Chapter 5

Overcoming Cross-Sightedness and Lazy Eye

Correcting Cross-Sightedness

Amblyopia and strabismus are both terms for cross-sightedness, and they have something in common. They both refer to a “lazy eye,” but with amblyopia the eyes do not look cross-sighted to an outside observer. With strabismus, however, the eyes actually look crossed. I have heard people sometimes joke that strabismus is when one eye is so beautiful that the other eye just wants to look at it all the time. It is okay to have a sense of humor. And this really is true: every part of you is beautiful, even your strabismus. With amblyopia and strabismus, the brain shuts off the information coming from one eye, but only in strabismus do the eyes look crossed to the outside observer. And the term “lazy eye” is actually a misnomer. In reality, the brain is just not using one of the eyes.

If you have cross-sightedness, you have two problems. The first is that your brain favors one eye over the other and works that eye while it suppresses the other eye from working at all or nearly as much as it needs to. This is why some people refer to cross-sighted people as having a “lazy eye.”

The other problem with strabismus, or amblyopia, is that doctors do not believe you can improve your condition in any way. Doctors mistakenly believe that, after the age of eight, cross-sighted people can no longer learn how to get their two eyes to work together. The debate over the plasticity or elasticity of the brain is ongoing, but old concepts are giving way to new understandings. More and more people understand that the brain can change if it’s being exercised properly.

As I mentioned earlier, the oldest person I’ve worked with so far was 101 years old. He experienced great changes from his exercises, and he was able to see better and to improve his brain and eye function significantly. I have also worked with several elderly patients, some in their eighties and nineties, and have witnessed positive changes in their visual systems. There is no doubt in my mind that no matter what age you are, you can change the function of your eyes; there is enough elasticity in your brain to back it up.

The issue isn’t age, but whether or not a person is practicing the correct exercises for his or her age. It may work easier for a five-year-old child to put on a patch for four or eight hours a day as he or she plays, in order to get used to the weaker eye working. Indeed, the brain has more plasticity when you’re five than when you’re seventy-five. But, there are good, age-appropriate exercises you can do at any age that can change your visual system completely.

In addition to the exercises in this section, it is essential to do some of the previously mentioned exercises as well, including the ten steps in chapter 2. Especially helpful for cross-sightedness is the exercise in the section on astigmatism called “Glow in the Dark.” As I mentioned in the introduction to chapter 4, it is important to refer back to that chapter for an extensive explanation of the exercises I recommend in this section. In addition to extensively describing the exercise steps, there is important information regarding the benefits of these recommended practices.

One other wonderful practice for you is to lie down twice a day, with a warm towel over your closed eyes. One of the recommendations that I normally make is to soak the towel in warm herbal tea. Do not use boiling water, just warm water. Within two or three minutes, the towel tends to cool off then you want to put a cold towel that has been placed wet in the freezer for two minutes or in the refrigerator for fifteen minutes and keep it over your closed eyes for a minute or two. You will find that the eyes are much more relaxed. That pleasant feeling can improve your circulation and increase your level of relaxation when you start to work for further improvement. The reason to do this with the towels is to alleviate the strain you have caused your eyes after doing the other exercises. Relaxation must be something you prioritize after doing all of them. Alleviate the strain with a wet towel.

Also, and this is especially vital for cross-sightedness, make sure you are practicing breathing exercises daily, and receiving face, neck, and back massages from a very good massage therapist at least once a month, but preferably much more often.

Exercise Program for Cross-Sightedness: At Least 90 Minutes a Day

Sunning: 10 minutes daily.

Palming: 12 minutes daily.

Long Swing: 10 minutes daily.

Glow in the Dark: 10 minutes daily.

Walking Backward: 5 minutes daily.

Blink Each Eye Independently: 5 minutes daily.

Extra Exercise for Cross-Sightedness: 30 minutes daily.

Note: I cannot stress enough how important it is to make these exercises a regular part of your daily routine. Whatever you are doing, you can also practice your eye exercises. While you are waiting for a bus, you can do your sunning. While you are riding the bus, you can look far into the distance. You can always be looking at details. At work, instead of taking cigarette or coffee breaks, take breaks to practice long swinging or palming. Anywhere there is a dark room, you can practice throwing a glow-in-the-dark ball around. Don’t just practice for one hour or two hours at home. Incorporate these exercises into every aspect of your life. That is the way to give yourself good vision for life.

For your extra daily exercise, you may choose from any of the following. The main point with cross-sightedness is to train the brain to use both eyes, not to favor one eye over the other. All of the following extra exercises do just that.

Extra Exercises for Cross-Sightedness: Rotate the Eyes; Look into the Darkness

Sit in a dark room, looking straight ahead. Sit up and don’t lie down for this exercise. Now move your eyes in a rotating motion in the dark. Within a few minutes, even a dark room seems to have some light. Move your eyes from area to area in the dark room. Look up, and move the eyes from side to side in the room; then look down, and move your eyes from side to side while the eyes are looking down. Now close one eye and slowly move the full range of rotation with the open eye: up, to the side, and down. Then switch which eye is closed, and repeat.

