Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us
Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network
Home
Discussion Groups
General
GeneralCardiologyVisionDentistryPharmacyLaboratoryNutritionAlternative
Diseases and Disorders
AIDSAlzheimer'sArthritisAsthmaCancerBreast CancerDiabetesEpilepsyGlaucomaHepatitisHerpesLupusProstate BPHProstate CancerProstatitisSinusitisTinnitus

Medical Forum / General / Vision / January 2005

Tip: Looking for answers? Try searching our database.

Bates Method

Thread view: 
Enable EMail Alerts  Start New Thread
Thread rating: 
Robin Parsons - 02 Oct 2004 15:56 GMT
I accept the idea of WH Bates that refractive errors are the result of
incorrect seeing habits. Myopia is learned very easily during the
formative years at school where incorrect reading habits are acquired.
A minority of pupils learn to stare at printed text and lose some of
the central fixation and rapid shifting essential to normal vision.
Instead of seeing a minute area of the visual field as more distinct
from its neighbouring areas they see whole groups of letters in a
blurred all seen at once mode. Over the course of time they
automatically and unconsciously influence the focusing lens to become
slightly more convex resulting in a cone of blur about the foveal
region. The effect is to produce a sharp image before the retina
instead of upon it.  Printed text is large enough to be seen
adequately in the described blurred mode and myopes are hard to
convince that their vision is defective at the near point.
When the myope tries to see at the distance he/she is unable to
recognise detail which is not detected with true central
fixation/rapid shifting. The optical axes of the eyes are parallel and
the myope's voluntary efforts to affect the ciliary muscles are
directed to the production of a divergent squint. This results in the
discomfort and pain experienced by all myopes when they try to force
vision.
The only way to overcome the problem is to learn how to see correctly
at all distances and in particular at the near point when reading
which produces the myopia in the first place.  When successful the
brain is able to activate the ciliaries without the interference of
the extra ocular muscles which are ganged to the focusing mechanism
controls in the cerebellum.

Best regards
Robin Parsons
Visionsenz@yahoogroups.com
Robin Parsons - 03 Oct 2004 13:32 GMT
> I accept the idea of WH Bates that refractive errors are the result of
> incorrect seeing habits. Myopia is learned very easily during the
[quoted text clipped - 27 lines]
> Robin Parsons
> Visionsenz@yahoogroups.com

I have been obsessed with the working of the human eye for more than
seventy years and my interest in Bates was first aroused in 1940 when
I heard him mentioned on a BBC radio programme by Dr Julian Huxley,
grandson of T H Huxley the English biologist and palaeontologist, born
in London. Julian's brother Aldous had benefited from treatment
received from an American woman Margaret Darst Corbett who practised
the Bates method in the US. Aldous Huxley is a well known classical
novelist and he wrote of his experiences in The Art of Seeing. This
book raised a storm of protest from the eye professionals and was
banned from the shelves of some libraries.
    I practised the drills recommended by Bates and after 18 months
noticed brief flashes of better vision. These phenomena were brief and
no permanent benefit accrued. My early prescription was about –1.75 in
the right eye with about –2 in the left. I wore the glasses only when
absolutely necessary, sniping at the enemy in WW2 or at the cinema.
With the glasses I could read the bottom line of my optometrist's
chart, a feat which he claimed was only achieved by about six of the
thousands of patients he treated a year.
    After twelve years of failure to achieve any permanent improvement
using the Bates Method I threw in the towel and wore glasses
permanently for all purposes including reading.  The ability to see
clearly was a wonderful experience but short-lived. There followed a
period of some years with increased correction on each visit to the
optometrist. Being a busy man I did not stick to the recommended two
years. Had I done so I could have had an increased prescription more
regularly and my sight would have soon descended to double figures in
the dioptre minus stakes.
    Like many myopes I endured considerable eyestrain. There were
occasions when after a day peering at pages of text, my head would
feel it would burst and my eyes bulge out of their sockets.  I
obtained relief by practising some of the Bates mental drills,
imagining such mundane images as black periods and allied punctuation
marks. These efforts produced improved vision even whilst wearing
correcting lenses which seemed to indicate a decline in vision since
my last fitting.
    When I asked my optometrist if he could explain the apparent decline
in my vision he ducked the question with the assurance that the
condition "tended to settle down". He did not refer to presbyopia as
the brake but I am sure he did not wish to confuse a simple member of
the public with big words. All medical practitioners are careful to
avoid committing themselves. That is why they cultivate a handwriting
style only decipherable by a skilled pharmacologist.
    It occurred to me that if I could see better by practising the seeing
drills whilst wearing my latest prescription why not work back to the
beginning using the same procedure. After some years I found myself
seeing perfectly with my original prescription from age 14 and my
present prescription is even less.  Now at 81 I am a fully developed
presbyope and can neither improve nor get worse.  Have my eyeballs
shrunk do you think?
    When I read the nonsense proclaimed by the experts with their absurd
experiments on chicks and monkeys in their attempts to support the
elongating eyeball myth I think of my own experiences.
    All refractive errors are the results of lens shape changing. The
studies of the intelligent scientists produce meaningless statistics.
It is just as easy and as relevant to relate myopia measurements to
the size of the foot.
    If the Bates Method is applied to the redevelopment of true central
fixation/involuntary high speed shifting as possessed by the normal
sighted eye, no refractive errors will occur (other than presbyopia
with ageing). Myopia is the result of what I have named Myopic Reading
Syndrome developed by a minority of the world population where they
try to recognise too much of the visual field at once. It really is as
simple as that. I challenge anyone to dispute the MRS hypothesis which
explains all common refractive conditions.
Best regards
Robin Parsons
Visionsenz@yahoogroups.com
Mike Tyner - 04 Oct 2004 04:02 GMT
>> incorrect seeing habits. Myopia is learned very easily
>> during the formative years at school where incorrect
>> reading habits are acquired.

