Quick question I did not think of before. Which eye shall I cover? Or shall I rotate? The left side of my body is weaker including the eye. The left eye is smaller and slightly astigmatic, and I do feel more muscular tension around that eye. Thanks.
Also, as anyone tried this stuff?
I regularly just use my smartphone for 30min-90min hour a day and just close my right eye. So i have close to zero problems with the device compared to severe issues when i use both. However, this doesn't help me with binocular vision later on.
I also used specific monitors with one i covered - compared to the closed eye with the smartphone - for 30min-180min with similar results once a week.
For me one eye is far better than the other. I would just test it. I feel which one relativ fast especially if you try to work or do something where you need to concentrate.
I want to add my experience.
Two years ago I started to have a burning sensation in my eyes even with good devices that did not give me problems. The optometrist given me glasses to correct astigmatism (0.5) and with those, I was perfect again.
In June 2020 I tried W10 2004 and I was sick for two weeks (vertigo, headache, nausea..) .. since that day I have not recovered at 100%. Currently, if I don't use glasses for astigmatism, I'm fine (apart from burning sensation) and I can also using W11 / W10 21H1. instead, If I use glasses I have a very strong feeling of confusion and after a while, I start to have eye ache/tension.
It may be that without glasses my brain suppresses the right eye (the one that has exophoria and in my opinion I see even worse than the left one...) and therefore I am fine! Instead with glasses the right eye also comes into play and I can't manage exophoria which causes me confusion/inability to stay focused?
AGI Which eye shall I cover?
For the most I cover my right non-dominant lazy eye.
AGI Or shall I rotate?
For me it wasn’t necessary, even if I tried it a few times.
I think you have to test what is working for you and keep on doing it.
AGI Also, as anyone tried this stuff?
Looks interesting, I want to try it.
I have not provided information about the exercises without prisms, that can easily be carried out by everyone, although I recommend you see a specialist.
One is the cat stereogram. After some practice I learnt first to maintain the three cats even after removing the pen, and next to make the three cats appear from scratch without using the pen at all. I also made the exercise more complicated by moving the sheet to the far left, then to the far right, up and down, and finally in circles.
I was also shown a variant of this exercise that does not contemplate the use of the pen at the start. You hold the sheet with the two cats at arm distance straight in front of you. You focus on a well defined object far away, for instance something 2-3 meters away at a similar height of the sheet. If you truly focus on that far away object which is on the same line of sight of the cats, the third cat will appear. You hold.
The cat stereogram can become fun. I can now see three well defined cats for as along as I want, like 3-5 minutes. Then I stop because it gets boring and stressful. One of the issues I encountered and I got better at is that sometimes one of the two outer cats would fade for a split second. I am not sure what this is due to, because the cat in the middle would stay, so it may not be simple suppression of one eye.
The other exercise is a sort of Brock string exercise but aimed at enhancing convergence at near. Therefore, no cord needed. Just a print out such as the one below (the length of the line is circa 20 cm).
The "nose" side is indicated. You keep the sheet inclined downwards, for instance, by 30 degrees, and you focus on the farthest away square. You do not jump immediately to the next square inwards. You first need to make sure that the square you are looking at is neatly defined and two lines depart from it towards your nose. You hold for a while, I typically do it for 15-30 sec. If you can see "the right pattern" of square and lines, then you move on to the next square. This time the line on the sheet will become a sort of X. You hold and try to control both the shape of the square and the X, and move on. Depending on where you are at, it may take you a while to reach the square near the NOSE label.
I was recommended to not overdo. 4 minutes a day are enough at the start.
I confess that at the beginning I was underwhelmed by the exercises I was given and I did not take them very seriously. I got more excited when I started using prisms and then when I noticed that I could take the pen out of the equation in the cat stereogram exercise. These exercises are also a way to find some relief in the presence of extreme eyestrain and neck tension.
I truly understand how you feel about your job, i am there as well.
