Natural Vision Improvement
Natural Vision Improvement is an educational approach to regaining your visual clarity through relaxing your mind, body and eyes.
Natural Vision Improvement is also referred to as the Bates Method after it’s founder and pioneer ophthalmologist William H. Bates, MD, who in the early 1900’s discovered that unless we interfere by straining, clear and perfect vision is natural. Dr. Bates found that tension in the muscles of the eyes resulting from mental, emotional and physical strain lowers vision, causes blur and many of the eyesight difficulties we experience.
Dr. Bates stated, “We see very largely with the mind, and only partly with the eyes. The phenomenon of vision depends upon the mind’s interpretation of the impression upon the retina. What we see is not that impression upon the retina, but our own interpretation of it.”
What Natural Vision Improvement IS
Natural Vision Improvement IS an educational and experiential approach to improving your eyesight.
Natural Vision Improvement is often taught by Certified Natural Vision Teachers and Coaches, as well as other educators, who assist you in finding ways of letting go of the mental, emotional and physical strain that may be contributing to your lowered vision.
Natural Vision can be learned, or more precisely, re-learned. Since Natural Vision is the way you innately see, with no effort at all, Natural Vision Improvement is experiencing and reestablishing that naturally relaxed way of seeing, of using your eyes with total ease.
What Natural Vision Improvement IS NOT
Natural Vision Improvement IS NOT medical.
Natural Vision Improvement is not a medical modality and is not intended to replace the medical care provided by an eye doctor or other healthcare practitioner. It is not diagnosis, treatment, prescribing, therapy or counseling. A Natural Vision Teacher or Coach who teaches Natural Vision Improvement is not an optician, optometrist, ophthalmologist, physician, psychologist, therapist or medical provider of any kind.
Please consult with your eye doctor or other medical provider regarding questions concerning your health and the health of your eyes.
The Bates Method
Natural Vision Improvement is often referred to as The Bates Method because it was pioneered and developed by ophthalmologist William H. Bates, MD…
“Primarily, the strain to see is a strain of the mind.”
-William H. Bates, MD
Rather than learning something new, Natural Vision Improvement is relearning something that you were unaware you had forgotten. Instead of correcting eyesight with prescription glasses, contacts or surgery, Natural Vision Improvement empowers you to improve your own eyesight by letting go of your habits of strain that are interfering with naturally clear vision.
Natural Vision Improvement is a reeducation of how to use your eyes in a naturally relaxed way. It is learning to let go of straining to see and relearning to see in the effortless way nature intended. It is improving your ability to use your eyes naturally, and in so doing improving their function and increasing visual clarity.
“The eye with normal sight never tries to see. Whenever the eye tries to see, it at once ceases to have normal vision.”
– William H. Bates, MD
Natural Vision Improvement is educational in nature, not medical. It is often taught by teachers, coaches and other educators who have themselves experienced Natural Vision Improvement and desire to share the benefits of Natural Vision Improvement education with others.
Natural Vision Improvement involves simple activities that reintroduce your eyes to the relaxed habits of Natural Vision. It is more like Eastern yoga than Western exercise, more like play than work, more like meditation than concentration, more simple than complicated. It is a mindfulness practice that involves developing a subtle awareness of how you are using your mind, body and eyes, realizing when you are holding tension and learning to let it go.
As you become reacquainted with the habits of Natural Vision, as you remember and relearn to relax and re-establish the natural state of mental, emotional and visual ease, clear vision can gently be coaxed to return. In this way, it is more similar to gentle yoga than to a strenuous workout. Rather than doing a regimen of exercises, Natural Vision Improvement aims to develop the subtle awareness of relaxing and letting go of any effort at all.
Who Can Benefit?
Just about everyone can find benefit from Natural Vision Improvement…
What Are The Benefits?
There are a variety of benefits with Natural Vision Improvement…
Natural Vision Coaching
As a Natural Vision Coach, I take a broad and integrative approach...
Paradoxically, the more you try to see, the worse you see. At its core, Natural Vision Improvement is the letting go of trying to see, and instead allowing seeing to happen.
