Myths about our eyes dominate the thinking of the eye-care profession.  Here are a few them:

Myth: The eye is a simple, mechanical/biological organ, separate from the rest of the body. It will inevitably deteriorate with age.

Starting with the industrial revolution, we humans, along with our machines, have become increasingly robotic.  In more and more areas of our lives, we repeat the same movement patterns – consider computer games and text messages, think about workplace tasks. Our ever-growing use of electronic devices causes visual confinement, so that for large parts of our lives we are living in a two-dimensional world rather than the three-dimensional world our bodies, eyes included, were designed for.  Mechanical repetitive movement has also become common in the fitness world, where the price we pay for greater body density and muscle mass is increased rigidity. In fitness, work, or leisure, repetitive movements create closed systems in our bodies, leading to decreased flexibility and increased aging in all realms – moving, seeing, and thinking.

Myth: Our genes control our eye health.

When mainstream medicine tells us that our genes determine our health, it leaves us feeling like victims of our own heredity. While we can’t change our genes, we can influence how they are expressed. Scientists like Dr. Bruce Lipton in the new field of epigenetics don’t agree that we are simply a product of our genes. Rather, they say, the expression of our genes is a result of the environment surrounding them.

Myth: If you don’t wear your glasses, your eyes will get worse.

Glasses and contact lenses keep the eyes stuck in one position.  The more we wear lenses, the more embedded the visual system becomes as the lenses reinforce our habit of seeing. Instead of movement, our eyes become paralyzed and can only accommodate to what the lens has to offer.

I once did a research study and found that 95% of all patients were over-correcting their eyes by using prescriptions that were too strong. A prescription is nothing more than a read-out of what your mind-brain tells your eyes; it can reveal a lot about your history and how you have reacted to life situations. In fact, if you look back to the time when you received your first prescription, you may unlock the reasons why you began programming your eyes to see in a distorted manner. Often, it’s a survival response from a time when a person does not feel safe in the world.

Myth: There is no correlation between the eyes and the rest of the body.

This myth lives on because we have such a hard time being in touch with our eyes.  Most people don’t feel their eyes working when they look at something. We have been conditioned to numb our awareness of our eyes because so much emphasis is placed on getting it right, being perfect, and hyper-vigilance  The more we live in hyper-vigilance, the more our reptilian brain gets stimulated — which becomes our fight, fight, freeze response.  In these situations, our nervous system and fluid system only know one state.  Certainly, when danger arises, the reptilian brain helps protect us.  The problem occurs when we only know the hyper-vigilant state, and there is no option to move out of this response.

Myth: Vision loss is caused by defects in our eyeballs.

The eyeballs are not at fault here.  It is our mind-brain – the programming behind the eye – that creates changes in the eyeball. When our mind-brain sends a message that the world is too chaotic, it tells our eyes to blur what they are seeing.  The eyes believe the mind-brain and, after a while, actually change their shape to accommodate the programming. When our eye doctors describe the problems they perceive with our vision, they validate our mind-brain programming.

Myth: Everyone over age 45 is presbyopic, meaning they have a diminished ability to focus on nearby objects.

We don’t have to lose our close-up vision. There are techniques and practices we can use to improve visual flexibility so that magnification lenses are unnecessary. You may notice that the more you wear reading glasses, the less responsive your eyes become when you take them off. That’s because the brain immediately notices the artificial magnification and allows the eyes to “go to sleep,” and with less movement, the eye muscles begin to atrophy.

Why do we learn so many myths about our eyes and so little truth?  In large part, this is due to the state of our health care (or more accurately, disease care) system, which is designed around financial incentives rather than the needs of patients.  In this environment, a doctor might hire technicians and invest in expensive technology in order to generate higher insurance reimbursements. That done, paying for the equipment and payroll expenses becomes the office’s priority and the doctor must see as many people as possible, rather than spending enough time with each patient to provide high quality care.

