Retinitis Pigmentosa Eye Exercise to Improve Eyesight

This week's blog was inspired by an email from one of our audience members who has Retinitis Pigmentosa and is working hard to improve his eyesight. However, he was unsure on some of the finer details in relation to the main eye exercise to help improve RP, which is the peripheral vision eye exercise.

Those of you who have not seen my blog The Eye Exercise That's Saving My Eyesight and do not know the peripheral vision eye exercise, it is when you individually place three different sized papers between the eyes and wave an object or your hands in the periphery.

This allows the central vision to rest and prevents it from dominating your vision. Your brain then starts picking up the information from the periphery rather than your central vision. Over time, this strengthens the brain's response to the periphery and the 120 million rods cells found in each eye.

It is common for people to want to know how to position their hands when performing the peripheral vision eye exercise and whether they should be seeing the hands or not. For those of you who do not know, Retinitis Pigmentosa is where the rods cells found in the periphery start to lose their strength and in return, the periphery becomes more difficult to access.


Somebody without RP can typically wave their hands next to their ears and still see them, whereas many people with Retinitis Pigmentosa could be waving their hands next to their eyes and not notice.

This is why the question of whether or not someone with RP should wave their hands where they can see them or not is such a good question.

The answer is... we want to work both places. In self healing, we always want to maintain and rest what is strong, but strengthen what is weak. This can be very difficult at times, especially as few of us like to work with what is weak within us. It can be very frustrating at times, but the benefits can be very rewarding.

Waving the hands where you can still see them is important as it maintains the strength of those cells and keeps them active. By working the areas that you cannot see, or as I like say not as clear as other areas, you are strengthening those weaker cells and helping to wake up those cells already dormant.

This may seem pointless at first, as you wave your hands in the periphery without noticing much, however, over time you will start to notice an increased awareness of movement in the periphery. You may also find waving colored paper in the periphery instead of just your hands may also help. In fact, anything that you may think would be easier for you to see can be used.

We recommend people using flashing lights in the dark so that the weaker cells can pick up the light more easily and be strengthened more from there. It would be an interesting self experiment to wave your hands in a particular area where you have difficulty seeing and then go to a dark room and flash a light in the same area to see if you notice it.

Some places you may not notice it, which is where you have more work to do, but other places that you otherwise thought did not exist are in fact still active and waiting to be used. You can find out more about flashing lights in the periphery in my blog post A Free Festival Eye Exercise Tool.

Do not forget that when we say 'exercise the periphery', we also mean both upper and lower periphery. This may mean playing with some of the sizes of the paper so that you can wave around the areas that are not seeing as well as others. As always, I would love to hear your feedback on this post or any of my posts.

If you want to read more on how my eyesight is improving and tips/advice on how you can improve your eyesight and find out more about eye exercises then head over to: www.envisionselfhealing.com

You can also keep up-to-date on the latest vision improvement information and my updates on: Twitter or Facebook and my Facebook Fan Page

You can also subscribe to my You Tube Channel You Tube Channel

Happy Healing :-)

Does Juicing Improve Eyesight?

To get a better understanding of why juicing is so good for our eyesight, we need to look at nutrition as a whole. After many years of studying nutrition, it is clear to me that our body needs ample amounts of natural vitamins and minerals to help sustain its high performance and functions.

This of course can be obtained from a good well balanced diet containing mainly of vegetables and fruits. If you think about the average western diet, our meals consist mainly of meats and carbohydrates, such as potatoes, and only a small portion of vegetables. So why is it so improtant to get plenty of vitamins and minerals? I like to use the analogy of building a house to help with this.

Image you were building a house and had a choice of poor quality material and high quality material. Clearly you would go for the high quality as you want the house to be strong, function well and remain so for as long as possible. Try to think of the body in the same way.

The better the material you are using to make up the body, by this I mean the cells, than the better the overall structure is going to be. This becomes even more important when you want to overcome a condition such as retinitis pigmentosa as you really do need the best materials available on the market.

Understanding this makes it easier to see why juicing would be a benefit because you are taking all those great materials and condensing them into a liquid and a sizable amount that you can consume. As much as I wish I could, it is difficult to eat the same amount of nutrients that you can get from the juice.
Think of it as a boost of natural nutrients which is then being sent around the body to help build, rejuvenate and heal the body. When it comes to juicing for the eyes we should focus on vitamin A.

