Beyond Glasses: Healing Your Vision the Holistic Way with Claudia Muehlenweg

Welcome to the Wellness Sherpa podcast, where we engage with passionate leaders, holistic thinkers, and disruptors who courageously share their personal journey, mission, and wisdom with you. Together, we create a safe space to empower you to live your best, most vital life. Thanks for being here. Well, hello everyone. I am so thrilled to be here with Just a beautiful, beautiful woman, Claudia Mullenweg, who is the Holistic Vision Coach. But really, she's the founder of Naturally Clear Vision Institute. And she's the first one we've had on the podcast who is going to teach us about the eyes and why that is so important in looking at our eyes in a holistic way and all the things that we're doing that are not helping our eyes. Yeah, you're gonna share all that, right?

I will. Like, I have so much to share, we could go for 5 hours, but I know we want to keep it succinct. The most important part for your audience.

Yes, yes, yes. So let's just start, like, how did you get pulled into a focus on vision? What was happening in your life and how did this happen? Because you are like, you're world-renowned, you're known around the world. And you have beautiful eyes. So tell me about how you got into this.

I think it's like so many of us through my own challenges. I never thought I had beautiful eyes. I got my first pair of glasses at the age of 3 years old, and I was teased and bullied. I was literally— I just looked at old school photos. I was— my first grade was like 1967. I'm aging myself, but I looked at the picture of the first day of school that was like looking like I was so scared, and none of the other kids wore glasses. And that was before Harry Potter. Like, glasses were basically not cool. And I wasn't the school smart kid. So I wasn't like, oh, you wear glasses, you must be smart. I had to really study. And I was clumsy. I was farsighted. So I— and I had to squint, which means I had problems with depth perception. So I was really bad at athletics, at sports, catching and throwing. Like, basically just the clumsy kid with the glasses. And I got bullied and teased so hard. So I hated the glasses. From like always, they broke, you know, either fogged up. It was just annoying. And then way, way later, as I was getting— I was married, I moved to the US. Long story short, marriage fell apart and my vision really tanked. I noticed how quickly my vision got worse. And I had this one day, we had already separated, where I noticed— I had noticed before, but I'd never noticed as much before. Like whenever I took my glasses off, my vision was so much worse than before I put them on. So as a farsighted person, I could see pretty well far. The biggest challenge was like middle distance reading and then driving at night. I had astigmatism so that there was streaking and doubling of lines and I couldn't really see the signs. But during the day I was pretty much okay for like distance stuff. But I noticed every time I took the glasses off how bad my vision was afterwards. And I just like, for some reason, you know the right time, you're like, I need to do something about this. And then as serendipity had it, I had started yoga as a single mom just once a week. And my yoga teacher said one day, I'm studying to be a vision teacher. I was like, what is that? And she said, for low cost, I'm looking for guinea pigs. I'm like, yeah, here. And that really got me hooked and that really helped me. And then of course I was hooked and when I really like something, I get certified. Like now I wanna understand everything about this. So that was like 2009 that I got certified. Yeah.

Okay. And so you noticed before you put your glasses on, you had a certain level of sight, and then when you put them on and took them off, your sight was actually worse.

Yeah. So I was, you know, I was putting them on to get my vision clearer and feel more safe. But when I took them off, my vision was always so blurry, like almost twice as bad as it was before. And I think that had like That epiphany was, I was like 41. And so maybe there's also more straining, you know what I mean? Because I didn't notice that. I noticed it before probably, but I never really paid attention. And that particular night, I got lost in the middle of Los Angeles. That was before we had Google Maps. I was so stressed. I was really like, I knew I was in the bad part of town. And when I got home like super late, that was that moment where I took my glasses off. I'm like, wait, I can't see anything. This is really scary. And that's the day where I was like, okay, there has to be something that I can do. Like, this doesn't seem right. And I wasn't even, Jen, I wasn't even a holistic person. I wasn't even the person who was like, oh, I don't like Western medicine. No, no, I was popping the painkillers for like, no, not at all. So this was like my first venture into, there needs to be something else because the glasses are not gonna do it.

Yeah. So where did you go from there? What rabbit holes did you find yourself going down to kind of figure out this before and after thing and the blurriness, you know, in your early 40s?

So I realized, you know, first I thought like everybody else, it was eye exercises. And when I started working with this yoga teacher, I learned that it was really about relaxing your eyes because vision is a sense just like hearing and tasting and smelling, right? And for some reason, I realized I was making such an effort to see, whereas this other thing seemed to be— I didn't make an effort. I didn't try to hear. So I thought, like, OK, so it's relaxation. I realized it's relaxation. And then also using your brain. We actually see in the brain, not the eyes. And utilizing things like memory and imagination to—

Mm-hmm.