I understand this dilemma. I once had nine employees and was so busy that I hired assistants to see my patients. But then I recognized how flawed this model was – my patients weren’t satisfied and neither was I. I closed that office and opened a much smaller one, where I made sure there was enough time for each patient.

Doctors, maybe could shift their focus to seeing their patients as individuals with unique needs and concerns, rather than fitting them all into a pre-formed agenda. Maybe having the largest square footage in your area is less important than deeply seeing and hearing your patients during their appointments.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could match your treatment protocol to the individual patient’s belief system?  I think you’d find that you would see more improvement – without the invasiveness and expense of surgery.

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Can we change the way people understand vision, moving from a narrow focus on basic biology to a psycho-spiritual recognition of the eye-brain connection?  Can we broaden the popular understanding about the way our eyes function to include experience-based insights?

My wish for us all is to be able to accept the possibilities of a larger view…the big picture, expanded vision, learning to experience vision as fresh, in the moment, instead of seeing through the filter of personal history.

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The strategies I use for eye health work with three spheres of vision: Traditional, Embryonic, and Universal.

The traditional sphere: This is the world of conditioned responses that we learned or inherited without noticing. We accept them as given and rarely realize that they are optional. When operating in the traditional sphere, we may internalize our visual experiences and store them in our memory banks, and they very quietly influence us without our even knowing it.

Eyes are “pattern addicts.”  Here are two examples of problematic patterns that can arise from the traditional sphere:

1. We focus our eyes harder in order to “see right.”
2. We tunnel our vision, excluding everything outside a narrow focus.

When the normal evolutionary process of development is disrupted, maybe by stress, trauma, or exposure to toxicities, the mind adapts by tapping into a fight or flight response, the brain’s most basic defense system. It may then send a message to the eyes telling them to compensate, protect, and withdraw, creating what I call 2-D vision. Computers, tablets, and smart phones all support this kind of visual narrowness.

The embryonic sphere:  Like our brain and skin, our eyes are mostly made up of tissue that originated in utero, a direct descendent from our pre-vertebral origins.  The embryo’s primitive survival reflexes continue to influence eye development during infancy. But these protective reflexes should recede into the background of our brain function by toddler age; when they do not, they can create problems by dominating the overall sensory system every time we perceive a threat in our environment.

Gestation, birth and delivery, bonding and attachment are important preverbal experiences that shape our overall sensory motor development.  Because difficult early experiences may create persistent survival reflexes, when children have learning problems or coordination challenges it can be useful to probe their early imprints.

When I start talking about the embryonic sphere in private sessions and workshops, participants often begin connecting to these times in their lives.  They connect the threads and begin to understand the affect their survival responses have had on their vision.

Universal seeing:  Can we recognize the difference between seeing through a hole and seeing the whole?  In the universal sphere we can see both the big picture and the details simultaneously. Our arteries and veins form fractal patterns, connecting us to both the microcosm and macrocosm of the whole: each branch connects us equally to the dendrites in our nerve endings and to the dendrite-shaped fractals we see in distant spiral galaxies.  As we connect with these fractals, we become more unified and able to connect to our biocosmic intelligence, which helps nourish and feed us.

Often, I ask people to assess the balance of these three aspects of their seeing, and most people find they exist mostly in the traditional seeing paradigm. But if they are offered alternatives, many become able to move beyond this sphere and broaden their vision.

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Arlene sought help because of a growing blind spot in her right eye’s optic nerve, reducing her ability to see three dimensionally and affecting her balance. Specialists had ruled out glaucoma, MS, and cancer, but  remained unable to find the source of her problem or to recommend a treatment.

After examining Arlene and hearing her story, I had a hunch that we should request biochemical testing. When the tests revealed toxic levels of both lead and cadmium in her system, I wasn’t surprised. According to Chinese medicine, the liver rules the eyes, and Arlene’s liver must have been under great stress from her high  levels of toxicity.

Arlene agreed to try four modes of treatment that I suggested. First, I prescribed therapeutic prism glasses in order to create more stimulation for the optic nerve. This immediately improved her balance and allowed her to see in three dimensions again.