This vitamin plays an essential role in how eyesight functions and is a key player in changing light into electrical signals that go to the brain to process the image. Caratene, which is what gives carrots their orange colour, is a great natural source of vitamin A. It can also be found in red, orange and yellow vegetables.

Lutein, which can be found in most dark green leafy vegetables, such as kale and spinach, is also essential for the eyes as they produce a yellow pigment in the eye and protects it from UV light.

The yellow area is called the macula, which is why some say getting enough lutein in your diet can help against macular degeneration.

Instead of spending hours searching for which foods are best for eyesight, you will find that in general, green leafy vegetables are best and contain most nutrients for healthy vision. Combine these with carrots, beets and other colorful vegetables for a strong boost of vitamin A and a more desirable taste.

If you want to read more on how my eyesight is improving and tips/advice on how you can improve your eyesight and find out more about eye exercises then head over to: www.envisionselfhealing.com

You can also keep up-to-date on the latest vision improvement information and my updates on: Twitter or Facebook and my Facebook Fan Page

You can also subscribe to my You Tube Channel You Tube Channel

Happy Healing :-)

Can Blood Flow Improve Eyesight?

It's something none of us can live without... but can having better blood flow help improve eyesight? To answer this question it helps to remember the blood’s basic functions, one of which is transporting oxygen and nutrients around the body. Without this function, each system, such as the digestive or muscular systems, could not function properly. For example, the nutrients could not be taken away form the digestive system to the rest of the body and the muscles could not receive the energy it needs to work. 

Every cell in our body needs oxygen and nutrients to survive and function properly. The more access our cells have to supplies, the better they can function. Think of a poor postal service as an example, if the deliveries don’t makes it on time and your lively hood relies on getting the mail, your business and life starts to suffer. This makes it easy to understand how having good blood flow is a great advantage to the eyes and can help us see clearer.

Those who want to improve their eyesight can see how better blood flow could also help improve their eyesight by helping the eye function to its best and get all the supplies it needs for good vision. So why do we have poor blood flow? I have identified three main areas that I feel contribute to this in today's society.

The first is exercise. More and more of us are experiencing sedentary lifestyles as office work replaces manual labor. Also, we are becoming less active in our leisure time, like watching TV and surfing the Internet, instead of going for walks. Another cause of poor blood flow can be diet. Eating food high in saturated fat contributes to the arteries clogging and restricting the amount of blood that can pass through.

Reducing foods high in fat, checking the labels on foods and understanding the nutrition value are all steps in the right direction when it comes to reducing fat in or diets.

Finally muscle tension is a big contributor to poor blood flow. If our muscles are tight, the amount of blood that can pass through the body freely is restricted. Furthermore, if the muscles are tight with a lot of tension, they are also receiving less blood.

By loosening the muscles, we allow better blood flow throughout the whole body, but most importantly, we can target places to loosen. For example, we can loosen the muscles in the neck to allow more blood flow to the eyes.

Clearly the benefits of good blood flow are not restricted to the eye. However, when looking at the fundamental jobs that good blood flow provides, we can see that eyesight can be improved by focusing on this essential function.

Please use the comment box below or email me at will@envisionselfhealing.com to let me know how you get on with the eye exercises and if you find any interesting new ways of doing them :-)

If you want to read more on how my eyesight is improving and tips/advice on how you can improve your eyesight and find out more about eye exercises then head over to: www.envisionselfhealing.com

You can also keep up-to-date on the latest vision improvement information and my updates on: Twitter or Facebook and my Facebook Fan Page
You can also subscribe to my You Tube Channel You Tube Channel
Happy Healing :-)

Does Stress and Anxiety Make Eyesight Worse?

  

By now we all know that stress and anxiety have a negative effect on our bodies and mind, but what about our vision? I divided the effects into physical and psychological effects on our eyesight. The first physical effect is the reduction in blinking when we are stressed.

The average person should blink around 20 times a minute. However, the modern day person blinks half of this and, when in a stressful situation or working at the computer, this rate halves again. Constant focus all day on documents or on the computer creates an accumulated stress on the eyes.

