Vision for Life

Chapter 5

Overcoming Cross-Sightedness and Lazy Eye

Correcting Cross-Sightedness

Amblyopia and strabismus are both terms for cross-sightedness, and they have something in common. They both refer to a “lazy eye,” but with amblyopia the eyes do not look cross-sighted from the outside. With strabismus, however, the eyes actually look crossed.

I have heard people sometimes joke that strabismus is when one eye is so beautiful that the other eye just wants to look at it all the time! It is okay to have a sense of humor. And this really is true: every part of you is beautiful, even your strabismus!

With amblyopia and strabismus, the brain shuts off the information coming from one eye, but only in strabismus do the eyes look crossed to the outside observer. And the term “lazy eye” is actually a misnomer. In reality, the brain is just not using one of the eyes.

If you have cross-sightedness, you have two problems. One is that your brain favors one eye over the other. This causes one of your eyes to do all the work while the other eye relaxes, which is why some people refer to cross-sighted people as having a “lazy eye.”

The other problem with strabismus, or amblyopia, is that doctors do not believe you can improve your condition in any way. Doctors mistakenly believe that, after the age of eight, cross-sighted people can no longer learn how to get their two eyes to work together.

The debate over the plasticity or elasticity of the brain is ongoing, but old concepts are giving way to new understandings. More and more people understand that the brain can change if it’s being exercised properly.

As I mentioned earlier in this book, the oldest person I’ve worked with so far was 101 years old. He experienced great changes from his exercises, and he was able to see better and to improve his brain and eye function significantly. I have also worked with several elderly patients, some in their eighties and nineties, and have witnessed positive changes in their visual systems. There is no doubt in my mind that no matter what age you are, you can change the function of your eyes; there is enough elasticity in your brain to back it up.

The issue isn’t age, but whether or not a person is practicing the correct exercises for his or her age. It may work easier for a five-year-old child to put on a patch for four or eight hours a day as he or she plays in order to get used to the weaker eye working. Indeed, the brain has more plasticity when you’re five than when you’re seventy-five. But, there are good, age-appropriate exercises you can do at any age that can change your visual system completely.

In addition to the exercises in this section, it is essential to do some of the previously mentioned exercises as well. Especially helpful for cross-sightedness is the exercise in the section on astigmatism called “Glow in the Dark.” As I mentioned in the introduction to Chapter 4, it is important to refer back to that chapter for an extensive explanation of the exercises I recommend in this section. In addition to extensively describing the exercise steps, there is important information regarding the benefits of these recommended practices.

One other wonderful practice for you is to lie down twice a day with a warm towel over your closed eyes. One of the recommendations that I normally make is to soak the towel in warm herbal tea. Do not use boiling water, just warm water. Within two or three minutes, the towel tends to cool off, and that pleasant feeling can improve your circulation and increase your level of relaxation when you start to work for further improvement. The reason to do this with the towels is to alleviate the strain you have caused your eyes after doing the other exercises. Relaxation must be something you prioritize after doing all of them. Alleviate the strain with a wet towel!

Also, and this is especially vital for cross-sightedness, make sure you are practicing breathing exercises daily and receiving face, neck, and back massages from a certified massage therapist at least once a month, but preferably much more often.

Exercise Program for Cross-Sightedness:

At Least 90 Minutes a Day

• Sunning: 10 minutes daily.

• Palming: 12 minutes daily.

• Long Swing: 10 minutes daily.

• Glow in the Dark: 10 minutes daily.

• Walking Backward: 5 minutes daily.

• Blink Each Eye Independently: 5 minutes daily.

• Extra Exercise for Cross-Sightedness: 30 minutes daily.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to make these exercises a regular part of your daily routine. Whatever you are doing, you can also practice your eye exercises. While you are waiting for a bus, you can do your sunning. While you are riding the bus, you can look far into the distance. You can always be looking at details. At work, instead of taking cigarette or coffee breaks, take breaks to practice long swinging or palming. Anywhere there is a dark room, you can practice throwing a glow-in-the-dark ball around! Don’t just practice for one hour or two hours at home. Incorporate these exercises into every aspect of your life. That is the way to give yourself good vision for life!

