The Clear Eye Guide: How to Improve Your Vision Naturally | 924 | Dave Asprey

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. This is an episode that I've wanted to record for you for quite a while because it's about natural vision improvement. And I promised you that I would tell you what you're going to get out of a show before you listen to it so that maybe if it's the wrong show for you, listen to one of the other almost 900 that you can choose from that are going to do more for you in less time. Because pretty much that's what it's all about. You're going to learn ways you can improve your vision that start with why it changes in the body, including how your nervous system works. We're going to talk about breath work, body work, rest, light and movement all around your eyes. And you're going to learn things you can do that harm your eyesight and things you can do that help your eyesight. And from a personal perspective, I went using eye training exercises from 2080 with astigmatism to 2015 in, in both eyes about 14 years ago. And I'm still 2015 in both eyes. And I don't need reading glasses and I'm at 28% of my minimum 180 year expected lifespan. So you can do the math on that. If you want to count in chronological years. So I identify as a 28%, not as a 49 year old because that would be wrong. And if you say that I'm 49, you're judging me. And then you'll have to drink extra danger coffee so you don't hurt my feelings. Now, our guest, who is an epic expert in this is Claudia Muhlenweg. Muhlenweg. It's like a vague German thing. Tell me how to say it exactly right.

Claudia, first of all, I'm so glad to be here. Claudia Muhlenweg.

So I almost had it. So I have a hard time with the WV sound that's kind of in the middle. Claudia, I'm really happy that you're here too, because most people don't even know you can hack your eyes. And it changed my whole brain when I did it. And I think that there's been some improvements in the field, not just the visual field, but the entire field of vision, since I did that work a long time ago. And I really want people to A, know that it's possible and B, know how to do it from this show. So give me the story. How is it possible? How did you get into this?

Okay, so of course I had glasses. I was three years old when I got my first pair of glasses. And they really, I hated them. I got bullied, I got teased. I grew up in the 60s. I'm 61 years old by the way, and chronological age. And back then nobody wore glasses like one kid in my school had glasses who was super smart. So I was determined as I. When I became like a teenager, I was determined to get rid of them. And I found a book, literally, this is a book that was from a California woman that I found in Germany in a bookstore. The only book I ever found and that was all about it was called Vision Etics. That was all about relaxing your mind, body and eyes to see better. And I started doing these practices and it didn't take that long and I was out of glasses. However, then I was in high school and my exams, super stressed out, really worried. I was not a good student. I had to practice like crazy, you know, all the hours at the near point. And my vision got really blurry. So I pulled the book out again and it worked again. I was no glasses in my 20s. And then in my late 30s, I was in a very challenging marriage. I ended up getting a divorce. Single mom, no sleep, super stress. You can get the story. And I was back in glasses. And then I thought like, okay, now I'm 40, you know, normal, like nothing you can do. And then I had this epiphany. One day I went to a party, I tried to date. It's Los Angeles, right? Everybody's good looking. And I felt really isolated and lonely. Got home and I took my glasses off and my vision was so blurry, like worse than it ever was before. And I was like, this does not feel right. Like it's worse than before I put the glasses on. So I pulled out that book and started doing the practices. And then eventually I found a teacher to help me restore my eyesight. And it took a little longer when I was in my 40s than it was back then as a teenager, but it works.

I really wish someone had told me this. Starting around sixth grade, I needed glasses, but I didn't want them for the same reasons as you. And things are a little bit more accepted now. But back then if you wear glasses, it was just considered that you were a nerd. Actually, I was a nerd, so there's that. But I just memorized the eye chart so they'd take me in for the eye exam and I would just read with the finest line. It didn't matter, right? Because you could just know what the letters were. And finally in about eighth grade, I was like, I can't. I don't even know why people sit in class. Because you look up, it's just all this swampy stuff. And then I said, oh, you don't know your vision is bad, right? Unless it's really bad. So I finally ended up wearing glasses through, geez, all the way through, I think all of college. So it was one of those things that I probably would have been a much better student at a critical time had I either worn glasses or just done the exercises. Does eye training work for teens and for kids?

Oh yes, totally. I mean, with kids it's really more about making it games because this is such a big topic, really. Vision is all about curiosity and being interested. And you have to be. This is the point of relaxation I was making earlier. Our central nervous system can only relax when we feel safe. And if you had like an adverse childhood event or some trauma or just being bullied is, you know, stressful for a kid. So you don't feel safe and then your nervous system literally blurs out the world. So a lot of times it's really finding. It's not so much eye exercises for kids really. It's more finding like what is the root cause? Like why are they so stressed out? And sometimes it's just pressure to be good in school or, you know, whatever it is.

It's interesting, I look back at how much vision affects everyone's life. My grandmother, who just turned 100, tells a story of how she thought she'd never date or marry a man because she had bottle cap glasses. I come from a family of nerds, if you guys haven't guessed. A nuclear engineer. How many hundred year old nuclear engineer women do you know? And she left her glasses behind on her first date because she didn't want to be wearing them and couldn't see any street signs to get home. So they ended up spending the whole night walking around Chicago because she couldn't identify where she lived because she couldn't see. So maybe wearing glasses or not wearing glasses might get you a spouse, who knows? But I look at the impact of it on that and then all sorts of stress that people have they don't even know they have because if you can't see something you're supposed to be able to see, you get stressed, but you don't even know why, like something's not right. So that's, it's a remarkably foundational aspect to the way we interface with reality. And you actually went and Studied at the College of Vision Education in London, which I did not know exists. Can you tell me what the coursework was based on? Like, how do they know any of this stuff works?

Yeah, so the basically, all vision improvement is really based on the Bates Method. And Dr. Bates was an ophthalmologist who lived 100 years ago. He was in New York, he was a professor at Columbia. And he got really interested in this when he noticed that some of his patients improved their eyesight, especially if they didn't wear the glasses he prescribed them. So he got really interested and he's like, I didn't learn this in ophthalmology school. So he researched more and more, and he found that the root cause of vision problems is a strain. So when you think of the other senses, right, hearing, smelling, touching, we don't really make an effort. But somehow with vision, which is our main sense for most, for seeing people, it's the main sense that we use there is all this strain. So he devised this method, the Bates method, which is based on relaxation and mostly relaxation of the mind. So he even said, you know, vision is 90% mind and only 10% eyes. And he developed this whole method. Of course, you know, he was an esteemed professor. He actually found adrenaline. Like he. He was a. He was a serious researcher doctor. And then he got kicked him out of the Ophthalmology association because he was talking crazy stuff. You know, back then, even a hundred years ago, they thought he was crazy. So this is really what all vision improvement is based on, on this method. And now I forgot your question.

