Customer Reviews

Relearning to See: Improve Your Eyesight Naturally!

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Far and away the most comprehensive book on vision improvement I've come across, this is more of an encyclopedia than a book you read straight through. Mr. Quackenbush - not an eye doctor, but a long-time teacher of the Bates method - goes through the mechanics and physiology of the eye and the eye's natural vision habits in exhaustive detail. He also gives pointers on reducing one's prescription, movement exercises, acupressure, relaxation games, left-brain/right-brain physiology, and holistic health, all geared toward improving your eyesight. Central to his teaching of the Bates method is that there are NO exercises. These are habits which are to be practiced 24 hours a day! And they are so simple, so easy to do, and afterwards you'll wonder why people are still stuck in poor vision.

Tom, who founded the Natural Vision Center, used to teach his courses in the San Francisco Bay Area but is now in Ashland, Oregon. I've taken his natural vision course and I found it to be profound. It's been a year and a half; my prescription used to be 20/400, but now I can occasionally see 20/50 or better. Progress is expected to be slow but steady, and I saw jumps in my vision after only a few weeks in the course.

"What is quality?" asks Robert Pirsig in his exceptional novel, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Relearning to See is QUALITY plus!

This book is a wonderful tribute to the genius of Dr. Bates, who was a pioneer in discovering how vision becomes blurred and how it restores itself naturally to clarity and acuity. Now 80 years later, his findings and teachings remain light years ahead of our contemporaries. There is at least one current book which gives you the impression that improving your vision naturally is "newly" discovered. Hardly. Tom is to be commended for his dedication in getting the truth out and keeping the torch burning in this "bible" on vision improvement.

As an ophthalmologist, Dr. Bates distinguished himself from the pack as a truly critical thinker. His colleagues were content to ignore or rationalize away the numerous cases of patients whose vision improved yet shouldn't have according to the orthodox theories. Dr. Bates was troubled enough to undertake his own extensive experiments and thorough analysis to debunk the myths. His approach to treating vision problems was truly holistic and the theme throughout this book is very much an extension of that holistic approach.

My vision improvement using the Bates method has been nothing short of spectacular. When I began, my near-sightedness was roughly 20/600. Now on a clear and sunny day outside, my vision settles in to about 20/30 on average, with many periods of 20/20. Under indoor artificial light, my vision averages about 20/40, with periods of 20/30. (Why does it vary, you ask? Read this book and you'll understand why eyesight isn't a fixed and rigid condition under all lighting conditions.) My vision continues to improve subtly each day (it's amazing how one can sense the differences that I'm sure no instrument could detect) and at this rate, I know that the perfect vision I fondly recall as a child will soon be restored.

Being formally educated and employed in the sciences, there was a time when I would have been extremely skeptical about holistic healing. I'm a firm believer now, because I have had reversals of other types of conditions that I never in a million years would have related to poor vision. This book describes many negative cognitive, emotional and physical symptoms that result from blurred vision.

Before getting this book, I had already been using the Bates method of improvement for several months. I was making good progress based on an obscure paperback first published in 1929, Better Sight Without Glasses, by Harry Benjamin. Tom's in-depth and comprehensive book gave me a much fuller understanding and appreciation for some of the finer points of Dr. Bates' work. The book also describes phenomena that I had experienced very early in my vision improvement that startled me at the time, such as brief "flashes" of 20/20 vision and incredible depth perception.

"Blinded by science" takes on a literal meaning when it comes to orthodox methods of "correcting" vision. There's no doubt that the eye care profession in its infancy was developed on good intentions. But it's a science that has gone terribly astray, with countless numbers of people needlessly suffering the consequences. This book discusses one of the founding principles of the profession based on experiments conducted in the mid-1800's where the reflection of a candle on a subject's eyes was checked under different focusing conditions. This experiment and its erroneous conclusions wouldn't likely meet the grade for a current school science fair.

I assume that many have chosen a career in the orthodox eye care industry for noble reasons beyond the almighty dollar. Yet they've been duped in their education to faithfully believe the mythical genetic condition of progressive myopia and they are unwittingly selling us snake oil (prescription lenses and contacts). To add insult to injury, a new brand of snake oil (laser surgery) is being offered. It's utterly preposterous the harm that has been inflicted to our most valuable sense organs in the guise of "treatment".