For your extra daily exercise, you may choose from any of the following. The main point with cross-sightedness is to train the brain to use both eyes, not to favor one eye over the other. All of the following extra exercises do just that.

Extra Exercises for Cross-Sightedness

Rotate the Eyes; Look into the Darkness

Sit in a dark room, looking straight ahead. Sit up and don’t lie down for this exercise. Now move your eyes in a rotating motion in the dark. Within a few minutes, even a dark room seems to have some light. Move your eyes from area to area in the dark room. Look up, and move the eyes from side to side in the room; then look down, and move your eyes from side to side while the eyes are looking down. Now close one eye and slowly move the full range of rotation with the open eye: up, to the side, and down. Then switch which eye is closed, and repeat. We do this to stretch the external muscles, which, to some extent, are responsible for the cross-sightedness.

Mirror Images

The next exercise uses a mirror. If your left eye is the one that turns in, look in the mirror while covering the right eye. Normally, when you cover the right eye, the left eye should be totally straight because the two retinas and the two eyes are not competing; but sometimes it isn’t. In this case, tilt your head a bit to the right and look intensively at the left side, and let the right eye be straighter. Do this several times and palm for thirty seconds to relax your eyes.

Now look at the bridge of your nose. Do not look at the right eye; do not look at the left eye. Look at the bridge of your nose between both eyes, and you will see both eyes. If they tend to cross, this is exactly what your brain will correct automatically. For your brain, normally, is not as aware of the cross-sightedness as you may think. You may see it in pictures. You may even sense it from time to time. But when you face the mirror and look in between your eyes, so your central vision is on the bridge of your nose and your peripheral vision is from both sides, you can exactly see the cross-sightedness. It’s amazing how much the brain tends to correct what appears to be wrong, and the cross-sightedness can decrease. If the eye tends to tremor a bit, the tremor will stop.

In addition to this exercise, as you stand in front of the mirror, move your hips in a rotating motion. Don’t stop looking in the mirror while your hips are moving. The movement helps to distract you, but it also helps you to get more circulation to your eyes. If the hips are loose, the ribs will be looser, and your breathing will get deeper. Your neck will get loose as well, and more blood will flow to your eyes.

Quite often, the shortening of one muscle, versus the lengthening of its opponent, has to do with poor blood flow to that muscle. So remember to move your hips in a rotating motion when you look in the mirror. If your vision is good, you can do this in any light. In fact, dim light may be the best light you can do it in, because it rests the eyes. If your vision is poor, you may need a strong light to see your face in the mirror.

By now you know that anytime there is an indication of effort in doing this exercise or any other, you must palm. Palming will help you to reduce the stress and to renew the work. Also, you can look into the distance before doing the mirror exercise.

I found that my mirror exercise was one of the best exercises to reduce my strabismus. You see, I struggled with strabismus from a very young age. In fact, in my case, the eyes never communicated because I was blind around the time that most people have their eyes working together, which is between four and six months of age. Since I was blind during that time, my brain had never developed straight eyes. In 1992, at the age of 38, I received my passport picture, and my eyes were severely cross-sighted. Six months before the expiration of that passport, the Brazilian Consulate issued me a five-year visa stamped on that passport. New pictures were taken in 2002, when I was 48, so I had two passports to compare. I took these passports to my school. Before going to the Brazilian Consulate to verify that I could use both passports, my good colleague and student looked at the passport pictures and said, “My goodness, look how your eyes have improved!” My cross-sightedness had decreased, and my eyes had straightened by 75 percent in ten years. Since then, I laugh at the fact that I lost hair and grew older by ten years, and yet my eyes got straighter. Now, years later, my eyes are even straighter. And so, straightening your eyes is definitely possible between your forties and fifties, but it is also possible in your seventies and eighties. You just need to do the work.

Figure 5.1. Passport pictures taken ten years apart. My eyes had straightened by 75 percent.