It was mostly about bait, what it was based on. And as a side note, I have done a lot of work based on Bates method, but if you go to Wikipedia right now, it says, like almost every functional medicine and alternative that actually works Wikipedia, which there's about 100 angry trolls who control a lot of the content on there and they call all of it quackery. So it says right there on Wikipedia, which is not a reliable source any more so than Google anymore, that the Bates method is bunk. That is not the case. It is shockingly effective. One of the other data points that made me want to have you on the show. Oh, I should mention that I first heard about you because you were on Anna Kabeca's show recently as well. But the reason I wanted to have you on is there's a guy named Meyer Schneier who wrote a book called Yoga for your eyes many years ago, and I had him come and speak at the anti aging nonprofit that I used to run. And this guy's had 200 surgeries on his eyes, and his retinas are like shattered mirrors. He should be legally blind, but he rewired his brain to see around all of that. And he has a driver's license and is fully functional like anyone else. And I did incorporate some of his exercises, which are probably similar to the ones that you're going to show with some updates from all of your work. But just, guys, this stuff fundamentally works. And anyone who says it doesn't work went through the worst, most religious, dogmatic thing that so many scientists do now, which is that doesn't work because it can't. That's just irrational. It's anti science. It's. What evidence do you have that it works? And it turns out there's a lot of evidence. And we've been doing this now for only 140 years. So a Columbia University doctor figured out 1885. Now, it can't possibly work. It does. Just want to give a little bit of a shout out to the history of this.

But I love that you said that about Wikipedia, because there's actually a book that I love, and I know listeners cannot see this, but it was created by the American Vision Institute, which was three behavioral optometrists and the scientists, and they even wrote about the danger of correct, corrective glasses. And this was published by Simon and schuster in the 90s.

Do your eyes get weaker if you wear glasses? Is that just a rule?

They don't get weaker? Basically, what happens is that this, like I said, the strain is the root cause. You're making an effort now. The glasses allow you to strain, right? And still give you clarity. So I call the glasses pills for the eyes. You know, when you take pills for some kind of condition for, let's say, heartburn, you know, you eat all the bad foods and you get heartburn, but you don't address the root cause, which is your gut issues, right? And your fat digestion. So that's what happens. It's like you're straining and you still get rewarded with clarity. There's no feedback like, hey, maybe take a little break from the computer or maybe go outside or do something, you know, so that's kind of. It's not even so much getting weaker, if that makes sense. In fact, that's usually more tension.

So it's about strain in the eyes. I didn't recognize where I carried tension anywhere in my body. I had massive problems with my bite alignment. And I've covered how changing your bite can completely transform your health. And I had tons of visual strain. I was kind of seeing through a narrow tunnel vision. I had no peripheral vision to speak of. And I just didn't understand how much effort that I was using to see because I had always used that. So if you're listening to the show right now, you have no idea how much effort you're using to see unless you know a different state. And a lot of biohacking is showing your body, maybe with technology, maybe with a certain technique, what it feels like to be in a state that's maybe better than your baseline, but until you felt it, your baseline feels perfectly okay. And this is literally, if you grew up in a small 10 by 10 cell, that's actually okay because that's all you've ever known. You just wouldn't know more. So if you ever ask yourself that question, what else is possible? Well, it's possible to have ridiculously good vision without lenses. Can people who wear glasses now reverse their, their vision problems to the point they can get rid of glasses no matter their age?

I mean, I would never say that, to be honest. I say you can always improve your vision, you can always drop diopters. Can everybody at any age completely? I don't think so. Really. I truly want to be honest because I have a 90 year old in my program and she doesn't wear glasses much and her vision has improved, but you know, can she get completely rid of glasses? I, I don't know. It also, here's the thing. It's not a quick fix, it's not a pill. It's. You have to do the work. And I don't like the word work, but you have to, you have to do it right. You have to be committed to making this a priority for yourself and not find excuses why. You know, I always say you brush your teeth twice a day, at least, I hope for two minutes, and you floss, but sometimes you be like, oh, two minutes a day. Like that's too much time for my eyes, you know, so that's important. You have to make it a priority. And I do want to say thank you for reminding us of the what feels normal. Because I call the strains and gains. And I always ask my students, do you notice that your vision varies? And most people that don't wear glasses yet, they're like, yeah, of course my vision varies. Like sometimes it's more clear and sometimes it's a little bit more blurry. And some people like, no, no, my vision never varies. It's always exactly the same. And that's what you're describing, that there's no sense of being in tune with your eyesight, you know, being in tune with your body.

Anyone who says their vision never changes, it just means they're not paying attention to their vision. They haven't developed what one guest called meta awareness. Like having a little process, observing the quality of your vision. And I noticed substantial changes, even from things like toxins. We know that when you're exposed to mycotoxins from toxic mold, that it will actually change your ability to see subtle shades of gray. And it's one of the diagnostic things are you getting neurotoxins. Lyme disease does something similar and you're not going to notice that. But if you look at a grid, that actually makes it very apparent, like, oh, wow. So it's just about having the awareness. And in terms of ability to focus when your eyes are tired or you're not making enough energy, you should see, like, when you're hungover, your vision is a little blurry. It's not because of a lack of tears. It's because of a lack of function in the cells.

Right, exactly. And the liver.

Yes, you said and on the liver.

Yeah, I mean, the liver and the eyes are connected, you know, and not. I mean, not now even Western medicine realizes that. I mean, like you said, the whole detox pathways, the eyes. I mean, the eyes are the only part in the body where we can look inside without surgery. Right. We can look at the retina and we can evaluate somebody's health. So that's very unique. But also, the eyes are one of the most sensitive structures. That's why often diseases are found first in the eyes before any blood work or symptoms show up.

We actually just had a study come out that they think they can spot Alzheimer's and Parkinson's in the eyes way before you see any other symptoms, which makes total sense. So what are the signs that someone should look for that they might have eye problems?

I mean. Yeah, the most common one is eye strain and blurry vision and headaches sometimes. I mean, that's most common. What else would I say? That's pretty much it. Like, if you notice your vision is more blurry, like I did. Right. I noticed when I was out of glasses. And then I was in my high school exams and I was reading. I was in the train looking up and everything was completely blurry. And I was freaking out. I was like, I have to do something. I have to. This is. I don't want to ever be back in glasses. So just, just notice, here's the thing. Eyes are the light receivers, just like our ears are sound receivers. So it's easy and effortless. Vision is. There's no effort. And if your eyes feel tired or strained at the end of the day or even in the morning, then you know that something isn't right.

Got it. What about things like dry eyes, feeling to have sand in your eyes? I always had dry eyes, but it seems like after I had Lasik in the late 90s, that really was bad for my vision. But I felt after that they got even worse. Is dryness or itchiness related to vision?

So first of all, dry eye is a super common side effect of lasik. Dry eye and also halos around lights at night.

I got both of those for two years. It was terrible. I don't recommend that surgery.

Yeah, I don't either. So dry eye. You know, here's the thing. I give you guys already a simple strategy. Blinking. One of my dearest friends, he passed away two years ago at 101 and he never wore glasses. Always had perfect vision, despite both his parents were wearing glasses and he blinked every second. And so I recommend every two to three seconds. But most people, especially when you look on screens, that's like the staring happening. There's two to three times per minute that even did studies. So sometimes it's as simple as blinking more and then getting your omega 3 fatty acids. And I know you're all about that, right? Getting that into your diet. Because tears are not water. They have an oiliness to them, like a fat, you know, component.

