Figure 6.8. Push your knees to the left and then to the right.
It’s also a very good idea to close your eyes and to put a warm towel over them. Moisten the towel with warm water or with herbal tea; Eye Bright tea, in particular, has been very effective for me.
Another thing that my clients like very much is the steam machine that my sister, who owns health spas, has donated to our school. Steam in a dark room can be very relaxing when you have your eyes closed.
These exercises are essential for reduction of tension. After doing these exercises every day for a period of time of around three months, measure your pressure and see if it has gone down. If so, you may be able to prevent the need to use eye drops, as long as your ophthalmologist does not oppose the idea; at the very least you may be able to reduce them gradually with supervision. Find a friendly ophthalmologist or optometrist who is willing to measure your pressure frequently, ideally twice a week, so you will know that you are on the right path.
Correcting Optic Neuritis
Optic neuritis is a condition caused by a temporary swelling from inflammation of the optic nerve. The worst-case scenario with optic neuritis is that less blood will flow to the optic nerve; because of poor blood flow, there will be ischemia of the nerve, a part of which could degenerate and wither.
In most cases optic neuritis comes and goes. Physicians believe they can help this condition with steroid treatments. Sometimes, the steroid treatments work, and the optic neuritis does not return frequently. At other times, however, the treatments create dependency.
When you suffer from optic neuritis, a very good thing is to spend a lot of time in a completely dark room. This gives your whole body, as well as your eyes, a great chance to relax. By far the best solution for optic neuritis is a long session of palming. This is true whether the cause is the optic nerve itself or a systemic illness like multiple sclerosis that impacts many other nerves besides the optic nerve.
Imagine that you walk a lot and step on your legs in an imbalanced way. Consequently, you would develop swelling in your legs. Physicians would correctly tell you to rest your leg, maybe to put a brace or a bandage on your ankle or, perhaps, to use crutches. Any of the those would be intended to give your leg the rest it needs to heal so that it can return to its proper functioning. In many ways, the same approach is good for the optic nerve. You must rest your optic nerve for the inflammation of the nerve to disappear.
Staying in a dark room and covering your eyes with a light cloth for a day, or perhaps two days, and not walking much in daylight could be the best solution for optic neuritis. It’s also good to massage your neck and your back.
This is a very important piece of information for millions of people. No one gives you the suggestion to lie and rest in the dark. Hospital rooms are fully lit all the time for the purpose of security and control. Lack of darkness in hospital rooms can exacerbate a problem like this. Being at home in the most familiar surroundings can make a difference, especially with fresh air and loving palms over your closed eyes to give you a sense of nurturing. When you lie in the dark with your eyes closed, or when you sit in the dark and palm, you allow for complete replenishment of the optic nerve, which is more important than any medication you can possibly get.
Medication can help in extreme cases, but sometimes it produces terrible side effects. Sitting in the dark has helped the majority of my clients who have had different attacks of optic neuritis. I advise the clients with whom I work in person that only if this doesn’t work should medication become an option. Since you, the reader, are not working with me in person, I advise you to work with a physician who is not opposed to your self-healing practices. Be sure, as you follow my recommendations, to consult with a trusted physician, one who knows your condition well and to whom you have easy access during this process. This would determine the urgency, or not, for you to be put on medication.
When the optic neuritis passes, diligently practice the ten steps in Chapter 2.
Correcting Detached Retinas and Retinal Tears
A detached retina is a very serious problem that almost always causes partial or full blindness unless it is treated.
The retina performs a function similar to the film in a camera. Located in the back of the eye, it receives optical images, converts them to chemical reactions, and transmits them through the optic nerve to the brain for interpretation.
The retina is considered to be detached whenever it is removed from its normal position in the back of the eye. And this can occur in anybody at any age. People who are experiencing retinal detachment report seeing “floaters” (dark spots that seem to move around in their field of vision) or a gray curtain moving back and forth across their eyes.
There are many reasons for detached retinas. The most familiar ones are myopia, postcataract surgeries, and traumas. Blows to the head can also create retinal detachments. In my opinion, this is another reason to avoid Lasik surgery, since it weakens the eye, creating higher chances of a retinal detachment simply by bumping your head forcefully.
If the retinal detachment is very large, you must see a physician soon, because the detachment can cause lack of blood flow to the photoreceptors and can kill them. Within a short period of time, possibly a week or two, you can lose your vision. As an exception, I met a person who received a head-butt during a violent fight in prison. As a result of the fight, his retina detached, and the prison physician was not capable of diagnosing it. Only after he had served his term was he seen by a top ophthalmologist, who told him that he had already had a detachment for several months. So he had reattachment surgery, and to his amazement, as well as his ophthalmologist’s and my own, his vision returned to almost normal, and the retina was functional. But this is extraordinary, and most of the time it doesn’t happen that way. Usually, within a couple of weeks of lack of blood flow to the photoreceptors, they die. What should we do then?
A female patient came to me once, complaining of a retinal detachment in one eye and poor vision in the other. One thing I noticed was that she wasn’t blinking. She told me it was written in her medical chart that she wasn’t blinking, but none of her doctors had paid attention to the notation. Therefore, I told her to blink, and her vision improved very quickly after that.
Pay attention to your demeanor. Are you blinking? Are you not blinking? Do you pay attention to your retina or not?
Also, when you have a retinal detachment, make sure that you don’t bend your head, or the retina can fall even more. After the healing process, it’s important for you to get a lot of massage on your neck and on your back in order to bring more blood to the head and to strengthen your retina with nurturing blood flow to the eyes. But some of the exercises for loosening your neck (e.g., in the section on glaucoma) could hurt since they require you to bend your head down, which could cause damage. So in the acute time of retinal detachment, don’t do movement exercises; instead, massage is the best option for you to relax the tension in your neck and back. After the detachment has healed, then it is okay to return to the movement exercises.
Some of the reasons for retinal detachment are emotional. A boy I once knew told me that, after his retinal reattachment surgery, he woke up one day and discovered he had some vision. But because his mother was not in the room, it traumatized him, and he became blind again. There are tissues that respond to our emotions, so it’s very important to be as calm as you can be, even in the hardest of situations. It can preserve both your sanity and your retina!
Exercise Program for Retinal Detachment