We are approaching the 100-year anniversary of Dr. Bates’ book Perfect Sight Without Glasses being published back in 1920.
His original book was a pioneering work that paved the way for the development of Holistic Eye Care as we know it today. As an ophthalmologist and a scientist, Dr. Bates’ book isn’t necessarily the most compelling read. It is a little dry, full of jargon, run-on sentences, and complex explanations that sometimes go over the reader’s head or reflect a different time.
While technically designed for the layperson, Dr. Bates was also tasked with attempting to convince other ophthalmologists of his research and theories. In trying to do so, he sometimes loses the layperson along the way, making his method a little less accessible, especially when you fast forward to the present day and take into account the evolution of language and updated terminology. At times Bates’ language and communication styles seem outdated and difficult to grasp or apply to our modern, hyper-civilized world. However, this does not mean that his original work does not still contain some very important concepts that are just as applicable today as they were a century ago.
I am quite grateful to have encountered the Bates-Corbett Method on my search for better eyesight naturally, and I believe firmly in the majority of what Dr. Bates taught and shared while he was alive in the form of his studies, writings, and case histories.
What I wish to address in this article are the few points where my personal teaching approaches differ slightly from how Dr. Bates originally presented them one hundred years ago.
Theory of Accommodation
Dr. Bates made the discovery that the six extraocular muscles (four recti muscles and two oblique muscles) play a part in accommodation, or your eye’s ability to focus light correctly from the outside world onto the retina on the inside back of the eye. When the eye fails to do so, it is called a “refractive error”, myopia/nearsightedness being when the light focuses in front of the retina, hypermetropia/presbyopia/farsightedness being when the light focuses behind the retina, and astigmatism being when the light focuses on multiple points on the retina instead of one.
Before Bates was born, Helmholtz put forth his theory of accommodation in 1855 that stated that the lens inside the eye is the sole factor of accommodation. The ciliary muscles contract and relax to thicken the lens to focus near and to thin the lens to focus far. The six muscles around the eyes had no role to play, other than to turn the eyes in different directions.
Once Bates became an authority in the ophthalmological community and began retesting Helmholtz’s theory of accommodation, he kept finding exceptions to that rule. Most notably, he performed a cataract surgery on a patient and removed both of his lenses. According to the Helmholtz theory, this man should not have been able to accommodate, yet he was still able to focus on fine print up close, and focus on the eye chart in the distance. This got Bates scratching his head and wondering what else could be contributing to the power of accommodation.
He proceeded to perform dozens of experiments on different types of animal eyes in the lab, applying electrical currents to the extraocular muscles when they were continuous and severed. He was surprised to find that when an electrical current was applied to the oblique eye muscles it elongated the eye organ to focus near, and when an electrical current was applied to the recti eye muscles it shortened the eye organ to focus far. He then cut the eye muscles and applied the electrical current to the back portion of the cut eye muscle, and no accommodation would take place. When he sewed the eye muscles back together and reapplied the electrical current, accommodation would occur yet again. This led him to the discovery that the six muscles around the eye are not just for turning the eyes, but also for accommodating the eyes by changing the shape of the entire eye organ slightly. Thinking back on the story of his patient who could accommodate without lenses in his eyes, he went as far as to claim that the lens had no accommodative role, and it was 100% the extraocular muscles.
This is one of the main contention points that conventional eye care professionals have with Dr. Bates, because they believe accommodation to be the other way around, 100% in the lens and 0% in the extraocular muscles.
In my personal opinion, my understanding of the matter falls somewhere in between. I believe both the lens and the extraocular muscles have accommodative power, not just one or the other. The fact that the eye muscles are hundreds of times stronger than they need to be just to rotate the eyeball hints toward the idea that they also serve the purpose of contracting and relaxing as a muscle pair to lengthen and shorten the eyeball.
And not only that, I believe the extraocular and ciliary muscles greatly influence each other, making it much more of a team effort than an isolated mechanism. When the four recti muscles contract to shorten the eye, it initiates the thinning of the lens by the ciliary muscles to focus far. Then, when the two oblique muscles contract to lengthen the eye, it initiates the thickening of the lens by the ciliary muscles to focus near.
And going beyond the accommodative factors of the lens and the extraocular muscles, there are even more factors that influence accommodation. There are so many moving parts of the eye organs, not to mention the entire mental perception element.
To focus, the surface of the eye must have a healthy even tear film, the cornea must bend the light, the iris must contract to make the pupil the perfect size, the lens must assume the perfect shape, the extraocular muscles must get the eyeball into the perfect focal length, the retina must be able to receive the light perfectly in the center, the optic nerves must transmit the signals instantly, and the visual cortex in the brain must perceive the signals immediately. Why would you want to limit this extremely complex process to just one or two parts of such a complex and interdependent system?
So instead of fighting back and forth over who is right – the lens camp or the eye muscle camp – why not focus our attention and energy on finding ways of balancing all the different muscles of the eyes to relearn automatic and effortless accommodation? I try not to get too hung up on the mechanics of it, and instead try to focus on focusing instead – which is also controlled by the mind.
