Take Off Your Glasses and See

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Overview

What this book is about

Liberman argues that poor eyesight is not a fixed, inherited defect in the shape of the eyeball. He says it reflects the mind and the emotions. In his workshops, he says, almost everyone can name an emotional stress in the year or two before their vision first got worse, and they describe it as something they "didn't want to see." Chronic fear, he says, contracts a person's "energy field" and visual field. Glasses then lock the contraction in. Each stronger prescription fixes the eyes in one focus, set for the "worst-case visual need." The lens's optical center trains the eyes to stop moving. Glasses cut peripheral vision and mask the feelings the blur was hiding. He calls lenses "crutches," quotes Aldous Huxley calling them "splints," and treats them as an addiction. His remedy: - recognize that change is possible - take glasses off as often as you can, or wear weaker "training lenses" - see effortlessly ("Open Focus") and keep the eyes moving - breathe and blink - feel and express the emotions that come up

He insists that improvement is "a shift of awareness." The exercises, which he calls "vision meditations," "merely assist."

The book has three parts, an epilogue and three appendices. - Front matter: Zukav's foreword (his own unaided acuity went from 20/70 to 20/60, one line, and he still wears glasses to drive), the Introduction, and a home eye-chart baseline test ("Before You Read Further"). - Part One, "There's More to Vision than Meets the Eye" (Ch 1–6): a critique of conventional eye care, Liberman's 1976 self-experiment, Open Focus, fear as the root of vision problems, and the case of Diana Crow. - Part Two, "Vision of a New Reality" (Ch 7–12): the practical program. It covers removing or reducing lenses, the vision meditations (breathing, blinking, tracing, swinging, Open Focus, palming, sunning, passive seeing, the Tibetan Wheel) and "visual hygiene" for reading, computers and sunglasses. Then come a day without glasses, the vision walk and emotional work (journal, love letters), and Rose Brandt's own account. - Part Three, "From Eyesight to Insight" (Ch 13–17): seeing auras and "invisible" energy, "hard" versus "open" thinking, vision and learning, and his "Effortless Learning" movement method (arrow charts and trampoline games). It ends with an optometrist's account (Sonya Hagemann). - Appendices: (A) products and programs, including his own company ULT; (B) about 210 behavioral optometrists in 37 US states and Puerto Rico, plus about 27 abroad; (C) about 74 "natural vision improvement" teachers. There are also endnotes and a bibliography.

The evidence is mostly Liberman's own experience and case reports from his practice and workshops. Many of the people are named, and many are optometrists. He leans on William Bates (1920), Huxley's The Art of Seeing, Ray Gottlieb's 1982 paper "Neuropsychology of Myopia," and Suddenly Successful (Dawkins, Edelman and Forkiotis, a behavioral-optometry book). He also uses popular sources: Brain/Mind Bulletin, East West, the New York Times, Deepak Chopra, Michael Talbot and Larry Dossey. A few studies are named: Young 1969, Sato 1964, Jennifer Nelson's O.D. thesis, Harmon 1951, Pennebaker 1993 and Brainard 1992. Liberman says openly that objective measurement of his own eyes still shows moderate nearsightedness and astigmatism (about 20/200). Even so, he says he sees clearly. He defines improvement as how well you see, not how the eye measures. He reports no controlled study of his method, and the results table from his Sydney workshop is missing from this ebook's text. Part Three moves into auras, psychic perception, morphogenetic fields and near-death experiences.

Development from Light: Medicine of the Future (1991). Ideas sketched there become the core of this book: - Open focus was a short paragraph in Light's preface. Here it gets its own chapter (Ch 4) and a step-by-step exercise. - Reduced prescriptions (Light's Nancy, glasses 20% then 50% weaker) become a full "training lenses" program (Ch 8). - Light's stress-narrows-the-visual-field material becomes the "energy field" theory, with nearsightedness as fear and farsightedness as anger (Ch 4–5). - The sunlight and sunglasses advice repeats Light, which he cites (Ch 8). - Computer screens are new. - Syntonic color therapy, the core of Light, appears only in the author bio.

Conflicts of interest. Liberman runs ULT, the book's listed source for "vision improvement products" and for information on his workshops and lectures (Appendix A and the last page). Most of his cases come from his own workshops and therapy sessions. The practitioner directories include several people whose success stories appear in the book. Details are at the end of Practical Takeaways. The later EYEPORT device is not mentioned.

Eyes and dryness. The book says nothing about dry eyes, tears, the tear film, eye drops or the eyelids during sleep. It does cover blinking and staring, computer screens, reading strain, contact lenses, how long to wear glasses, sunglasses and light sensitivity, palming, sunning, and stress in the eyes. See the "Eyes, dryness and strain" section below.

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Key Ideas

The core frameworks and findings

The eye is not a camera; vision happens in the whole mind/body

Liberman was taught to study the eye "as if it were a camera that just happened to be located in the head" (Ch 2). He argues instead that "believing is seeing." The eyes are "physical extensions of the brain." Seeing is projective as well as receptive (he quotes Karl Pribram: "Vision is a holographic projection," Ch 13). Since the body heals itself everywhere else, he asks why the eyes alone should be unable to (Ch 1). The book's figures (Ch 1):

Prescription and real sight are different things

The "objective" test (retinoscopy) measures the eye at rest, often after eye drops that paralyze focusing. Yet "the eye is never in a state of rest, even during sleep" (Ch 2). The "subjective" test ("Which is better, one or two?") confuses patients. Snellen based "20/20" on the eyesight of one assistant he thought had good eyes. Jennifer Nelson's thesis (Pacific University) asked how people with the same −1.00 prescription can range from 20/100 to 20/30 unaided. In the cases she cites, a 20/400 nearsighted person saw 20/50 under hypnosis, and a −5.00 person went from 20/800 to 20/30 with feedback training. Liberman reads the 20/15 line while his measured prescription is unchanged (Ch 4).

Nearsightedness (myopia) rises with schooling and indoor life

Table from Suddenly Successful (Ch 2): In Young's 1969 study, 59% of Inuit ("Eskimo") sixth-graders were myopic, against 5% of their parents and none of their grandparents. Sato (1964) found myopia up two to three times in Japan over 25 years of industrialization. China has had students and factory workers do eye exercises for about 10 minutes twice a day since 1949, and "the Chinese say" this reversed their rise in myopia. The four exercises are reproduced in Ch 2.

