Meir Schneider - Vision for Life

Relaxing the Ears

A good addition to palming the eyes is resting the ears from external noise. As a result of the noise we live in, our senses are under continuous pressure. Pressure causes tension, and if we are tense, we can never get to a place of relaxed eyes.

So, when you finish palming, rub your hands together again to increase the blood flow to your fingers; then put your thumbs deep inside your ears. Listen to your breath. What does it sound like? It may sound like ocean waves or wind. Breathe deeply and slowly to the count of ten, and palm again. You will feel your neck muscles becoming loose, and your whole head will start to relax.

Benefits of Palming

People who have multiple sclerosis and have an attack on their visual system quite often receive cortisone treatments from their doctors. In many cases, if such patients just sat down for a whole day palming with a nice cloth around their eyes, they would be able to overcome the attack on their visual system simply through rest. It’s a simple truth that relaxation is very powerful. When you relax completely, your body returns to its highest and best functioning.

Figure 2.13. Put your thumbs deep inside your ears. Listen to your breath.

I am in awe of nature for giving us such wonderful tools with which to see. In all its complexity, nature has fine-tuned our vision. Vision is completely integrated with our development as human beings and is progressing side by side with it. Most of the visual process is subconscious and unknown to us. But science is gradually realizing the marvelous energy behind vision!

We have 125 million photoreceptor cells in each retina, with a billion light rays bouncing against some of them every single minute, converting light into visual energy. To allow the process to function at its best, we need to learn not to squint. You may not be aware that your eyes squint even when you sleep and dream.

Palming can work away our tendency to squint. When you palm with soft, relaxed hands, and when you see black, there is a wonderful release of the eyelids, the temples, the forehead, and the entire skull. Squinting is eliminated, and you notice a relaxed sensation as you open your eyes. You also sense much more periphery because, with fully open eyelids, much more light can penetrate your eyes.

Quite often, physicians say that squinting does not have any ill effects, but it does. In this respect, the wisdom of the Tibetan Yogis was definitely greater than the wisdom of modern medicine. Modern medicine still needs to adopt the concept that rest and relaxation are so powerful.

Combining Palming with Other Exercises

After you have mastered palming, next time you are sunning, practicing the long swing, or night walking, stop for a few moments, put your hands over your eye orbits, and do your palming. Breathe slowly, in deep breaths. Your pupils will have time to enlarge a bit. Then take your hands off and return to your other exercise.

From time to time, also stop to massage your eyebrows. Massage the right eyebrow from the bridge of your nose to your temple; then do the same thing on the left side. Massage your cheekbones and stretch the muscles of your cheekbones from nose to ear. Every time you firmly massage your cheekbone, you may find that more light penetrates your eyes and you experience a sense of less squinting.

Step 7: Shifting

Shifting is an exercise designed to wake up your macula and help to develop the retina. In the retina, we have 125 million photoreceptors. Five million of them look at fine details, and 120 million of them look at the general picture. When we try to look at fine details, we can see them well only if we look at them centrally. We see them poorly, however, if we try to see them with our peripheral vision.

Shifting is all about moving your gaze from detail to detail. The eye has a natural tendency to shift from point to point. If you are the type of person who takes your time to see the beauty of the world and to look from detail to detail, you’ve already started this exercise.

Figure 2.14. See the beauty of the world and look from detail to detail.

Figure 2.15. Let your eyes see whatever they see. Relax.

Practicing Shifting

All you need to do is to open your eyes and look at details, without contacts and without glasses. The beauty of this exercise, and the reason you can feel good about practicing it without glasses, is that you don’t need to strain to try and see details clearly or perfectly. You just observe them. Let your eyes see whatever they see. Relax. If what you see is clear, that is wonderful. If what you see is fuzzy, that is wonderful, too! So enjoy the clarity or relax and maybe start to enjoy the fuzziness.

After you observe the details of whatever you are looking at, close your eyes and visualize the margins and distances between details. Think about the contrast between those details. Have you ever thought about the pleasure of seeing contrast? Even if your general vision is fuzzy, when you notice the contrast between details, you start to activate the mechanism of perception that is so important when trying to establish a visual sense of your environment.

You can look at details from near, or you can look at details from afar. Go for a walk and look at a house. Then look down at the sidewalk. Look at a road and then look at another house. From time to time, look into the distance for a short moment; then look back at the details of the street, the details of the road, and the details of the houses. Embrace the contrast.

Some people think the normal speed of the macula is as quick as seventy-two eye movements per second. The macula moves at a great speed, and we want to help our eyes look from detail to detail rapidly, by doing it correctly and looking right. By shifting, looking at one detail and then looking at another, and examining the contrast between these details, we can reverse this habit and open up the tendency to truly look.

Look at More Details

Now that you are slowing down to notice the details of your environment, you can further vitalize your eyes by looking at even smaller and smaller details.

There was a time when I looked at details for thirteen hours a day, every day. I looked at windows and air conditioners. I looked at blinds and bricks. I would sometimes ask a friend of mine with better vision to look at the exact details that I was looking at and to describe them to me. My friend would always describe different details than the ones I saw, and this would make me want to study the details even more.

It is also helpful to get a group of people to stand and look at details together. As the group looks at an environment, such as the waves on the ocean, they take turns describing what they see. Someone might describe a boat or a ship at a distance. Someone else might describe the boat’s shape or color even more specifically. There could be a particular light in the horizon with different coloration. The larger the number of people describing these details, the more everyone can find new things to look for and discover new ways of seeing.

This happens instinctively with little kids because they get so excited when they respond to something they see. The same thing is true for us adults: the more we look at details, the more stimulated we get. That sense of excitement in our eyes is apparent, and when anyone looks at our eyes, they see vitality in them. There is nothing as frozen as eyes that don’t look, and there is nothing as alive as eyes that do look. When you look from point to point, you project that you have a sense of presence and attention.