Because we have a memory of what we see, but we can also imagine what we want to see. And that was amazing. And then also light. Obviously, I had worn sunglasses. I lived in LA. I wore sunglasses on overcast days. I was always light sensitive. You know, they told me because you have the bright green eyes. And I had trouble driving at night. And when she said, no, light is really important and you need to reduce your light sensitivity. So I actually haven't worn sunglasses in 20 years except for like, in fact, I was in the snow not too long ago. I was like, oh gosh, I don't even have sunglasses anymore. But that was too bright, like blue skies.

Yeah.

You know, snow.

Yes.

And but I was so light sensitive. So she taught me how to generally, like, gently reduce it. And that also made night driving a piece of cake for me. So I had almost stopped night driving, which in Europe is fine. But in the US, you basically, you know, you can't live. Yeah, you can't live. Yeah. And that was in my early, like mid-40s. So that really helped me drive at night again. And And that's also what I teach, right? Eyes are light receivers. So we need— the eyes need to be able to receive light. And we have amazing mechanisms built into our eyes and our brain to tolerate light. And it's actually really beneficial for us to get sunlight.

Yeah. I mean, we've— I feel like we've come so far away from who we are innately as humans, right? Because we are light and energy beings. And when you start putting sunglasses on, you're blocking your ability to synthesize light. So are you glasses-free now?

Oh yeah, I've been glasses-free for like 20 years. And as a farsighted person, you know, so I always had problems even when I was a kid to look, to see sharp up close. So, you know, the people that always talk about, oh, I had great vision until 45 and then I needed the reading glasses. So for me, it's like a double win because I have conquered presbyopia. I don't need reading glasses. My distance vision is really, really good. It goes like In very good days, it's 20/10. It's usually 20/15. And on a bad day, it's 20/20, you know, which happens too. We all have bad days and stress. We can talk about this too, how stress affects our vision. So I'm glasses-free, 100%. And like I said, sunglasses is something I don't even own anymore. But I realize, oh, if I go into extreme conditions, it's— I probably should have a backup pair of sunglasses for those situations.

An old cheap pair of them just in case.

Yeah.

And so, you know, let's, let's stay on the physical for a minute. And then I want to go to the emotional side of the eyes. On the physical side, what are some things that you teach that help people? So you had glasses from the time you were age 3. Most people would say, oh, you could never reverse that, right? We have all these beliefs we've inherited. I know I went to my eye doctor about a year and a half ago, and my eyes were better. And he said, oh, well, the next time you come, they're going to be worse. And I said, why? You know, and I've been using plants for a long time.

They already tell you these things, you know? Yeah.

And I said, well, no, you can reverse, you know, your eye, you can reverse anything. So tell me about just like one or two things that you teach people, like how to relax and all of that for their eye health.

I think one thing that was so interesting for me, and I don't have my eye model here because I'm not at home in my office. I'm actually in Germany. where I'm from. So I don't have all my tools here. But basically, the one thing I want everybody to understand is that our— first of all, the retina is part of the brain. And we think of the retina, it's often compared to like a film, like there's a film camera and the retina is the film. But the film is equally sensitive. Like if you have like, you know, the old-fashioned film in the camera, the retina in the eye is not the same way. So we've all heard of the macula. you know, macular degeneration. It's like the center of your retina. And inside of that is the fovea. And only in the fovea, it's the size of a pinhead, it's tiny.

Wow.

Do we have the sharpest, most acute clear vision. That's only filled with cone cells. And then, in the macula is cone cells. And as we go toward the periphery, we have 2 different photoreceptors. I forgot to say that. We have rods and cones. You might remember from school biology. And the cones are the ones that see sharp and see color, and the rods are the ones that give us night vision. So they're not very sharp, they're black and white, but they see at night, right? At night. So in the end, they give us the peripheral field. And so the understanding that when we wear glasses and when we have poor vision, what we usually do is called staring. We are trying to see, like if I look at you right now, Yeah, I see my lamp and my other things and my water bottle, but I only see, even in fact, if I look at your right eye, I don't see your left eye as sharp as the right eye. So in other words, healthy eyes move a lot. And it's not that we think about moving our eyes. Our brain is like driving, like we are basically looking around. So the point of sharp vision is very tiny. And when we try to see a whole picture sharp at once, we are making a huge effort and we are trying to see with parts of the retina that are not anatomically able to see clearly. And, that's really important. So, there's 4 types of eye movement and one of them is saccadic eye movements. And, I always compare them to breath and blinking. Blinking the eyes is also important. We do them automatically but we don't do them well. And so, one of the things is I had one of my first clients, he was in his 60s, his dad was in his 90s and his dad was a fighter pilot. And, in World War II, he said he had 20/40 vision and he wanted to have 20/10 vision. He wanted to beat the Germans back in World War II. And I love this, what he said. So his dad always used to say, when I'm staring or when I'm straining, I have a little plastic eyeball here, it says it feels like a ball bearing that doesn't have any grease. It's like, you know, like it's kind of— and when it's— when the eyes are relaxed and everything is functioning, I'm using my central vision in the fovea, it's like a greased ball bearing and everything is just smooth and easy. And I always liked that concept so much. And so understanding the difference between sharp vision and peripheral vision, and especially when we wear glasses, we often think everything behind the glass is sharp and we might as well forget about all the other stuff because it's blurry anyway, when in fact nobody has perfect vision in the peripheral field. We see movement mostly in this periphery. We see movement.