Glasses and contacts work like an addiction

With each stronger pair, "within a few weeks he could hardly see anything without the new glasses." The doctor says, "Don't worry, you'll get used to it" (Ch 1). In his 1976 experiment, Liberman found that taking his glasses off brought up unease, then anxiety, fear, sadness and anger, and that putting them back on made the feelings vanish (Ch 3). His points about lenses (Ch 3):

Staring is the core bad habit; healthy eyes move and blink constantly

This comes from Bates: "Mental strain of any kind always produces a conscious or unconscious eyestrain." Huxley adds that "a stare always defeats its own object," and that strain makes blinking rarer and the lids tense, in a "descending spiral" (Ch 3, Ch 8). "Whenever we focus intently on something, our vision blurs and the visual field closes in."

Open Focus: look at nothing and see everything

Liberman says he found it in 1976 while driving without glasses with a pounding headache. The headache went whenever he stopped analyzing, and his vision became "crystal clear" (Ch 4). Open Focus is soft, nonjudgmental seeing of the whole visual field, with the eyes moving freely, like an artist stepping back from a canvas. A footnote discloses that "Open Focus" is a trademark of Biofeedback Computers Inc. and Dr. Les Fehmi, whose approach is "similar" but less visual. In Light this was a preface paragraph; here it is the method's center.

Fear contracts the energy field and the visual field

He describes a personal "energy field" (aura) that expands when we relax and contracts when we are afraid. The visual field "breathes" with it (Ch 4). Under chronic fear it collapses into tunnel vision. Many "learning disabled" children, he says, "simply have a severely contracted field": "They're not disabled; they're simply chronically afraid." He reports cross-eyed children who were small for their age growing "as much as six inches in six months" as their visual field opened. This is a case report from his practice.

Nearsightedness is fear; farsightedness is anger

Myopes "collapse" their field inward ("It is against me"). Hyperopes push it outward ("It's me against it"). Ray Gottlieb is quoted on blocked fear versus blocked rage, and Lisette Scholl's Visionetics supplies the personality profiles (Ch 5): Liberman suspects that poor diet and environmental toxins drive presbyopia ("old-age vision"). He reports three men in their sixties to eighties with 20/20 near and far vision after 10–20 years on an organic vegetarian diet and a "natural lifestyle." This is an observation, not a study.

Awareness heals, sometimes instantly

He cites multiple-personality reports (Michael Talbot; Brain/Mind Bulletin). In one, a Chicago optometrist found a myopic correction nearly four times stronger in one personality than in another, and her child personality needed only her childhood prescription (Ch 5). "Human homeopathy" is his name for how we keep attracting situations that re-trigger unresolved childhood feelings until we feel them fully. "Awareness itself is curative."

Remove the lenses and the eyes improve within hours

In a 1993 Sydney workshop, ten optometrists took their lenses off for 24 hours and did sunning, palming and the Tibetan Wheel (Ch 7). Everyone below 20/20 improved, he reports. Soo Tan, an optometrist, went from 20/600 to 20/225 by 4:30 p.m. and to 20/25 (three errors) the next morning. He calls these results "typical." Diana Crow (Ch 6), Nada Grbevski (Ch 8), Rose Brandt (Ch 12) and others show breakthroughs followed by partial relapse. He treats fluctuation as a sign of healing: "two steps forward and one step back."

Close work strains the eyes ("near-point stress")

The eyes are built for distance vision in sunlight. Reading and computer screens force sustained convergence, "terminal illness" in his phrase (Ch 8). He reports a "major study of more than 160,000 schoolchildren" in which about 80% developed vision problems by the end of fifth grade unless prevented (Darrell Boyd Harmon, The Coordinated Classroom, 1951, published by the American Seating Company). The New York Times (1993) suggested a reading child look up "every 15 minutes or so" (Ch 5). His remedies:

Sunglasses make the eyes more light-sensitive

Liberman says regular use "desensitizes the photoreceptors," creates hypersensitivity to light, and hides the signals that light really is too bright (Ch 8). He advises:

Unexpressed feelings blur vision; expressing them clears it

A workshop participant, after quoting the Talmud ("We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are"), puts it this way: "If we don't see clearly, it is because we are not clear" (Ch 11). His tools: His daughter Gina said as a child: "I always see better after I cry." He calls relationships the core of healing ("Relational Healing").

"Hard thinking" is an addiction that shrinks vision

We think in order to avoid feeling (Ch 14). Concentrated, analytical thought goes with central vision, held breath and a shrinking aura. "Open thinking" goes with Open Focus, the "belly brain" and intuition. Marcel Just's pupil research is quoted: "the eye [is] a kind of meter of mental energy." Bates said people could be taught to produce any refractive error "simply by teaching them how to think in a particular way."

Learning, like seeing, should be effortless and built through movement

Most reading problems involve eye coordination, not acuity. He says "80 percent of 'slow' readers" have trouble controlling and coordinating their eyes (Ch 15). In one report, 96% of hard-core juvenile offenders had vision problems. After vision therapy their rearrest rate fell from about 50% to 10%, and their reading rose four grade levels (Brain/Mind Bulletin, 1983; Ch 8). His "Effortless Learning" adapts Oregon optometrist Robert Pepper's trampoline work. It uses paradoxical tasks that can only be done when the mind stops trying (Ch 15–16). Liberman tells of his own lifelong reading struggle: after a week with Pepper, an IQ test came back "very high."

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Chapter by chapter — click to expand

§ Front matter ▾

Dedication "to the child within all of us who has always been able to see"; epigraph from The Little Prince.
Acknowledgments: Rose Brandt (writer). Colleagues: Ray Gottlieb, Robert-Michael Kaplan, Elliott Forrest, Bruce Rosenfeld, Larry Jebrock, Sam Berne, Marc Grossman, Amorita Treganza, Robert Pepper, Simon Grbevski, Peter Fairbanks. Also Larry Dossey, Bernie Siegel and Deepak Chopra.
Foreword (Gary Zukav): expanded "multisensory" perception. He gave up glasses except for driving, though he used to get headaches he blamed on "eye strain" when he took them off for more than half an hour. His acuity improved from 20/70 to 20/60 by following Liberman's advice: "Close your eyes, inhale. Exhale, softly, and open your eyes gently. Do not look at the chart. Let the chart look at you." He also recounts his effortless A+ paper at Harvard.
Introduction, "Seeing from the Heart": twenty years earlier Liberman's eyesight "instantaneously improved from almost 20/200 to better than 20/20." Poor vision is "a socially acceptable ... substitute for self-awareness and emotional expression." He suggests using the book as a manual, as a resource, or as a story.
"Before You Read Further …": the home baseline test with the book's eye chart. The book says it "does not replace a professional vision exam." Steps are in Practical Takeaways.