I believe a main takeaway from Bates’ contributions, is to not forget about the mental side of sight. No matter what muscle is causing accommodation, Bates proved that the ability to focus is influenced by the mind and the mental state. Stress or strain in the mind could potentially interfere with the automatic involuntary function of the ciliary muscles, the extraocular muscles, and most likely both.
Do not let the argument over what is physically focusing the eyes interfere with your mental abilities to focus the eyes. The conventional explanation leaves out much of the mental, emotional, and psychological sides of sight, whereas Dr. Bates included them and studied their influences on sight. Through his research and experiments, Bates found that the mental and emotional states can directly interfere with or prevent accommodation from taking place properly. Dr. Bates’ theory of accommodation is therefore a more holistic way to think about what causes vision problems and how to most fully deal with them physically, mentally, emotionally, and psychologically.
The Role of Glasses
Dr. Bates was one of the first eye doctors to question the role of glasses as being the absolute best solution for treating vision problems. He quickly noticed the trend, as all eye doctors eventually do, that his patients kept needing continually stronger and stronger prescription lenses the more they wore the original prescription lenses he gave them on their last visit. In other words, he put two and two together that the glasses were actually making the underlying vision problem worse and worse over time, because they were leaving the root cause untreated. They were simply treating the symptoms of the vision problems.
When he prescribed glasses to patients, he would encourage them to only wear them when absolutely necessary, and to take them off frequently and gaze up and down the cornfields, roads, cities, clouds, or any distant objects to counteract the harmful effect the glasses seemed to be having on the eyes.
In his book, Bates stated that in order to improve your vision naturally you must discard your glasses permanently. He was fairly strict about this and warned that if you wear glasses it will retard your progress. At first glance, the idea of quitting glasses cold turkey may sound daunting, especially if you wear high prescription glasses or are very dependent upon them for everyday activities. Maybe in an ideal world you could spend two weeks on a ‘vision retreat’ on a tropical island and not have to wear your glasses at all because you don’t have to work or drive, just relax on the beach and heal your eyes using the Bates Method all day and all night long. But if that’s not an available option for you at the moment, you’ll have to find another way to incorporate the Bates Method of natural vision improvement into your already busy daily schedule, whether filled with school, work, social obligations, or any other task that requires seeing clearly with your eyes (nearly everything huh?). Luckily there is another way.
Later in his career, Dr. Bates did say that glasses can still be worn while in treatment if your vocation depends on it, or you need them to be safe in certain situations, but he still remained steadfast that it would really slow the process down and even lead to relapses. So if ‘quitting cold turkey’ doesn’t seem like a realistic option, ‘weaning off’ might be more realistic.
I personally believe that gradually weaning down to weaker prescription glasses as stepping-stones is a more realistic approach in this day and age than quitting cold turkey. The eyes and brain usually respond better to tiny gradual changes than big leaps. Going from -7.00 glasses to no glasses may be a little bit too big of a leap. Instead, gradually drop down to -6.00, -5.00, -4.00, -3.00, -2.00, and -1.00 as stepping stones all the way to no glasses. You can either work with an open minded eye doctor or behavioral optometrist who is willing to prescribe you undercorrected training glasses as you go through the vision training process, or you can order custom prescription glasses online from websites like Zenni Optical.
Eye Floaters
In Dr. Bates’ book he says that floaters are a product of the mind and are not actually physically there. We now know that not to be true. Floaters actually are physical particles that appear when the vitreous body begins to break down and debris get suspended in the fluid inside the eye, casting shadows on the retina. However, Dr. Bates was definitely on to something when he said the mind has the ability to see through them or to tune them out, and the fact that the floaters appear to be more noticeable when the mind is strained and stressed, and less noticeable when the mind is relaxed and focused speaks to the mental component of eye floaters.
When I asked my vision teacher Dr. Taber about my eye floaters, she told me that I would no longer see them once I improved my vision using the Bates Method – and she was right. The more I practiced the Bates Method to reverse my myopia and astigmatism, the clearer the world became around me, and the less I noticed the floaters. Even though they were still in my eyes, I saw right through them once I learned how to focus more clearly in the distance again. In addition to the powerful mental possibility of overcoming the floaters, there are also physical techniques from the Bates Method as well as nutritional and supplemental approaches to implement when addressing eye floaters naturally.
Telescopic Vision
When introducing and explaining the concept of Central Fixation in his book, Dr. Bates gives the example of people who have “telescopic vision”, who can actually see the moons of Jupiter with the naked eye.
The limits of vision depend upon the degree of central fixation. A person may be able to read a sign half a mile away when he sees the letters all alike, but when taught to see one letter best he will be able to read smaller letters that he didn’t know were there. The remarkable vision of savages, who can see with the naked eye objects for which most civilized persons require a telescope, is a matter of central fixation. Some people can see the moons of Jupiter, with the naked eye. It is not because of any superiority in the structure of their eyes, but because they have attained a higher degree of central fixation than most civilized persons do.
