imprinted in the deepest possible black on the far side of a matt white cylinder. Let the cylinder slowly rotate on its long axis until the letter comes into view. Then forget the cylinder. Allow it to vanish, leaving just the letter against the background of your visual field. If the letter is blacker than the field, let it merge as before.
All these techniques, and indeed all the techniques of the Bates method, are effective in some cases but not in others. It is up to you to find out which ones suit you and which do not. A few people even have difficulty with simple palming and must achieve a degree of improvement with the other techniques before returning to it. At the start of your Bates training, give each technique a trial. If you find it unhelpful, go on to another, bearing in mind always that later on you might like to come back to it and try again.