Looking in a mirror was one of my main exercises. I used to stand in elevators if they had good light and, for a moment, look in a mirror at the bridge of my nose between both eyes. Often, however, people with cross-sightedness look far into a distance, and their cross-sightedness is decreased; sometimes it disappears. The reason is deep relaxation of the eyes.

The Melissa Exercise

The most wonderful exercise for cross-sightedness is the Melissa exercise. As mentioned earlier, Melissa, who works with me these days, had an accident in which her face, chest, and ribs were crushed by a truck. She had a great many reconstructive surgeries on her face. After one of these surgeries, her eye turned in and lost a lot of vision. She also saw double. The exercise of putting a small piece of paper in the middle of the face, then using a large piece of paper and waving to the side, was useful, but she saw double below and above it. So I simply devised a piece of paper that I would place on her nose so that it stretched from her forehead to her chin. I put masking tape on the top and bottom and had her throw a ball from hand to hand. She could see the ball with each eye, and her vision was not double for a while; this provided great relief for her visual system as well as her neck, for her neck hurt constantly due to the unevenness of her eyes.

This is a great exercise to help people with cross-sightedness. If you put a piece of paper between your eyes and throw a ball from side to side, at least a hundred times for about two minutes, the ball will disappear for a split second before you see the ball again with the other eye. That will create a very nice difference in your eyes. The dominant eye will no longer control the eye that trails.

Figure 5.2. As you do this exercise (the Melissa), the brain will use both eyes independently.

To a great extent, that’s the essence of all amblyopia and strabismus: a lazy eye. And a lazy eye is not lazy on its own. Often, it’s an eye that doesn’t see well. Sometimes, however, it’s an eye that sees very well, but the brain is not using it. The brain did not learn to use both eyes together, and so, throughout your life, one eye looked and the other one trailed. Until now, the brain did not learn to use both eyes together; it used only the strong or dominant eye. As you do this exercise, the brain will use both eyes independently.

With this division between the two eyes, each eye looks and sees the ball independently. The right eye will see the ball in the right hand; the left eye will see the ball in the left hand. There is a body/eye connection here that makes it very real for the body and the eyes. This is not a peripheral exercise. In fact, look at the ball. When you throw the ball from the right to the left or the left to the right, there is a moment when you do not see the ball as you throw it above your head. That’s good because in a short moment you will see the ball, and your hand will have to respond to what you see. Eye/hand coordination is very precious in this case because it makes it real to your brain that you are actually using the lazy eye, as well as the eye you always use. It’s not our purpose to use the lazy eye more than the eye that is always used. Our purpose in this exercise is to use both of them.

The use of both eyes may give you great relief. If it is hard for you to do a hundred repetitions, then start with ten, and palm after taking the paper off. If it’s easy, continue to do it three or four times a day. And, if that’s easy, then do it for ten minutes three times a day for a month. You will feel much looser, and your muscles will work much better. This happens for two reasons: first, because each eye works independently, which is a big, important first step; second, because each eye looks down and up to follow the ball.

The Melissa Exercise is very important for cross-sightedness, and I recommend that you practice it often. Try the following variations:

Clap: Throw the ball from hand to hand while wearing the piece of paper, and clap your hands before you catch the ball. That will really distract you and will also activate you in a way that will have your brain building new pathways to be able to see with the weaker eye.

So, for example, if your left eye is your weaker eye and you clap your hands before you catch the ball with one hand, it’s going to be easier for you to catch the ball on the right side than on the left side. With enough practice, however, it’s going to be easy to catch on both sides, and it’s going to start to be natural for you to see with your weaker eye.

Walk: Next is to walk as you throw the ball from hand to hand. Walk forward while throwing the ball from hand to hand. Walk backward. Walk sideways. It should become more and more challenging but also more and more relaxing for your eyes.

Jump: Now try to jump when you throw the ball from hand to hand. Jump on the ground or, if you are able to, on a trampoline, which is the best method. You will see the periphery moving in the background while wearing the Melissa paper on your face. You’ll also be throwing the ball from hand to hand and trying to catch it each time you bounce.