But that's by design, right? That's how the eyes work.

That's the anatomy of the eyes. Exactly. And so When you understand that and, and then, and, and reduce the strength of your glasses. So glass that— oh, we can go into that as well. Sorry, I, I'm going to pause right now because there's a lot to digest.

It's okay.

Yeah.

So, so doing some eye exercises, understanding the anatomy of the eye, I think is really important. I did not know any of that. So that's really amazing. Knowing that the eye is going to be receiving light. Now let's kind of pivot over a little bit to the emotional side. So, you know, I went through 4 years of energy school. And one of the things that they said is when you have eye problems, it's what is, what is it that you aren't willing to see? So let's go down that space and see what you can share there emotionally. How do emotions affect our eyes?

To a huge degree. And my own observation was like the stress was more the The the first part that I recognized this when I was a single mom, when I had that epiphany, you know, I was sleep deprived. I worked crazy hours. I was financially, emotionally, like mentally, spiritual, completely solely responsible for my two daughters, and I had high levels of stress. But it was normal for me. My body was tense. Everything was tense, right? And I remember what was like totally eye-opening for me. So my kids went to a children of divorce group, you know, and then the therapist would meet with you like maybe once a month. And they would be like, how are you doing, Claudia? And I was like, oh, I'm fine. Like, and I realized later as I was getting into the vision improvement work, as a farsighted person, we are always out there. We wanna help the whole world, we wanna change the world. But when it comes to ourselves, it's almost like there's a bubble. Think of arm's length bubble. Like, I don't even wanna get into this space even though my vision was technically already like, well, it wasn't back good back then yet, but it was, you know.

Yeah.

I worked on it a little bit at that point, but it's like, it's almost like we don't wanna let anything in. So, and I see with farsighted people, a lot of times there's anger, there's this frustration of pushing out, being impatient. 100% me, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. When people are nearsighted, so basically just let's break that down as well. So people get really confused. When you're farsighted, you have problems looking up close. I know it's confusing. So you're, you're farsighted because you can see pretty well up in the distance. Doesn't mean your vision is great in the distance, but it's better in the distance. A nearsighted person has really good vision up close. In most cases, they can even read without glasses. Depending on how nearsighted they are, they might have to hold it really close to their eyes or a little further. And they have— the distance is blurry. And when you think of that little bubble, it's almost like a nearsighted person feels more comfortable in that little bubble, in that little cocoon around them versus The world out there can be scary, can be overwhelming. And when you think about why do so many children all of a sudden become nearsighted? Because babies are all born farsighted. And now we have an epidemic. We have a huge epidemic of school children and myopia. But think about it. For me, school was stress. I didn't like school. And even if you like school, going from the home environment and not, I mean, I didn't have kindergarten where I grew up. There was no kindergarten. I went from straight being at home to like, you go to school. And it's a huge impact. And sometimes the kids feel overwhelmed or they get bullied or teased or they don't feel safe. And then, and when you don't feel safe, you can't be relaxed. And when we're not relaxed, our vision is blurry. And now the teacher says, well, Mary can't see the blackboard or whatever it is nowadays, the projector. And then in that case, the child is very likely not really nearsighted yet. It's just that they The nervous system is too overwhelmed to handle all this and the vision blurs. And some kids get eczema or some kids get like stomach— my daughter used to get stomachaches. Like the body somehow expresses it doesn't feel good, it doesn't feel safe. But then you get the glasses and now we are literally manifesting in myopia, nearsightedness, the elongation of the eyeball. And there's animal experiments, there's lots of experiments where we can see that the lenses actually impact the physiologic— physiology of the eyes. So I'm not saying every child that has myopia has like originally pseudomyopia. And but there is a lot of times, like when I worked with children, I used to work with children, they would tell me they don't like the school or they don't like that. Like there's always something.

