Vishen Lakhiani describes his personal journey from childhood myopia (eventually -7.00 diopters) through LASIK at age 28 (initially restoring ~20/20) to later post-surgical astigmatism and renewed dependence on glasses. He reports improving his functional vision — claiming a two-line improvement from 20/40 to 20/25 in about two weeks and reducing time wearing glasses from ~40% to ~4% — by experimenting with modern vision-therapy approaches over a year. Key, evidence-backed tips he gives: get a proper medical eye exam (not a retail eyeglass shop), choose lenses one step weaker than the prescription, install/read a home eye chart regularly, ensure children sleep in total darkness (Penn study cited), and work with a vision coach or daily vision-training course (examples: Dave Asprey’s 12-week program; Vishen spent ~5 hours with a coach). He cautions against over-reliance on the original Bates Method as slow relative to newer approaches.
Questions this video answers
Nine years old.
-7.00 diopters.
Around 28 years old.
From 20/40 to 20/25 (a two-line improvement).
From about 40% of the time to about 4% of the time.
Chapters
I'm sharing this because way too many of my friends have come to me to ask me how to help them improve their deteriorating eyesight. And they dread the thought of someday wearing glasses. When I tell them that I healed my eyesight in about two weeks, from 2040 to 2025, that's around a two lines improvement and an eye chart, they want to know my secret. So I created this video to help my friends and to help you guys on the mindvalley Channel understand how you too can improve your eyesight. Basically, I'm. I was able to go from wearing glasses 40% of the time to 4% of the time. So my issue with eyesight started when I was nine years old. I started wearing glasses and my eyesight rapidly deteriorated to the point where my myopia or short sightedness was minus 7.00. That basically means I couldn't recognize a face this close to me. Now, when I was around 28, I finally had Lasik and Lasik restored me to 2020 eyesight. But as you know, when you go for surgery, sometimes things go wrong. That's what happened with my LASIK surgery. Basically, it went awry in my left eye and this left me with astigmatism. Over the next 12 years, my left eye started getting worse and worse. And then my right eye decided that it too had to deteriorate to catch up with my left eye. And 12 years after my LASIK, I found that I needed glasses once again. And so I had to go back to the doctor and figure out what to do. Now, the doctor told me that as a man in my 40s, Lasik would no longer be an option. So I was faced with two choices. Deal with wearing glasses, which I totally disliked, or try to heal my eyesight myself. Now, what happened then was I was in a conversation with my friend Dave Asprey, the famous biohacker, the founder of Bulletproof Coffee. And Dave told me how working with a vision coach for one hour a week for 12 weeks totally got rid of his bad eyesight and allowed him to function without glasses. I was intrigued, so I started researching the natural healing of eyesight. What I'm going to share with you is what I found and what I'm going to share with you is my advice for what you can do to help restore your eyesight. So you can, if not get rid of your glasses, reduce the amount of time you do have to wear glasses. Now, I'm still experimenting. I've been doing this now for over a year. And although it's not perfect yet. I want to share with you what I know because I believe this is going to help a lot of people. So in this video I'm going to cover a number of different things. But if you're looking to prevent bad eyesight developing in your kids, or if you're looking to heal your vision, or if you're looking to prevent the onset of age related vision problems like farsightedness, or, or if you're looking to reduce your use of glasses, pay attention because I'm going to share with you everything I've just learned. So the first big mistake people make is that they go get their eyes checked at a store that sells glasses. This is never a good idea. The machines at that store are not accurate. I did a simple experiment. I had my eyes checked at one of these stores and then I went to a real clinic, a real doctor. And the difference was almost 40%. I decided to take the doctor's prescription, as should you. You see, your eyesight varies from day to day, from year to year. Some studies on children found that a child could naturally move from short sightedness to farsightedness year over year. But here's what happens. If you pick that particular slice of time where your eyesight is, say 0.25, and you go to an optician and you get glasses for that, it locks you in. The glasses become a cross crutch. So what you want to do is go to a real doctor. A TRU vision checkup could take up to an hour in an eyeglass shot, right? They'll do it in around 15 minutes because they want to move you through and sell you glasses. Go to a doctor and get your vision properly checked. Now the second tip is this. After