At first this may be hard to believe, but one must consider the fact that 100 years ago the atmosphere was less polluted and there was less light pollution, meaning that the night sky was probably more visible back then. Also consider the fact that tribal groups of people had already mapped the cosmos well before the invention of telescopes. Although I have not met anyone presently who can see the moons of Jupiter with the naked eye, I don’t necessarily discount it as being impossible or unachievable. Therefore, the main thing I disagree with Bates on this topic is his use of the word “savages”, which is much more of a 20th century way to describe tribal and indigenous groups of people. As an anthropologist, I cringe when I hear the word “savages” used to describe human beings.
Instantaneous Cures
If you have read Dr. Bates’ book, you know that it includes many success stories to demonstrate the power, potential, and efficacy of the Bates Method. Many of the examples of the cure of imperfect sight by treatment without glasses are seemingly instantaneous, with some of his patients achieving perfect vision in a matter of days, hours, or even minutes. Sometimes when he would get his patients to demonstrate the truth of central fixation to themselves, it would secure an immediate and permanent cure. Bates shares the now well-known story of his patient who palmed his eyes for 20 hours straight, which led to his permanent cure. These case histories are meant to instill inspiration in the reader, but to be honest there were times when those stories actually frustrated me because they did not reflect my own experience. From start to finish, it took me 3-4 years to achieve perfect vision without using my glasses, which seemed like much longer than the examples Bates gave in his book. If I had only used these instant cures as a standard to hold myself against, I probably wouldn’t have held my faith and stuck with it for the long run.
Luckily, I also read other books about the Bates Method and met other people using the method in the present day who shared different types of success stories that seemed more realistic and seemed to match my progress. I’m afraid that one of the main reasons people don’t succeed with the Bates Method is because they don’t stick with it long enough, which is understandable because if you’re not seeing improvements after a couple weeks or months of practicing it may make you lose hope or think it’s not working. In my own experience, I had to get through those initial periods of doubt in order to begin experiencing improvements in my vision. I also hired a vision coach to help me get more improvements, which is definitely something you should consider if you have not been seeing as many improvements as you had hoped.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to achieve a seemingly miraculous reversal of your vision problem, and I’ve even met people in my career that have woken up one day and not needed their contacts or glasses anymore because they could all of a sudden see clearly without them. What I am saying is that if you’re not one of those select few who get instant improvement, don’t let that discourage you and don’t give up. If you don’t achieve an instant permanent cure, maybe you can at least experience some instant temporary cures, or “clear flashes”. These “clear flashes” or moments of improved or perfect vision without glasses, are like little previews of what is possible with continued practice. These flashes are possible to attain very early on in the vision reeducation process, but they are often temporary cures, not permanent ones. The majority of people who practice the Bates Method experience more gradual improvements, and the total time it takes to achieve permanent improvement is more like several months or sometimes even several years, which at first may sound like a long time, but remember to ask yourself this: how long have you already been wearing glasses? I had already been wearing glasses for 15 years by the time I learned about the Bates Method, so 3 to 4 years spent working on improving my vision paled in comparison to the amount of time I had already been mistreating my eyes.
Dr. Bates worked with thousands of patients in his lifetime and witnessed countless reversals of vision problems. So I’m sure that when it came time to write his book he could only include a limited number of examples and case histories (for more case histories, check out Stories From The Clinic by Dr. Bates’ wife, Emily Lierman). I guarantee that there were many cases which took longer to heal or improve, but maybe Bates wanted to share the “best of” case histories or the most impressive ones to really get people’s attention and show the reader what is possible through this simple and natural method. Like the last point about telescopic vision being potentially more possible 100 years ago with a more conducive environment, maybe instantaneous cures were also more possible back then because of differently lifestyles. Maybe people in the early 20th century had more liberty to go without glasses for longer periods of time. People didn’t have to worry so much about driving cars, staring at computer screens, or existing in a hyper-civilized globally connected stressful world. So even if permanently improving your vision naturally takes longer than it used to, don’t let that dissuade you from trying it, or continuing to work on achieving healthier eyes and mind using the method that Bates pioneered nearly a century ago because it is still just as powerful and potent today as it was then.
Despite these slight disagreements and differences in the way that Dr. Bates taught 100 years ago and the way I teach his method today, I still view the Bates Method as one of the most specific and viable ways to prevent and reverse nearly all types of vision problems in a simple, natural, and holistic way. If you disagree with some elements of Dr. Bates’ original teachings, I encourage you not to toss the baby out with the bathwater.
At the end of my one month yoga teacher training at Yogaville, we were shown a video of the late Swami Satchidananda sending off some past graduates of the teacher training program. He said that over the past month we had all been like cows grazing in a field chewing grass. The grass represented all the new information and knowledge we obtained about yoga, meditation, breathing practices, yoga philosophy and lifestyle, diet and nutrition, and more. He said as we left the ashram and went back home to our own communities, we should continue to chew this ‘cud’. He said that before we swallow it and digest it to make our own version of the yoga practice, we should feel around for little twigs and pebbles, that represented all the things that we disagreed with, or didn’t fully accept, and spit them out. Swami Satchidananda was not forcing us to accept every single thing that he said or taught as dogma. He said to take what we needed, and to leave the rest.
So in other words, study Yoga, or the Bates Method, or any new subject diligently and sift through the parts that do not serve you. It’s up to you!