There's that. And I think you've used this word several times, Claudia, safety, right? When there's something that you don't like in your environment, it doesn't feel safe.

So that is a big piece of astigmatism. So basically, when we think of vision problems, there is the so-called refractive errors, which are related to the refraction of light through the cornea, the lens, and so on. That's the focusing process. That's when we talk about 20/20 vision. That's eyesight, right? How sharp we can see. So nearsighted, farsighted. And then the third one is astigmatism, which is an uneven cornea. And sometimes they tell you, oh, it's genetic. But we also have 6 muscles around the eyes. And if the muscles are pulling unevenly, if there's an imbalance, they can— that will actually affect the shape of the cornea. So astigmatism on an emotional level, which I had pretty strong in my right eye, is confusion. It's like, I would call it like ADD, not clinical ADD, but I always had struggled focusing.

Mm-hmm.

Like I was compared to my sister, for instance, who's like, She's really good at getting thing— one thing done and then moving on to the next. I'm like, oh, let me look at that. Oh, let me look over that. And then astigmatism, you have multiple focal points. It's not just nearsighted, the focal point is in front of the retina, farsighted, it's behind the retina. In astigmatism, you can be both near and farsighted. It's basically this idea of multitask, like you have so many balls in the air and you can't focus on one thing. And that was like emotionally, mentally, that was 100% me. Like, indecisiveness. Like, I could never make decisions. And when I recognized that, I was like, oh, so now we can work with that concept, right? Like focusing on one thing, put the other thing in the peripheral, make to-do lists, whatever you need to do. And then the other piece are the— so then there is also functional stereovision. So that is like lazy eye, squint, strabismus, double vision, where the 2 eyes They could actually have perfect vision. The 2 eyes could be 20/20 or better, but they don't work together. So either there's a double image or the brain is like, we don't like that, and it shuts the feed from one eye off, and then you get lazy eye amblyopia. In the old days, they would patch the good eye. Imagine being a kid. Now one eye doesn't see well. Now you get a patch on the good eye. You don't have depth perception. You're gonna be bumping into things. You look like a pirate. I can't imagine more stress put on a child than running around with an eye patch. And then you have the blurry eye to train the blurry eye. So that's—

Trying to see.

Yeah. And that is also like, what is an imbalance? And we also— I like the Chinese model a little bit of that concept of the right is the male, the analytical, the left is the creative and the female side. And sometimes there is imbalances or arguments in the family or some kind of discord, the balance, like something is off. So I see that. And the last category of vision problems is basically eye diseases. And I think Louise Hay said it best, you know, cataract is often something that happens in the mid-60s. It's a clouding of the lens so that you think of a dirty window, right? You can't see sharp anymore. So she talked about lack of joy, like a dark future. And why do we often get that when we are retiring, when the nest is empty? It's like, well, what now? Am I still useful to society? What am I supposed to do every day? And then glaucoma is another one that's related to pressure where the optic nerve deteriorates. You lose your peripheral vision in glaucoma. So basically, and it's often you don't notice it 'cause it's not like a black tunnel, it's just your brain fills it in with light, but you don't realize that you don't see things there. And I love what Louise Hay said, there's the stony unforgiveness, there's some pressure. I also like longstanding hurts. And I also have seen that these people are the perfectionists. They need all the ducks in a row, like the overachievers, like, you know, where we don't— where we have so much pressure here, me. And then macular degeneration is where you have that central vision that we talked about where you don't see. So if I looked at your right eye, I wouldn't see your right eye. I would only see the rest of your face depending on how bad it is. And that is really where you can't see anymore. Like, like you don't have something to look forward to, you know what I mean? Because you like— so I would say with emotional levels, I find like some, for some people that's like 90% of the importance. And for other people it's a little bit less. Usually presbyopia, the old age side, I feel there is not as much of the emotional level than somebody who became nearsighted, especially as a child. But we always open it up to our clients, and some people are really, oh yeah, that's so— like, and other people are like, no, no, no, give me the exercises. And so I think that's fine. But we, like, we have to look at these levels too. And I usually just, you know, gently suggest something, but it's like, this is how you are, you know? Right. Yeah.

Okay. That's wonderful and amazing. So how are things like LASIK surgery? Technology, all the things. How are those types of things affecting our eyesight?

Let's break it down. Let's start with technology. So we often hear, oh, screens are, you know, are so bad for us. I ran a 3-day workshop. It was like 28 hours on the screens in '23, and everybody had improved vision, including my team. They had improved vision afterwards. So But that was to me, I didn't even plan to prove it with that, but that shows that screens are not the problem. The problem is with screens, one simple thing, blinking. I mentioned this earlier. Healthy people blink every 1 to 2 seconds. Blinking lubricates the eyes. So many people, especially menopausal women, have dry eyes.