I am sure all of you have experienced after a long days work that your eyesight is worse, otherwise known as eyestrain. You experience such symptoms as dry, itchy eyes and a sense of visual fatigue or tiredness. Unfortunately, instead of resting our eyes and working to improve our eyesight naturally, we tend to get glasses or increase our prescription.

The other side of visual stress is psychological stress. Again I am sure we have all noticed that in certain times of emotional stress, our eyesight is worse. This was first noticed by Dr William Bates in the 1800's when using a retinoscope to evaluate clients eyes. He found that their sight was poorer when they were emotionally stressed or fatigued.

Although similar to the emotional stress, when I refer to anxiety, I mean when a person feels under pressure when having poor eyesight. Typically when someone has an eye condition, they are aware of it and, more often than not, have negative feelings about it.

When placed in a environmentally stressful situation, such as a busy shopping centre, anxiety levels can rise and make the individual's eyesight worse. Time and time again I hear from my clients that their eyesight reduces significantly when this happens and they have to leave the area they are in.

This creates further negative emotions about their vision and the next time they are in a stressful environment, the previous anxiety combines with the current and then the worsening of vision is more so. It takes some time and patience to accept that the place you are in is visually stressful.

Taking some time to tune into your surroundings and not allow the negative emotions to arise can prevent the deterioration from taking place and help motivate you to do your eye exercise, instead of shying away out of fear, frustration and/or embarrassment.

Keeping a vision journal is a great way to map your physical and psychological stress and anxiety, allowing you to follow any negative patterns that may be emerging. Please use the comment box below or email me at will@envisionselfhealing.com to let me know how you get on with the eye exercises and if you find any interesting new ways of doing them :-)

If you want to read more on how my eyesight is improving and tips/advice on how you can improve your eyesight and find out more about eye exercises then head over to: www.envisionselfhealing.com

You can also keep up-to-date on the latest vision improvement information and my updates on: Twitter or Facebook and my Facebook Fan Page

You can also subscribe to my You Tube Channel You Tube Channel
Happy Healing :-)

Convergence Eye Exercise That Improve Eyesight are Everywhere!

In today’s blog I will be showing you how convergence eye exercises can be found everywhere. A great example is holding up your two index fingers and crossing your eyes. You will see that the two images converge into one another, creating a third clearer image. When doing this, you are using one out of six extra ocular muscles known as the Medialis Rectus. This muscle, which is closest to your nose, turns your eyeball inwards. allowing you to focus on closer images.



Unfortunately for a lot of us, we spend most of our time looking from near, meaning these eye muscles are working for a large portion of the day. Over time, the muscles become weak and stiff making it hard to to focus and track a single object

As long as you have two simple objects, you can converge the eyes so that the two objects merge into a single identical image. For example, you can hold two pens side by side. Because the two images are the same and are next to one another, crossing your eyes allows the two images to merge into a third.

The same principle can be said for any two house hold objects, like tennis balls, money or even photographs. One benefit of using photographs is that they are less boring and can be changed frequently. You can also move from detail to detail on the picture just like the one shown below.
When converging the two images into one, the aim is to hold it for around 5-10minutes. In the mean time, you can shift (move the focus of the eye) from a particular detail in the photo to another. For example, you can shift from Richard’s left eye to right eye, then his chin and repeat the same on my face. By placing several images side by side on a sheet of paper, you can move between the different images. A great example of this can be found in the Presbyopia chart located in our resources section.

You can see it takes some skill and practice before you become an expert at this and it will be harder for some than others, but it is important to take it easy at first. Only try a few minutes at a time and then build up to the longer periods of holding a single object. You will also want to try our Eye Muscle Exercises as a way of preventing strain and helping keep balance of muscular eye strength. Please use the comment box below or email me at will@envisionselfhealing.com to let me know how you get on with the eye exercises and if you find any interesting new ways of doing them :-)

If you want to read more on how my eyesight is improving and tips/advice on how you can improve your eyesight and find out more about eye exercises then head over to: www.envisionselfhealing.com

You can also keep up-to-date on the latest vision improvement information and my updates on: Twitter or Facebook and my Facebook Fan Page

You can also subscribe to my You Tube Channel You Tube Channel

Happy Healing :-)

How to Improve Your Eyesight with a FREE Ebook

In this blog I will be telling you where to find a free ebook that will help improve your eyesight. The book is called A Modern Day Guide to Improving Eyesight and is based on the basic fundamentals of vision improvement.