§ Ch 1 — "Don't Worry, You'll Get Used to It!" *(Part One: There's More to Vision than Meets the Eye)* ▾

Patients' new glasses feel "very weird": "My eyes feel like they're pulling," the floor tilts. Doctors answer, "Don't worry, you'll get used to it."
By 1973 Liberman was wearing his eighth pair. The patient's addiction cycle: stronger glasses each year, never questioned. A tennis-elbow brace "for the rest of your life" as an analogy.
A boy with mild myopia: "I can see everything just fine. I just can't read those letters on the chart!"
Vision has sensory, integrative and motor parts. Posture and vision affect each other. Vision therapy is said to help headaches, muscle aches, dizziness, teeth grinding, bed-wetting, claustrophobia and travel sickness (from Suddenly Successful). Arnold Gesell is quoted.
The "quantum mechanical body" (Chopra): neuropeptides in the immune system and in every cell; pheromones. "Our eyes are also made up of thinking cells."
Vision problems begin with emotional stress, including ordinary childhood events such as a move or a new baby, and with how we cope: suppressing feelings ("changing the subject").

§ Ch 2 — What I Learned in School ▾

The eye taught as a camera. 20 feet as "optical infinity." Snellen's 20/20 norm. Diopters explained (−5.50 = 22 quarter-diopter steps). Refractive error defined. Retinoscopy versus "Which is better?"
His own eyes still measure about 20/200 objectively while he sees "beyond normal." Radial keratotomy is called unpredictable, "like suddenly changing a car's finely balanced steering mechanism—without telling the driver."
Ray Gottlieb: myopia research is confused, and the condition is treated as "normal."
Myopia and education (the table in Key Idea 3); Young (Inuit) and Sato (Japan). M. J. Hirsch's quote that children should be "reconciled" to glasses.
Chinese eye exercises (poster from the People's Republic of China). Four massages, each done 8 times, eyes closed, twice a day. Steps are in Practical Takeaways.
William Bates (New York ophthalmologist, 1920s): poor vision as a response to stress. Liberman concedes the method has never been "scientifically" proven. He says studies may be built wrong, citing Gottlieb and an Optometry and Vision Science abstract on acuity changes "in the absence of a refractive shift."
Behavioral optometrists see reading as "biologically unacceptable" stress.
The twenty-one-point exam measures parts in isolation. Jennifer Nelson's thesis questions. Grosvenor's "not encouraging" review, which dismissed improved acuity as possibly a memorized chart.
Case: Larry Simons, O.D. (1986 weekend workshop, about 20/200). Breathing while reading an unfamiliar number chart, he reached 20/25. Liberman kept his glasses for hours. Afterwards they felt "really tight." Simons drove San Diego to Los Angeles with the glasses on the seat. Six years later: about 20/40, no glasses, drives 25 miles each way to work.

§ Ch 3 — An Experiment on the Workings of the Mind ▾

The experiment (early 1976): in the quiet afternoon hour he sat in the vision-therapy room with his glasses off. His hand kept putting them back on. Staying longer brought up unease, then anxiety, fear, sadness and anger. Insight: the glasses masked feelings he "couldn't bear to see."
After a few days he read the 20/80 and 20/70 letters. Colleagues said, "That's just blur interpretation." His retest showed a weaker prescription. The new weaker lenses felt like "my whole being was shrinking inward."
Central vision analyzes; peripheral vision "feels the world as a whole." Lenses cut peripheral vision, and the prismatic blur off-center trains the eyes to stay central.
Eye-movement experiment ("the keys to the mind"). Ask: the color of your first bicycle; your mother with bright green hair; stroking a kitten; the National Anthem. Each question makes the eyes move in a typical direction (compare NLP eye-accessing cues). Liberman says immobile eyes suppress painful memories, and head-for-eye substitution tenses the neck and shoulders and may encourage astigmatism.
Contacts: always centered, worn all day. Some long-time wearers switch to glasses to wean themselves. Others move to disposable soft lenses and decrease the correction. Contacts "can be a useful transition to a weaker prescription."
"Freezing Your Vision" — staring demonstration: stare at one point without blinking until your vision changes; clarity and field shrink and dim.
Quotations from Bates and Huxley (The Art of Seeing: lenses as "splints, iron braces and plaster casts"). Bates's schoolboy who could read the bottom line at ten feet but lost the big C when told to "mind what he was about." A weaker near correction (bifocals) is "a step in the right direction."

§ Ch 4 — Open Focus: Let Your Vision Escape Your Eyes ▾

He went from 30 minutes a day without glasses to the whole day. One retest showed improvement; the next showed none, and he suspected the test itself created stress.
Driving without glasses for the first time ("I did just fine!"). The pounding headache that came and went with his state of mind. Clarity, with the air "filled with scintillating particles." He named it Open Focus (trademark footnote: Les Fehmi; handbook and tapes in Appendix A).
Open Focus exercise (steps in Practical Takeaways). Open Focus with a partner: sit facing each other in silence for several minutes, then share.
The artist stepping back. "Nonjudgmental seeing." When your eyes stick on one spot, you have left the present.
"Becoming the Sky": in deep meditation, eyes closed, he "could suddenly see everything ... from everywhere." Afterwards he read research charts to 20/15 at twenty feet. "A complete remission of my myopia and astigmatism," yet the instrument showed the same prescription. "We don't see with our eyes!"
Support from others: Jacques Lusseyran (blinded as a child, And There Was Light); Larry Dossey's "Sarah," blind from birth, who described the operating room during cardiac arrest; M. von Senden's 66 cases of sight restored in adults born blind (via Arthur Zajonc); Goethe's "inner light."
The "web of life": Rupert Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields; a personal energy field (aura, Kirlian photography). Workshop demonstration: a "blaming parent" pointing a finger makes the "child" collapse inward. Gottlieb's rabbit, frozen between two barking dogs, as a model of myopia.
Visual-field self-check: arms out to the sides, thumbs up, bring them forward until you see them; repeat up and down. Recheck when relaxed, stressed, tired, with and without glasses.
Cross-eyed children growing as their field opens. Learning-disabled children as "chronically afraid." Peripheral vision as "our doorway to accessing the future." Peripheral awareness exercise: look ahead and notice objects all around. Lusseyran's inner light faded "every time I was afraid," and with anger, impatience and jealousy.