Dry eyes.

So, and there's different forms of dry eyes. There's autoimmune, there's hormonal. And, but then the tear film one, that's the blinking one. Like, so, so easy. Blink more. And when we look at screens, studies have shown we get really focused. Like, we— like, if I looked at you and I would be like looking at that, like, you'll be like, you are creepy, Claudia. But when we look at screens, we get so much into this like hard focus where we don't blink. And that leads to eye strain and dry eyes. So that's a simple thing that you can do. The other thing right now, I have my computer here and I'm looking out the window. So I look at houses, I look really far away. I believe ergonomics are so important with screen use. You want to make it super easy to shift your focus so that you're not looking the whole time at the same distance.

Look outside and look far. So you're doing near and far. Right.

And then the peripheral vision. So what I, what I sometimes see people sit in a dark room with only the screen, that's so bad for you. First of all, the pupils dilate a little bit, then you get too much blue light, especially in the evening. Blue light per se is important for our circadian clock. I think you teach that as well. That's really important. But we don't want blue light in the evening. So, but having your room equally bright. So basically, you don't want to sit in a dark room. And I want to— ideally, I would have things moving. Actually, there's a fan on the right of me. I'm in Germany. There's no air conditioning. It's really hot. So I see this spinning fan like I'm I'm just aware of something in the peripheral so that I'm not like getting this hard stare tunnel vision. So those are some things you can do on the screen in order to—

What about the yellow glasses, right? You see all these people wearing the, you know, yellow glasses. Do they help? Do they not help?

I mean, I, I like the brand Ra Optics and I am an affiliate for them as well. I use the orange ones in the evening. Especially here with the— like, I have— because everything I do now is at night. All my sessions is like in the evening. So I like them to kind of help me, you know, get more tired during the day. I don't use them unless, let's say you have a job and you're like working in a building without windows and there's fluorescent lights and you get this really horrible artificial blue light all day long. I think in that case, it would be really useful to wear these yellow glasses. high-quality ones that actually block the blue light. But if you have any access to like natural light, that's, that's the best. And then you don't really need them. I have software on my, on my computer and I have Apple devices, so I just use Night Shift mode. But there's more advanced ones like Iris or Flux. Iris costs money. Flux is for free that people can install as a software. And yeah, so basically there's tons of things you can do. I think Iris also helps with the flicker rates of computers that we don't actually notice. It's like film, right? We don't see that. I think, like, I am a big fan of taking lots of breaks, not sitting at the computer for hours at a time. So yeah, I think it depends on your work, right? I used to, back in the day, I used to work in a cube a long, long, long time ago, right? But, but yeah, I, you know, I, I had to print things. So I would go to the kitchen, get a coffee or a glass of water, or I would go to the bathroom. And you can do, like, you can build little mini breaks in for yourself.

Yeah.

You know, you have— you're the steward. You have to be the ones. Nobody else will do this for you.

So just even setting your alarm every hour, right, to get up, like, move. Like, I see—

I don't like those things. No, I don't like it. I mean, optometrists love to talk about the 20-20-20 rule. Every 20 minutes, get up for 20 seconds and look 20 feet in the distance. I'm like, who's setting a timer for 20 minutes, and then for 20. And then who— how do I know that it's 20 feet in the distance? To me, put the computer in front of a window if you can. Like, make it— like, I'm a big believer of make it easy for yourself. I honestly, I don't even know how people can sit for more than an hour. Like, I just, I can't. Like, I— and right now I'm sitting at home. I have a standing— I can make my desk stand.

Yes, same.

But even then, like, my brain, I just, I want a mental break. So I'm, you know, I don't know, maybe that's my Quote unquote ADD. But yeah, I mean, if timer setting works for you, that's what I tell my people. Do what works for you. Pomodoro timer can be helpful. There's those apps where you focus for 25 minutes and then you take a 5-minute break. Whatever work, whatever you actually do is the important thing. You know what I mean? Right. So I'm just not a timer person. I would be like, oh, what is that? Like, I would, and then I was, had the best thought of my life and I was like, oh my, what, what, what, what was it? Like, and I lost it. I would be so mad.

