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
A wonderful group of folks gathered in the Green Mountains of Vermont for a four day retreat at an off-the-grid retreat center called Sky Meadow. Participants were invited to spend as much time as possible without wearing their glasses and without looking at artificial screens, to see how much improvement could occur when good vision
Sadly, my good friend and colleague Esther Joy van der Werf passed away in March 2025 from cancer. I recorded a podcast called “Remembering Esther” where I share this news and reflect on some of the amazing work we got to do together as well as the fun times we got to share over the
Throughout the end of September and beginning of October 2024, three big events took place in New York State. After switching to virtual conferences in both 2020 and 2022, the Association of Vision Educators (AVE) was eager to host their first in-person professional conference in six years, since our last one in Portland, Oregon in
On the eve of the year 2025, I was struck with a vividly clear message. That message was VISIBILITY. To embrace visibility, I have begun a brand new Natural Vision Vlog where I give you a glimpse into the life of a Natural Vision Teacher and provide bite-sized vision improvement tips. Make sure you subscribe
Five years ago in the summer of 2019, my colleague Barry Auchettl and I were driving from Crater Lake, Oregon to San Francisco, California in the process of filming our documentary Vision 2020: From Eyesight To Insight. Our director Craig Leith was crouching in the backseat to avoid being captured by the cameras mounted on
In this episode of The Naked Eye Podcast, Certified Bates Method Teacher, Nathan Oxenfeld is joined by Dr. Ray Gottlieb as they review some key parts of his Bates Fundamentals & Procedures document, which you can download here: Click Here to Download Dr. Ray Gottlieb’s Bates Fundamentals and Procedures document that we refer to in
It has been quite a while since I have released a Bates Method 101 video on YouTube. To start getting back into releasing more of them, I am sharing an excerpt from a recent Natural Vision Support Group class I taught about How To Use Shifters. This video is meant to accompany the new Episode
After being based in North Carolina for nearly a decade, Integral Eyesight Improvement has moved north and is now based in Vermont. Owner, Nathan Oxenfeld, and his girlfriend relocated from Asheville, NC to Burlington, VT in the summer of 2021 to pursue Emma’s nursing career at the University of Vermont Medical Center. Much of Nathan’s
Nathan Oxenfeld and two of his vision students were interviewed by Ben Briscoe with CBS News. Click Here to watch/read the full story now.