Combinations: Challenge yourself to combine all levels of the Melissa exercise. Walk while throwing the ball from hand to hand, and also clap your hands before you catch the ball. Walk backward and sideways while you combine clapping. Combine clapping with jumping or bouncing on the trampoline. Or, finally, the most difficult variation of the Melissa exercise is to keep both eyes open, throw the ball up, and then close the eye that does not need to see the ball.

For example, with your two eyes open, throw the ball from the right hand to the left hand. As the ball reaches the area above your head, close your right eye, and with the left eye you will see the ball. Catch the ball with your left hand and then open both eyes. Throw the ball above your head again and, as the ball reaches the area above your head where the two eyes cannot see, close your left eye and catch the ball with your right hand.

Do this for a while and then go back to the original Melissa exercise. Perform the most basic variation, keeping your two eyes open, while throwing the ball above your head and catching it. See how much you have improved, and how simple this original method seems now that you have expanded your comfort zone and have adapted to your new challenges.

Beads on a String

Your job in this exercise is to teach your brain what to focus on and what not to focus on.

First, make a string of beads with five different colors of beads on it. (We have many of these available for purchase at the School for Self-Healing.) Tie one end of the string of beads to something in front of you, like the back of a chair or the railing of your patio. Now hold the string of beads in front of your eyes. Focus on the different colored beads. As you focus on each separate bead, every bead that you focus on must appear to be a single bead. Every bead that you don’t focus on must appear to be doubled.

For example, if you have five beads, when you focus on the first bead, the second, third, fourth, and fifth beads should appear to be doubled. When you focus on the third, the first two and last two should look doubled, and the middle should look single. When you focus on the fifth bead, the first four should look doubled, and the last one should look single.

Figure 5.3. Your job in this exercise is to teach your brain what to focus on and what not to focus on.

What often happens to people with cross-sightedness is that, first of all, they may not see double with the beads that are in their periphery; they may see single beads all along. The best exercise to correct this is to look at one bead, let’s say the closest one to you, and close your eyes one at a time. When you close your eyes one at a time, you can see a shift, a move of the beads from side to side. While doing this, keep thinking and focusing on the bead in front of you, with each eye separately. That means you keep looking at that bead, but you will see all the beads shifting because each eye sees the bead from a different angle, and even from a different distance. Only when both eyes are open can your brain measure the distances more precisely. After doing it forty times, open both eyes, and when you look at the first bead, the rest should appear to be doubled.

The bead you are focusing on is being viewed with your central vision. The ones you are not directly looking at are being viewed with your peripheral vision. The nervous system and the brain see one image with central vision and two separate images with peripheral vision. When you look at an object straight in front of you but focus on another object in front of that object, the object you focus on will appear to be single, and the one you don’t focus on will appear to be doubled. You want to become capable of distinguishing between the one you look at directly and the one that you don’t, so that the one you are looking at appears to be single and the one you aren’t looking at appears to be doubled.

Holding Double

If you were able to see double, the next point is to hold the double. You will find that most people who can produce a double image can hold it for thirty seconds, maybe even a whole minute, before they become fatigued. When this happens, of course, they should massage around their eyes, palm or sun, look into the distance, or do long swinging until the fatigue goes away. You can blink as you do the exercise, and, hopefully, you won’t lose the double image.

Your goal is to be able to hold a double for a full ten minutes. You can move from one double to another. You can see the front bead as single and all the other four as doubles. You can move through the five beads, one after another, and hold each double for two minutes. So, you don’t have to stay at one point for the full ten minutes, but you should continuously see double for the duration.

You can then increase the amount of time that you see double, and try to go all the way to twenty minutes, or even to half an hour. You can decide one time, in a marathon session, to look at one bead and see the other four as doubles for ten minutes each; therefore, you would see double for fifty minutes. As long as the strain is not too high, this is a great exercise for good coordination between the two eyes.

Two-Color Exercise (Beak Glasses)

This exercise uses a tool we sometimes refer to in fun as “beak glasses.” We call them beak glasses because they are glass frames with the lenses removed and with two strips of paper attached to the front of them in such a way that they stick straight out between the lenses. When you put them on, it looks as if you had a two-colored beak.

