The first thing you see upon opening Dr. Bates’ pioneering 1920 book Perfect Sight Without Glasses is a foreword called “The Fundamental Principle”.
Within a few paragraphs, this peculiar eye doctor prompts you, the open-minded reader, to experience “Central Fixation” through an experiential practice he called “flashing”.
126 years later, we now call it “reverse blinking”, since over the past century the term “flashing” has taken on newer, more risqué connotations.
No matter what we call it though, this powerful principle has the potential to help you improve your vision in a minute or less.
It’s simple. You can even try it as you read this article.
It goes like this: take off your glasses and close your eyes, remember a color in your mind, open your eyes back up on a word or letter, and then quickly close your eyes again.
Repeat several times, making sure to keep your eyes closed long enough to start to feel more relaxed.
Keep focusing your mind on that color.
Keep breathing deeply.
Keep relaxing more and more.
Can you notice that for that brief moment when you flash your eyes open and they land on one word or letter, that you can really only see that one word or letter best at that moment?
Can you notice that the rest of the words or letters appear peripherally and more out of focus than the central one you landed on? Even if the one you landed on wasn’t perfectly in focus because you have your glasses off?
This is central fixation, which Bates defined as “seeing best where you are looking”… which in turn insinuates that you are “seeing worse where you are not looking”.
Your visual acuity is a spectrum, with the most color and clarity concentrated in the central area (which is quite small!) and lower resolution farther into the peripheral area (which is pretty massive!)
When you relax into central fixation, you may start experiencing clear flashes on what you’re looking at, which is when your visual acuity is either slightly or significantly better than before. At first they’re often temporary, but they are important signs that you are starting to relax into central fixation. If you can demonstrate the truth of central fixation to yourself through this short, simple experiment, it might open up many possibilities of further future improvements in your vision.
Did you see any “clear flashes”?
By repeating reverse blinking more and more, you can’t help but notice that your eyesight isn’t exactly the same every time you flash your eyes open.
Sometimes it’s better.
Sometimes it’s worse.
Sometimes it’s the same.
But those moments where it’s better count as clear flashes, even if they’re not perfectly clear. Even just a little bit clearer is a win.
To go straight back to the source, here is Dr. Bates’ original version of The Fundamental Principle:
Do you read imperfectly? Can you observe then that when you look at the first word, or the first letter, of a sentence you do not see best where you are looking; that you see other words, or other letters, just as well as or better than the one you are looking at? Do you observe also that the harder you try to see the worse you see?
Now close your eyes and rest them, remembering some color, like black or white, that you can remember perfectly. Keep them closed until they feel rested, or until the feeling of strain has been completely relieved. Now open them and look at the first word or letter of a sentence for a fraction of a second. If you have been able to relax, partially or completely, you will have a flash of improved or clear vision, and the area seen best will be smaller.
After opening the eyes for this fraction of a second, close them again quickly, still remembering the color, and keep them closed until they again feel rested. Then again open them for a fraction of a second. Continue this alternate resting of the eyes and flashing of the letters for a time, and you may soon find that you can keep your eyes open longer than a fraction of a second without losing the improved vision.
If your trouble is with distant instead of near vision, use the same method with distant letters.
In this way you can demonstrate for yourself the fundamental principle of the cure of imperfect sight by treatment without glasses.
If you fail, ask someone with perfect sight to help you.
Since Central Fixation was something I couldn’t fully understand on my own, I took his last sentence there to heart and contacted a natural vision teacher named Dr. Jerriann Taber to help me when I was learning this back in the early 2010s.
So if you don’t see clear flashes when you try on your own, consider seeking some guidance from a Certified Bates Method Teacher. Contact Nathan or one of the teachers he has trained to take your natural vision improvement process to the next level.
Since Dr. Bates’ claimed that “along with all errors of refraction, there is always a loss of central fixation”, Nathan will be teaching a lot about central fixation in his three upcoming class series, Nixing Nearsightedness, Fixing Farsightedness, and Alleviating Astigmatism. Click here for more information.