§ Ch 5 — Seeing Through the Fear ▾

Seven workshop participants describe the onset of their myopia: parents ill, a school move, a parent's departure, a remarriage, a failed nursing exam, public humiliation at 13.
Spiral: trauma, "blurring out," glasses, a stronger prescription. Social norms and schooling intensify it.
Myopia as fear and hyperopia as anger (fight or flight). Presbyopia and diet (three men on organic vegetarian diets). Personality profiles (Gottlieb, Scholl), with Liberman's caveat that real people are more complex.
"Splitting the target" exercise: hold myopic glasses a foot in front of your face, so part of an object is seen through the lens and part outside. Inside the lens it looks clearer but "smaller and closer."
People switching from glasses to contacts feel their eyes are "unprotected and defenseless" for the first few days.
Bates via Gottlieb: schools are "the hotbed not only of myopia but of all other [vision problems]." New York Times, May 1993: close work and myopia, "pattern deprivation," look up every 15 minutes.
He says reading, indoor life and physical changes have little effect "unless our energetic and emotional field is contracted."
Multiple personalities: eye pressure, corneal curvature and acuity differ between personalities (Talbot; Brain/Mind Bulletin 1983, 1985).
"Human Homeopathy" ("like cures like"; what we resist persists). Exercise: recall the last time you felt really uncomfortable, relive it, then ask, "Have I ever felt these feelings before?" and look for the pattern.
"Awareness Is Being Here Now": meditation; Open Focus as a stress break; "just noticeable differences"; then express what you notice. Jung: "Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering."

§ Ch 6 — Vision Quest (case of Diana Crow) ▾

Case report: a week of therapy in June 1992. She had worn glasses since age 10, with a "real" prescription over −8.00. She could not identify the 20/700 "7" at 12 feet.
She walked around Aspen without glasses and began driving without them. Liberman: "I wouldn't have recommended that with her present degree of myopia."
Breakthrough: she realized she had married 23 years earlier to escape her family. Right after, she read about 20/80.
She drove 160 miles home to Denver over Independence Pass without glasses. She went three weeks without them, relapsed amid family reaction to her divorce, and two years later used −4.00 glasses (about half) on a string, as needed.
The book's driving caution is quoted in Practical Takeaways. Lesson: relapse as hidden feelings surface is normal.

§ Ch 7 — Change Your Vision, Change Your Life! *(Part Two: Vision of a New Reality)* ▾

Some people improve instantly, some over years, some never. All suggestions are "practices in awareness"; eye movements alone give "only a temporary shift."
"The Intention to Change" exercise: ask, "How do I really want my vision to change?" and "How would my life change if I could see perfectly clearly without lenses?" Then dialogue with the resisting part until you feel willing.
Finding a "vision mentor": behavioral optometrists, who "will generally prescribe reduced prescriptions," and natural vision improvement teachers (Appendices B and C). Ophthalmologists are "particularly opposed."
Anecdote: an ophthalmologist re-examined a workshop participant for hours, unable to accept that her old glasses were much stronger than her new prescription.
Christa Roser, O.D. (Lancaster, PA; April 1992 seminar; 20/200): a year without glasses, except quarter-strength lenses for night driving. Unaided 20/40 by day and 20/50 at night. Her acuity drops "when I neglect my needs for food and sleep, or am nervous or tense."
Sydney workshop, November 1993: ten optometrists, hosted by Simon Grbevski, removed their lenses and were tested in the morning, six hours later and the next morning. He taught sunning, palming and the Tibetan Wheel. The greatest gains were "Jenny, Paul, Elvira, and Soo." The results table is not in this ebook text.
Soo Tan: 20/600, then 20/225 at 4:30 p.m. She drove home in weaker glasses, and the next morning drove without glasses, "peep[ing] through the weaker glasses twice to check the road signs." She read 20/25 with three errors. Later her baseline fluctuated between 20/200 and 20/20, with −1.75 glasses "when her eyes needed a little help."

§ Ch 8 — Take Off Your Glasses and See! ▾

Twenty years earlier he used exercises alone, and gains faded when people stopped. Lasting change needs "willingness to accept an expanded vision of life."
Seeing the Flash: a client went from just under 20/200 to 20/40 with gentle "balloon" breathing. There is "an instant in which we all see clearly every time we open our eyes"; healing is letting that instant get longer. Tip: tape-record the directions, or have a friend read them.
Removing Your Blinders: eye chart, a 20-minute walk without lenses, then recheck. Nada Grbevski read 20/40 within 15 minutes, panicked at the clarity, put her glasses back on, and next day measured 20/400. Months later she was off glasses at 20/40.
Training lenses: weaker prescriptions to wean yourself (optometrists in Appendix B). Glasses rather than contacts for a while, and an eyeglass chain. Take glasses off for eating, reading and close work. Strongest prescription only for demanding tasks such as night driving. "Pause, breathe, and blink" before saying "I can't see it."
Vision meditations: Breath Awareness (quoting Bija Bennett's Breathing into Life; "Breathe!" signs), Remember to Blink, Tracing (with Huxley's "shifting" over faces), Swinging, Open Focus, Palming, Sunning (Americans spend "only 3 percent of their lives outdoors"; "chronically jet lagged"), Passive Seeing (from Ray Gottlieb) and the Tibetan Wheel. A suggested 20-minute morning routine.
How to Use Your Eye Chart: hang it opposite your bed as an open-eye meditation, not a test.
"Tips for Good Visual Hygiene":
Plus Lenses for near-point stress: the 160,000-schoolchildren study, the 96% juvenile-offender figure, children reading "two or three grade levels higher" (his observation).
Reading: glasses off, the knuckle-to-elbow distance, a slant board made with doorstops, the "Look Up!" bookmark, a desk facing the room or a window.
Computers ("How to Avoid 'Terminal' Illness"): five steps.
Pinhole glasses (credited to Leonardo da Vinci; Appendix A).
Remove Your Sunglasses: gray tint only, none for children, no photochromic lenses. He points readers to Light: Medicine of the Future.

§ Ch 9 — A Day in the Life of Your New Vision ▾

A guided day without glasses, starting on a weekend:
waking: Open Focus at the ceiling, breath awareness, palming, seeing the flash
bathroom and dressing without lenses
outside: sunning and a walk
checking whether you are really hungry or anxious
mindful eating (no paper, TV or animated talk)
public transport with glasses on a chain
Driving section: a visualization in the parked car comparing tense driving with glasses to relaxed, mindful driving. "Most auto accidents occur because we're not present, not because we can't see" (his claim). Empty-parking-lot practice. The cautions are quoted in Practical Takeaways.
At work: vision meditations at breaks. A "Look up. Look away. Breathe!" sign for near work. Tracing faces when working with people. Telling coworkers. "Hitting the wall" like an addict wanting a cigarette, and journaling through it.
Taking glasses off for heartfelt conversations. For therapists and healers. Hazardous jobs: reduce "very gradually" and obey regulations.
Evening: eyes tire as light fades; you may need a stronger pair to drive home. Walk and do evening sunning.
Night vision: practice walking and looking around in the dark, somewhere safe, using Open Focus and peripheral vision. Fear of the dark weakens night vision, he says.
End the day with Open Focus and palming.