The next exercise you can do in the dark, or not. Palm, but not real palming; just do it for three breaths. Take your hand off of the amblyopic or strabismus eye while covering the stronger eye and look at your thumb, while moving it in a wide rotation. Even in the dark you can see at least the dark form of your thumb. Move your thumb in full rotating motion, in both directions, as you follow it. Now switch and do exactly the same with your other eye. We do this to stretch the external muscles that, to some extent, are responsible for the cross-sightedness.

Mirror Images

Next is a mirror exercise. If your left eye is the one that turns in, look in the mirror while covering the right eye. Normally, when you cover the right eye, the left eye should be totally straight because the two retinas and the two eyes are not competing; but sometimes it isn’t. In this case, tilt your head a bit to the right and look intensively at the left side, and let the left eye be straighter. Do it several times and palm for thirty seconds to relax your eyes.

Now look at the bridge of your nose. Do not look at the right eye; do not look at the left eye. Look at the bridge of your nose between both eyes, and you will see both eyes. If they tend to cross, this is exactly what your brain will correct automatically. For your brain, normally, is not as aware of the cross-sightedness as you may think. You may see it in pictures. You may even sense it from time to time. But when you face the mirror and you look in between your eyes, so your central vision is on the bridge of your nose and your peripheral vision is from both sides, you can exactly see the cross-sightedness. It’s amazing how much the brain tends to correct what appears to be wrong, and the cross-sightedness can decrease. If the eye tends to tremor a bit, the tremor will stop.

In addition to this exercise, as you stand in front of the mirror, move your hips in a rotating motion. Don’t stop looking in the mirror while your hips are moving. That helps to distract you, but it also helps you to get more circulation to your eyes. If the hips are loose, the ribs will be looser, and your breathing will get deeper. Your neck will get loose as well, and more blood will flow to your eyes.

Quite often, the shortening of one muscle, versus the lengthening of its opponent, has to do with poor blood flow to that muscle. So, remember to look in the mirror often while moving your hips in a rotating motion. If your vision is good, you can do this in any light. In fact, dim light may be the best light you can do it in, because it rests the eyes. If your vision is poor, you must have strong light that will show you your face in the mirror.

By now you know that anytime there is an indication of effort in doing this exercise or any other, you must palm. Palming is going to help you to reduce the stress and to renew the work. Also, you can look into the distance before doing the Mirror Exercise.

I found that my Mirror Exercise was one of the best exercises to reduce my strabismus. You see, I struggled with strabismus from a very young age. In fact, in my case, the eyes never communicated because I was blind around the time that most people have their eyes working together, which is between four and six months of age. Since I was blind during that time, my brain had never developed straight eyes. In 1992, at the age of thirty-eight, I received my passport picture, and my eyes were severely cross-sighted. Six months before the expiration of that passport, the Brazilian Consulate issued me a five-year visa stamped on that passport. New pictures were taken in 2002, when I was forty-eight, so I had two passports to compare. I took these passports to my school. Before going to the Brazilian Consulate to verify that I could use both passports, my good colleague and student looked at the passport pictures and said, “My goodness, look how your eyes have improved!” My cross-sightedness (strabismus) had decreased, and my eyes straightened by 75 percent in ten years. Since then, I laugh at the fact that I lost hair and grew older by ten years, and yet my eyes got straighter. At the age of fifty-seven, I had to take another picture before going to Brazil for the Brazilian visa. So, before taking the picture, I went to Mount Tamalpais—a beautiful mountain in Marin County in the San Francisco area—and looked at the whole Bay area, and looked into the distance, and it helped to straighten my eyes. It is a very dynamic process. At times my eyes cross a bit and at other times they straighten. Now, years later, my eyes are even straighter. And so, straightening your eyes is definitely possible in your forties and fifties, but it is also possible in your seventies and eighties. You just need to do the work. Now, in my sixties, my eyes only cross when they are fatigued, and are completely straight when they are relaxed.

Looking in a mirror was one of my main exercises. I used to stand in elevators if they had good light and, for a moment, look in a mirror at the bridge of my nose between both eyes. Often, however, people with cross-sightedness look far into the distance, and their cross-sightedness is decreased; sometimes it disappears. The reason is deep relaxation of the eyes.

Figure 5.1. Passport pictures taken ten years apart. My eyes had straightened by 75 percent.