The pieces of paper should be two different colors; for example, one could be orange and the other yellow. Put on the glasses and look straight ahead into the distance. Now toss a tennis ball from one hand to the other and try to catch the ball. Toss the ball several times.

Figure 5.4. “Beak Glasses.” When the ball is on the right side, it emphasizes to the right eye that the right color exists.

Since the paper is attached to the front of the glasses, you are guaranteed to be using both of your eyes for this exercise. When the ball is on the left side of your body, it emphasizes to the left eye that the left color exists. When the ball is on the right side, it emphasizes to the right eye that the right color exists. As the ball travels from side to side, the peripheral vision of both eyes is being worked individually; the central vision is still looking straight ahead into the distance. Remember that the central vision sees a mostly still picture, while the peripheral vision sees movement.

One interesting thing about this exercise is to notice which color each eye seems to be seeing. If your eyes are completely at ease and completely functional, when you look into the distance you will see the two colors, each one of them on the opposite side. And this will indicate that they work well together.

If one of these colors disappears, you can also wave your hand close to your eye—not so close that it’s dangerous, but right in front of the eye. Often, that color will reappear. Seeing two colors with both eyes, especially for someone who has a hard time using both eyes together, could be a very relaxing experience at certain times.

Red and Green Glasses

Each color has different wavelengths. For example, the color red has long wavelengths, and the color green has short wavelengths. If you look through a pair of glasses with one green lens and one red lens, quite often the colors of the objects you look at seem to be different through the red lens than through the green. Some colors you can see easier with the red, and others you can see easier with the green.

Figure 5.5. Working with red and green glasses made it possible for me to have partial three-dimensional vision.

When you look at the world with both eyes through the red and green filter, you will see quite a few amazing things. For example, if you walk in a park or in your garden with red and green glasses on, you’re going to find that you see a pinkish view of flowers through the red lens but, at the same time, a greenish view of leaves much clearer with your green lens. So, from time to time, close one eye and look at colors with the open eye; then close that eye and open the other, and see what colors you notice. Do the pink flower petals disappear when you close the eye looking through the red lens? Do the green leaves disappear when you look only through the red lens? Now look around with both eyes open.

You’ll find, however, that if you close the eye looking through the red lens and look at the pink or reddish flower only through the green lens, it will not look red or pink to you; rather, it will look dark, which is far from its true color. If you close the eye looking through the green lens and look only through the red, the green leaves would look dark.

In fact, this is exactly how you start to develop bilateral vision and three-dimensional vision. You emphasize to yourself the difference between the two eyes. Your two eyes are independent. No one eye sees what the other one sees; therefore, no one eye controls the other. Instead, each is independent of the other, and the brain fuses the image from both of them equally.

In the past, I had no three-dimensional vision. I didn’t know if an object was close to me or far away from me. But as I improved my clarity, I wanted to be able to drive. Working with red and green glasses made it possible for me to have partial three-dimensional vision and to eventually see well enough to start learning to drive and to know where I was on the road.

You may not have such a dramatic change, but having better three-dimensional vision and having a distinction between the two eyes is a great way to reduce your cross-sightedness.

Object and Line

The first step is to make a division between the two eyes completely and to unite them in the brain. Wearing the red and green glasses, you may see light with one eye and an object with the other. Some people will not see light or an object. The aim of this exercise is to get both eyes working together.

For this exercise you will need a red pen or pencil, a piece of white paper, and a small flashlight with a red bulb. If you don’t have a red bulb, put some red masking tape over the flashlight lens to simulate a red filter.

Draw a red circle on the white sheet of paper. Hold the paper out in front of you with one hand so that the paper is parallel to the ground, about a foot in front of your eyes. Turn the flashlight on and put it underneath the paper, shining the light up through it. Look down at the circle while shining the light up through the page. You should see the circle and also the light.

Now close your red-filtered eye. The eye that looks through the green filter should see the circle but not the light, because the red light cannot penetrate through the green lens. On the other hand, the green filter does not stop you from seeing the red circle.