I like to play a song, get up, do a dance. Go outside, get some sunshine, and then come in. And it's like, oh, okay, maybe, maybe I don't need to be back at my desk for a while. I'm just gonna—

I do little things, literally, like at home here, like in Germany, you have to recycle everything perfectly. And the glass, anything glass, you have to go to the next closest glass container dumping thing. There's green glass. Anyway, I'm like, okay, we just have 3 bottles of glass, whatever, I don't care. I'm gonna walk down the street, like go to the glass thingy, dump them in, you know what I mean? Like, I Find little things to do so I don't feel like I'm just taking a break. And I feel productive at the same time. Yeah.

If you could change one myth about the eyes, what would it be? Just one thing, if you could change it, that would help so many people.

Oh my God, I have many, many myths. Which one would the number one one be? I think the number one would be that LASIK, because you touched on that earlier, LASIK, glasses, And contacts are the only option to improve your— to see clearly. Not like to see clearly if your vision isn't good. I think that's the number one.

Okay. And what does LASIK actually do to the eye? We had kind of mentioned it earlier.

So LASIK— so basically surgeries, and I'm not saying I'm against all surgeries, sometimes cataract surgery, whether we place the lens inside the eye, is the only thing that you can do if it's a really advanced cataract and people are not willing to change their diet because there's a lot more. It's not just aging that causes cataracts. But LASIK is actually, basically there's different forms of this, but they basically cutting into your cornea. So in most cases there's a flap. So if your near side of your eyeball is too long, right? And what they do with the LASIK, they make the cornea flatter so that the, with the flap, the surgery, so that basically even despite your elongated eyeball, that the light rays fall like— but here's the problem. We haven't talked about this yet. Most LASIK surgeries are done for nearsighted people, meaning they needed glasses for the distance, but they could probably read or depending on their nearsightedness, maybe even use the computer or the phone without glasses. Now, the correction— I don't even like that word correction. What we do is it's measured in diopters. So just let's break it down. Diopters is basically the power of a lens a contact lens, glasses, or whatever they do with the cornea with LASIK, for instance, right? And diopters, just like kilos or pounds, are a measurement of weight, and inches and centimeters are measurements of length. So diopters are based on a distance. So when you wear glasses, if you're nearsighted, you wear glasses that give you distance vision. And when you get older, then you realize, oh, that strains my eyes, you take the glasses off, or you get the worst of all kinds. We can talk about this too. Progressive glasses, I get everybody out of those. They're horrible for your posture. But here's the thing. So people that get LASIK for nearsightedness, so they now, before they could take the glasses off to read, right? No problem. But now they have the permanent contact lens called LASIK in their cornea. And most people, and I just have somebody on my team who had cataract surgery. So cataract is a little different, but the same thing. you get an artificial lens implanted. In other words, there's a correction done to your eyeball that, right?

Yeah.

Who was always really nearsighted, really highly nearsighted, now can't see the computer without reading glasses. And for him, because reading glasses magnify everything versus nearsighted lenses make everything appear to be smaller, he's like, so, he's so stressed out because he doesn't like, it's, he's like, I can't believe it. Now all of a sudden I can see distance clear. And it's almost like your whole identity was, even though, you know, there's a lot connected to how we see and how we show up in the world. And so what happens with LASIK, that you have this engraved on your eyeball and you can't take it out. Like you can take glasses, you can off and you don't use them if you don't need them. And everybody is back in glasses. So that's one thing. Many, many people have now dry eyes to the point where they need prescription eye drops.

Mm-hmm.

Many people have halos at night so that there's weird streaks around the lights and they can't— I have a neighbor who can't drive at night anymore. She's only in her early 40s.

Wow.

And sometimes people have pain in their eyes. And LASIK only promises 20/40 correction. They don't even promise 20/20. And I also know a ton of people that are happy, you know, like, but I think the longest I've ever heard that somebody didn't need glasses was like 12 years. But LASIK is a huge risk factor. I mean, some people have committed suicide because it's— the pain was so bad. I think it's just a really risky thing to do, to be honest, and there will always be consequences. And the good news is, though, that I tell everybody who had cataract surgery or LASIK, you can still improve your vision. Like, even though your eye was surgically corrected, doesn't mean you're doomed, you know, because I had people with LASIK that were back in glasses get out of glasses again. So it's possible. But I like, I would not ever recommend. And I get a lot of people who are very unhappy. They actually have like lost vision in one eye, one had corneal ulcers. Again, there's always lots of people that are happy, but I want to say it's an optional surgery.

And it's a risk.

It's a risk. I'm like, I don't know why you would risk that, you know, but I also, some people just want the quote unquote quick fix. That bites you in the butt later on.

Yes. Yes. We see that in so many different arenas, don't we? And it's, you know, it's part of our programming and conditioning, right? I have a headache. Let me go take an aspirin. My headache will go away. But there's no understanding of, well, why did I get the headache? Oh, I haven't eaten, or I've been on my computer for 4 hours straight. Right. We don't— it's like we've lost our curiosity and we just want to fix it and move on. Right. Yeah.