Both Richard and I worked hard to develop a book that bridges the gap between a newbie to vision improvement and those who have been following eye exercise programs for some time. We felt it was essential for people to understand the foundations of natural vision improvement so that they could advance their self healing program that much further.

We also felt that it was important to have an understanding of the human eye, how the eye works and how the eye exercises help improve eyesight. This would help the reader become more likely to continue with their self healing practice, as it would intellectually make sense, as opposed to performing the eye exercise and hoping for the best. We divided the book into 10 easy to understand sections. Each section explains a particular part of the human anatomy.

We started from the front of the eye and moved towards the back so that it would be easier to follow and also to allow individuals to learn about how the eye works in a logical and easy to understand way. We explain how Caveman Dave, who is one of our main characters, would have been using his eyes when hunting and gathering. The book then uses another character, which I am sure a lot of us identify ourselves with, named Modern Day Mike.

Mike is a type of person who spends many hours in front of the computer, giving little thought to eyestrain and his eyesight. The book then shows you how it is possible for Caveman Dave’s positive visual habits and Modern Day Mike’s workload to co-inside and function together. The importance of this is that modern technology, such as computers and their usage, is not slowing down and we’re becoming more and more dependent on it.

Therefore, we need to make adaptations in our lives in order for our eye structure, which was designed for the great outdoors, and our modern day life to co-exist. You can find the ebook A Modern Day Guide to Improving Eyesight on our website www.envisionselfhealing.com.

Download the book and away you go! As always, we appreciate any feedback that our audience has to offer and any questions you may have on the topics raised. You can contact us at envisionselfhealing@gmail.com

If you want to read more on how my eyesight is improving and tips/advice on how you can improve your eyesight and find out more about eye exercises then head over to: www.envisionselfhealing.com

You can also keep up-to-date on the latest vision improvement information and my updates on: Twitter or Facebook and my Facebook Fan Page

You can also subscribe to my You Tube Channel You Tube Channel

Happy Healing :-)

Free Festive Eye Exercise Tool to Improve Eyesight

It’s that time of year when all the festive decorations get hidden away in the attic or cupboard for another year. However, this year there is one decoration you might want to keep out. Those of you who have been following my other blog posts have probably already guessed that it’s something to do with activating and improving peripheral vision whilst resting the central vision. You would be right in thinking so, and the decoration I am talking about are flashing lights.

Flashing lights in the periphery, whilst having the central vision blocked, works the rod cells, which are responsible for detecting movement and dim light. In our modern day life, we tend to overuse our central vision by using computers, reading books, watching TV etc. This means that we under-use our peripheral vision. I wish we could change this by spending our days paying more attention to our periphery, but its highly unlikely given that most of our livelihoods depend on the ability to spend most of our time focusing with our central vision. Unfortunately, this is not what nature intended. In fact, it was our periphery that kept us alive all those years in the jungle, by sensing when danger was coming and make us better hunters.

Think of someone working at their desk in a busy office. If they were paying attention to their periphery, they would find it very hard to fully concentrate on what they were doing and probably get no work done. For a lot of us, our survival now depends on our ability to work one foot in front of us instead of being out in the wild. This creates an imbalance between the central and peripheral vision, creating strain and making us overwork one and under-use the other. What the lights do for us is work the underused peripheral vision and rest the overused central vision.

Now, I am not expecting you to turn off all the lights in the office and put on flashing festive lights. This would probably only serve to create more strain as you would probably find a notice on your desk suggesting you find somewhere else to work. However, you can, from time to time, try to tune into your surroundings when at work. Then, when you get the chance, you would exercise your periphery in the dark with the lights. Of course not everyone works in an office and will find that they have more opportunities to perform this eye exercise.

One thing that I like about using festively flashing lights for eye exercises is their versatility, meaning they can suit many different eye conditions. For example, someone who simply feels eyestrain from overusing their central vision and wants to rest, can just take 10 minutes out of their day, sit in a dark room, turn the flashing lights on and put them in their peripheral field, blocking their central vision with a piece of black construction paper.