Conversely, if you close the eye that looks through the green, and only look through the red lens, you will see the light, but you will not see the red circle. The eye with the green filter will only see the object, and the eye with the red filter will only see the light. This kind of division is very important because you see a separate image from the eye with the red filter and the eye with the green filter simultaneously.

Now move the light, which is underneath the page, around the perimeter of the circle, like you are tracing around its edge. If your eyes can track together, you will be able to keep the light on the edge of the circle. If your eyes cannot track together, though you may think that the light is on the edge of the circle, it will actually be elsewhere. In my case, when I thought that the light was on the circle, the light was actually outside or inside the circle. So, a way for you to know what’s happening with your light is to suddenly close the eye with the green filter; when you do this, you will see exactly where the light is. When you open the eye with the green filter, you will see if the light remains exactly where it was when that eye was closed, or if it moved. Even if it moved, don’t correct it. Close your eye with the green lens and open it ten to twenty times or until the light remains in the same place as it does when you look at the light through the red lens alone. Once it stays in the same place, it means that your eyes are tracking. For it doesn’t matter if it’s in the circle or out; what matters is that the two eyes are looking together at the same spot.

You may find yourself needing to palm in the middle of this exercise. Palm for as long as necessary to help you relax enough to return to the exercise.

Figure 5.6. Turn the flashlight on and put it underneath the paper, shining the light up through it.

Now change the glasses. That is, if you first put the red lens on the left eye and the green on the right eye, now put the green on the left eye and the red on the right eye; then repeat the exercise.

Another exercise you can do with the red and green glasses is to have someone draw a line with the red pencil, and you try to trace the line with a red pencil while wearing the red filter over your strong eye. The reason for this is that through the red lens you will not be able to see red lines or red writing (unless you are in the 2 percent of the population who can see a red line or red writing through a red lens, in which case the other exercises are more appropriate for you).

You will want to put the red lens in front of the strong eye so the weaker eye will read the red print, but the stronger eye will not read the red line or print. The two eyes will see most other colors together, but the eye with the red filter won’t be able to see whatever is red, and that changes domination for a moment, which could be five to eight minutes. The weaker eye will take a front seat, and, as a result, the brain will learn to use it more in your day-to-day activity.

A variation of this exercise is to take some white paper, wear the red lens in front of the strong eye, and write in big letters anything you like, for example, your name and four other names of people familiar to you on one page and a few words of a poem that you like on another. Then trace what you wrote and see if you can match the original writing.

Card Game

This is a fun and effective way to help balance the two eyes because you don’t even realize that you’re doing an exercise, and you create body/eye coordination as well. Let’s say the left eye is weaker; it will now have to work no less than the right eye, which has no control over it in this situation.

You start off with a special deck of cards (two decks, if you have a few people playing) specifically designed to work with the red and green glasses. The deck is made up of two different colored cards: half the deck is red with black letters, and the other half is white with red letters. You can only see the white cards with the green lens and the red cards with the red lens. As this game proceeds, you and others wear the glasses while you each simultaneously throw down a card from your own portion of the deck. When you identify certain numbers, you will react with a corresponding physical response. For instance, when you see a card with a nine on it, you clap your hands; when you see a seven, you tap your forehead; when you see an ace, you stamp on the floor and bang on the table, etc. The responses could match whatever four cards you would like them to match, and could be anything you are able to dream up. The point is to do something with your body in response to the numbers you have designated in the cards. The person who reacts the quickest when one of these cards is thrown is the one who gets to keep the pile. When it appears that about half of the cards have been thrown, reverse your glasses so that each eye has a chance to see through both the red filter and the green filter.

Figure 5.7. Playing a variation of the card game War.

It’s better, and more fun, to have two or three people playing this game along with you. Extra pairs of glasses are inexpensive and can be purchased at the School for Self-Healing, as can the cards themselves. As enjoyable as it is, this game has had significant results: there has been a temporary improvement in the vision of 50 percent of the people who have played it.