The Melissa Exercise

The most wonderful exercise for cross-sightedness is the Melissa Exercise. Melissa was the director of my School for Self-Healing for ten years. These days, she is a great practitioner and teacher of Self-Healing in Texas, and was featured in the movie Happy. She was interviewed in this documentary because of her ability to be a very happy person despite having experienced great tragedy. She was in an accident in which her face, chest, and ribs were crushed by a Chevrolet Suburban. She had a great many surgeries to reconstruct her face. After one of these surgeries, her eye turned in and lost a lot of vision. She also saw double. She became interested in my work even before she had started extensive training and long individual sessions. The exercise of putting a small piece of paper on the bridge of her nose, then using a large piece of paper and waving to the side, was useful, but she saw double below and above it. So I simply devised a piece of paper that I would place on her nose so that it stretched from her forehead to her chin. I put masking tape on the top and bottom, and had her throw a ball from hand to hand above her head. She could see the ball with each eye, and her vision was not double for a while; this provided great relief for her visual system as well as her neck, for her neck hurt constantly due to the unevenness of her eyes.

Figure 5.2. As you do the Melissa Exercise, the brain will use both eyes independently.

This is a great exercise to help people with cross-sightedness. If you put a piece of paper between your eyes and throw a ball from side to side, at least one hundred times for about two minutes, the ball will disappear for a split second—because of its speed you will not notice it—before you see the ball again with the other eye. That will create a very nice difference in your eyes. The dominant eye will no longer control the eye that trails.

To a great extent, that’s the essence of all amblyopia and strabismus: a lazy eye. And a lazy eye is not lazy on its own. Often, it’s an eye that doesn’t see well. Sometimes, however, it’s an eye that sees very well, but the brain is not using it. The brain did not learn to use both eyes together, and so, throughout your life, one eye looked and the other one trailed. Until now, the brain did not learn to use both eyes together; it used only the strong or dominant eye. As you do this exercise, the brain will use both eyes independently.

With this division between the two eyes, each eye looks and sees the ball independently. The right eye will see the ball in the right hand; the left eye will see the ball in the left hand. There is a body-eye connection here that makes it very real for the body and the eyes. This is not a peripheral exercise. In fact, look at the ball. When you throw the ball from the right to the left or the left to the right, there is a moment when you do not see the ball as you throw it above your head. That’s good because, in a brief moment, you will see the ball and your hand will have to respond to what you see. Eye-hand coordination is very precious in this case because it makes it real to your brain that you are actually using the lazy eye, as well as the eye you always use. It’s not our purpose to use the lazy eye more than the eye that is always used. Our purpose in this exercise is to use both of them.

The use of both eyes may give you great relief. If it is hard for you to do a hundred repetitions, then start with ten, and palm after taking the paper off. If it’s easy, continue to do it three or four times a day. And, if that’s easy, then do it for ten minutes, three times a day for a month. You will feel much looser and your muscles will work much better. This happens for two reasons: one, because each eye works independently, which is a big, important first step; two, because each eye looks down and up to follow the ball.

Clap

Next, throw the ball from hand to hand above your head with the piece of paper, and clap your hands before you catch the ball. That will really distract you, and will also activate you in a way that will have your brain building new pathways to be able to see with the weaker eye.

So, for example, if your left eye is your weaker eye and you clap your hands before you catch the ball with one hand, it’s going to be easier for you to catch the ball on the right side than on the left side. With enough practice, however, it’s going to be easy to catch on both sides, and it’s going to start to be natural for you to see with your weaker eye.

Walk

Next is to walk as you throw the ball from hand to hand above your head while doing the Melissa Exercise. Walk forward while throwing the ball from hand to hand above your head. Walk backward. Walk sideways. It should become more and more challenging, but also more and more relaxing for your eyes.

Jump

Now try to jump when you throw the ball from hand to hand above your head. Jump on the ground or, if you are able to, jump on a trampoline, which is the best method. You will see the periphery moving in the background, while wearing the Melissa paper on your face. You’ll also be throwing the ball from hand to hand above your head and trying to catch it each time you bounce.

Combinations

Challenge yourself to combine all levels of the Melissa Exercise. Walk while throwing the ball from hand to hand above your head, and also clap your hands before you catch the ball. Walk backward and sideways while you combine clapping. Combine clapping with jumping or bouncing on the trampoline. Or, finally, the most difficult variation of the Melissa Exercise is to keep both eyes open, throw the ball up, and then close the eye that does not need to see the ball.

For example, with your two eyes open, throw the ball from the right hand to the left hand. As the ball reaches the area above your head, close your right eye, and with the left eye you will see the ball. Catch the ball with your left hand, and then open both eyes. Throw the ball above your head again and, as the ball reaches the area above your head where the two eyes cannot see, close your left eye and catch the ball with your right hand.

Do this for a while, then go back to the original Melissa Exercise. Perform the most basic variation, keeping your two eyes open, while throwing the ball above your head and catching it. See how much you have improved, and how simple this original method seems now that you have expanded your comfort zone and have adapted to your new challenges.

The Melissa Exercise is very important for cross-sightedness, and I recommend that you practice it often.