you get your actual prescription from the doctor, get a lens that is one step lower because like I said, your eyesight actually fluctuates. You could be at 0.5 in one day when you're really stressed out. And after a relaxing weekend, your eyesight could actually improve. Studies are now finding that emotional states, that stress influences your vision. So if your doctor tells you that your eyesight is say 0.5, myopia, short sightedness, don't get a 0.5 lens, get a lens that's 0.25. That will still give you an adjustment, but, but it gives you room for your vision to improve. If you get 0.5, your vision cannot go below 0.5. It has to get worse. So what's happened is you've effectively created a crutch. You've Created a barrier to your vision getting better. So always go one step below. So this was the first thing that many vision therapists recommend. And this was one of the tools I used to get my short sightedness from 0.75 to 0.25, which pretty much means I don't need glasses most of the time. Now, the next thing you want to do is that you want to install a basic eye chart in your home. So I have something like this on the door of my study. William Horatio Bates, who lived in the early part of the 20th century, did a study on school classrooms. He would hang an eye chart on a pillar in school classrooms. And what he found is that in classrooms where kids had that eye chart, and the teachers were trained to get the kids to go and just look at the chart and see how far they could read once a week, the amount of cases of nearsightedness was dramatically reduced. At the beginning of that period, 6% of the children were nearsighted. By the end of the year, only 1% were nearsighted. Now, because of the success in this one school, the system of using an eye chart in classrooms was introduced to all schools In Grand Forks, North Dakota, where Bates worked. These schools used charts continuously for eight years with as many as two school children. And there was an unexpected results. The kids actually began to see better than normal. Children who already had normal sight 2020 were now able to read at 2015 or 2010. It was nuts. You must have an eye chart installed in your home for you and your kids. Adults can do the same thing. Now, here's another really important tip. Studies on kids found that if you allow your children to sleep in a room that is absolutely dark, that means no night light, no door ajar with a light out in the corridor, your kids are less likely to develop vision problems in the future. Now this, this study blew me away. It was done by the University of Pennsylvania on around 479 kids. Now, what they found is that sleeping in a dark room, if you have your kids sleep in a pure dark room, they are less likely to develop bad eyesight. And so here's what happened. They divided these kids into three groups. Kids that slept in a dark room, kids that slept in a room with a night light on, and kids that slept in a room with the lights turned on. And then they traced these kids to see what type of vision problems these kids would develop. Now, they found this. Of the kids who slept in a darkened room, only 10% developed nearsightedness. Of the kids who slept in A room with a night light on, 34% develop nearsightedness. And of the kids who slept with the lights on, 55% developed nearsightedness. So this is an important conversation you gotta have with your children if they are afraid of sleeping in the dark. The dark is phenomenal for sleep, and science is showing that it has a correlation with helping kids retain good vision. Now, the final tip is this. Hire a vision coach or take an online vision course. There are numerous vision courses out there. I've been expanding, experimenting with many of them. I even have a vision coach who has helped me. We spent around five hours together and the results have been really, really, really promising. Now, a course means you gotta have the discipline to do it yourself. Typically, you gotta do these courses every day. If you do a vision coach, you'd spend an hour with them a week, and then you'd spend around five minutes a day going through the exercises that they prescribe. Where else on a course, you typically are spending between 10 to 20 minutes a day watching a video and doing the eye exercises which are being prescribed. Now. My tip is don't get obsessed with the Bates Method. The Bates Method was popular in, like, the 1930s, and a lot of people talk about the Bates Method because it was the first. It was the first method to really heal vision. So much more research has happened. It's been almost 90 years since that book was released, and today modern vision therapists and newer courses on vision know so much more. So avoid the Bates method. It works, but it works slow. There are much faster ways to improve your vision that have been developed in the last 90 years. So I hope these tips helped you. Go ahead and share this video with other people whom you feel need to hear this to improve their vision. And good luck on your vision quest.
