20/20 Vision Quest

You can improve your eyesight by regularly performing this series of simple exercises.

By Cybčle Tomlinson

When you look at Meir Schneider, founder and director of the Center and School for Self-Healing in San Francisco, his striking eyes are what you see first. The left eye angles slightly inward and is somewhat murky; the right one is focused and alert.

The fact that Schneider is able to see is nothing short of extraordinary: He was born cross-eyed with microopthalmy (a small eyeball), glaucoma (excessive pressure on the eyes), astigmatism (an irregular curve of the cornea), nystagmus (involuntary shifting of the eyes), and cataracts (an opacity of the lens). At the age of 6, after enduring numerous painful and unsuccessful operations, he was pronounced legally blind.

Schneider credits his restored vision to his practice of yoga for the eyes. These techniques are based on the Bates Method of vision improvement, developed around the turn of the century by ophthalmologist William Bates, who believed that eyes which were capable of deteriorating were also capable of improving. Over the course of his controversial career, Bates developed an extensive training program for the eyes. He argued that the eyes must be relaxed in order to see well.

Schneider began the Bates Method at age 17. He practiced relaxing the eyes for up to 13 hours a day. "The results were so dramatic when I began to work on myself," he says. "Seeing light—when it happened—was such a dramatic thing that nothing could stand in my way." At the same time, he also discovered how to relax his body and move more freely. Eventually, Schneider gained enough vision to read, walk, run, and even drive.

Since that time, Schneider, who holds a Ph.D. in healing arts, has made helping others with vision limitations his life's work. He began by concentrating on the eyes and then moved to the whole body, aiding those living with muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, and polio.

The Psychology of Seeing

Schneider's techniques are remarkably simple, but you have to be able to abandon your preconceived notions of what eyesight is and how it works.

Seeing involves not just the eyes but the brain. According to Schneider, "Seeing is largely a function of the mind, and only partly a function of the eyes. There are 80 to 110 million rods and 4 to 5 million cones with which the retina senses light. A billion images are produced in the retina every minute. But the brain can't assimilate all these images: It's selective, and determines how much of a picture you will or won't see. It also determines how clear or how fuzzy your vision will be." For instance, when you're bored, your mind tells your eyes not to look, and after awhile that's what happens: You stop looking.

However, there is a demand to see, and in order to do so, we often squint, strain, and stress the eyes. We further abuse our eyes by reading late into the night, watching television, working long hours on computers, and focusing for too long. "How you use your eyes determines their structure," says Schneider.

Yoga for the Eyes

Schneider begins his own eye program with palming, massage, blinking, and shifting—exercises which should be done in a relaxed, effortless way. If there is tension in the body, then the exercises will only encourage current habits. In all exercises, keep your breathing deep and full.

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