I just rub sticks of butter in my eyes and I feel like I'm there all day. Is that, is that normal? Now it feels like dry eye can contribute. And I've seen the same studies that say, look, you just stare at a screen and you stop blinking. So you can teach yourself to blink more often. Although that's probably hard to do. I'm guessing it's an unconscious reflex, but I'm sure it can be trained.

It can be trained. I mean, I didn't use the blink. And initially I had stickers on my computer and my books. I had like bookmarks. And it just. Now I can't even when I'm trying to do like an Instagram reel, but I'm trying to stare like I can't even do it anymore. So it, you, you can train it. It's like breathing. You can also improve your breath, even though it's an auto, you know, what is it called? Automatic process.

Yeah. Or Automatic or autonomic?

Yes.

Now, there's a bunch of different eye drops. Before we get into relaxing the eyes and some of the vision training things. Are there any eye drops that you recommend as being helpful?

I mean, as homeopathic eye drops, I usually say do the. Something we're going to talk about a little bit later is palming, resting your eyes, blinking more, doing the omega 3 fatty acids, really making sure that you get that into your diet. Those things are what I usually do recommend first. And I even had clients that had from Lasik for instance, or even not Lasik prescription eye drops completely wean themselves off the eye drops. So if the doctor prescribed you eye drops for glaucoma or something, then please don't just, you know, randomly stop the eye drops. But you usually homeopathic ones is what I would recommend. But I always try the, the actual methods first. You know, the better habits versus using eye drops. Because you train your eyes not to tear as much when you use eye drops. That said, before you get super dry eyes and you scratch your cornea, then, yes, use some eye drops.

There's the eyedrops for lubrication. I take some supplements, lutein and zanthinine and actually a lot of astaxanthin, which comes with krill oil to support my eyes. A lot of it, like 20 milligrams of astaxanthin a day. But I also use eyebright drops, which is an herb that helps your eyes. And I have used, but I'm not using can see drops can dash C and I've also used drops with carnosine in them that stop the yellowing and aging of the cornea. And so there's interesting things you can do to extend the life of the eyes. None of those are prescription. Those are all natural products, but they're not homeopathic. And I notice a big difference, especially with eyebright just in clarity the next day after I use it. So it feels like there's ways you can probably support the eyes. There's MSM eye drops. Any of those stand out as being useful or is that kind of outside?

No, no, you're right. You're right. I mean, definitely IPART is a natural herb. I mean, I was kind of considering that as a homeopathic part of that protocol, but I was, I was talking more about the, you know, the fake tears that. I don't recommend those either. No, what you mentioned is all good. And even castor oil at night in the eyes can actually help, you know, with, with cataracts. Or just overall dryness. So. And carbon 60 is a really powerful antioxidant that you can also use. I mean, you're absolutely right with what you'.

You talked about palming, which is one of those really important things. But palming is only one of the three big things you talk about to have a healthy mind and healthy vision. Can you tell me the big three? And let's get into palming. What is, what that is?

Well, so the, the big three, I mean, there's. I can come up with list of 5 and 7, but big 3 is really light rest and movement. So the eyes need rest. That is palming. We need sunlight. And I know you're big on sunlight, too. We do need natural light. And there's so many studies now, and I think even traditional medicine, whatever you want to call it, have now realized that sunlight is not as bad as we thought it would be. And then movement, really, really important piece of good vision is movement. Your eyes are basically moving all the time. If you have good vision. If you don't have good vision, you're probably trying to stop movement from happening. So those are the big three.

Okay. So it's how you move your eyes or your body or both.

Both. Really Both. I mean, the eyes make these little vibrational movements called saccadic eye movements. And much like blinking and breathing, they can be improved with practices that, you know, I teach or that are part of the Bates method. However, you do them automatically, and they're very. They like, very like they're the heartbeat of the eyes, except that we want them to be fast. We want the heartbeat to be usually slow. But, yeah, it's. People with poor vision have a habit of trying to see. Now we're getting a little bit into the anatomy, but they're trying to see a big area clear at once. And our fovea, which is the teeny tiny part in the retina where we have perfect clear vision, is about the size of a pinhead. So when I look at you on the screen here and I look at your right eye, yes, I can see everything else in my room, but I cannot see your left eye as clear as your right eye. So I would have to shift my attention. So, yes, you definitely want to move your body, you know, with your eyes. And that's also connected to astigmatism. You mentioned that earlier that you had astigmatism. So there's a research that was done in the 80s, actually, with when people habitually move their eyes in one direction without moving their head along that's the axis of astigmatism that you develop. And you can maybe look in your prescription, everybody listening, and see what kind of axis you have in your. In your astigmatism, which is the. In your prescription. If it says axis and cylinder, you have astigmatism.

Interesting. So it's all about proper movement of the eyes. I've done a couple episodes recently on functional movement of your feet or of your body, and it turns out functional movement of your eyes is probably more important than either one of those, but they're integrally linked. When I changed how I moved my eyes, it changed how I move my body kind of automatically, which was a little bit surprising. And that's why some of the exercises I thought sounded really stupid, because they involved a physical movement and closing your eyes or. Or palming your eyes. I'm like, why am I doing this? This guy making me move like a clown here? But, you know, it's like, why am I exhausted for six hours after my eye training? Because my brain was rewiring itself. So it was. It was really profound stuff that's hard to talk about without having you on the show as an expert. So we have rest, we have light, we have movement. Let's talk about some techniques that people can use to give their eyes real rest. What's your favorite?

Well, palming is kind of the. The key component of the Bates method, and so that's what I recommend, and that works for a lot of people to just lubricate your eyes to feel more refreshed and rejuvenated. And do you want me to demonstrate it or just talk it through?

Criticize my technique. I'll explain what I'm doing. I want you to tell me what I'm doing wrong. All right?

Okay.

Okay. So first thing I'm doing is I'm warming up my hands by rubbing them together. The. The chi master guys like Dr. Barry would be happy with that. And then I'm going to put them. After they're warm, I'm going to put them over my eyes. I'm cupping my eyes, so I'm not touching my eyes. I'm making a little cup over them. And if I open my eyes, I can't see even a tiny bit of light. And if I close my eyes, I can't see that. And then if I wasn't talking, I would take a couple deep breaths. How'd I do that?

Sounds good. I would probably cross my hands a little bit more over the forehead so that your nose has a little Bit more space. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, there you go.

You know what? I've always not crossed my hands until you just taught me that. Thank you. See, I knew there was something. So this is kind of a cool look. Like, take a screenshot. So, yes, I look a little ridiculous. I have done this in board meetings and people like, what are you doing? Like, restoring my vision. How long should you have your hands over your eyes to make it work?

See, this is a question. I always say it depends. You can do it as long as you want, and you can do it for a minute or just a couple of breaths. Everybody is different. And I noticed, for instance, in my own vision journey, when I did it in the morning, it took me just a minute when I was for my eyes to feel really fresh and lubricated. In the evening, it took me sometimes 30 minutes because I used to work as a designer, you know, in a job I didn't like in a stressful environment, and I was just tired at the end of the day. So it depends. Some people do best with like, five times one minute, five times a day for one minute. And other people do best with one little bit longer session.

I like to do it when I'm driving. Is that a good idea?

That's a great idea. If you're in the backseat, yes.