§ Ch 10 — How to Take a Vision Walk ▾

Vision is movement; the eyes are our "navigational system."
Choosing a path: quiet, hilly, with open views (especially for myopes). Consult a doctor if fitness is in doubt.
Leave glasses in a pocket. Leave sunglasses off; use a hat or visor, then drop those too. Sun and palm before, during and after.
Walking meditation: breath, Open Focus, tracing everything in view. Feet that "look down" as if they had eyes, while the head's eyes look ahead.
"Where Are You Headed?": imagine the neck growing, with the head floating 5 feet and then 10 feet up. Keep your gaze parallel to the ground; on rough paths look about 10 feet ahead, not at your feet. A dropped head restricts the throat and breath.
"The Eyes in the Back of Your Head": walk backward, including uphill; people report less breathlessness. Then sideways ("crabwise") up the hill.
Spinning (paradoxical visualizations): imagine spinning right and left, doing back flips, "unscrewing" the head. Finish by skipping and laughing.
Wanda Tort, O.D. (Puerto Rico, 1991): during a walk she read a license plate about 90 feet away. In the office she saw 20/20 with one-third of her prescription, and now wears half-strength lenses.

§ Ch 11 — Living Clearly: Being Present and Staying Current ▾

Removing lenses brings back the childhood feelings they masked. One patient described each prescription as "a snapshot of who I thought I was." A workshop participant estimated 80% of the group improved and called emotional release "100 percent of the change."
Vision history in a vision journal: onset, every prescription change, feelings about eye exams and glasses, daily wearing time.
"Seeing the Hidden You" visualization: compare a happy childhood memory with the time you got your first glasses. Look into your eyes at each age. A stressor checklist: death, a move, divorce, a new sibling, shame, abuse. "Every person I have worked with" found a major stress in the one to two years before onset, he says.
Expressing Your Feelings: share fresh feelings with the people involved, without blame, then listen. "The IRS says we only have to hold our financial records for seven years."
Relational Healing: others mirror our inner state. Make space in your life for feelings to move through.
Keeping a Journal: Pennebaker's research (15–20 minutes a day for 3–5 days improved immune function, grades and attendance, and even job-finding).
Love Letters (from John Gray): five steps, repeated every few weeks. Used for conflict resolution, and in families and groups with a facilitator.
Open Living: the case of "Pamela," who kept seeing red during sessions. Her mother recalled her at age two locked in a laundry room with a red door. Gina: "I always see better after I cry."

§ Ch 12 — Vision Quest, by Rose Brandt, M.A. ▾

First-person account by the book's co-writer. She met Liberman in spring 1992 after reading Light. About 30 years of myopia; −6.00; 20/800 in one eye.
He suggested a 20% weaker prescription, worn only when necessary. She wore nothing for a month and phoned him whenever tempted.
At an Aspen intensive she felt panic in a grocery store aisle. She wore weaker glasses part-time for the computer and passed the Colorado driving test in weaker lenses. Her prescription was reduced several more times. Her vision got worse whenever she wore a stronger pair, "even for a few hours."
Migraines of many years faded within months. She links them to the muscles around her eyes, forehead and temples tightening when she put glasses on. Sunning ended her sun-triggered migraines and her need for sunglasses.
She now measures at least 20/40 and is clear outdoors. She found she could clear her vision "by blinking slowly and firmly." With tracing she read 20/25 on a backlit chart.

§ Ch 13 — Seeing the Invisible *(Part Three: From Eyesight to Insight)* ▾

Arthur Zajonc's light box: pure light looks black. The visible spectrum is a sliver. Einstein and Heisenberg are quoted on unknown energies.
A 1992 study found visual responses to UV light in children aged 7–10 (Brainard et al.). Jack Schwarz's claimed UV and infrared perception. "Vision is a holographic projection" (Pribram).
Seeing the Aura: The Boy Who Saw True (a Victorian diary); Barbara Brennan's Hands of Light; halos of saints (Talbot). Mirror exercise (steps in Practical Takeaways).
His first auras, on a Caribbean boat after "becoming the sky." He panicked, thinking he had a retinal detachment; "there was nothing wrong with my eyes."
"Quantum Vision": floaters ("Muscae Volitantes") are quoted from May's Diseases of the Eye as harmless shadows "of no importance." Liberman suggests we may be seeing "the vibrational essence of material reality." Air-shimmer exercise: look softly into the air in front of a blank wall. Practice Open Focus on people, animals and plants.
A lens-wearer's dream of clear night driving without lenses.
Working with energy: during an eye exam he "saw" something dark in a woman's throat; she had had thyroid surgery and linked it to an issue with her mother. A participant "saw" his hands in green light. He reports that the aura shrinks whenever a person thinks hard, and vision may blur at the same moment.

§ Ch 14 — The Truth About Thinking ▾

Thinking to avoid feeling is "the most common addiction in the world."
Hard (narrow) thinking goes with central vision, analysis, fear and held breath. Open thinking goes with Open Focus, feeling, intuition and "whole intelligence."
Sources: Marcel Just's pupil research; Bates; Sampooran Singh. Dreams and out-of-body "thought balls" (Robert Monroe); near-death "light pictures" (Talbot).
"I'm confused" usually means we are too anxious to feel, or afraid to act on what we know. David Bohm: thought gets no "ouch" feedback.
Optometric conferences as presentations without presence; grade-school boredom.

§ Ch 15 — Effortless Seeing, Effortless Learning ▾

90% of learning is visual. "80 percent of 'slow' readers" have eye control problems. One eye doctor lists twenty visual skills needed for reading, most untested in a standard exam.
Stanley Kaseno: "an absolute correlation between vision disorders, reading disabilities and juvenile delinquency." Gottlieb: "90 percent" of reading-related vision problems can be alleviated by vision therapy.
"Paying Attention": children learn to fragment their thinking. Children who stutter don't stutter when singing or moving. Gottlieb (Brain/Mind Bulletin): "In school we are taught to squeeze and hold on to information"; children asked to clap on 5 while counting to 10 say, "I don't know—you tell me." A "very significant decrease in myopia" followed a school program designed to reduce stress (Gottlieb).
William Gray and Paul LaViolette: "A felt sense underlies everything we know." Tim Gallwey, Stuart Heller and Michael Gelb on experience and movement.
"How I Found My Effortless Genius on a Trampoline": a week with Robert Pepper, O.D., in Oregon.
The arrow chart: calling out directions with hands moving the opposite way, he froze, stopped breathing, his vision blurred, and he blurted "Reft!"
On the trampoline: spelling "The train went by very fast" with about 30 substitutions, then from memory, backward, and alternating from both ends.
Each time he stopped trying, it became easy and his vision cleared. Afterwards he took the IQ test he had feared and scored "very high."
Effortless Learning: his adaptation of Pepper's work. He reports using it with neurologically impaired people (cerebral palsy, head trauma), U.S. Olympic Team members and world champions. A rebounder can be used at home (Appendix A).