A philosopher once stated that truth goes through three steps. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. And thirdly, it is accepted as self-evident. Buy this book and go immediately to step 3. Learn the proper vision habits (not exercises) and you will be rewarded with marvelous clarity, incredibly healthy eyes and a whole new outlook on life.

This is the best book I've seen on the Bates method of how to improve your vision naturally. It's extremely well researched, thorough, and very readable. At $25, it's a real bargain, as the quality of the publishing (including many color plates) is much closer to that of a $60 college textbook.

My personal story: I went from -9.5 in each eye to -6.0 (+0.25 astigmatism) in the left and -6.75 in the right in just a week after getting this book and committing the natural vision habits to heart. Factoring in the cost of the book, a new eye exam, and new glasses, that's well under $400 for a 30% improvement in my natural vision. My girlfriend is also steadily improving her vision and has already moved to her next oldest prescription as a result of this method. Now everyone I've talked to who wears glasses has been extremely interested in this technique, and I recommend this book to them.

It's a real shame that the medical establishment is so resistant to promoting these ideas. Maybe it's because not everyone can master them. Like meditation, it's a skill that can't be mastered by struggling and stressing out (especially since, according to Bates, stressing out and squinting to see is what got us myopes in this mess in the first place!). So it's definitely not a sure thing, *but* there's certainly no risk to trying it (unlike, say, the inevitable risks of surgery, or even the slight risk of eye damage from contact lenses).

If you are thinking about getting laser eye surgery (LASIK), do yourself a favor and buy this book now. Surgery is expensive and even if the risk of side effects seems small, ask yourself, is your vision worth risking?

Before reading this book, I was already a bit uncomfortable with the idea of laser surgery. After reading this book, I believe that the idea of surgery, which is basically having your current prescription etched onto your cornea permanently, rather than solving the true problem that your eye has lost the ability to focus properly (due, in most cases, to years of our eye doctors' prescription of stronger and stronger glasses as "eye crutches") is fundamentally the wrong approach.

As a child I was given glasses, luckily I hid them and refused to wear them, 20 years later and my eyes are a little blurry, mainly noticed whilst driving. I bought this book because I really don't want to wear glasses or contacts. At the back of the book are some standard Snellen eye charts, I pinned them up and noted my 20/30 vision, not too bad really. So I read a little of the book, enough to recognize some of the bad habits I've been adopting for years, why I sometimes get physical pain in my eyes, the vacant stare I adopt, why I went through phases of being cars sick etc etc. After spending a half a day practising the correct way to use my eyes again, I read the same chart in the same lighting conditions with 20/20 clarity. I've read a lot more of the book now, it is fantastic! The main challenge ahead it seems is to make these habits come naturally again.

This book is the most comprehensive book I have come across in natural vision improvement. Drawing mostly from the methods of Dr. William Bates, it provides a very thorough exploration of what you can do if you want to improve your vision naturally. From a practical point of view, the suggestions in this book worked for me. I had started with a strong myopia prescription a year ago and now I only wear glasses occasionally. What a huge difference that makes. My improvement was confirmed by my eye doctor. However, vision improvement is a gradual process, and it's easy to give up or get frustrated, especially after the first initial improvements. The real gift of this book was that it had enough information and insight to keep me going through those frustrating moments.
This book answered many questions that often aren't addressed in other books, such as why vision is usually sharper in bright lighting situations (the pupil is contracted, creating a "pinhole" effect). "Relaxation" and "centralization" are other concepts that may be hard to grasp for the novice, and this book not only explains what this means in detail, but also how to "relearn" these concepts of seeing well, naturally. Although I would encourage readers to read other books on natural vision improvement as well, just to have a balanced point of view (it seems that different authors draw from slightly different methodologies, and have varying techniques that are also interesting), if I were to keep just one book for personal reference, it would be this one. Highly recommended.

Hallelujah I can see... well actually I already could, but having Keratoconus made wearing glasses mostly a waste of time. So I did like the book said and quite wearing them. I can now go out on a bright day without dark sunglasses. After reading all 521 pages in the book the techniques become second nature. I bought a pile of them to give out as Christmas gifts to all my four eyed friends, and family members. If you cherish sight then this is a must buy.