And I think it's understandable. I mean, I sometimes very rarely do I get a headache and usually I try peppermint oil and massage and sometimes I'm just like, I, I take, you know, but it's like, to me, it's the last thing I do nowadays. Whereas before I would just not even question it, just pop the pills. I'm like, well, I guess I'm somebody who gets headaches every day. And I want to give you one quick example since we talk about headaches. So my social media manager, and she, she put it public. So she, she, she has on my Instagram. Young girl in her late 20s had crazy headaches, right? And so she had a -4.75, so it's kind of medium myopia. And I said, well, how many hours a day are you on the computer? She said, oh, 10 to 12 hours. I'm like, is the -4.75 for distance? She said, yeah. I said, okay, go to your eye doctor, make sure you get computer glasses or contacts. And if you do contacts, you can always put something, glasses on top for driving, right? Especially if you spend all day, again, because you need different diopters when you look up close compared to far. And I said, probably about a diopter less. You probably need a -3.75. So she went to her eye doctor. The eye doctor said, no. I said, ask for computer glasses because you don't need to know all the different. And the doc said, that's, that doesn't make sense. And she went to another eye doctor who prescribed her, guess what? -3.75s. That doctor was shocked that she didn't, that she spent all day at the computer with her distance correction and was like, that is crazy. From that first day, headaches are gone. And she had popped pills for like over a year every day.

Wow.

Like, just not having that distance correction, that strain, even though she was young, it's like it causes— it messes so much with your whole visual system and your muscles in your eyes. And yeah, so that was problem solved. Like, that's the easiest thing. I mean, I didn't help her improve her vision further, but like, that was a big problem for her. Daily headaches and popping these pills will ruin your stomach lining. I mean, that's just— yeah.

Wow.

Anyway.

So let's talk about progressives real quick since you mentioned those that you try to get people off because my husband has those. So tell me.

Oh, I didn't know that. I will, I will talk to him next time.

Yes, you'll see him in San Diego.

So, so here's the thing. So basically, let's backtrack a little bit when we start with, with Like vision, like we usually have single distance glasses. So like I said, nearsighted people usually get like minus something for distance vision. My sister, I have some readers here for my sister that lay here. So people that start with reading glasses, they know they put these on to read something. And then immediately when they look far, they would take them off because they realize this— You can't see. That makes everything blurry far away, right? So people with presbyopia innately know that the reading glasses are not going to be fine for distance, whereas nearsighted people tend to wear the glasses all day long no matter what they do. Now, like I said, diopters are based on distance. So what progressive glasses are— in the old days, it was bifocals. It was those— my dad had these glasses with this line in the middle.

Oh yeah.

You're right. They basically tried to be the one and all. Like, the top part is for distance, and then in the bifocals, the bottom part was for reading. And then they had trifocals where you had like 2 lines. And now progressives are basically more modern. They're basically a gradated version from like the top is far, the middle part is more like more or less middle, and then the lower part is reading. But here's the problem. Driving is one of those exceptions where you always, when you look straight, you look far. When you look down, you look at your dashboard. But pretty much everything else in life, have you ever seen people on Zoom? They're like this with their chin up, like looking down.

Yeah.

Because the computer is close, but the computer is straight ahead. But now they have to look through the lower part of the lens. Now there is neck tension, there's shoulder tension, there's distortion in the spine. Or another thing, when you get these glasses and now you walk down a flight of stairs, you look down, that's not reading distance. Most people are taller than like 40 centimeters or 16 inches. So you look down and that's all like, woo. And that's why we have so many falls, dizziness, vertigo. And the other piece of this, astigmatism is in 85% of cases connected to your postural habits. So now we have people with progressive glasses basically tweaking their body, their head to find the right place of the lens. And so now you make all these weird movements and then we see the— we often see the astigmatism that I can directly relate the axis and the strength connected to progressive glasses. And they're really expensive. And then when I ask people, when you first got those glasses, did you wanna rip them off your face? And everybody's like, yeah, God. But the— here's the thing, the brain gets used to the bad stuff just as much as it gets used to the good stuff. So people, some people have gotten used to them so much, but then now here's the other thing. Now you have no clarity at any distance. So now you're wearing glasses even though technically you might not need them. Right? Because the doctor measured something that's not perfect. And you're making everybody lose it, like their vision goes down so quickly with progressive glasses. And this is the other thing. Everybody thinks these really cheap, like reading glasses are like, oh, it's so cute. You look like a sexy librarian. And, you know, I'm not— and people told me that when I had my glasses.