Actually, here's a suggestion. I'm going to let you guys in on my real biohacking secrets. When you go in and use the bathroom, you're probably going through Instagram, which is slowly rotting your mind away. Or instead of having to wash your phone, like, you have to wash your hands when you're done going to the bathroom, you could just palm your eyes for a minute and see how much better your so much better your eyes get when you're in the Oval Office, so to speak.

Oh, my God, I love David. That's awesome, Dave. That's great. Because Iris is teaching an episode on habits. And I said how you can can combine habits you're already doing, like going to the bathroom. So I coined, like, pee and palm.

I love it. Pee and palm. It's another one of the unfair advantages that women have.

Or you can do a toothbrush, like brush and blink. You know, when you brush your teeth, like, combine some things that you're already doing and just remind yourself, oh, this is a great time to do some, like, quick butterfly blinking or something.

I'm feeling sort of left out because if I tried to do palming while I was peeing, I could only cover one eye. It's just it doesn't work the way it does for you.

So let's sit down.

I mean, I could sit down. That's too easy. I need government support for this problem. Come on, guys. There's at least $1,000 a month in inflation of our currency that I should get. I mean, come on. Now, that was palming. And we talked about how long to. At least a couple breaths, maybe a minute. And if you do it for a minute, it's kind of interesting. Your mind can wander. And, like, how are my eyes? And you really focus on your eyes and focus on your breath. And I do this sometimes as part of meditation practice. It's a real thing. And if I'm like, in a big box store or at movie theaters now have LED lights behind the projector, and they're really between the jerky cameras and the blinking lights that you can't see that are blinking, that are very rich in blue. My eyes get tired in something like that. So I'll palm my eyes in the middle of a movie during the boring parts, you know, where there's kissing and stuff. Ew, gross. Just kidding.

But I thought, you know, I do want to say really important with palming is, too, that your mind is. You know, I had a client, she always listened to CNN during the 2016 debates. And, like, you want your mind to relax. So I always say, think of. You can definitely observe your breath or something like that or just like. Like, I do it in meditation as well. Right. But you can also just bring up a happy memory. Like something where, you know, you're like, oh, yeah, like, imagine you're at the beach or you're at a favorite place or with a favorite person. So you want your mind to be. You want to relax your mind. Because if your mind is stressed or thinking about all the stuff you have to do, you're not going to get the same results.

I do have the CNN palming technique that I'm a big fan of. You rub your hands together, and then when CNN is on, you cover your ears instead of your eyes and everything's better. Your body relaxes. It's crazy.

That's so funny. Oh, my God.

All right, so that's the number one eye relaxation exercise. What are some other ways you can give your eyes a little break during the day?

So, you know, sunning, sunlight and movement are also relaxation practices. It's just palming is rest for the eyes. So other things you can do. Obviously you want to shift your attention around. Our eyes. Were not. Never meant to look. Sorry. At one Point for a long, long, long time. So moving your attention around. I have my computer, you know, against the window. I just have to look up and I look outside. And your peripheral vision, this is another big topic we haven't talked about. So the good vision is both the central focus and the peripheral field. And a lot of times now, especially when you wear glasses, you might feel this kind of tunnel vision. Like, have you ever been next to somebody who's working on a computer and you stand next to them and they're like, not even noticing that you're there. And you're like tapping them on the shoulder like, oh, my God. I'm like, this is a sign of that you don't have peripheral vision, that you don't have an open field of visual awareness. So that's really important to practice. And we have different things that we do for that.

Now as I was hearing you say that. So I'm making eye contact with you on my screen. People think I'm looking at the camera, but what I do is I have a monitor about three feet behind my camera so I don't have to look really close in. And I have your face on that right behind the camera. So I can sort of. I can see most of your face, not the camera body. And still I'm making eye contact, which is a focused thing. But I realize I'm constantly. It's a habit that I've developed because of the training, but I wasn't aware of it until you just mentioned this, that I'm simultaneously, just maybe every twice a second, maybe sweeping my peripheral vision, which was not a natural behavior for me until I was 30. So even though I'm doing that, I'm very aware of but not stressed about. There's a window open over there for natural light. There's supposed to be a window open here, but it's closed because it makes too much light on the camera. But I have, you know, mountains over there and light over there. And that's by design. But what I don't do is I don't have a window right behind my monitor because I've heard that causes a lot of eye strain because you have sunlight or bright light and then a dimmer monitor that, that you kind of focus in on the monitor, but then you're going to get too much light from the edges. Any thoughts about looking with a window behind your monitor or next to your monitor?

So I have. What is my window? A west facing window. So now I have to have my, you know, my blinds, like halfway drawn down. Because, yes, the sun is about to hit, you know, this window. So in the morning, it's perfect. It depends on the time of day. But I like. I just simply like the idea that you can easily. You don't have to get up, you don't have to look around. You can simply just look literally half an inch above your. Your computer and you are out. You can look really far in the distance. That's absolutely important because the harder. If you have your computer against the wall and you have to get up and look around, like, how likely are you going to do that? You're not. You're not. You're just gonna look at the screen, so. Right, Yeah. I mean, and if you have a window behind you that usually reflects on the screen, a side is definitely good, too. On the side is good, for sure. And one more thing about periphery. Periphery, we only see movement. So sometimes if you have a second monitor, what you can do also is have a little. I never know if they're called GIFs or GIFs, but you can have a little, you know, something on your screen or a little teeny tiny YouTube video, like one of those nature movies videos, you know, have that on this on a second monitor or something in the corner so that you. That your peripheral vision is kind of stimulated by a little bit of movement.

Wow. I just recorded an episode with the Upgrade Collective yesterday on eight different kinds of nature and what they do to your nervous system and to your performance. But it's a really interesting idea to have in your peripheral vision, like wind blowing through trees or something, so you get a little bit of that natural motion. Intriguing. I might have to play with that. What I do have is one monitor that's kind of closer over here and one that's further away where you are. So I change my depth level and my screensaver is a natural scene that changes the angle of the sun, I think, eight or 16 times throughout the day based on what time it is. So there's a bit of circadian in there.

That's cool.

So, all right. That's a really cool idea. No one's ever suggested having nature on a video monitor in your peripheral vision, but I think. I think that's a good. A good idea. What is the name for the exercise you do where you close your eyes in sunlight and then turn your head towards the sun and then turn away from the sun so you feel the light on your face? Is that a movement exercise? Is that a relaxing exercise?

We call it sunning. We call that sunning. And usually you have Your. So you basically face the sun. If, unless you're super light sensitive, then you would go with a background to the sun. But the sun is not in the side. The sun is actually in the center. And then you do turn your head to the side. So basically what happens is the, the, the eye that's turned to the side is in the shade and the pupils open and close just a teeny tiny bit behind the closed eyelid. So this practices your pupillary reaction, which is really important in nighttime driving. Like, I had such problems driving at night because the, the headlights were so, you know, bright. And when I started practicing sunning and also ditching my sunglasses over 20, night driving was not a problem anymore at all. So we call that sunning. You can also do your head in circles. I mean, any kind of. It's nice for your neck. The traditional one is just like you said, you turn your head side to side.