§ Ch 16 — How to Learn Without Effort ▾

Principles: a partner if possible. Mistakes are "reminders" to thank. Notice when you started thinking or holding your breath. Slow down ("faster is better" is conditioning). Never move to the next step until the current one is effortless; one new step a day if you want to go slowly. Guides must master the steps themselves first, especially with children.
Part 1: the arrow chart (poster paper, five rows of five or six arrows pointing up, down, left or right). Remove lenses. Myopes step back one step after each procedure.
Case: "Peter" (about 20/300, his guess) moved from 5 feet to about 27–28 feet from the chart in 15 minutes.
Steps One–Eleven:
Head toward each arrow and back to center, breathing between arrows; let the eyes go with the head.
Head opposite each arrow.
Eyes only, toward each arrow.
Eyes only, opposite.
Call out the direction and move the right hand that way, palm facing the direction.
Same with the left hand.
Both hands.
Call the direction, move both hands opposite.
Hands with the arrow, call the opposite.
Alternate 8 and 9 by row.
"Olympic Games": alternate 8 and 9 on every arrow.
Step Twelve: colored arrows, with the rule changing by color. Variation One: on a blue arrow, call your mother's or father's name. Variation Two adds another substitution. Then a diagonal-arrow chart from the beginning. Suggested as a morning "moving meditation."
Part 2: Trampoline Games (trampoline or rebounder):
hand circles (fingers together, palms down; "Feet hit, hands together, mouth speaks")
warm-up: count by twos to 20, adding substitutions (3 for 14, a color for 4, a letter for 18, an animal for 8), then backward
Jumping Arrows, including quarter-turn rotations, and alternating clockwise and counterclockwise as the Olympic level
Jumping Color Arrows (color words printed in mismatched colors)
Mary Had a Little Lamb (spell on each jump, clap on spaces, add substitutions, backward, from memory, both ends inward)
Continuous Calculation (two columns of five numbers; running sums, then alternating addition and subtraction, then multiplication and division)
Jumping Formulas (with a partner adding "plus one" or "minus four")
Fun with Balloons (a family spelling volley, on the floor; let children work out their own "reminders"; Gottlieb's children's manual is in Appendix A)
Gold Medal: Paradoxical Eye Movements (lying down, turn the head right while the eyes go left, and vice versa)
Switching Places (guide your partner)
Case: "Sheila" recited almost all fifty states after breaking down over geography. He refers to "idiot savants" (Joseph Chilton Pearce, average IQ 25). He claims a person at "20 percent of her learning potential" can go to 40% "permanently" within an hour.

§ Ch 17 — Vision Quest, by Sonya Hagemann, O.D. (Calgary) ▾

First-person account. Glasses at 12, which she links to choosing "not to see" men's attraction ("visual denial"). Over 20 years her prescription rose to between −3.00 and −4.00, about 20/400.
Bored as an optometrist, she met Liberman at a conference. With her glasses off, "I went from anxiety to terror in minutes."
Weaker glasses, yoga, meditation, expressing feelings (including to her father); she quit her job. A dream of clear distance vision.
At his November 1991 workshop, on the trampoline, letters "began to pop into my mind." She went to work the next day without glasses and has hardly worn them since.

§ Epilogue — Open Living ▾

Fall 1993, at the kitchen sink while feeling shame: his visual field suddenly "exploded outward," showing him the "narrow gray tunnel" he had been in.
Dates are inconsistent. Here he dates his discovery of Open Focus while driving to 1973. Ch 3 dates the start of his experiment to early 1976, and Light gave 1975.
Bohm: "all matter is frozen light." Goethe: "light created the eye." "We are actually human beamings."

§ Appendix A — Vision Improvement Resources (Products and Programs) ▾

Robert-Michael Kaplan, O.D., Beyond 20/20 Vision (Gibsons, BC, Canada).
Martin Sussman, Cambridge Institute for Better Vision (Topsfield, MA).
Les Fehmi, Ph.D. (Princeton, NJ), for Open Focus.
Janet Goodrich, Creative Vision Research (Australia).
ULT (PO Box 520, Carbondale, CO; 800-81-LIGHT), Liberman's company, "for vision improvement products, Ray Gottlieb's manual of exercises for children, and information about Jacob Liberman's lectures and workshops."

§ Appendix B — Behavioral Optometrists ▾

Referral organizations: the Optometric Extension Program Foundation (Santa Ana, CA) and the College of Optometrists in Vision Development (Chula Vista, CA).
About 210 US listings in 37 states and Puerto Rico; about 27 abroad (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, India, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the Philippines, South Africa, Spain).
Includes people from the book: Lawrence Simons, Christa Roser, Drs. Pico, Tort & Gorbea, Simon Grbevski, Sonja Hagemann, an "A. S. Tan," Ray Gottlieb, Robert-Michael Kaplan, Marc Grossman, Sam Berne, Larry Jebrock and Peter Fairbanks. Source authors Ellis Edelman, Constantine Forkiotis and Arthur Seiderman are also listed. Ch 8 says these optometrists will prescribe weaker lenses and Plus Lenses.
Contact details date from 1995.

§ Appendix C — Natural Vision Improvement Practitioners ▾

About 43 US listings in 17 states (including June Kirkwood, R.N., in Aspen; Deborah Banker, M.D.; Lisette Scholl; Marilyn Rosanes-Berrett; Parents Active for Vision Education) and about 31 abroad. Of these, 17 are in Australia, including Janet Goodrich's Natural Vision Improvement Teachers Headquarters. The rest are in Canada, England, Germany (six), Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.

