Enjoy many additional helpful tips and practices to improve your vision through reading! Associated materials are also suggested. If you missed or want to review part one of this article, you can read it here.
Both parts are based on our Better Vision through Reading course. If you would like to take these practices to the next level, you can access our full course here.
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Before reading (continued)
These additional practices to do in preparation for reading will help you make the most of it!
Sleep and Rest
This aspect is critical for your eyes and your vision. When you sleep well at night, your body strength is restored. Your eyes will get a good rest and it will be easier for you to have the required presence, concentration, comprehension, retention and memory to read.
If possible, get away from all kinds of screens well before bedtime. Otherwise, make sure you have good ambient light while you are working in front of the screens in the evening. Salt lamps such as these below are great for that:
Ideally, the room where you sleep should be in total darkness for your eyes and your brain to get a good rest.
Apart from closing your blinds, there should be no lights from electronic devices such as mobile phones, computers, chargers, televisions, clocks or alarms, and so on.
If total darkness is not possible, the next best thing is using a sleep mask such as the ones below:
Palming
This is one of the really essential techniques in Natural Vision Improvement. By practicing it before going to sleep, it will improve the quality of your sleep and rest your eyes.
Relax and cup your hands so that they do not put any pressure on the eyes.
Close your eyes and cover them with your palms. The fingers should be crossed at right angles over the forehead, on the third eye.
Do not squeeze the nose so you can keep breathing gently. Imagine the blackness getting blacker and blacker.
Ideally, you should practice this technique for five to ten minutes at a time, but it is also effective if you do it for one minute or two.
The ideal palming variation and the recommended one before going to sleep is the Thinker position as explained below:
- Sit at the back of the seat, without a table in front of you.
- Unbutton your pants for comfort.
- Lean forward from your hips.
- Rest your elbows on your knees, creating a continuity from your arms to your knees and your legs.
This way, you will relax your head, neck, shoulders and back; this promotes abdominal breathing and produces an even deeper relaxation throughout your body.
Another variant is lying down. Use a belt or a yoga tape such as the ones below to put it around your elbows and hold them. You can also put a cushion on your chest and rest your elbows there so that they do not fall and the arms do not get tired.
When Reading
These are a few effective practices ant tips you can apply while reading to greatly improve your reading experience.
Your Reading Device
Reading on paper is always the best option, and second-best is using an e-reader. Your eyes will read more comfortably and be less tired than when using other kinds of screens because of their black and white contrast, fewer light reflections and use of electronic ink rather than pixels.
Good Reading Habits
It is essential to keep on blinking often while reading. When you are really focused on your reading, you tend to blink less. In order to improve on this, you can use a metronome such as these and set it to 30 BPM to remind you to blink every two seconds.
Post-it reminders such as the ones below are also a great tool that can help you improve your vision while reading. As you read, post a breathing and blinking reminder every two pages. Every time you turn a page or move a post-it, look to the far, preferrably through an open window, and then go back to your reading.
We also recommend adding a post-it at the end of every chapter with this reminder: «Breath, look through the window, and look up, down, right and left.»
How to Optimize Breaks
When it is time for a longer break or your reading session is finished, do some palming or sunning through an open window. A head massage is also a great practice to relax your head and your scalp, which helps relax your eyes as well.
Beyond Reading: Techniques and Exercises to Take Care of Your Eyes
After all these important recommendations you can apply before and while reading, these additional tips will help you improve the condition of your eyes even more to be able to read more and better.
Eye-Stretching Exercises
When you are reading, you are using your eyes in a very specific and repetitive way. In order to relax and rest your eyes to read better, you need to compensate by using your eyes in other ways.
You can do these eye-stretching exercises with your bare hands and follow your fingers with your eyes, but if you use finger puppets such as the ones below, this will stimulate your eyes and your vision even more:
- Slowly move a finger up and down 3 to 5 times and follow it with your eyes.
- Slowly move a finger left and right 3 to 5 times and follow it with your eyes.
- Slowly move a finger in diagonals—upper right, lower left, upper left and lower right—3 to 5 times and follow it with your eyes.
- Slowly move a finger in semicircles 3 times from left to right and 3 times from right to left and follow it with your eyes.
You can do this while moving your head or not, obtaining different benefits in each case. Do not make a special effort to focus. You can also do some palming for 1-5 minutes between an exercise and the next one.
Convergence Exercises
Good convergence is essential for good reading, so here are some practices you can do to train and improve your convergence with a Brock string. It is a tool consisting of a string with several small beads or clothespins of different colors.
How to Use Your Brock String
- Hold the string with your arms or tie it to a door handle or a shelf to make it longer. Put as many clothespins on it as you want.
- Hold your Brock string and look at the farthest clothespin, then the next one that is a bit closer to you, and so on until you get to the nearest one.
- At some point you can also remove the clothespins and run your gaze along the rope from the far end to the near end continuously. As your gaze runs along the rope, you will observe a crossing and a double rope.
- If you are looking at the far or the near end, you will see one string one way and one string the other way, and if you are looking at the center of the rope, you will see like an X.
- Switch from looking near to far several times and you will see how your near convergence ability improves.
These convergence exercises are very useful to improve your visual acuity and binocularity when you are looking at the book you are reading.
Always remember to finish by palming from 5 to 10 minutes to relax your eyes and integrate what you have learned.
How to Make Your Brock String
You can make your own Brock string very easily. Use a clothesline in a bright color that you like and add clothespins of different bright colors to it.
You will find below a set of clothespins and a string to create your own Brock string, or ready-to-use Brock strings if you prefer.
Suggested Materials for Your Brock String
Eye-Balancing Exercises
If you have noticed that one of your eyes sees more clearly than the other one, these exercises will help you balance and coordinate your eyes better.
In order to accomplish this you will use patches, which can be made of fabric or even a simple post-it. If you would like to have a regular ready-to-use patch, you will find our suggestions below.
Do this exercise initially allowing the eye that sees more clearly to see more. As it is used to taking the lead, we do not want it to get frustrated.
Do these practices to stimulate that eye while covering the other one:
- Look at an interesting object close up and far away, while moving it in different ways.
- Move your fingers at the widest angle where you can still perceive them while looking to the front.
- Do the Brock string exercises.
- Walk around the house.
- Read only with that eye.
- At the end, close your eyes and do palming to integrate the experience.
Then do the same for twice the time with the other eye, by covering the eye that sees more clearly. Next, do the same thing with both eyes uncovered.
Filters and Glasses
If you are reading from a screen, instead of using a «filter» for your eyes to protect them, put a filter on the screen itself. A great software filter can be found at https://justgetflux.com/. It is free and it simulates the natural variations of sunlight as the day goes by.
Alternatively, you can use a physical filter such as those manufactured by Reticare—use the DRDEFEDERICO code to get a 10% discount—or the ones below:
As you can see, there are very many effective practices that will help you improve your vision through reading! We really encourage you to try them and see how much they will help you… and leave us a comment here to let us know!
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Important:
Neither «ClearSight Method» nor Ainhoa de Federico perform diagnoses or prescribe treatments, lenses or operations, which are reserved for the medical profession. The practices of Natural Vision Improvement do not replace the roles of the ophthalmologist or optician, being a complementary option. The opinions and practices expressed here have shown positive results in a large number of cases, proving to be a useful and effective visual correction option, although under no circumstances do they imply a guarantee of results. The practice and application are under the responsibility of the participants. Consult your doctor as often as necessary.
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