You will gain back some of the normal vision in the blind spot. Sometimes the blind spot decreases, and you can slowly control and manage your vision. The loss you would have experienced over a period of five years stretches to a period of twenty-five years, and your visual life becomes more normal and more predictable.
Waving Lights in the Dark
If walking outside in the starlight or moonlight is way too difficult and above your capacity, and your central vision is good or even excellent, then sit in a dark room and turn lights on and off. At the School for Self-Healing we use fiber-optic lights, which look like many strands of plastic spaghetti sticking out from the end of a plastic wand. The wand projects a light that causes the strands to light up in many different colors. They turn on and off, and we can wave them sideways. The good thing about fiber-optic lights is that when you wave them—we call them magic wands—it stimulates your peripheral vision, provided you’re looking forward. In the past we would put down newspapers to protect the floor from falling wax because we used candles for this exercise.
If you wave either a fiber-optic light or a candle in the dark, the movement will wake up many of the dormant cells you have. The benefit of the flame from a candle is that it moves, and the movement of the flame activates the rods of the retina. What’s good about fiber-optic lights is that you can wave them. Also, they have stronger light than candles and do not drip wax. Sometimes, however, the fiber-optic lights are too strong for the eyes to exercise and improve as compared to candles.
Spending positive time with your eyes will eliminate the negativity you hear about or experience with them. I once had a patient who came to me in San Francisco from Australia. She was able to improve her central vision from nearsightedness to nearly normal vision and did not need glasses to look straight ahead, but she had severe retinitis pigmentosa. For ten years she did not walk freely outdoors at night, but she did walk freely outdoors in the daytime. After she practiced waving lights in the dark, and also having extensive amounts of massage, she was able to walk at night on dark streets for the first time.
After a few weeks of this exercise, gradually start to use small, medium, and large pieces of paper taped to the bridge of your nose. Wave the fiber-optic lights to the sides of your eyes, and you may get a sense that one eye sees more light than the other eye. If this is the case, close the eye that sees more light for a short while (about five or six seconds), and use only the other eye; then open both eyes and use both. The idea is to create evenness between the two eyes and to make the brain immediately use peripheral vision.
Sometimes, the fiber-optic lights will not be visible. Other times, people with retinitis pigmentosa will not notice the color of the lights. So it is better to start with red blinking lights because red has the longest light waves, making it the easiest light to see. Then, over time, you can change to different colors.
Truly, anytime someone is experiencing a blind spot, blinking lights and fiber-optic lights in a dark room can bring to life the parts of the eye that are not functioning. In this way, you start to create that process of slowly expanding that which you are capable of doing.
A Final Note about Peripheral Exercises
If you have retinitis pigmentosa, no matter what condition your eyes are in, make it a habit to notice the periphery throughout the day. Work the periphery every waking moment. Wave your hands in your periphery for a few seconds at a time throughout the day. This way, the two eyes will be working together. In the center, one eye can dominate; with the periphery, however, both eyes must work, so one eye cannot dominate the other.
When you wave your hands to the sides of your eyes and close one eye, you see only one hand waving. Close the other eye, and you see only the other hand waving. Open both eyes, and you see both hands waving. This way you know that both eyes are working together.
Chapter 7
The Blind Spots of Conventional Wisdom
The Hidden Danger of Sunglasses
It has become common for people in our culture to put on sunglasses as soon as they step out of the house on a sunny day. People see the sun as some sort of enemy that is about to cause harm to their eyes. Doctors warn us of the dangers of sun exposure, and there certainly are reasons to take the proper precautions to protect our bodies from too much exposure to ultraviolet light. Our eyes, however, are made to function at their highest and best when they are exposed to a full range of light and darkness.
It’s important to be in touch with our bodies on a cellular level. You can’t normally see your cells unless you have microscopic pictures taken of them and are able to look at the pictures. We tend to ignore our body and our body parts. But it is very important to have a very thorough feel for our own body.
Enjoy the sun and also the dark of night. Seldom wear sunglasses because they weaken the pupils. Enjoy the sun throughout the day, and don’t use a flashlight when you take a walk at night. Enjoy the expansion of the pupils at night. Make your eyes more vital and more alive. Give your eyes a sense of love so that, in many ways, you love your life and you love the universe. Allow your eyes to develop good fixation, which is the ability to allow the proper amount of light to enter the pupils in order to see better in whatever situation you find yourself. When your pupils become firmer and not sluggish, you can then have a better fixation and allow the exact amount of light you need for your sight to improve.
In the daytime, you will end up seeing details seeing details with much greater clarity. This will take the load and distress away from other parts of the visual system, like the retina and the lens. At nighttime, your pupils will be wide enough to see all that is around you in the dark. Your whole system will become stronger as a result of your pupils being able to absorb more light.
Ignoring your eyes, and not giving them enough darkness or enough light, will weaken the system through the years. Renewing our strength by reducing the amount of time we wear sunglasses, and reducing the amount of time we spend indoors, can make a huge difference.
Be wary of the sun scare.
Many people do not realize that there are pigments in the eyes that darken the light. Melanin pigment is in the choroid area, the area that nourishes the retina. One of the ten layers of the retina is melanin. So the retina itself has a whole layer of melanin pigment that darkens the light. Therefore, you have “sunglasses” inside the retina itself! When you wear sunglasses, it takes away the usefulness of this layer in the retina. It also darkens the light as it arrives at the retina, so you do not use your own pigments to darken the light. Consequently, your pigments migrate to the back of the retina and are not as effective as they could have been otherwise.
Believe it or not, sunglasses hurt your retina just as much as crutches can hurt one’s legs. If your legs are weak and you are too quick to use a cane or crutches or braces to walk with, you may never give up your crutches. But if you work very hard on strengthening your legs, there is a possibility you will regain their full use. In some cases there isn’t such a possibility, and that’s when crutches or braces are very useful. But if it’s at all possible for you to strengthen your legs yourself, do not use crutches as a method of healing, since it’s best to work on the body’s independence.
The same is true for sunglasses. The more you use sunglasses, the weaker your pupils become. You are also weakening the defense mechanism that exists in your retina and that has existed in your ancestors’ retinas for millions of years.