The “Melissinia” Exercise

Even for people who can see with two eyes, we recommend this variation of the Melissa Exercise because there needs to be a balance within each eye. The Melissinia Exercise was originally invented for people who see only with one eye; however, most people have weakness in one eye. What I recommend is to do it more with the eye that is weak but also to do it with the eye that is strong; in this way, you do it with both eyes. Whichever way you do it, it should be three times as much with the weaker eye. For example, you can do three minutes with the weak eye and 1 minute with the strong eye. It creates a new balance within each eye, which in turn helps to create a more balanced use within each eye.

Figure 5.3. Throw the ball from side to side above the head, just as you did in the Melissa Exercise.

So, first patch your strong eye, then put a very thin (one-eighth of an inch) but long enough strip of construction paper over your weaker eye, from your forehead to your cheekbone; its thinness will only cover a small part of your central vision. Now take a ball and throw it from hand to hand above your head. Next, take a strip of paper slightly thicker (one-quarter of an inch), and do the same. The third time, try it with a piece of paper slightly under three-eighths of an inch. And each time, throw the ball from side to side, just as you did in the Melissa Exercise, except this time using one eye. You can do the same patching in both eyes, but the recommended procedure is to do it much more on the weaker eye. Do it for five minutes at a time. The reason for this exercise is to allow more parts of the eye itself to be active. If one of your eyes sees well, more or less, and the other eye has areas of diminished sight—scotomas, which are blind spots—this would be a great exercise, providing your eye can see the ball; it is not relevant to old people. It should be done once a week at first, but eventually just once a month, to make sure each eye moves enough in a rotating motion.

The latest discovery of using the Melissa Exercise with a neurological patient makes me think that cross-sighted people could use the same approach from time to time. I still recommend the patch, but try also to use a Melissa, meaning the long strip of paper that you put on your nose earlier, but now put it over one eye. So while you’re covering the eye, you’re not patching it, but rather you’re obstructing the central vision, the central peripheral vision, and some of the peripheral vision. Then do exactly the same Melissa Exercise we were talking about—the three different strips—with a ball. What happens, especially when you work on the weak eye, is that the strong eye has some light penetrating it and the brain is not getting as stretched. This is because you don’t completely cover the strong eye and stop it from working, but you stop it from working around 80 to 90 percent, and so there is the realization in the brain that the strong eye is still doing something. Again, covering the weak eye with the Melissa and working with the Melissinia and the strong eye about a third or a quarter of the time that you work with the weak eye can also make a big difference.

Beads on a String

Your job in this exercise is to teach your brain what to focus on and what not to focus on. First, make a string of beads with five different colors of beads on it. At the School for Self-Healing, we have strings of beads you can use for this exercise. Tie one end of the string of beads to something in front of you, like the back of a chair or the railing of your patio. Now hold the string of beads in front of your eyes. Focus on the different colored beads. As you focus on each separate bead, every bead that you focus on must appear to be a single bead. Every bead that you don’t focus on must appear to be doubled.

Figure 5.4. Your job in this exercise is to teach your brain what to focus on and what not to focus on.

For example, if you have five beads, when you focus on the first bead, the second, third, fourth, and fifth beads should appear to be doubled. When you focus on the third, the first two and last two will look doubled, and the middle should look single. When you focus on the fifth bead, the first four will look doubled and the last one should look single.

What often happens to people with cross-sightedness is that, first of all, they may not see double with the beads that are in their periphery; they may see single beads all along. The best exercise to correct this is to look at one bead, let’s say the closest one to you, and close your eyes one at a time. When you close your eyes one at a time, you can see a shift, a move of the beads from side to side. While doing this, keep thinking and focusing on the bead in front of you, with each eye separately. That means you keep looking at that bead, but you will see all the beads shifting angles, because each eye sees the bead from a different angle, and even from a different distance. Only when both eyes are open can your brain measure the distances more precisely. After doing it forty times, open both eyes, and when you look at the first bead, the rest should appear to be doubled.

The bead you are focusing on is being viewed with your central vision. The ones you are not directly looking at are being viewed with your peripheral vision. The nervous system and the brain see one image with central vision and two separate images with peripheral vision. So, even if you look at an object straight in front of you, but you focus on another object in front of that object, then the object you focus on will appear to be single, and the one you don’t focus on will appear to be doubled. You want to become capable of distinguishing between the one you look at directly and the one that you don’t, so that the one you are looking at appears to be single and the one you aren’t looking at appears to be doubled.

Your goal is to be very relaxed when you look at one bead and see the rest doubled. Never strain to do that because that does not help anything. A way to not strain is to look into the distance either in the beginning or in the middle of the exercise, maybe wave your hands quickly to the side, and then return to the exercise. Another way is to move one of your hands: let’s say the left one holds the strings at the bridge of your nose and so the right would move from right to left and left to right, thus providing you with a sense of periphery. Remember, when your two eyes are looking together, normally there is no sense of strain; therefore, looking into the distance and noticing your periphery are good ways not to strain the eyes. Even if you practice this for a few seconds at a time, you will start to relax your eyes almost completely. Then when you feel that your eyes are completely relaxed, extend the time that you look at the beads. Sometimes, this period can extend up to five minutes; longer sessions—or marathon sessions, as we call them—can last as long as ten minutes if you don’t lose your patience. Remember, the purpose of this exercise is deep relaxation of the eyes through balanced use. If you strain in the process, stop and do another exercise.