However, someone with a specific condition such as Retinitis Pigmentosa, Optic Atrophy or Glaucoma, can manipulate where the lights go so that the flashing occurs where the individual finds it difficult to see. This helps stimulate the cells in that area, helping to wake the cells back up. Also, depending on what kind of flashing lights you have, you can change what speed the flash goes at and what pattern it moves to. For example, flashing one at a time or all together.

If you want to read more on how my eyesight is improving and tips/advice on how you can improve your eyesight and find out more about eye exercises then head over to: www.envisionselfhealing.com

You can also keep up-to-date on the latest vision improvement information and my updates on: Twitter or Facebook and my Facebook Fan Page

You can also subscribe to my You Tube Channel You Tube Channel

Happy Healing :-)

How Step by Step I am Improving My Vision in the Dark

I found four main areas that i have been working with to achieve this improvement. They are allowing the eyes to adjust to dark, doing eye exercises in the dark to strengthen the rod cells, strengthening the pupil and better confidence.

A saying that fits well here is “If you don’t use it, you lose it”, if you don’t use the rod cells in the dark making them fully active how can we expect them to fully function when we need them to? This is relevant for everyone not just those with eye conditions that make it difficult to see in the dark, they just experience it on a larger scale.

An example of how I am training my eyes to adapt to the dark is instead of turning on the lights immediately when I enter a room, say if I am looking for my keys, I leave the light off. Similarly as the sunsets I will wait as long as possible before turning on the lights. Another way is night walks, as my neighborhood is pretty safe I can go for walks when its dark allowing the rods to be as active as possible.

The second technique is strengthening the rods by performing eye exercises in the dark with flashing lights, which can be found on our website under peripheral vision exercises. Due to the rods responding to movement and dim light, by being in the dark and flashing lights in the periphery you are helping to activate those weaker cells even more.

Those with Retinitis Pigmentosa or anyone who has difficulty seeing in the dark I suggest doing this exercise before going on a night walk or anywhere that is dark to help activate the rods before going out.

The third reason for my improved adaption to the dark is that the muscles that make the pupils felt strengthened. This means that I could dilate the pupil better and take in more light in my surroundings. I could actually feel the fight between the direct light trying to constrict my pupils, but the dark environment trying to dilate them causing a fight between the two. When removing the bright light my pupils could relax and do its job trying to dilate enough to bring in more light. This was achieved by again spending time in the dark and doing eye exercises, allowing the pupil to fully dilate.

Doing the opposite to this by performing the sunning eye exercise to fully constrict the pupil also gives it a good workout. Knowing how I improved my night vision by spending more time in the dark helps explain my forth reason for improvement which is finding more confidence in a dark environment.

Although my visual system was physically adapting better, psychologically I felt more confident being the dark. Something that anyone with low light vision problems will tell you is one of the larger difficulties with the condition. This in itself was a great achievement and I look forward to developing on it more.

Overall, its easy to see that by not avoiding what is weak and in fact spending some time with it brings more strength. Although challenging and frustrating at times it can be very rewarding.

If you want to read more on how my eyesight is improving and tips/advice on how you can improve your eyesight and find out more about eye exercises then head over to: www.envisionselfhealing.com

You can also keep up-to-date on the latest vision improvement information and my updates on: Twitter or Facebook and my Facebook Fan Page

You can also subscribe to my You Tube Channel You Tube Channel 

Happy Healing :-)

Is the IPhone Good or Bad for Our Eyes?

The last two weeks I've been playing with my new iPhone and have spent some time to discover what it has to offer. In doing so I discovered some strains and pains that using the iPhone caused my eyes.. This got me thinking is the iPhone good or bad for eyesight? Was it how i was using the iPhone or was it the iPhone itself causing the strain? Maybe, just maybe it might help improve my eyesight and if not what eye exercises could i do to help!?

The main area that I felt the strain was the nasal side of both eyes. This meant i was over working and straining the medial rectus muscles. This muscle is one of six extraocular muscles, which are responsible for moving the eyeball in its full range.

I found that one of the best ways to overcome this was to hold the iphone a few more inches away from my eyes than i normally would to help use the eye muscles less. From time to time you can also look away from the screen then back again, just like in our ‘near and far’ eye exercise, which can be found in our library of exercises. Looking into the distance relax the muscles in the eye and the medial rectus muscles are not being used.. This also helps the cilliary muscles to relax allowing the lens to flatten.