It's true.

And here's the thing. I call it the gateway drug to vision loss because everybody that starts with reading glasses, and it doesn't matter if it's the $1 store one or the $500 ones from the eye doctor, the dollar store glasses are not to blame. The point that we're using these magnifiers to read, you lose your distance vision. So even if you had perfect eagle eye vision, depending on how quickly you, you know, how much you strain, but anywhere between 2 to 10 years, you will be like, I can't read that street sign. Or you will be at the DMV to do that eye test and you'll be like, What? And then you, you get the correction, and then you have to get these progressive glasses because now you can't drive. You need, you know what I mean? So, my God.

It just kind of goes downhill, basically.

It goes downhill, and your distance vision that nobody thought would be affected is also down, gone. And I, I want to give these people hope because that's the quickest thing you can get back, but you got to stop wearing these progressive glasses. And I always say, Driving, I also want to say I'm a big advocate for safety. In most states and in most countries, 20/40 vision is the limit for driving. So when you go to the DMV, the line that they have you read, you know, that's not 20/20 actually, it's 20/40. So we need to be safe. We need to make sure we see well enough, right? So I don't get people to like, oh, just don't wear glasses anymore because that's dangerous. Usually we start with all these other things in life, reduce the glasses, don't wear when we don't need them. And then driving is the last thing where we, you know, where we end up when, when the vision is proven to be good enough to like step down or reduce or not wear them anymore. So, yeah.

Well, tell, tell us about your program. So how can people find you? How can they work with you?

So I, yeah, I, I used to work with people just one-on-one. And at some point I thought like, oh, there's no way I can make a program like that. is not gonna work. And then I, over the years, tweaked and fine-tuned my Natural Key Vision program. It's a 12-week course with coaching because we realize there's no, I don't sell these self-study courses that seem like that are just cheap. And then you can, you know, because people, it's too complicated and you really need to understand all these things. We teach prescriptions, we teach reducing the glasses, measuring your vision, understanding all aspects of vision, the night vision, the day vision, near vision, far vision, double, like, It's— vision is such a huge complex process. And in that 12-week program, we literally had 2 people like just beginning, like a few months ago, in their 70s, not need the restriction for driving anymore on their license that they had for almost 50 years.

Wow.

So it's like I always say, at any age, you can improve your vision, even if you had surgeries or you have eye diseases. Of course, not everybody gets back to 20/20. But my goal is you can see better as you get older, right? And, and it's up to you. I want to tell people you have agency. So the Naturally Clear Vision program, we just started a group. We're probably going to run another one in October. So we're doing these cohorts because we found that the community is really important and we found it more successful when people kind of go through this program together. I also on my website, naturallyclearvision.com, There is a download called 10 Habits for Healthy, Happy Eyes. Sometimes we have other downloads, but there's something that you can download for free that gives you like the first steps you can take. And then I'm also on Instagram, on YouTube as Holistic Vision, @holisticvisioncoach. I'm really, really, to me, it's really important to educate people on this. And then several times a year, we're running a free 4-day course called See Better in Just 4 Days. Because I realized, you know, you might not believe what I'm saying. So I'm always a big believer of like, don't believe me, don't believe your eye doctor, see for yourself. So that's why we're running this 4-day program again, I think probably end of September. We don't have the exact dates yet, but it's all— when you go to my website.

But if they subscribe, they'll be able to find that.

You will find— you will get all the information from us. Yes.

Okay. Well, you are amazing. I love your story and it gives everybody hope. That they too can get out of glasses and improve their vision in many, many ways. And I've noticed this is very bizarre, but I've noticed since being here with you on Zoom that my vision— maybe I'm blinking more because you said that and I'm more aware of it, but I'm like, wow, my vision's pretty, pretty great right now.

Yeah. Taking a few deep breaths. You know, I also studied yoga and myofascial release. So part of my methodology, I really work with the whole body. Because even tension in your feet, you know, the balance, the vestibular system, we really have to look at vision as a holistic thing. We have to zoom out from the eye and really look. Vision is much more than just, you know, the eyeball.

Yes. Yeah. Yes. Well, aha. Well, thank you so much. It's been such a joy to have you here. And I encourage our listeners to Follow you and start, start your program.

Yeah, don't take your eyesight for granted. Oftentimes, you know, we wait till it's really bad. Nothing is better than doing it now or 20 years ago. So like once in a while we get proactive people that are just starting to notice some decline, taking the program. That's the best time. But the other best time is now, you know, don't wait.

Don't wait. All right. Words of wisdom. Thank you so much, Claudia.

Thank you so much, Jen, for having me.