Holding Double

If you were able to see double, the next point is to hold the double. You will find that most people who can produce a double image can hold it for thirty seconds, maybe even a whole minute, before they become fatigued. When this happens, of course, they should massage around their eyes, palm or sun, look into the distance, or do long swinging until the fatigue goes away. You can blink as you do the exercise and, hopefully, you won’t lose the double image.

Your goal is to be able to hold a double for ten slow breaths. You can move from one double to another. You can see the front bead as single and all the other four as doubles. You can move through the five beads, one after another, and hold each double for ten breaths. So you don’t have to stay at one point for the full ten breaths, but you should continuously see double for the duration.

As long as the strain is not too high, this is a great exercise for good coordination between the two eyes. Sometimes you will have only thirty seconds and sometimes you can have as much as seven or eight minutes in which to do it; either way, you should do it as many times as possible each day. Doing this once a day for ten breaths per bead will make a big difference. If your eyes do not get tired from seeing double, it is a very good indication of relaxation and a good use of the two eyes. On the other hand, if they get tired for any reason, you can look into the distance and then look back at the beads, or move your hand from side to side, from right to left and left to right, all the way in your periphery. When the two peripheries work, there could never be fatigue. Similarly, when the two centers work in unison and one does not suppress the other, or at least doesn’t suppress it much, there can never be fatigue. These two things are parallel and work together, which is why you want to repeat this exercise many times. In fact, it’s sometimes beneficial to do a marathon session for a longer time that you breathe. For example, up to seven or eight minutes at a time of looking at doubles will make a huge difference.

Two-Color Exercise (Beak Glasses)

This exercise uses a tool we sometimes refer to in fun as “beak glasses.” We call them beak glasses because they are glasses with two strips of paper attached to the front of them in such a way that they stick straight out between the lenses. When you put them on, it looks as if you were wearing a two-colored beak.

Figure 5.5. “Beak glasses.” When the ball is on the right side, it emphasizes to the right eye that the right color exists.

The pieces of paper should be two different colors; for example, one could be orange and the other could be yellow. Put on the glasses and look straight ahead into the distance. Now toss a tennis ball from one hand to the other and try to catch the ball. Toss the ball several times.

Since the paper is attached to the front of the glasses, you are guaranteed to be using both of your eyes for this exercise. When the ball is on the left side of your body, it emphasizes to the left eye that the left color exists. When the ball is on the right side, it emphasizes to the right eye that the right color exists. As the ball travels from side to side above the head, the peripheral vision of both eyes is being worked individually; the central vision is still looking straight ahead into the distance. Remember that the central vision sees a mostly still picture, while the peripheral vision sees movement.

One interesting thing about this exercise is to notice which color each eye seems to be seeing. If your eyes are completely at ease and completely functional, when you look into the distance you will see the two colors, each one of them on the opposite side. And this will indicate that they work well together.

If one of these colors disappears, you can also quickly wave your hand close to your eye; not so close that it’s dangerous, but right in front of the eye. Often, that color will reappear. Seeing two colors with both eyes, especially for someone who has a hard time using both eyes together, could be a very relaxing experience at certain times.

Besides the glasses with the two colors, we also have a little stick with two colors, which we put on the bridge of the nose as we look into the distance. We don’t look at the two colors, we see them. So we look into the distance while seeing those two colors at the same time, which, like seeing double at the same time, indicates deep relaxation and that the two eyes are working together. Moreover, being able to rest your eyes at a distance and from near, and to move relatively quickly—less than thirty seconds, from near to far—also indicates eye relaxation. Remember, amblyopia and strabismus are conditions for which relaxation rarely exists, and achieving it could help your life in many ways. And this also goes for people without amblyopia and strabismus. We all need these exercises because we make our eyes rigid throughout our life, and we need to reduce that rigidity all we can.

Figure 5.6. A little stick with two colors, which we put on the bridge of the nose as we look into the distance.

Red and Green Glasses

Each color has different wavelengths. For example, the color red has long wavelengths and the color green has short wavelengths. If you look through a pair of glasses with one green lens and one red lens, quite often the colors of the objects you look at seem to be different through the red lens than through the green. Some colors you can see more easily with the red, and others you can see more easily with the green.

Figure 5.7. Working with red and green glasses made it possible for me to have partial three-dimensional vision.