We also started a nutritional and aromatherapy program designed to remove the heavy metals from her system while boosting her immunity, and color therapy to help re-sensitize the photoreceptors in her retinas.

The last therapy we added, Continuum Movement, became Arlene’s favorite.  In a daily practice, she employed a special breathing technique while visualizing the ways her visual health and overall well-being were improving.  She said she found this protocol particularly calming and rejuvenating.

After following this program for four months, Arlene’s visual field was restored. Her visual system and overall health remain robust.  To maintain her visual and overall health, she checks in with me every six months and attends one of my intensive retreats yearly. Her home self-care includes Continuum movement sequences and a variety of Medicinal Essential Oils.  Arlene now has a variety of resources to help her maintain her vision.

Remember: When we connect to our own biology for wellness, our eyes have the ability to heal!

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It’s unusual for eye doctors to think outside the allopathic box. I guess I’m unique – I can’t think inside of it. I am constantly probing and asking questions, like:

What are our eyes really saying?

How can we let go of “looking at” from the front part of our eyes, and instead use our eyes to see from the visual cortex in the back part of the brain?

Often, when we look at something we focus too hard, work at it too strenuously, creating tension and disrupting the flow of energy.

Have you ever thought about deep seeing? (It’s like deep listening.)

Can we become quiet enough in our seeing to flow with the rhythms of life? To invite, inquire, and receive the flow of life? 

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True 20/20 vision can only occur if we are open to an ever-expanding vision of our lives.  Vision is more than seeing clearly in the physical world; we also have to keep our inner worlds in sight.  Our eyes are connected with the deeper parts of our autonomic nervous systems, our endocrine systems, our immune systems, and our fluid bodies.

Did you know we are comprised of 90% water as prenatal beings and 70% water as adults?

Did you know the eyes and brain together make up 2% of our body weight and use 25% of our food intake?

90% of vision occurs in the mind, so the more our minds are filled with chatter, the busier our eyes will be and the worse we will see.

Factors outside our eyes can affect the eye tissue profoundly.  If we eat a lot of junk food or have been exposed to heavy metal toxicities, our livers have to work extra hard.  And remember, in Chinese medicine the liver is said to rule the eyes.  Conditions like floaters and macular degeneration have their roots in liver chi stagnation.

80% of body tension is carried in the eyes.  Our eyes are our major navigational system, and we often unconsciously store tension in our eyes, especially if a perceived threat triggers a flight or fight survival response.

Most of us have forgotten that it’s possible to feel sensation in our eye tissues. If we don’t know that our eyes are connected to many of our body systems, (i.e our cranial sacral rhythm, our acupuncture meridians), and we think our eyes are an isolated system, then  in time this vital area becomes stiffer and more rigid, even numb, reducing the information flow to our eyes and brain.

But when we learn to slow down, everything changes. As we begin to relax our survival responses, the decrease in tension allows more nourishment to flow through the optic pathways to the brain. The eyes are made up mostly of fluid. This fluid carries memory and information, so as the flow becomes freer, we might become more aware of our eye tissue and of the ancient memories stored there.

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Filters can be very limiting, especially when we don’t even realize we have them. Seeing through our eyes helps us to become aware of the unconscious filters we have placed in front of them.  Whether the filters are cultural or tribal in origin, or even if we created them as an adaptive response to stress, once we become aware of them we can choose which to keep and which to let go.

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It’s only because of light that our eyes can see.  When light finds our eyes and our retinas’ photoreceptors are stimulated, our eyes move toward the light — and we begin to move in our journey through life. About 25 % of the light that enters the eyes travels to the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that directs our endocrine function.  When light is broken down into its individual colors, the hypothalamus sends different frequencies to different parts of the body, helping to stimulate balance.  The better we absorb the gift of light, the better we can radiate it, expressing our spirit as well as our vitality and creativity.