All right. You mentioned driving at night. I never had a problem driving at night, but now we've got these LED headlights that are extremely blue, very bright, and they have a flicker that most people can't see. I get tired when I drive at night. I just wear my 70% blue blocking glasses, which is. One of my companies makes them. That's easy. It's called true dark. But if I don't wear those, I just get exhausted after like maybe 20 minutes of just super bright lights. What's causing that?

I mean, the LEDs, like you said, first of all, they screw up our circadian rhythms, especially at night. You don't want that blue light. And that's why I love blue blocking glasses at night. I mean, I honestly don't feel like an eye strain from that. I mean, you don't look directly. It's not like you look directly into those lights, but they kind of pass you by. But it's that quick lightness, darkness. Lightness, darkness. And our pupils, you, we have built in sunglasses. The pupils, right. We want them to be really fast in their reaction time. And if you wear sunglasses all the time, and especially the dark sunglasses, you know, and you go outside and maybe inside, it's kind of pretty dark. Your eyes never practice the pupillary reaction. So then it takes you way too long for the pupils to close when there's a bright light coming on. But yeah, I, I mean, to me the blue light is mostly the circadian rhythms thing and obviously for the macula. So we. You mentioned lutein and zeaxanthin. I, I never know how to pronounce that correctly. Or astaxanthin too. Those are all important plant pigments that cover our, the fovea, the macula in our eyes where we have the best vision. And if you don't get this from the diet and additionally from supplements, probably, you know, that's, that absorbs 60% of the blue light in a healthy eye. But if you, if you're older, that's why age related macular degeneration is often a lack of these nutrients, you know what I mean? And too much blue light.

I, I would probably was one of those 80s kids who listened to the I wear my sunglasses at night song. I wore sunglasses all the time because bright light just messed with me. So you go outside too bright. So I decided that I was going to solve that problem and I'd go out there and I'd do 30 seconds of bright light. Like I can't stand it. Between taking the supplements, I also take bilberry, which has really good evidence for improving your vision. It's another source of polyphenols that are specific to your eyes. And after doing that and all the other mitochondrial enhancing things, your eyes have a lot of mitochondria. I don't need sunglasses. I can go out in really, really bright light. Unless it's really bright, like diffuse clouds that are super bright. There's no directionality of that light. I still am like, give me some, give me at least some blue blocking here. But otherwise I just stopped using them. Maybe if I'm skiing or something. But it's kind of weird that it went from I couldn't dream of going without sunglasses to the fact that, oh, it's sunny outside. Maybe I'll wear a hat so my face doesn't get too much sun. That's all.

That's what I do now too. And I was the same way. I was so light sensitive. And you really brought up a good point about, you know, the, the sunlight has also the, the whole spectrum. And the mitochondria we have, the retinal cells have more mitochondria than any other cell in the body. They need more energy than any other cell in the body. And you know, now they did studies at the University College of London with the infrared light right now that has been become a hot topic because it's actually helping rejuvenate mitochondria and older retinal cells. And they say older is 40 plus. So we both qualify.

Hey, hey, hey, don't be insulting to my identity. Year old. I mean, I'm feeling judged.

Well, but you know, you're, you're You're. Even though you're 28, biologically, your retinal cells will probably still like the infrared light.

Tell them. Shh. All right, so I think we've covered rest pretty well. And something about light. What else do we need to know about light?

I mean, I think you covered a lot about light. I think, I mean, light eyes are light receivers. So the circadian rhythm. I know you talk a lot about that. It's super important to get light first thing in the morning into your eyes, and ideally in the evening. When you think of nature. Nature is so smart the way it's, you know, also the sunlight changes at the, you know, wavelength over the day. It's. It's not the same the whole time. So you definitely don't want any blue lights in the evening. You want, like, lights more on the side in the evening so that you. Because overhead lights signals our system. Okay, it's daytime, it's time to be awake. I think we covered light pretty well. I'm trying to think what else. I would say, yeah, we covered that pretty well. What we haven't covered much is movement, memory, imagination, and also glasses and why they are not good.

All right, let's talk some more about those then. What do you have to teach us?

So I do want to talk a little bit about those saccadic eye movements and the fact that your visual perfect clarity is so tiny. That blew my mind when I first. I was like, no, that's not true. I can see the whole thing. And yes, you can see the whole thing. But if you look at a point on your computer or just one letter, notice how you see that letter better if it's not sharp. I always say better because sometimes people are like, well, it's not clear than anything else, even the letter next to that. So improving those little saccadic eye movements with practices like the swing, which is from the Bates method, is super important. And like breathing and blinking, we can improve that.

I always called the swing the Snuffleuphagus. But talk to me about what's. What's the. What's the swing? Walk me through.

So basically, you know, you can do this just like sunning in a similar way where you just turn your head side to side. But you can also do a whole body movement where you put pivot on one foot and you basically turn your whole body right in 180 degree circle. Now I'm getting too much far away from the mic. And the idea is that your eyes are basically as you're moving like let's just think of like your head being a brush or something. The eyes are just moving it. They're kind of making this tiny, tiny, tiny movements as you're moving in a circle versus somebody with poor vision. Might be like the eyes be like plung, plung, plung. They make like a ping pong ball, right? They don't make this kind of smooth movements. So you want to improve those saccadic eye movements. Other movements are tracking movements, vestibular ocular movements, which is kind of like what we don't want to do in the swing. In the swing, we want to. I know. Sorry. I'm too much. In the swing, we're gonna go think of like a car, like turning, right? Your eyes stay with a nose. You want to kind of turn your. Your head in that 180 degree circle. Another movement would be where you turn your head to the side, but your eyes still look in the center. So the eyes turn exactly the same degree than the head in the other direction. So that's also a way of. That's not something we focus so much on in our practice, but it's just another way of eye movements. And then also fusion, right? How your eyes work together to focus on something.

Fusion is something that most people wouldn't know they had a problem with. And I had a really severe one. Entirely invisible until I started training my eyes. It turns out that my brain learned a long time ago because my eyes sucked at being teammates with each other. It's probably why I suck at being a teammate, right? Anyone who works for me will tell me I'm kidding. But what happened was that it was so stressful to my brain to make my eyes work together that it would just turn off my left eye whenever it wasn't needed. So I was losing stereo vision much of the day without knowing I was losing stereo vision. And learning how to turn on my left eye was like grueling work in order to do it. And it made my light sensitivity worse because now I had two eyes that had to get used to not wearing sunglasses. But it, it made a really big difference. And now I'm actually working on testing out a VR system that teaches I teaming really, really effectively. You had a different word than teaming. What was it?

Well, I call it fusion. But I love teaming because I do talk about, you know, are your eyes friends or foes? Are they, are they teammates or not? I do. I use that language too. I love you. We use very similar language, actually. So you see a question how to test this or how to Know if you have fusion or stereopic vision, binocular vision.

So. But is there a test that someone watching the show could do or hearing the show do right now? So how do you know if your eyes work together well or not?