When you look at the world with both eyes through the red-and-green filter, you will see quite a few amazing things. For example, if you walk in a park or in your garden with red-and-green glasses on, you’re going to find that you see a pinkish view of flowers through the red lens but, at the same time, you see a greenish view of leaves much clearer with your green lens. So, from time to time, close one eye and look at colors with the open eye; then close that eye and open the other, and see what colors you notice. Do the pink flower petals disappear when you close the eye looking through the red lens? Do the green leaves disappear when you look only through the red lens? Now look around. Take a few minutes to enjoy three-dimensional vision with both eyes open.

You’ll find, however, that if you close the eye looking through the red lens and you look at the pink or reddish flower only through the green lens, it will not look red or pink to you; rather, it will look dark, which is far from its true color. If you close the eye looking through the green lens and look only through the red, the green leaves would look dark.

In fact, this is exactly how you start to develop bilateral vision and three-dimensional vision. You emphasize to yourself the difference between the two eyes. Your two eyes are independent. No one eye sees what the other one sees; therefore, no one eye controls the other. Instead, each is independent of the other, and the brain fuses the image equally from both of them.

In the past, I had no three-dimensional vision. I didn’t know if an object was close to me or far away from me. But as I improved my acuity and could see large freeway signs, I wanted to be able to drive. Working with red and green glasses made it possible for me to have partial three-dimensional vision, and to eventually see well enough to start learning to drive and to know where I was on the road.

In your case, you may not have such a dramatic change, but having better three-dimensional vision and having a distinction between the two eyes is a great way to reduce your cross-sightedness.

Object and Line

The first step is to make a division between the two eyes completely and to unite them in the brain. Wearing the red-and-green glasses, you’ll see light with one eye and an object with the other eye. Or some people will not see light or an object. The aim of this exercise is to get both eyes working together.

For this exercise you will need a red pen or pencil, a piece of white paper, and a small flashlight with a red bulb. If you don’t have a red bulb, put some red duct tape or two layers of red cellophane paper glued with masking tape over the flashlight lens to simulate a red filter.

Draw a red circle on the white sheet of paper. Hold the paper out in front of you with one hand, so that the paper is parallel to the ground, about a foot in front of your eyes. Turn the flashlight on and put it underneath the paper, making sure the flashlight is touching the paper and shining the light up through it. Look down at the circle while shining the light up through the paper. You should see the circle and also the light.

It’s very important to put the red over your weaker eye because the brain is much more attracted to light than to form. The circle or lines—vertical, horizontal—would all be forms, and the brain is much more interested in light. Similarly, if you are walking down the street and you see a light in a shop, you would find that your eyes are much more attracted to that shop than to a shop without one.

Now close your red-filtered eye. The eye that looks through the green filter should see the circle but not the light, because the red light cannot penetrate through the green lens. On the other hand, the green filter does not stop you from seeing the red circle.

Conversely, if you close the eye that looks through the green, and only look through the red lens, you will see the light, but you will not see the red circle. The eye with the green filter will only see the object, and the eye with the red filter will only see the light. This kind of division is very important because you see a separate image from the eye with the red filter and the eye with the green filter simultaneously.

Now move the light, which is underneath the page, around the perimeter of the circle, like you are tracing around its edge. If your eyes can track together, you will be able to keep the light on the edge of the circle. If your eyes cannot track together, though you may think that the light is on the edge of the circle, it will actually be elsewhere. In my case, when I thought that the light was on the circle, the light was actually outside or inside the circle. So, a way for you to know what’s happening with your light is to suddenly close the eye with the green filter; when you do this, you will see exactly where the light is. When you open the eye with the green filter, you will see if the light remains exactly where it was when that eye was closed, or if it moved. Even if it moved, don’t correct it. Close your eyes and open them, ten to twenty times, until both eyes see the light exactly where it really is. Once it stays in the same place, it means that your eyes are tracking. It doesn’t matter if it’s in the circle or out; what matters is that the two eyes are looking together at the same spot.

You may find yourself in the middle of this exercise needing to palm. Palm for as long as you need to help you relax enough to return to the exercise.

Figure 5.8. Turn the red flashlight on and put it underneath the paper, touching the paper, shining the light up through it.

Now change the glasses. That is, if you first put the red lens on the left eye and the green on the right eye, now put the green on the left eye and the red on the right eye; then repeat the exercise.

One of the ways for you to know whether the light is in the circle is to ask someone else to let you know, because people who have strabismus or amblyopia do not often know on their own where the light is. They may think it’s in the circle but it may be out of it. Another way is to raise your head up and look underneath the frame of the glasses, and then you’ll know if the light is in the circle.

What I found is that many people are very upset when the light was not where they thought it was, and that is the biggest hurdle we have to work with—because now you have a good indicator that shows you if your eyes are working together. And if they don’t work together, this is a good way for you to start getting them to work together. You may need to do many other exercises, like the Melissa Exercise—putting a long piece of paper between the eyes—and the relaxation exercises that we have mentioned for that to finally work. So it is worth your while to allow yourself not to do it right and to simply correct where you are. Doing these exercises is a way of slowly knowing where the light is in relation to the circle, since some kinds of vision make it difficult to distinguish its location.

