Yoga of Perfect Sight

Blindness or Amblyopia

When the normal eye has normal sight, it is constantly moving. When it has imperfect sight or is partially or completely blind, it is always seeing objects stationary or letters stationary, or is making an effort to do so. These two truths suggest the prevention or cure of blindness. When adults, school children and others are taught to imagine stationary objects to he always moving, the vision always improves.

When the sight is poor and cannot be improved promptly by glasses, the cause usually is due to amblyopia. The word amblyopia means blindness. In amblyopia the vision is less in the region or the centre of sight, hence central fixation is always found to be quite defective.

Since it is a truth that staring, concentration, causes imperfect sight, any treatment which relieves strain should always improve the sight or improve the vision in amblyopic cases. Recently I treated five children of the Centre of Education who were suffering from amblyopia. Apparently the eyes looked quite all right but the vision was poor both for distance and reading and could not be improved by glasses. When they looked at the chart letters, their eyes were stationary, there was no blinking, there was no movement of the eye-balls. All these children gained normal vision by palming, swinging and candle practice. They were taught blinking and how to move the eyes with the movement of the head by means of a ball. They moved the ball from one hand to the other and shifted the sight with the movement of the ball.

The great mistake that has been committed for the last one hundred years or more is in ignoring amblyopia. Most doctors believe amblyopia is incurable. Time after time patients with amblyopia have been treated in my clinic with success by relaxation methods.

In the case of young children methods have to be modified. There are many ways in which this can be done, and it is important to devise a variety of means so that the child will not weary of them. For the same reason the presence of other children is at times desirable. There must be no compulsion and no harshness, for as soon as any method ceases to be pleasant it ceases to be beneficial.

The needle, the brush, the pencil, kindergarten and Montessori material, picture books, playing cards, etc., may all be utilised for purposes of eye training. If one eye is normal, the other amblyopic, then the good eye is to he covered and the bad eye is trained on such material. At first it will be necessary to use rather large objects and forms, but as the sight improves, the size must be reduced. A child may begin to sew, for instance, with a coarse needle and thread, and will naturally take large stitches. As its sight improves a finer needle should be provided, and the stitches will naturally be smaller.

One very amusing practice for children is to sit on a small stool with a chart placed at five feet or farther. The child then runs around the stool while bouncing the ball. After every five rounds he sits down, closes the eyes and then reads the chart letters while blinking on each letter.

Many interesting games can be devised with playing cards. "Slap Jack" is a good one, as it awakens intense interest and great quickness of vision is required to slap the jack with the hand the moment its face appears on the table.

These ideas are only suggestions, and any intelligent parent will be able to add to them.