I mean, there's a whole host of tests, but one super simple one that everybody can do is literally just use two fingers. Use your two index fingers, hold one a little closer to you, and hold the other one in line with your nose a little further out. And now look at the one that's close to you. And do you see two fingers behind you? And otherwise, when you look at the one that's further away, the exact distance really doesn't matter. And if you look at the other one further away, do you see now two fingers in front of you in the closer thing? You know that basically wherever you don't look, you see two. And wherever you do look, you see one. Even if you look at your phone, you should see, like four feet. You know, when you look down, basically everything doubles up where you don't look.

This exercise was so difficult for me when I started this, and eventually I got to do the beads on a string exercise. Do you want to walk us through that? If you agree with it, yeah.

Oh, totally. The Brock string is definitely part of my practice as well. So basically, imagine a string. You can have a short one that's arm's length. You can also have one that's. That's like 20ft or 6 meters long, and you have a series of beads on it. And the goal is. So basically, when you look at this string. And so if you have even your headphones of your cable or something, you can use that, too. And you look at that with two eyes. Yeah, I have my headphones here. So if I look at. There you go. Perfect, perfect.

Your nose, not your ear like that.

You hold it under the nose. Exactly. And then you look down on that string and you should see wherever. Depends on where you look. If you look in the middle, you should see an X. And both of those strings that you see should look the same. And if one is faint or weak, then that might mean that either is not, you know, either more challenged or is not participating. If you don't see two strings, you don't use two eyes. Yeah.

So there you go, guys. If you're driving, don't do this, obviously, or operating heavy equipment or holding a baby. So don't do that. But otherwise it's pretty safe to do this. And the two fingers, always make sure you're seeing two Fingers where you're not looking. And if you want to do the string thing, you should see an X that's evenly strong on both sides of the X. And the string has to be touching your nose, not just off to one side. And it is amazing how many people go, wow, one of the strings is really faint. Well, there you go, that eye. Your inputs from that eye are weaker than they should be. And you can teach your brain to turn that up by doing that exercise some more and doing some of the other things that are and the things that you teach. By the way, your website is my holistic vision.com, right?

Yes, yes.

Talk to me about regulating the nervous system and how that's tied to vision.

So, yeah, I mentioned that a little bit in the beginning, how we, our vision is best when we are relaxed. And you all know this. If you have been stressed, if you've been late for an appointment, if you just had a car accident, you know, your, your vision will be blurry or, you know, your peripheral vision shuts down, your pupils open up, you know, you get this shot of adrenaline and you're in this fight or flight mode and your vision will not be good, which is a good thing to have if we are in an actual emergency, you know, to have this fight or flight system kick in. But if it becomes chronic stress, you will also start chest breathing. The more you do chest breathing instead of abdominal breathing, the more your trapezius and the sternocleidomastoid, all those muscles in the neck and the shoulders, and will tighten up maybe your jaw muscle. And that creates, first of all, reduces blood flow to all these tissues and you create kind of, what do you call it, like, you consistently shut your peripheral vision down and your vision will be more blurry. And that's what I mean with the engine light. If you now put the, the glasses on you basically, I'm sorry, with the pills for the eyes, when you put the glasses on, you don't address this constant strain and stress and the tension in your body. And, and yeah, I always say blurry vision is the engine light. It's like, hey, something is not right, so maybe check out what the problem is. And so the only way we have relaxed vision and peripheral field is when we are in a relaxed state or the parasympathetic nervous system state known as rest and digest. That's the only time. And we can never all be relaxed all day long. I mean, that's not possible, right? There will be moments when we have a little bit of stress, but that's fine. That's good, right? We do need that little bit of stress. But then when the, when the stress is done or over, then you should be back to your relaxed state pretty quickly. And that's really important to regulate, to really get into that. And I teach breath practices which I'm sure your listeners have heard about. You know, abdominal breathing, just holding a little, hold your breath a little bit. Little breath holds are really helpful. Or focusing on your exhales, making those longer. That's just simple ways to, you know, tell your body, hey, and your brain, it's okay, we are safe, we can relax.

So creating autonomic response or going out of the sympathetic, you know, fight or flight response and just into relaxing helps. I think even heart rate variability exercises with feedback can really help your vision just because the body chills. And for listeners, episode 895 with the one of the world's top five powerlifters, Mark Bell. We talked about what I would do for vision in some detail there as well. And I know quite a lot as you can tell, but we have someone who knows 10 times more than me as our guest today. So you should start with this episode if you're thinking about hacking your vision and you can look at some online programs and all that you'll find from Claudia. Because there's really strong return on investment for spending energy on fixing your eyes. Because when your eyes work better, you use less energy all the time. And then that energy can go into folding. Then that energy can go into folding mitochondria. It can go into being nice to other people, it can go into learning something. It's just free energy. But you're wasting it with bad light and eyes that are struggling all day long. Your goal is to learn how to keep it so that you're mentally, emotionally and physically not struggling. You're just executing. And maybe you're succeeding, maybe you're not. But the struggle represents wasted energy that you didn't need to do. So that's why I think fixing your vision is such a big thing. All right. Oh, and it looks like I'm just googling here. You have a free five day course, so there you go. I do energy, not your money, which is even better. And that's your URL is I just took it off my screen. What is that again?

It's the URL for the free Friday training is you have to put the www in which I don't know why, but naturally clear vision.com forward/5days.

Okay. So naturally clearvision.com and I'm sure there's links on the homepage for that.

One thing we haven't talked about that I'm going to teach in that five day training is really memory and imagination, which is we do see in the brain. I want to quote one quick. I know one quick thing that is, I think really that blew my mind too. So they did studies with people with dissociative identity disorder, which is used to be called multiple personality disorder, and they found that people that have these different Personas, right, it's the same physical body, but they have these different Personas or alters. And they had, they were like severely near sighted in one Persona and had like 2015 vision in another. And even the eye pressure, the color perception was different. And you know, how can that be if it's the same physical body? If the brain, right, would be the driver and our mind wouldn't be such a piece, key piece and vision. And that's what Bates talked about 100 years ago. And neuroscience confirms all of this. We know all this now that the visual cortex lights up the same way if you imagine something or if you actually look at it, you know, like look at your hand, close your eyes and imagine or have a memory of your hand and you have the same parts of the brain firing up. And he didn't know that 100 years ago, you know, so it's, it's, to me, it's just mind blowing.

This is the same body of research that shows cognitive improvement from either reading or listening to fiction, because it requires you to do exactly that and it exercises that part of the brain. So part of your job, and I've shared this with Upgrade Collective members on our bi weekly calls, but part of your job is to spend 10 minutes every day, maybe 20 minutes, not listening to a podcast like this, but listening to an audiobook and maybe one that has really interesting language or really interesting imagery. But the idea is you want to make your brain paint a picture and I don't know, will that actually improve your vision, just making your brain paint a picture, or do you have to really focus on the visual side of it?

