For example, if you have five beads, when you focus on the first bead, the second, third, fourth, and fifth beads should appear to be doubled. When you focus on the third, the first two and last two should look doubled, and the middle should look single. When you focus on the fifth bead, the first four should look doubled, and the last one should look single.
Figure 5.3. Your job in this exercise is to teach your brain what to focus on and what not to focus on.
What often happens to people with cross-sightedness is that, first of all, they may not see double with the beads that are in their periphery; they may see single beads all along. The best exercise to correct this is to look at one bead, let’s say the closest one to you, and close your eyes one at a time. When you close your eyes one at a time, you can see a shift, a move of the beads from side to side. While doing this, keep thinking and focusing on the bead in front of you, with each eye separately. That means you keep looking at that bead, but you will see all the beads shifting because each eye sees the bead from a different angle, and even from a different distance. Only when both eyes are open can your brain measure the distances more precisely. After doing it forty times, open both eyes, and when you look at the first bead, the rest should appear to be doubled.
The bead you are focusing on is being viewed with your central vision. The ones you are not directly looking at are being viewed with your peripheral vision. The nervous system and the brain see one image with central vision and two separate images with peripheral vision. When you look at an object straight in front of you but focus on another object in front of that object, the object you focus on will appear to be single, and the one you don’t focus on will appear to be doubled. You want to become capable of distinguishing between the one you look at directly and the one that you don’t, so that the one you are looking at appears to be single and the one you aren’t looking at appears to be doubled.
Holding Double
If you were able to see double, the next point is to hold the double. You will find that most people who can produce a double image can hold it for thirty seconds, maybe even a whole minute, before they become fatigued. When this happens, of course, they should massage around their eyes, palm or sun, look into the distance, or do long swinging until the fatigue goes away. You can blink as you do the exercise, and, hopefully, you won’t lose the double image.
Your goal is to be able to hold a double for a full ten minutes. You can move from one double to another. You can see the front bead as single and all the other four as doubles. You can move through the five beads, one after another, and hold each double for two minutes. So, you don’t have to stay at one point for the full ten minutes, but you should continuously see double for the duration.
You can then increase the amount of time that you see double, and try to go all the way to twenty minutes, or even to half an hour. You can decide one time, in a marathon session, to look at one bead and see the other four as doubles for ten minutes each; therefore, you would see double for fifty minutes. As long as the strain is not too high, this is a great exercise for good coordination between the two eyes.
Two-Color Exercise (Beak Glasses)
This exercise uses a tool we sometimes refer to in fun as “beak glasses.” We call them beak glasses because they are glass frames with the lenses removed and with two strips of paper attached to the front of them in such a way that they stick straight out between the lenses. When you put them on, it looks as if you had a two-colored beak.
The pieces of paper should be two different colors; for example, one could be orange and the other yellow. Put on the glasses and look straight ahead into the distance. Now toss a tennis ball from one hand to the other and try to catch the ball. Toss the ball several times.
Figure 5.4. “Beak Glasses.” When the ball is on the right side, it emphasizes to the right eye that the right color exists.
Since the paper is attached to the front of the glasses, you are guaranteed to be using both of your eyes for this exercise. When the ball is on the left side of your body, it emphasizes to the left eye that the left color exists. When the ball is on the right side, it emphasizes to the right eye that the right color exists. As the ball travels from side to side, the peripheral vision of both eyes is being worked individually; the central vision is still looking straight ahead into the distance. Remember that the central vision sees a mostly still picture, while the peripheral vision sees movement.
One interesting thing about this exercise is to notice which color each eye seems to be seeing. If your eyes are completely at ease and completely functional, when you look into the distance you will see the two colors, each one of them on the opposite side. And this will indicate that they work well together.
If one of these colors disappears, you can also wave your hand close to your eye—not so close that it’s dangerous, but right in front of the eye. Often, that color will reappear. Seeing two colors with both eyes, especially for someone who has a hard time using both eyes together, could be a very relaxing experience at certain times.
Red and Green Glasses
Each color has different wavelengths. For example, the color red has long wavelengths, and the color green has short wavelengths. If you look through a pair of glasses with one green lens and one red lens, quite often the colors of the objects you look at seem to be different through the red lens than through the green. Some colors you can see easier with the red, and others you can see easier with the green.
Figure 5.5. Working with red and green glasses made it possible for me to have partial three-dimensional vision.
When you look at the world with both eyes through the red and green filter, you will see quite a few amazing things. For example, if you walk in a park or in your garden with red and green glasses on, you’re going to find that you see a pinkish view of flowers through the red lens but, at the same time, a greenish view of leaves much clearer with your green lens. So, from time to time, close one eye and look at colors with the open eye; then close that eye and open the other, and see what colors you notice. Do the pink flower petals disappear when you close the eye looking through the red lens? Do the green leaves disappear when you look only through the red lens? Now look around with both eyes open.
You’ll find, however, that if you close the eye looking through the red lens and look at the pink or reddish flower only through the green lens, it will not look red or pink to you; rather, it will look dark, which is far from its true color. If you close the eye looking through the green lens and look only through the red, the green leaves would look dark.
In fact, this is exactly how you start to develop bilateral vision and three-dimensional vision. You emphasize to yourself the difference between the two eyes. Your two eyes are independent. No one eye sees what the other one sees; therefore, no one eye controls the other. Instead, each is independent of the other, and the brain fuses the image from both of them equally.