The importance of allowing the lens to flatten is in our modern day lives we spend the majority of it looking close. this forces the focusing muscles (ciliary muscles) to be continuously contracted in order to keep the lens round so it can stay focused on what you are trying to see. This will eventually lead to a fatigued muscle and stiffen lens leading to such vision conditions as presbyopia and pseudo myopia.

I wondered if the small print on the screen could have also caused the eye strain. However, the new iPhone 4.S has a new retina screen display, making the image clearer as the pixels are closer together. This makes a difference because one reason why people say looking at a computer is bad for the eyesight is that the text is not straight lines, rather it is many small dots making the eye work harder to decipher the image.

Another cause of strain and one question clients always ask is whether using the iPhone or iPad in the dark is bad for eyesight? The answer to this is yes. One reason is because it cuts off the periphery. As with all electrical reading appliances or just reading, your focus is in the central vision and not what's going on around you. To avoid this try to have lights on in the room so you can still take in the periphery. An eye exercise which could help with this is waving the hands to the side as you read.

The last aspect of the new iPhone I wanted to look at was the new speech to text feature Siri. Potentially this could be a great way to use our eyes less and save our eye sight, because in theory you spend less time being focused on the screen and more time looking into the distance and in the periphery. However, at the moment I tend to spend more time editing the words Siri gets wrong than if I had written it myself. But I have no doubt by the time Iphone 5 comes out Siri will be very advantageous for those wanting to help save and improve their eyesight.

In summary with any reading appliance or even with a book, there can be a strain    on the eyes. It seemed to be more my habit of using the iPhone rather than the unit itself. In particular we need to be aware of where we're holding it and for how long. Take as many eye breaks as possible and try to perform some eye exercise when possible, such as near and far. In particular try to notice if any strain is occurring and if you do, STOP and perform a resting eye exercise such as palming or distance looking.

If you want to read more on how my eyesight is improving and tips/advice on how you can improve your eyesight and find out more about eye exercises then head over to: www.envisionselfhealing.com

You can also keep up-to-date on the latest vision improvement information and my updates on: Twitter or Facebook and my Facebook Fan Page

You can also subscribe to my You Tube Channel You Tube Channel

Happy healing! :-)

With any condition, physical or visual, you want to ask yourself the question, what is weak and what is strong? What is weak needs to be strengthened and what is strong needs to be rested. With my visual disease Retinitis Pigmentosa, it is the rod cells in my periphery which are weak and the cones in my central vision which are strong.

Therefore, to improve my eye sight I need to strengthen the rod cells and rest the cones as much as possible. Hopefully, this explanation will help you understand why this simple eye exercise of blocking the central vision and stimulating the periphery is so effective.

This eye exercise consists of using 3 different sized pieces of paper to block the central vision and progressively increase the amount of periphery you are using. Due to the nature of the rod cells responding to movement, by waving your hands to the side of your head with the central vision blocked, you're stimulating these cells and waking up the periphery.

Start with the small piece of paper waving the hands to the side of the head for about a minute, then change to the medium, then large always waving the hands. Once you get to the large piece of paper, STOP and palm for 5 deep breaths. Then start to decrease the size going from large to medium back down to small always waving your hands to the side of the head. Try to see if the small piece of paper now looks smaller than it did before. This means that the periphery has woken up that little bit more and you may also find your central vision or your eyes in general now feel a lot more rested.

Although I have many other eye exercises that I perform to help my vision, this one in particular was my starting block and have been doing it the longest. For those with stronger peripheral vision the results can be quicker, for myself the improvements are slow, but they are improvements nevertheless, as opposed to a continuous deterioration.  Give this exercise a try whether you have a peripheral condition or not its still great for the eyes!! If you want more detailed instructions for this exercise, please go to:www.envisionselfhealing.com and find the peripheral vision eye exercise in the 'Exercise' Tab.

If you want to read more on how my eyesight is improving and tips/advice on how you can improve your eyesight and find out more about eye exercises then head over to: www.envisionselfhealing.com

You can also keep up-to-date on the latest vision improvement information and my updates on: Twitter or  Facebook and my Facebook Fan Page

You can also subscribe to my You Tube Channel You Tube Channel


Happy Healing :-)