§ Endnotes, Bibliography, About the Author ▾

Endnotes by chapter. The main sources are Gottlieb's "Neuropsychology of Myopia" (Journal of Optometric Vision Development, 1982), Suddenly Successful (OEP Foundation, 1991), Bates, Huxley, Lusseyran, Zajonc, Talbot and Brain/Mind Bulletin.
Bibliography: natural-vision classics, including John App; Bates; Harry Benjamin; Margaret Corbett; Elliott Forrest's Stress and Vision; Edward Friedman; Janet Goodrich; Huxley; Robert-Michael Kaplan (two books); Richard Kavner; Richard Leviton; Christopher Markert; Rosanes-Berrett; Rotté and Yamamoto; Meir Schneider; Seiderman and Marcus's 20/20 Is Not Enough; John Selby. Also Liberman's Light, Chopra, Bohm and Peat.
Contact page: write to ULT for "a free newsletter with information about his workshop and lecture schedule."
About the Author: as in the header above.

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Practical Takeaways

What to actually do with this

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Take glasses off whenever you don't need themHe lists activities most people can do without them: eating, exercising, reading, writing, conversation, shopping, cooking, dishes, the bathroom. Nearsighted people should always remove glasses for reading and close work (Ch 8).

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Test it:check the chart right after removing your lenses. Take a leisurely 20-minute walk without them, breathing fully and not judging blur. Recheck (Ch 8).

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If your prescription is strong, get weaker "training lenses"rather than going "cold turkey" (Appendix B lists optometrists willing to prescribe them). Use the "minimum safe correction" for work and driving, and keep the strongest pair for demanding tasks such as night driving. Examples in the book:

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If you have contacts and glasses, wear (weaker) glasses for a whileThey are easier to take on and off. Some prefer disposable soft lenses with a gradually decreasing correction (Ch 3, Ch 8). Hang glasses on a chain.

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A weaker correction for near work(bifocals) is "a step in the right direction" (Ch 3).

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Before you say "I can't see it," pause, breathe and blinkto give your eyes a chance (Ch 8).

⚙️

Notice why you reach for your glassesOften it is anxiety, not need. Breathe and shift into Open Focus instead (Ch 8, Ch 9).

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Do your first full day without glasses on a weekend,at your own pace, then bring it into workdays (Ch 9).

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Expect fluctuation and relapsesas feelings surface. Keep wearing lenses "only as necessary" (Ch 6).

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Take glasses off for heartfelt conversations,and as much as possible if you are a therapist or healer (Ch 9).

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Open Focus (Ch 4, Ch 8)a few minutes a day, and as a break whenever stressed:

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Seeing the Flasha few minutes daily, until bored or straining:

⚗️

Breath awarenessany time:

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Blinking:see "Eyes, dryness and strain" below.

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Tracing:

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Swinging:

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Palmingbegin with twenty one-minute sessions a day, longer as needed. Also in the morning to wake gently and at bedtime to fall asleep:

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Sunninga few minutes at sunrise and sunset, or any time in daylight (easiest when the sun is low):

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Passive Seeingabout 10 minutes a day:

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Tibetan Wheeltwice daily, before breakfast and before dinner:

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Chinese eye exercises (Ch 2)twice a day, morning and afternoon, sitting with elbows on a table, eyes closed, short nails and clean hands. Massage lightly and slowly until the area is "a little bit sore"; no excessive pressure. Each exercise 8 times:

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Check your visual field (Ch 4):stretch your arms out to the sides, thumbs up, and bring them forward until you see them; repeat up and down. Recheck when relaxed, stressed, tired, and with and without glasses.

⚙️

Remove glasses to read,especially if nearsighted.

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Hold the book at the distance from the knuckle of your middle finger to your elbowIf that is blurry, start where it is easy and move a little closer to that distance each day.

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Tilt the page parallel to your faceMake a reading board: screw two doorstops at right angles onto a smooth 12 × 18 inch board, set it sloping toward you, and put the book on it.

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"Look Up!" bookmark:write "Stop. Look up. Look away. Breathe! Now put me two pages ahead." Place it two pages ahead and obey it each time you reach it. He wishes all children were taught this from first grade.

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Face your desk or reading chair into the room or out of a window,not against a wall. Now and then look at a distant object until it is clear, then shift into Open Focus.

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For children reading:look up every 15 minutes or so (New York Times, Ch 5).

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Plus Lenses:low-powered magnifiers for close work, for students of all ages and especially children with learning difficulties. Nearsighted people get the same effect from a reduced prescription. Prescribed by behavioral optometrists (Appendix B).

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Wean yourself off sunglassesWear them only on especially bright days (beach, snow), not every time you go out. Expect sensitivity at first; sun daily to rebuild tolerance.

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When you do wear them, choose neutral grayAvoid yellow, pink, blue and red tints, and tinted glasses indoors.

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Avoid photochromic (self-darkening) lenses

🎯

Don't put sunglasses on children or infants"except under very unusual circumstances."

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On walks, swap sunglasses for a hat or visor,then drop these too except on very sunny days.

📐

Pinhole glasses:a transition tool, for example for TV or movies without prescription lenses. Not all day, not at night, not while driving. They do not permanently improve unaided vision (Appendix A).

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Intention dialogue (Ch 7):in a quiet spot, ask how you really want your vision to change and how life would feel if you saw clearly now. Find the part that resists, ask what it is protecting, thank it, and ask whether it will learn another way.

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Vision history (Ch 11):write about your earliest visual memories, the time you got your first glasses, each prescription change, your feelings about eye exams, and your daily wearing time.

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"Seeing the Hidden You" (Ch 11):lenses off, eyes closed, breathing.

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Express feelings while fresh,to the person involved, without blame, then listen without judgment (Ch 11).

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Journal (Ch 11):write the date and time and whatever you feel ("My heart is racing. My hands are sweaty"), whenever the impulse comes, without minding spelling. Put it away; don't reread it the next morning. Someday, review an old section to see your recurring feelings. The research he cites used 15–20 minutes a day for 3–5 days.

🛠️

Love Letters (Ch 11):

🎓

When an uncomfortable feeling recurs (Ch 5):relive it and ask, "Have I ever felt these feelings before?"

📌

Work with a partner if possible. Go slowly, breathe between moves, and thank each "reminder."

🌟

Never move on until a step is effortless; one new step a day is fine.

⚗️

Myopes step one step back from the arrow chart after each procedure.

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Steps 1–12 on the floor can serve as a morning moving meditation. Then trampoline or rebounder games, and the family balloon game for children.

🏔️

Aura mirror exercise:stand before a mirror reflecting a plain light wall. Look toward your face but not at it, or just past its edges, keeping your eyes moving. Notice any glow without looking straight at it. "Don't discount or try to analyze anything you see."

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Air shimmer:lenses off, look softly into the air in front of a blank wall in Open Focus.

🎯

Teach every reading child the "Look Up!" bookmark.

🔧

Consider Plus Lenses and vision therapy from a behavioral optometrist for reading or learning problems.

