Lorena

Lorena first came to see me in 2007 when she was 69. She had varifocals but she only used them sometimes for reading. She could see 6/6 on the distance chart but found reading small print harder. She was reading 12 point text with not much difference between the eyes. After some sunning, palming, nosecard and colouring in at our first session she was reading 3 letter sizes smaller and was one away from the smallest on my chart. Her left eye was a little clearer than the right.

Lorena came to see me every 3-6 months for 8 years. She came for general maintenance when other health issues came and went. She came to check in about her eyesight. This varied too and she went through periods when she had bits of visual disturbance with an impbalance between the eyes developing for a time.

In our sessions we would talk a bit about her vision and do some practical work. She had experienced good vision and could access it. In one session doing shifting work with the chart brought her 2 more lines of clarity.

In 2012, 5 years after she first came and at age 74 she was still easily reading the tiny print without glasses, much better than when she first came. At one of our last sessions she was noticing more blur in the distance. She said that palming helped to clear that.

Lorena passed away this year and is sadly missed by me and many others. I am grateful to have had the chance to work with her. She used natural vision work in an ideal way, to maintain and support her good vision.

Lorena once said to me, “I like palming. I like the way I see better after it too. There is such an obvious change in how much more I can see.”

 

laser surgery

I always thought that I wouldn’t work with people who had had laser eye surgery. If someone decides to go the surgical route that is the opposite of natural vision improvement so what can I do. But when soemone comes asking for help I find I don’t turn them away. Natural vision work is totally individual BUT sometimes has a pattern that goes like this. Take of glasses, discover blur, vulnerability. Learn some new things, maybe pass through some fear, a crisis, often lots of tears, find some clarity that wasn’t there before.

 

If someone has laser eye surgery then step one is missing, you can’t take off the glasses. As a vision teacher I am a bit lost and the energy stays anxious. We can’t dip together to the calm knowing and healing power of vulnerability. But they are still vulnerable. Something has brought them. Their vision has changed again and the magic of the surgery has worn off. What do we do? There is still fear there.

 

It just comes down to the fundamentals of viewing health/life as interconnected. Visual, skeletal, emotional postures all related.  Poor vision comes with tension. Laser eye surgery cements in that tension. That might be fine. I have met some who are happy with their vision after surgery and who have never looked back. But I see the others too. Young, struggling with night vision, losing a bit more sight, feeling muscle pulls. We’ll keep working and find a way to help them heal too. But it would be so much better if we didn’t have too.

minus lenses and periphery

As a post script to the peripheral vision response in the last post is this.

Minus lenses minify an image. This means that the full picture is made smaller and projected onto a smaller portion of the retina. So the very edges of the retina are not engaged at all. And this is peripheral occlusion in itself.

peripheral vision

Now, it’s now that this starts again.

‘Mindfulness is very much like what you see with your peripheral vision as opposed to the hard focus of normal or central vision. Yet this moment of soft, unfocused awareness contains a very deep sort of knowing that is lost as soon as you focus your mind and objectify the object into a thing’ Bhante Gunaratana

My response that I had too much to say not good enough. So the dismantling of thoughts into words and things to share begins, and always with me there too. No objectifying the experience for then the deep knowing is lost. I would use peripheral occlusion as another definition of myopia which is epidemic in our world just now. If you put glasses on chickens they grow exactly the visual anomaly that the glasses are designed to fix. If you put minus lenses on them they become short-sighted. But also if you block their peripheral vision they become equally short-sighted. ( I have references, I’m not putting them here).

Again and again in my own personal experience and with people I work with who are short sighted, block central vision and spend some time with peropheral vision only there is a very quick improvement in clarity (more letters on an eye chart can be read). So for me the central normal vision should not be hard and dull, although it so often is for so many and that is considered normal. It is a struggling system. Optimum is a strong stable peripheral field (context) from which we can gently and clearly deal with the central vision (details). There is a dance between this relationship of peripheray and detail. Each needs the other.

But any online communication is by definition involving a lot of central time. Lit screen in a dark room, no peripheray. IT possible to hold it while screen working but it is also very common to sink into the screen in an addictive state and get futher and further in losing more and more periphery. There is something about regaining it that involves delving into pockets of fear. (Although for some it is a haven.) But more common in my experience is that it takes people a little bit of time to adjust and not “look at” anything but be aware of space around.

Movement is a crucual here. Our peripheray is where we observe movement from. Once long ago I was on a train and I took off my strong contact lenses and woosh! Suddenly I was on a speeding bullet with the world rushing by and I was terrified and stimulated and excited and moving so fast! The change was immense.

 

sweeping

Exploring the metaphor and reality of clearing. Clearing the space, the air. Clean sweep. And a poem made me cry yesterday. How long since that? So long, but there it is. Miss you writing miss you. My house full of people rattles me and I start to sweep again.

back to it

And in and out and in and out and I do lots of different things and my eyesight improves in bits and pieces and I get more control, but nothing is like this. This week I have started palming again, an hour a night. It started with doing some swings and sways on sunday night but one day of that was plenty powerful enough and I was thrown back to the palming. It changes everything. Yes lots of those golden nuggets. Moments of turning my head and looking to see the whole street clear and alive. Noticing my son’s silhouette against the window clear for the first time across the room. These moments are all there. But the other sensations are more striking. Waking this morning without tight feeling eyes for the firs time since I can remember. A dark delicious and dangerous sensation echoing round my body. The joy in the ease of the morning and the play in the children. The instant hurt and fear and panic when they fall. Such a powerful ride.

And the energy for cleaning. Partly because my vision improves so I am more aware of the dirt but more it is just the energy of clearing and the personal resources and strength to carry it through.

My heart opens, I want more and it all scares and delights me.

been a while

so my vision is so variable I feel like a fraud talking about it because the nex tmoment it is different. I got a new CSR in my left eye blocking some of the vision which totally reformed my life for a few weeks. Utter panic induced things. I made more space for myself and it felt really amazing. Now I feel like as my vision evens out a bit, although CSR patches stll very present I can see around and under them enough to create a picture. Adequate. But is that good enough. Sometimes. Other times I have a big secret.

 

A day with pockets of intense grief triggered by…some socks in  drawer….a photograph. Doubled over with it. Outside in some allotments later a deep clean held clarity watching my children play. Such intense joy. This is what feels taboo and deeply private. That joy.

 

I don’t have that today, feel like I am creeping further and further away from myself in a dangerous manner. Going through the motions. Expression so needed. Getting rest just not enough.

gentle

today some gentle gentle clarity outside. Touching moments not lost. Sitting quietly. Doing what’s needing done. So so relieved to have stepped aside from frantic …for a while? I feel the soles of my feet on the ground.

clarity

The last day like this went unrecorded. A day when I see really really clearly for a time. People’s faces a long way down the street, not a hint of doubling or shadows or holes. Sometimes I panic and am overwhelmed if I see clearly but today I noticed and enjoyed and got on with what I was doing.

The build up to this, a massage, a lot of anger and tears and sleep.

Yesterday a moment when my toddler didn’t want to go out and I stopped pushing and we had a nice day at home. At the moment of that decision to stay my vision – and eyesight – was clear.

The clarity today didn’t feel so strange, it felt like I inhabited it. I could feel the muscles in my face, my body being different but being me.

It takes stamina, the evening now and I feel my face tight and a bit of blur returned gathering me in its protective blanket.

Yesterday

When I am searching into blur I look for edges on things. But when I see clearly it is not the clean ines that I notice. It is the intensity of the colours the immensity of the depth and how close I am to tears that are the dominant sensations.