Another exercise you can do with the red-and-green glasses is to have someone draw a line with the red pencil, and you try to trace the line while wearing the red filter over your strong eye. The reason for this is that through the red lens you will not be able to see red lines or red writing unless you are in the 2 percent of the population who can see a red line or red writing through a red lens. In that case, the other exercises are applicable to you, but not this one.

You want to put the red lens in front of the strong eye so the weaker eye will read the red print, but the stronger eye will not read the red line or print. The two eyes will see most other colors together, but the eye with the red filter won’t be able to see whatever is red, and that changes domination for a moment, which could be five to eight minutes. The weaker eye will take a front seat and, as a result, the brain will learn to use it more in day-to-day activity.

The fact that you favor your weaker eye at this moment doesn’t mean it doesn’t stay weaker, but it means that you use it more now. And, it will participate more in the vision of both eyes. Just like it’s easier to stand on two legs rather than one, it’s easier to use both eyes rather than suppress one and use the other much more. So, the one that’s being suppressed becomes very weak, the one that’s always being worked becomes very tired, and in time, both become weak.

You can also draw a vertical line and a horizontal line; they can be pretty long, and you should be able follow them visually, with a red flashlight shining from underneath, touching the page with the flashlight. Some people can follow a horizontal line but not a vertical one; I had that problem. I could easily follow a horizontal line with both eyes tracing it, but I could not easily follow a vertical line. Some people find just the opposite. So whatever your challenge is, keep practicing. You may find that when the red lens is over your strong eye, you follow the line better, and when the red lens is over your weaker eye, you don’t follow it as well. Again, the reason for this is that the brain is more attracted to light than to form. But it’s important for you to do it from a neutral state. Don’t do it for very long, but just for about three to four minutes at a time, every other day, until it becomes easy for you to do it. In some cases that I have seen, the light disappears when you try to trace a circle or a line. All you need to do is close your strong eye and the light will reappear immediately. But when you open it, it may disappear again. So open and close you strong eye ten times. You can also knock on the paper with the flashlight, or put the paper on a red translucent clipboard and knock with the flashlight on the clipboard. Many people then start to see the light and the circle or the lines at the same time. Some people have such poor fusion of the eyes that they will see the location of the light in one place and the location of the circle or the lines in another place. So that is their starting point. As you exercise, you can also draw line forms that you find are useful or helpful. Whether or not you do it right or wrong at first, with time, when you trace better, you’ll find that your eyes are much straighter.

It’s also really good to sit in daylight or in the sun and read red print. See the red chart in the back of the book. It’s easy for you to create a red hardcopy of this book, for example, in different print sizes from your own computer and then to read it. One of our clients was bored with the red print that she had to read in English with the weaker eye. So we printed a French version of the story of The Little Prince in red because she was familiar with the French language—although it was a second language to her—which piqued her interest. The more you read with your weaker eye while the stronger eye is being blocked by the red color, the better it is.

It’s also useful for you to draw and to write letters with a red pencil, and then to write them from the opposite end. So, for example, you write from left to right through a whole page (names of people and animals that you like or anything else), and then you write from bottom to top over the same letters that you have written from right to left. If you speak Hebrew, however, which is written right to left, you would do the opposite. Regardless, it’s very important that you sit in strong light, which makes a big difference. In our school we have a balcony, and we take a folding table outside so that people can see the red line through the green lens with the help of the bright light of the outdoors. Again, it’s also important that you know you’re not straining or stressing. From time to time, you can even lie down and put a cold towel over your eyes to make sure there is no inflammation or stress in them.

Card Game

This is a fun and effective way to help balance the two eyes because you don’t even realize that you’re doing an exercise, and you create body-eye coordination as well. Let’s say the left eye is weaker; it will now have to work no less than the right eye, which has no control over it in this situation.

You start off with a special deck of cards (two decks, if you have a few people playing) specifically designed to work with the red and green glasses. The deck is made up of two differently colored cards: half the deck is red with black letters, and the other half is white with red letters. You can only see the white cards with the green lens and the red cards with the red lens. As this game proceeds, you and others wear the glasses while you each simultaneously throw down a card from your own portion of the deck. When you identify certain numbers, you will react with a corresponding physical response. For instance, when you see a card with a nine on it, you clap your hands; when you see a seven, you tap your forehead; when you see an ace, you stamp on the floor and bang on the table, and so on. The responses can match whatever four cards you would like them to match, and can be anything you are able to dream up. The point is to do something with your body in response to the numbers you have designated in the cards. The person who reacts the quickest when one of these cards is thrown is the one who gets to keep the pile. When it appears that about half of the cards have been thrown, reverse your glasses so that each eye has a chance to see through both the red filter and the green filter.

Figure 5.9. Playing a variation of the card game War.