I have noticed that I was loosing sight in one eye. The diagnostics from doctors ranged from adult ampliopia, to cararacts, to presbiopia, to astigmatism, etc. Every doctor I went to came with a different cause. I was about to go into surgery or start wearing glasses when I read about Dr Bates.

After doing some resarch on line, I decided for Tom's book. It is sort of on the long chatty side, but it was well worth it.

Now i am not only free from ampliopia (temprary blindness of one eye), but I am now reading most of the time with out glasses. As a matter of fact, I am now with a patch on the good eye and writing this review with the eye that doctors wanted to do the surgery on or give me thick glasses.

This book is not so much about exercises but in understanding how to change habits that create the vision problems in the first place.

After reading this book, I met with other people that also bought it and had similar results.

If you have physically undamaged eyes and are healthy and wear eye-glasses or contact lenses and wish to get rid of glasses or contact lenses this is the book you must read. I started 14 months ago to get rid of my glasses with -4.00 dioptrie in both eyes and Astigmatism. With my left eye I was able to see nearly normally within 3 weeks. I was lucky to find out that my right eye had actually Amplyopia ( if it is not cured early enough, it will lead to unrecoverable blindness ), which no optician checked for before. It did not move only looked in 1 direction and very unsharp. Currently I can get nearly normal vision in parts of my right eye temporarily. After 1/2 year of practice I got a statement from a doctor that I am now able to drive a car without glasses in Australia as ny vision had improved to about 1/2 - 1 Dioptries. I read the original Bates book (1) and a few of its successors and tried to cure my eyes based on the information in these books. During the practice lots of questions came up of how to do certain exercises which were not answered in the original books ( maybe I did not understand them properly ). The Relearning to See: Improve Your Eyesight - Naturally! is the best book available. It summarizes all the other books, explains how the eye is working according to current believes of opticians and opthomatologists as well as according to Dr. Bates with the evidence why Dr. Bates believes, which are based on facts, are correct. It includes new discoveries and ideas as well. It provides the most understandable types of exercises than any of the other books. It is easy to read and to understand. The best books I came across are ( numbering does not represent quality ): 1. Perfect Sight Without Glasses Good book to get convinced why Dr. Bates is right with his ideas as it is based on physical evidence and facts. Lots of exepriments and research are described as facts which can be redone and which should convince anyone who doubts that the eyes work as Dr. Bates is telling and not as the normal optician or optomathologist is telling you. If you are only interested in getting your eyes working again just get Relearning to See: Improve Your Eyesight - Naturally! as it contains some of the contents of this book. 2. Better Eyesight: The Complete Magazines of William H. Bates This book is the collection of Magazines published by William H. Bates . They contain stories, researches, trials and a bit of methods to improve once sight, which have been done in schools and hospitals in the USA. I believe that the information provided in this book could be verified and therefore this book can convince people that Bates ( or the natural vision system ) methods work. It gives lots of information to prevent bad eye sight in children as well. If you have children, it has lots of chapters and stories about childrens eyesight and how childrens eyesight can be corrected. 3. Better Eyesight: The Complete Magazines of William H. Bates Best book of all concerning this matter. [...]

This book changed my life. I used to think that poor eyesight was genetic and unchangeable. This book explains how eye muscles can change the shape of your eyeball to make your vision better or worse. Because these muscles are not under your conscious control, relearning to see is more about relaxing and letting your eyes do what they were always supposed to do. In one month of applying some of the advice from this book, my vision improved from -3.50 to -1.25 in both eyes--tested in a dark optometrist's office. In natural light outside I often see 20/20. I now wear much weaker glasses, and only for driving. I also get fewer headaches.

I did not realize this was such a large book and technical at the same time. But it is concise and thorough and I skipped many of the technical explanations and derived the main geist of improving vision naturally.

Mainly the book conveys the importance of relearning correct habitual seeing at all times as opposed to exercises for the eyes. The book is emphatic and focused on this point.

Mainly the three habits of seeing is blinking, sketching, and breathing and the book goes to great lenghts to explain and convince in many different situations its relevance.

Outstanding reading. Just realizing your erred visual habits will improve your sight to an extent which varies widely but as the book says it will take more time and relearning to undo years or lifetime of incorrect habits that it becomes natural and subconcious as was what you were born.