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As we begin to reflect and see inside ourselves, we can start to understand our nearsighted, farsighted, and astigmatism patterns.  Remember, it is the programming the brain sends to our eyes that causes them to deteriorate.

Prescription lenses serve to validate this internal programming.  The refractive measurement from which the lenses are made describes the scroll of history and story of a person’s adaptive response to life.  Each prescription represents a strategy we use to avoid seeing what life is showing us.  We think that with our prescription we see more clearly, but really, it removes us further from truly seeing.  The lens provides an artificial way of seeing through a prescribed filter. The person who thinks this is how we should see is not taking into account what our eyes are really expressing.

Can we find a better way of prescribing lenses? Some of us might want to try a “homeopathic” lens.  Rather than forcing a vision correction externally, this solution provides a very tiny power of correction, allowing balance to come about from an internal place.

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Can we balance the clarity and blur? Maybe including a little blur in our visual experience would relax our visual system and bring us closer to balance.  Too much clarity creates a stress response and can make it harder, not easier, to increase the energy flow into the eyes.

A little blur is about receiving life in a more vulnerable way, being in the right brain instead of the left brain, softening so that we can be more attuned to the subtle energies within ourselves and within life itself.

Blur helps us release the patterned addictions in our thinking, moving, and seeing.  (It’s hard to avoid falling into these responses in a society that seems to say we need to become more like machines.)  Blur is about returning to our biological process of movement and flow.  Blur reminds us about our deep capacity for trust.  Blur, if we can relax into it, will help us see ourselves in a new way, and the by-product is more clarity, a clarity that we master from an internal place of peace and harmony, instead of from an external crutch like a lens.  Blur says let go!  Be, rather than do!  Let’s soften our survival response, be in the love instead of the fear.

The second eye-opener is:  The way you heal your eyes is by embracing and loving your blur.  Going into your blur gives you the gift of clarity, both from an internal place and in our physical world.

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Ilya Priogine, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on thermodynamics of nonequilibrium systems, states that the farther away we move from an equilibrium state (current habitual patterning—my meaning), the more we become aware of our external environment,  and our system has the potential to reorganize itself in very unusual and innovative ways.  The system does so in a non-linear fashion.

Being in the blur jars us out of the state of equilibrium, and the possibilities abound.  I have also experienced and observed this level of transformation when applying Continuum movement, watching people inhabit their bodies through their fluid system in a whole new way!

In terms of our eyes, we have been entrained to believe that there is one way we are “supposed” to see.  Eye doctors who have succumbed to mainstream allopathic indoctrination are afraid of blur — let’s get rid of it right away! — so they prescribe a strong lens to hide the blur from you.

Myopia says our focus is too tight, thus the need to look through a minus or negative lens which creates more negativity and judgment in ourselves. Hyperopia and presbyopia says our focus is too diffused or flaccid, thus the need to look through a lens that creates artificial magnification, and astigmatism which says our focus is twisted, thus the need to look through a lens which creates a distorted view.

Yes, we need focus, but maybe we can organize and focus with relaxation and effortlessness. Are you seeking an emergence state or an emergency state?  Let’s find a way to focus while being inclusive, instead of focusing tightly and becoming exclusive and isolated.

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Blur slows us down so we can be vulnerable, sense our bodies, and begin to recover from over-stimulation. We can return to Primitive Primordial Vision, where our eyes. along with the skin, are an outgrowth of brain tissue and become our embryonic roots. We return to float in the womb.  Our vestibular and peripheral vision begin to develop.  Our eyes have to differentiate into many different cells: the retina (our light capturing system), the lens (helping us with focus), and our cornea (looking through the transparent window).

In blur, we can explore further. What is the state of our umbilical connection to mom?  To the larger cosmos?  What are the early imprints we receive from our parents’ consciousness at preconception and conception? From our gestating experience? Remember that everything outside our bodies in-utero becomes our energy field….

In blur, we can invoke a trans-rational seeing, intuitive, non-linear, and subtle, moving not only with our eyes but our bodies, we can become nourished, supported, replenished, and sustained.

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