"From a developmental viewpoint, a child must first learn to team the two halves of his body together before he can team his two eyes. Also, from a developmental standpoint, a child must first learn to control his large muscle groups before he can control the fine muscles of his eyes. Consequently, when we find a problem in bilaterality, we find a problem in binocularity and visual perception."
I have included some of the eye exercises from the article...
The following activities can help improve your vision, depending on your individual problem. For more information, see an optometrist who specializes in optometric vision therapy.
1. Abdominal Breathing. Remind yourself to not hold your breath throughout the day. Practice deep breathing. Let your diaphragm relax. Sometimes you need to put your hand on your waist and feel the expansion of your lower abdomen to help yourself know what deep breathing feels like.
2. Shoulder Rolls. Isolate your shoulders by pulling them up as high as they go and then releasing the tension. Breath in and out as you find the rhythm; repeat a half dozen times.
3. Palming. Warm your palms by rubbing them together. Then place your palms in a cupped fashion over the eyes, without putting any pressure on them. Keep your eyes closed and enjoy the darkness and warmth.
4. Acupressure. Gently touch the inside edges of your eyebrows with the tips of your index fingers. Let the pressure of your touch feel similar to the weight of a quarter resting on your arm. Begin to make a circular motion with your fingertips, remaining in that one spot. Maintain contact with your skin and continue to breathe diaphragmatically. Make sure that you do not lift your shoulders. Continue circling for 5 to 10 seconds.
Then slide your fingers along the edge of the bone that encircles your eyes, maintaining contact with your eyebrows or skin and stop at the following points. At each point, make small, gentle circles for 5 to 10 seconds, always circling outward:
* the center points above your eyes
* the end of your eyebrows
* the outside corners of your eyes
* the center points below your eyes (feel for a little notch in the bone)
* the point where the bone begins to curve up
5. Yoga Eye Stretches. You have six extra-ocular muscles in each eye. They tend to tighten from lack of flexibility. To stretch them, start in a comfortable sitting position, while keeping the eyes open. By using a clock chart as a guide, move the eyes gently from three to nine o’clock, two to eight, one to seven, eleven to five and ten to four o’clock. This exercise may initially feel like an effort. However, you will find that the eyes begin to feel more fluid in their movements. Practice once a day for three to five minutes.
6. Peripheral Awareness and Convergence. Your peripheral vision tends to shut down under stress (tunnel vision). One simple activity to counteract this is to hold a colored pen or your finger about 5 inches directly in front of your nose. As you look past the pen into the distance toward a light, you should notice a second pen in your peripheral vision. Next shift your attention to the pen, making it single again, while being aware of a second image in the distance.
Here is the full article: http://www.smartnow.com/page/9919
Enjoy,
Dr. Eliot Kaplan, Developmental Optometrist
Dr. Eliot Kaplan, Developmental Optometrist
Book Reviews:
REVIEW #1
I just finished reading a newly published book, Fixing My Gaze, by neurologist Susan Barry, PHd.
It is about her experience of recovering stereo vision after four decades of seeing only with one eye at a time ,due to strabismus. It is by far the best non-medical book I've ever read on the experience of being a strabismic and about the amazing changes she goes through as the world begins to snap into 3-D depth. Then she ties the whole process to the brain and the changes it goes through, making new connections, discussing the phenomenon of brain plasticity and debunking the long held beliefs about "critical periods," after which the brain has been thought to be unable to make changes or develop.
Just 155 pages of easy to read material with lots of technical information, presented in simple language: including a bibliography of medical and brain and perceptual research sufficient to satisfy the most skeptical "show me the studies" critic. The noted neurologist Oliver Sachs wrote the foreword.
Thomas Lecoq, Optometry Consultant
REVIEW #2
From today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (7-2-09), an unqualified and ringing endorsement of Sue Barry's book, and of specially trained and imaginative optometrists which reads, in part:
"Capitalizing probably more on latent neuronal connections than on the creation of new ones, Barry benefited from orthoptics — a hidden corner of restorative medicine. With contrived ocular exercises, specially trained and imaginative optometrists treat patients whose eyes are cosmetically aligned but imperfectly foveated. The simplicity of the exercises and of the apparatus (such as beads on a string, papers taped to walls, and strips of film) is bracing for a profession enamored with technology.
The book’s main contribution, however, is exposing the wrong-headed dogma that acuity and binocular vision can be restored only during a critical developmental period. Surgical correction of strabismus is dominated by this notion, first posited by Claud Worth in his landmark 1903 book, Squint: Its Causes, Pathology, and Treatment, and set at a hard stop at 2 years of age by his student Francis Chavasse. The experiments of Hubel and Wiesel are often cited as confirming the lost malleability of the adult brain, but Barry points out that they did no such thing because there was no attempt at restoration of fusion. Her experiences and those she recounts from others belie the “nothing else can be done” message that ophthalmologists gave t o her and to her mother throughout her childhood.
Several visual scientists have now demonstrated the reversibility of infantile loss of vision and stereopsis, but blindness to these findings and underappreciation of the solutions offered by orthoptics still persist."
It is wonderful to see (no pun intended) that "brain fitness" embraces the importance of VISION as it relates to cognition with such chapter headings as: 1) attention 2) short-term memory 3) long-term memory 4) sensory integration 5) vision
We need to keep ourselves healthy by developing a fitness program that incorporates both aerobic exercise as well as strong visual-motor and visual perception skills. Developmental Optometry offers one piece of the puzzle, as does many other health care professionals involved with improving learning skills.
As John Medina says, "Vision trumps all of the other senses".
Sincerely,
Dr. Eliot Kaplan, Developmental Optometrist
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I have many patients whom have used the new BrainWare Safari cognitive skills program with great success. This is a terrific adjunct with our individualized vision therapy programs. My children and adult patients enjoy the challenge and direct benefits of this fun and interactive program. Please explore what BrainWare Safari has to offer and share with me your thoughts.
http://www.brainwareforyou.com/professional/PDF/BWSGeneral.VisionTherapyCognition.8-28-07.pdf
Dr. Eliot Kaplan, O.D.
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