No, I think that's really important is painting a picture is perfectly fine. Or what I will teach in the, in the five days is, you know, a black period, which is something that Dr. Bates used a lot because a black period is so simple. It's just a little tiny black dot. And can you imagine one, you know, with your eyes closed? And I find that people with poor vision usually cannot imagine a black period with them in Their mind with their eyes closed. So, you know, using that, using your actual imagination of clear vision is also really important because if you say to yourself, oh, it's all blurry, I can't see anything yet, your thoughts have an amazing energy. And the more you repeat saying, I can't do it, I can't do it, it's all blurry versus imagining something clear. And it literally can clear up using this. The imagination of clarity. And imagination always assumes that you have a memory. So you know what I mean? I always use an example. If you imagine a pink elephant, you need to know what pink is, and you need to know what an elephant is. And then you can kind of, you know, create this new visualization or imagination from that. So having a memory of a clear letter and even if that's with glasses on and then closing your eyes and continue to imagine the letter being clear and how it looked like black against white, for instance. So that's really. That's really probably the most important part of the Bates method that nobody talks about is really the mental eye exercises.

If you want to call those imagining black versus white. Imagining that black dot on a white surface. Yeah. You can also play with the. The color and intensity of the white behind the dark as well. I can do that. Now that you pointed out, I can do that kind of effortlessly. But there's these red letters that say red rum in there. Is that normal?

Let us that say what? What?

I'm sorry, that was a reference to a Stephen King novel.

Oh, okay. I didn't get that.

That's murder spelled backwards from some kind of.

Oh, my God. I used to love. I mean, I used to read these books and now I can't do that anymore.

That's just my. My multiple personality disorder. I have a seventh grade sense of humor and it just doesn't go away. So that must be a different personality.

You have a great sense of humor. I love it.

Oh, thank you. Now talk to me about reading from a book versus reading from a screen.

So our eyes, again, are light receivers. And having a book is a reflected surface. Right. There's a specific distance. We didn't talk about that with a box string, but when you use the beads, you can practice your targeting. So there's a specific distance, like, I don't know, let's say 40 centimeters or 16 inches. But as a screen is a backlit, it's like we have this fake 3D. Right. I look at you and as I see a room behind you, but it's fake. It's like A flat screen. And it's really tiring for the eyes because there's no physical exact. How do I. How to distance fake.

It's real. Look, that's not a background. Anyway, I'm kidding, right?

Yeah. So. And, and you, you talked about flicker rate earlier. You know, computers have flicker rates and all these things. So it's definitely much harder. It's easier for the eyes to look at the edge of your computer, of the physical computer than the actual screen, which is kind of this bottomless, you know, fake depth, basically, if you're going.

To be reading an actual book on paper. And by the way, guys, as an author, if you buy my books or anyone's books on paper, we like that better than ebooks because ebooks don't pay authors as much. They pay Amazon way more. So they kind of squeeze you there. But Amazon also has a history of deleting your ebooks when they're not politically correct. It's actually happened now where they have pulled content. I'm not saying for any particular recent realm of misinformation or whatever, but there was a big broa about 10 years ago when they edited stuff on people's Kindle devices. So you don't really own an ebook. You own it as long as the E book provider allows the app to keep working. So there you go. And if there's ever a big power outage or something like that, or, I don't know, governments that turn off the Internet when truckers do stuff, you might just want to have the important books on paper. So. And it's good for your eyes.

It is definitely better for the eyes. And as it's also good to read small print.

Okay, that's good. So, so many people said, don't strain your eyes. Don't read like Abe Lincoln under the firelight and candlelight. You have to have super BR light and big print, like a fluffy pillow for your eyes. You like fine print? Why?

Yeah, because it actually requires you to relax. And again, this is kind of the symptomatic treatment. As I see people with phones and the text is on the super bright. What is it? Enlarged size, like humongous letters and it allows you to strain. And again now you can read the text, but you're using bad habits. And I have my phone to the tiniest print settings because whenever I do get tired and I'm not perfect, right, I get tired sometimes at the end of the day and I look at this like, oh, it's getting a little blurry. Guess I need to do some Palming or maybe I should just go to bed and get some sleep instead of, you know, pushing through. So it's. Bates had said if you, you cannot read four print, text and candlelight if you're not relaxed. So it's kind of a great way to, to check how relaxed you are by reading small print and not making an effort.

I have this amazing technology that I've been working on and it's a solar powered book that stays charged forever. And it looks like this, it's got these pieces of wood in it. That's just the healthier way to do it. So if you have to be a tech person, there you go. It's just a good old fashioned paper book. What about the type of reading light? People have LED reading lights, but bright light at night keeps you up and you want to read before bed. So what, what's the right solution for that?

I'm not a fan of reading in bed, to be honest. I. That's just my personal opinion. Also, you want to look at things straight ahead. We didn't look. Talk about, about posture. We talked a little bit about posture. But you know, you don't want to lay on the side and read a book. You want to look at things straight ahead and you also want to move your head with your like a little bit, even if it's not like a lot, but you're going to move your head a little bit as you're reading. You don't want blue lights for sure, but you know, at light at night you also don't want super bright lights. So I do recommend like a little bit dimmer lights at night. However, if you then have to put glasses on, I, then I just, I wouldn't recommend reading then. I would rather have you read. I mean, here's what I do. In my programs we always get into weaker glasses or no glasses and start with bright light because that's just, it's just starting to understand that you can actually see a lot better than you think.

Right.

Versus relying on the glasses. And then slowly, when you can read smaller and smaller print and bright light slowly we then start using dimmer light situations. So, you know, Bates was of the other opinion who's like, you have to start in the worst conditions to get people to relax. In. Elvis Huxley, who wrote a book, the Other Seeing, because he worked with a Bates teacher called Margaret Corbett, he said, you know, start with brighter light and I find that easier. People find it more, you know, encouraging that they can actually go from like really high prescription progressive glasses to like drugstore readers. You know, like really low drugstore readers and. Oh, no glasses in good light. And then slowly get into the dimmer light situation. So that's, that's what I do. Or pinhole glasses, if you've heard of those. Some people, like.

I was gonna ask you about that next. I didn't have mine present, so I just was going to pretend these were pinhole glasses.

Okay.

You've actually got a real pair to show off. That's good.

I got a bunch of different ones. I don't use them myself, but I have a bunch in my. Here in my local practice so that people can try them out. They basically little, they make little. They have little holes and see, these are square holes that I'm showing right now. And then there's some with round holes. So basically they create a pinhole effect much like you would do when you try to squint. Right. When you try to squint to see clearly, they bundle the light for you so they don't distort. Like an actual glass lens, which distorts. Right. Reading glasses make everything larger. And near side, the glasses make everything smaller so they, they just bundle the light for you. So it's a, it's not a training tool per se where you use those and miraculously your vision will improve, but it's, it's. It's a great way to use as a transition or as training glasses.

What about reading under red light?

I don't actually have an opinion about that, to be honest. I never, I never thought about that. I don't. I mean, I think as long as it's easy for you to read and you're not straining, that should be fine.

There's a study actually that it improves eye health and vision, and I'm trying to find it right now.

Oh, interesting.

So I read under a red light. I just have like. This is one of the ones. Oh, shoot. I just moved it. It was on the floor here because I was using it. But no, whatever. I have a little portable thing that we make that's a relatively dim but bright enough red light. Like a little red flashlight kind of. And I'll have that or just a red light on in the room and then you read. You're going to get sleepier under a red light, which is not a bad thing if it's before bed. But according to that one study, it, it made a difference. And there's a study I'm finding it's not the one I'm looking for, but conserve visual capacity of rats under red light. So apparently your eyes last longer if you're using that to read, it makes sense.