The below lesson helped me, however i am trained in somatics for more than 5 years, so if you choose to do it you need to VERY GENTLE to all movements described. The purpose is NOT to stretch but to sense the movements. I suggest you split the lesson in 3 or more parts in order not to strain your eyes.
I am not a somatics teacher nor a doctor, so it is up to you to experiment with the lesson, i am only saying that it helped me. For me what the lesson has achieved is that whenever i get strained i recover fast, sometimes in a few hours. This was achieved after a month of training in the below lesson. Also note I am not in anyway connected to the lesson or the trainer.
1.Tuning Eyes and Brain AY 15 - https://www.sensingvitality.com/self-guided-lessons/vision-lessons/
Somatics is the umbrella name for various alternative techniques like the Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, Rolfing, etc. Each discipline has its own specialists. A key assumption in these techniques is that body parts are not isolated and that each body part can affect another or the whole body.
In the suggested lesson even if you focus in the eyes you actually work on your whole body. For example you can feel the neck more relaxed and when upright you may feel taller or more "straight". You could even feel the feet more relaxed.
What worked for me with this lesson is that i can release very quickly the neck tension that accumulates from a "bad" display and for me this results to a faster eye strain recovery. Obviously it is not the solution to our problem but it helps.
This is a new exercise I was asked to do. I attach a photo of the little tool required (a piece of plastic that cost a fortune :-). I believe this is similar to the exercise that made a difference for @mike. You read "through" the bar. If you cannot read the letters under the bar, which stands ~ 8 cm above the sheet, then you are not using your eyes in a coordinated manner. I can see through the bar easily. However, I need to hold the tool down, which is inconvenient when I read a book in bed or from a Kindle or when I need to underline text and write comments.
Another exercise - the next level from the cat stereogram I had described earlier - is aimed at merging the two round features below into a cylinder (with depth), which will appear in between the two round features, if you keep your eyes focused on a point either midway between you and the sheet or very far away.
I am also testing coloured overlays to address if I suffer from the Irlen syndrome. Very tricky. I tried out a few colors and I cannot tell the difference. So far, all look pleasant the same, as they make the "white" disappear. I must try under natural light as well.
Finally, I was given two prisms mounted on a single post. I look at a pen behind either one or the other prism. The goal is to see "one" pen. One prism is to train convergence and the other to train divergence (I forgot to ask for the specs).
With the prism to the right in the photo, no way I can see one pen as of now. I believe it is because I skipped training for 6 months and I restarted with a prism on the high end without using intermediate prisms. This seems to prove that I was not able to maintain the skills developed with the training.
AGI With the prism to the right in the photo, no way I can see one pen as of now.
@martin Just read this comment of yours in an old post.
I must say that the divergence, which is my problem, is really difficult, takes forever to fuse the images
Did you elaborate a trick to fuse the two images or they just happen to merge at a certain point?
martin Thanks, Martin. Last year I borrowed loose prisms from my orthoptist and went from low to high power progressively.
This time (new orthoptist) I just got one set of prisms of given power. I started using them without receiving any advice, which was not handy. However, I saw the orthoptist last week. She gave me some tips and I can now do the exercises. I reported about the progress here. Cheers.
Hello Folks! I think it can be worth to share my experience of last year.
This story had been started a year ago with huge problem with my neck, that by occasion was quickly fixed by company visiting manual therapist. After that she noticed the way how i walk: my feet keeps more < position during walk (the way I walked most part of my life) rather than = one . She suggested that it could be a reason for my neck problems: wrong walking causes block of low back and blocked low back causes problem with upper part of the body and neck.
I started to do stretching exercises that she shown me and keep attention to walk in = mode, after 3 month I had big progress in stretching and in my feeling, after half a year I got a habit to walk more in = mode rather than in <. After a year I've started to feel my low back and it's mobility.
Result of this journey, more clear and resourceful state and, it's difficult to measure, I have feeling that my led sensitivity decreased a bit.
I hope this sharing could be valuable for you!