It’s better, and more fun, to have two or three people playing this game along with you. Extra pairs of glasses are inexpensive and can be purchased at the School for Self-Healing, as can the cards themselves. As enjoyable as it is, this game has had significant results: there has been a temporary improvement in the vision of 50 percent of the people who have played it.

Nystagmus

Nystagmus is an involuntary flutter, a fast uncontrollable movement of the eyes that may happen in many different ways: up and down (vertical nystagmus), from side to side (horizontal nystagmus), or in rotation (rotary or torsional nystagmus). Depending on the cause, these movements may be in both eyes or in just one eye, but may result in limited vision due to the inability to focus on what one is looking at. Nystagmus may be caused by congenital disorders (including albinism—lack of pigment—and cataracts that were not operated on in time), acquired or central nervous system disorders, toxicity, pharmaceutical drugs, alcohol, or rotational movement.

There are ways to overcome nystagmus regardless of whether it is the result of cataract surgery, because of albinism, or for any other reason. You can do lots of palming every day, lie in dark rooms often, and do all ten steps of the vision exercises. After about two months of doing the ten steps, look in the mirror at the bridge of your nose between your two eyes, as described in the section on cross-sightedness. You will be able to see both eyes in your peripheral vision and you will sense the tremor in them. They will slow down simply because you see them in the mirror. When the brain senses a deficit, it tends to correct it automatically. It’s a wonderful thing to experience. I’ve done it many times and it slowed down my nystagmus considerably: it used to be three hundred movements per minute, and now it’s between zero and twelve.

When you look between the eyes, it’s the best indicator that the eyes are moving. In response, the brain will immediately slow down the movement of the eyes. When you look between the two eyes, they are in the periphery, so your focus must be on the bridge of your nose or a small point on the bridge of your nose if your vision is acute. My vision was very poor, so looking between the eyes at the bridge of my nose from very near made that area seem big for me. Rarely did I find a patient who had nystagmus and still had perfect vision. Most of the time, nystagmus is an indication of compromised vision, or it is the cause of compromised vision, and at times leads to low vision and legal blindness. But I recently met a person whose vision was very sharp and, unusually, was not decreased by the nystagmus. He looked at a small area within the bridge of his nose from a much longer distance than me—more than two feet—and easily stopped his nystagmus by looking there, as the two eyes were in the periphery and the brain was able to notice both. If your vision is good, you can look in a mirror in strong or dim light, from two or three feet, without any problem. If your vision is poor, then look in the mirror from only an inch or less, in only strong light.

The result of looking between the two eyes is productive; however, if you look at one eye, you will not see the flutter because the eye will move with the nystagmus. As you do the aforementioned exercise, you can also move your hips in a rotating motion without moving your head, and this can help to gradually reduce the flutter. Slowing down nystagmus happens with focusing as well, so all the exercises that involve shifting can make a very big difference. The red-and-green-glass exercises can also help to reduce nystagmus. Many people with nystagmus might experience an increase when they are upset or angry or anxious. Palming is helpful, as is sitting or lying in the dark and touching your eyelids ever so gently to feel the flutter with your fingertips; this feeling can slow down the nystagmus. When you touch your eyelids, breathe deeply and count eight slow breaths as you do it. And then palm. When you have finished palming, touch your eyelids again to see if the movement has calmed down. If you follow these recommendations thoroughly, you will greatly decrease your nystagmus in anywhere from a few months to a few years, depending on conditions.

One of the best exercises I did for nystagmus was standing in front of a mirror, where I would put my nose almost on the mirror and move my hips in a rotating motion in both directions. It made a huge difference. I would look between the reflection of my eyes because, if I looked at any one eye, the movement of the eye would not be seen by me. Looking between my eyes helped me see the movement in the periphery and slowed down the nystagmus. I moved my hips in a rotating motion and had a pelvic tilt, to make it like a J shape and then like an S shape, back and forth, mainly forward and then a little bit backward. This has made a very big difference in terms of loosening my whole body and my posture. As more blood circulated to my head, because my body was loosened, my eyes quieted down. We all know that the eyes move quicker in people with nystagmus when they get very upset. Also, light can disturb them. And that’s why sunning is such a good exercise. After sunning for a long time, you may temporarily have a bit more nystagmus, but if you do it enough and, of course, if you couple it with palming, you will find that light sensitivity decreases and your nystagmus slows down. Also, I found that long palming sessions—and those can only be done if your whole body is loose and if you don’t have a close-angle glaucoma on top of it—can reduce nystagmus over the course of years. If your vision was not compromised, to slow down or erase nystagmus is a good move for your entire central nervous system. If your vision is compromised, as in 95 percent of all nystagmus cases, these exercises are your path to success, along with all the other exercises. Follow the ten steps in chapter 2 and emphasize palming.

Be optimistic. I remember that when I took my dark glasses out, people thought I was on drugs because my eyes would move involuntarily. But there are moments when people tell me that my eyes are so quiet they don’t even move.