I mean, Bates talked about the candlelight, right? That was really. It's really, really warm light, too, so it makes total sense. Yeah, I didn't know about that study. I knew only knew about the infrared light study with the mitochondria, but that's great. Good to hear that.

What happens if we just don't move enough? If we, say, sitting down all day, what effect does it have on vision?

Well, if you don't move much, first of all, you're not practicing your balance, right? Balance and vision is obviously intricately related, because if you've ever tried to do a yoga pose on one leg and you close your eyes, so the more you sit or the less you move, the more you will probably not move your eyes. And also the blood flow, I mean, there's so many factors why movement is important. I'm at a standing desk right now, and usually I'm on a little balance board when I'm standing, which I didn't want to do because I didn't want to wiggle around too much. But that creates automatic movement without doing the swing or any of the vision practices. Just kind of moving around when you're standing, right. And your balance. I teach myofascial release. I use little massage balls in my training. So, you know, your balance. You talked about the feet earlier, right? How we are grounded. Feeling grounded and feeling solid on the ground is absolutely affecting your vision. The more unstable you feel, the more you're going to strain in your whole vestibular and visual system.

It's so cool that you're talking about this, because I guess on a very recent episode where we talked about zero shoes and proper footwear that allows your feet to move around, we talked about wobble boards, and I've talked about it on a few other past episodes. But standing on one of those or just using it some of the time, or a Basu ball, it really does make a difference. But who would have ever thought that it changes your visual quality to relax and get the body moving because you stop staring, right?

You don't stare. The second you're moving, you're, you know, without actually moving. Even if you wouldn't move your eyes that much, when your body is moving, your eyes automatically move, right? So you don't even have to think about it. And so that's one reason why I love this. And I actually wear barefoot shoes, and I recommend them as well, so.

Well, there you go. People are Paying attention to the quality of their performance. Whether you start with the eyes, you start with the toes, you end up coming up with the same answer, which is kind of cool. That's one way you can tell. Biohacking's interesting when people from entirely different lineages of ancestral study or different scientific study end up meeting in the middle, going, oh, that's kind of weird. But this appears to be a foundational and fundamental part of human performance is vision. It's interesting that that is trainable. And it turns out professional athletes like people who are awesome at baseball or football or hockey, we have to see something. And if you judge by three inches the difference in a throw that's coming from across the field, you might not actually catch it. Right. So that's when in professional athletes you see the most importance of that aspect of vision. But like you said, bead and string. Oh, you mean I could focus both eyes right here, not behind it, not in front of it at the same time. That apparently gave me a score that was pretty darn impressive for someone who's not really spent a lot of time with a scope.

That was very, very cool. And you have ball games. I do that a lot with children and even adults. Just throwing and catching and occluding one eye when you obviously don't have to have position perception, but you know, training your peripheral vision, all that is really important. And I started playing handball as a, at 12 years old and I couldn't wear my glasses and I had squint. In other words, I had problems with depth perception too because my right eye was turned in. So. And I didn't want to get hit with a heavy leather ball. Right. So I, you know, we practice a lot. And I think that was partly in addition to the Bates method and practicing those relaxation techniques really helped me to get rid of my glasses in my late teens was the, the handball because. Right. I couldn't wear my glasses and my depth perception, like. Yeah, you get hit by the. If you can't, if you can't catch the ball, you know you're going to get kicked off the team pretty quickly. So I think that was part of it. So ball games are really. Kids don't play ball games anymore. You know, like old fashioned, go outside in the park and catch and throw stuff.

As a parent, I highly Recommend Getting about 5 beanbags that aren't too heavy and just throw them at your kids and eventually learn how to catch them. And if not, you can just laugh at them every time you nail them with it and they'll laugh too, which makes it more fun. And eventually that can lead to learning how to juggle, which I think also is really good for your visual system in addition to the cross patterning in the brain. So if you're not gonna play ping pong, which is one of the ways Dr. Amen recommends improving cognitive performance. And I do a ping pong table for that reason. But I'm not great at juggling. But I got to where I could at least not drop it all the time. And I think it also helped not just cognitively, but I think it helped my vision. Do you have any thoughts about juggling?

Yes, totally. Juggling is absolutely. It gets you into that flow and you, you focus, but you also have that peripheral awareness and the hand eye coordination. So juggling is fantastic. I'm definitely not a good juggler at all either. But it's, it's definitely like one of my colleagues who was a teacher at the college of Vision Education. They don't actually. The college had to close. That's a different story. But basically he, in his book, he talks about that's what he does with kids. He does basically juggling with kids to improve their vision. So you're absolutely on target, Dave.

I like juggling with kale because then I don't care if I drop it because who wants to eat that crap, right? It just. Just how it is. Stuff tastes bad and it's bad for you. So different story now. Do you have time for a couple questions from listeners?

Yes, of course.

All right, raise your hand if you want to go. We had lots of really intelligent questions from our chat thread. Again, if you want to be on podcast and hear the entire discussion live and be able to have this opportunity, OurUpgradeCollective.com is where you can join this group of amazing smart people. Except for Scott. Just kidding, Scott. All right, Katherine, you have a question.

Hi. Great information so far. Very quickly. Born cross eyed. Had the surgery to correct it. Never worked in my left eye. Had to wear a patch. Cheated because I was five and my left eye, they sort of say I'm legally blind. I have a black thing floating around in there that moves around inside my eye. Everything I do see is in perfect focus. But just wondered if any comments or protocols I could use to strengthen my left eye.

Yeah, I mean, so as a kid, did I hear that right? They had you patch the so called good eye and then your left eye, you kind of had to work with the left eye by itself. Is that what you were saying?

Into walls and everything Because I couldn't see.

Yeah. And there's a black. There's something black floating in your eyes. Is that like just like a floater? Does it feel like. Does it look like a little soft something?

It doesn't have edges, but it just takes over part. It's just there. It's like a black. Like it's a horror movie and I'm walking through a very black, dense smoke.

Is that like retinal detachment or something? Or like. I'm just wondering if there's anything from like a pathological thing. I mean, what you can. Here's the thing, what I found is the eye could use more rest. Maybe. Maybe it could literally use more rest. Like even one sided palming could be helpful. Or you could be indeed be excited to kind of be on its own when you cover up the other eye or use an occluder on the right eye. So I found both to be helpful. And it really depends. And I've had lots of students that have what's called amblyopia, where one eye was lazy eye. Right. Where one I didn't see as well. So like sometimes working with that eye alone or even giving that eye just a little bit of extra rest could also be helpful.

Okay. All right, I'll give it a try. Yeah. They say if anything ever happened to my right eye, my left eye would come back because my brain would heal it. So I think if my brain could heal it in that situation, why can't I just heal it then?

Exactly. I love that. And also doing those fusion practices like we talked about, that could be helpful for you. I mean, there's a whole lot more you can do. But I wonder about the black patches that are floating around. I'm not sure what that is. Have you ever gotten that checked out?

Yes, I ever.