📐

No sunglasses for children.

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Don't treat learning-disabled children as disabled; he sees them as anxious.

⚡

Use family games (balloons, the arrow chart) with questions rather than corrections.

🗺️

Cases of driving without glasses:Liberman himself (Ch 4), Larry Simons (Ch 2), Soo Tan the morning after measuring 20/225 (Ch 7), and Diana Crow at over −8.00, of whom he says he "wouldn't have recommended that with her present degree of myopia" (Ch 6).

⚙️

His caution in Ch 6:"I would add that improving your vision should only assist you in driving more safely and attentively. I recommend that you always drive responsibly and consult with your vision specialist before changing the prescription that you wear while driving."

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Ch 8:"You'll want lenses for working or driving that support your continually improving vision—the minimum safe correction required for those activities, rather than the maximum." Reserve the strongest prescription for "the most visually demanding activities, such as night driving."

🛠️

Ch 9:"Of course, before driving without your glasses, make sure you can drive safely. Consult your natural vision improvement practitioner for a prescription strength that best supports your vision while keeping you within the legal requirements for driving.... be sure to drive responsibly! You don't need to prove anything to yourself by driving without glasses. If you have any doubt at all, leave your lenses on while driving until you feel confident that you can see clearly enough to drive safely while wearing a reduced prescription." He suggests practicing in an empty parking lot and putting glasses back on "whenever you need to."

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Hazardous work (Ch 9):"reduce your prescription very gradually," "abide by any regulations that require you to wear corrective lenses," and wear "the minimum prescription that you need for safety and legality, not the maximum."

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Evening (Ch 9):you may need a stronger pair to drive home at night.

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Pinholes (Ch 8):"should not be used all day long, at night, or while driving."

⚗️

Walking (Ch 10):consult your doctor before hill walking if fitness is in doubt; skip walking backward if uncomfortable. Night walks only where safe (Ch 9).

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Medical checks:the home chart "does not replace a professional vision exam." The book gives no list of warning signs of eye disease. Liberman twice mentions fearing a medical problem: a colleague advised an eye check after his first Open Focus experience (Ch 4), and he feared a retinal detachment when he first saw halos (Ch 13). In both cases his eyes were fine.

🏔️

His own company, ULTAbout the Author: Liberman is president of Universal Light Technology, Ltd., "doing research, development, and educational seminars on phototherapy and phototherapeutic devices."

🧭

Text that points to Appendix A:

🎯

Workshops as the evidence baseMost success stories come from his own workshops, seminars and therapy weeks: Simons (1986 weekend workshop), Hagemann (November 1991 workshop), Roser (April 1992 seminar), Crow (a week of therapy, June 1992), Brandt (Aspen intensive), the Sydney optometrists (November 1993), plus Tort, Peter and Sheila. He calls the Sydney results "typical of what has happened every time." No case of someone who did not improve is described.

🔧

His own named method"Effortless Learning" is his adaptation of Robert Pepper's trampoline work, which he says he has used with U.S. Olympic Team members, world-class athletes, and people with cerebral palsy or head trauma. "Open Focus" is disclosed in a footnote as a trademark of Biofeedback Computers Inc. and Les Fehmi; Fehmi's handbook and audiotapes are listed in Appendix A.

📐

Directories include people whose stories the book tellsAppendix B lists Lawrence Simons (Ch 2), Christa Roser (Ch 7), Drs. Pico, Tort & Gorbea (Wanda Tort, Ch 10), Simon Grbevski (host of the Sydney workshop), Sonja Hagemann (Ch 17), and an "A. S. Tan" in New South Wales (the book does not say whether this is Soo Tan of Ch 7). It also lists colleagues thanked in the acknowledgments: Ray Gottlieb, Robert-Michael Kaplan, Larry Jebrock, Sam Berne, Marc Grossman and Peter Fairbanks. The book states no financial ties with any listed practitioner.

🔑

Sources who also sell services:

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The co-writer's testimonialRose Brandt, credited with writing the book from his spoken ideas, also writes Ch 12 about her improvement as his client.

🗺️

Paid follow-up careThe book repeatedly steers readers to behavioral optometrists and natural vision teachers (Appendices B and C) for training lenses, Plus Lenses and vision therapy.

⚙️

Not here:Syntonic color therapy, his paid modality in Light, appears only in the bio. The later EYEPORT device is not mentioned.

💡

Blinking (Ch 8, "Remember to Blink"; Ch 12):

🛠️

Staring (Ch 3, Ch 8):fixed staring shrinks and dims vision (the staring demonstration). Staring "is especially common when we feel stressed." Keep the eyes moving with tracing, swinging and Open Focus. Don't stare at faces; shift the gaze over them.

🎓

Computer screens (Ch 8):the five steps above, starting with "breathe fully and blink frequently to avoid staring." He notes that after a screen session "you can't see as clearly as you could before."

📌

Reading strain (Ch 8, Ch 5):working distance, slant board, "Look Up!" bookmark, desk facing a window, Plus Lenses or a weaker near correction.

🌟

Contact lenses (Ch 3, Ch 5, Ch 8):his concern is that all-day wear fixes the eyes in one focus. He suggests switching to (weaker) glasses for a while, or disposable soft lenses with decreasing correction. New contact wearers may feel their eyes are "unprotected." Nothing on lens comfort, dryness or sleeping in lenses.

⚗️

Glasses wearing time and strain (Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 8, Ch 12; Foreword):

🔬

Sleep, waking and bedtime (Ch 2, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9):

🏔️

Light sensitivity (Ch 8, Ch 10, Ch 12):sunning on closed lids and weaning off sunglasses (see above). Rose Brandt's sun-triggered migraines stopped with sunning.

🧭

Rest for the eyes (Ch 8):palming ("the total darkness soothes your eyes") before and after any exercise, and in breaks.

🎯

Tired eyes at the end of the day (Ch 9):vision tires with the body; expect to need more support as light fades.

🔧

Eye-area massage (Ch 2):the Chinese eye exercises, with eyes closed.

📐

Releasing tension in the eye sockets (Ch 8, "Seeing the Flash"):feel the "holding on" or "grabbing" in the eye sockets and breathe "through your eyes" until it softens. No squinting.

🔑

Stress and the eyes (Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 11, Ch 14):the book's core claim is that fear, held breath and "hard thinking" tighten the eyes and shrink vision. Breath awareness, Open Focus and expressing feelings are its remedies.

⚡

Floaters (Ch 13):quoted from a textbook as harmless; Liberman reinterprets them as glimpses of energy.

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Overview

Key Ideas

Contents

Practical Takeaways

See Also