Yoga of Perfect Sight

Squint And Amblyopia

When one or both eyes are turned in towards the nose, the condition is called convergent squint. When the eyes turn out, it is called divergent squint.

The cause of squint is a mental strain. Normal eyes have been taught to consciously produce squint at will. This requires an effort, but the fact suggests that since squint can be produced at will, it should be considered curable by eye education. The success of the surgical treatment is uncertain. Some children produce convergent squint by straining to see the end of the nose. The production of divergent squint is difficult.

Treatment: Since squint is caused by an effort or strain to see, mental relaxation is the fundamental part of the successful treatment. This may explain why teaching the eyes to see better is a relaxation method, which promotes the cure of the squint. When the vision is improved of each eye to normal, the eyes become straight. If somehow the relaxation treatment fails to correct the squint, then only one may think of the operation.

Young children are cured of squint by swinging the whole body in a circular direction and swinging them strongly enough to lift their feet from the floor. While swinging the hands of the child are held by the hands of an adult who may be swinging him. At the same time the child is encouraged to look upwards as much as possible. The little patient will immensely enjoy this form of exercise. Games of all kinds have been practised with much benefit to the squint in children.

When double vision appears with squint, it is very annoying. Any method which secures relaxation corrects the double vision and lessens the squint. Many patients are greatly benefited by palming, long swing and reading fine print in good light and candlelight. Undoubtedly blinking is a great aid to cure the squint as well as double vision. When this is not sufficient, one may select the exercise of memory or imagination.

The Snellen test card may be useful in the cure of squint. While swaying from side to side, standing a few feet from the card, all stationary objects in the field of vision may appear to be moving in the opposite direction to the sway. While practising the sway, the whiteness of the card improves while the blackness of the letters becomes darker and the vision improves. If one eye is normal and the other defective, the good eye is covered for several hours a day, so that the bad eye may learn functioning in the right way.

Recently two teachers of the Centre of Education developed a squint in their right eye due to working on the microscope with a strain. When the squint appeared, double vision followed and this was very disturbing and annoying. They were cured by palming, long swing and reading line print or photographic type reduction with gentle blinking. Frequent palming kept their eyes under relaxation. In such cases football swing is also very helpful.

What is football swing? Take a tennis ball and move it with your foot. The sight moves with the ball but the floor appears to move backward. This imagination of the floor moving backward brings good relaxation. After playing this game for a few minutes one may read fine print or the Snellen test card at varying distances.

Usually there is a lowering of vision in the squinting eye which cannot be improved by glasses, and this condition is called amblyopia which is supposed to be incurable, but by relaxation methods of eye education, amblyopia is cured quite rapidly in many cases.