I have trouble understanding what you mean by "incorrect reading habits". I
suspect you'll have just as much trouble defining it.

>> A minority of pupils learn to stare at printed text and lose
>> some of the central fixation and rapid shifting essential to
>> normal vision.

Except in Singapore it isn't a minority. Aren't you curious how different
ethnic groups can share the same school experience in US yet still show such
wide variation in myopia prevalence? Ah so... ethnic Asians prepare their
children with poor reading habits before they ever go to school. Damned
inscrutable, if you ask me.

>> The only way to overcome the problem is to learn how to
>> see correctly at all distances and in particular at the near point
>> when reading which produces the myopia in the first place.
>> When successful the brain is able to activate the ciliaries
>> without the interference of the extra ocular muscles which
>> are ganged to the focusing mechanism controls in the cerebellum.

Please tell us where you learned about this. I wasn't aware that autonomic
nerves from the EW nuclei were "ganged" in the cerebellum.

> When I asked my optometrist if he could explain the apparent
> decline in my vision he ducked the question with the assurance
> that the condition "tended to settle down". He did not refer to
> presbyopia as the brake

Myopia usually stops ten or twenty years before presbyopia becomes evident.

> but I am sure he did not wish to confuse a simple member
> of the public with big words. All medical practitioners are
> careful to avoid committing themselves. That is why they
> cultivate a handwriting style only decipherable by a skilled
> pharmacologist.

Ah.. the old conspiracy theory. That explains it.

> When I read the nonsense proclaimed by the experts with
> their absurd experiments on chicks and monkeys in their
> attempts to support the elongating eyeball myth I think
> of my own experiences. All refractive errors are the results
> of lens shape changing.

So the human ultrasound measurements were faked? All those keratometry
readings are false?

> The studies
> of the intelligent scientists produce meaningless statistics.
> It is just as easy and as relevant to relate myopia
> measurements to the size of the foot.

As we all know, scientists can't count. Fraternal twins are no different
from identical twins and non-twin siblings.

> If the Bates Method is applied to the redevelopment of true
> central fixation/involuntary high speed shifting as possessed
> by the normal sighted eye, no refractive errors will occur
> (other than presbyopia with ageing).

Bates made great sweeping claims for curing presbyopia too. Rishi says so.
He also says everything Bates proposed has turned out to be true.

Some of us have made lots of eye movement recordings, and studied lots more.
Nobody has found unique eye movement patterns associated with different
types of refractive error. Maybe the instruments just weren't sensitive
enough? Maybe we just thought we were measuring eye movements, when it was
actually something else? I know - all the results were faked in order to
confuse the public.

> Myopia is the result of what I have named Myopic
> Reading Syndrome developed by a minority of the world population
> where they try to recognise too much of the visual field at once. It
> really is as simple as that. I challenge anyone to dispute the MRS
> hypothesis which explains all common refractive conditions.

Except maybe those common refractive conditions that show up before anyone
starts reading?

>>  A minority of pupils learn to stare at printed text and lose
>> some of the central fixation and rapid shifting essential to
>> normal vision.

Is this your "MRS hypothesis"? If so, you have some work to do before anyone
will bother to "refute" it. You might start by defining "central fixation"
and finding some way to measure it. Then I'd suggest developing a new
instrument that can record "the rapid shifting essential to normal vision."
Differences between myopes and hyperopes and emmetropes haven't been evident
so far, in recordings from IR or scleral coils. Maybe you can do better.

As long as you claim that "all common refractive conditions" share the same
cause, only the ignorant will take you seriously.

-MT
visionsenz@aol.com - 26 Jan 2005 16:27 GMT
Anyone disagree with this?

Eye Movements
So far, the relation of the movements of the eyes to the requirements
of the visual apparatus and their control have been touched upon. To
examine the character of the movements in some detail requires rapid,
accurate measurement of the movements that the eyes undergo. Modern
studies of this subject employ a contact lens fitting on to the globe;
on the lens is a small plane mirror, and a parallel bundle of rays is
reflected off this mirror onto a moving film.
By the use of refined methods of measuring the position of the eyes at
any moment, it becomes immediately evident that the eyes are never
stationary for more than a fraction of a second; the movements are of
three types: (1) irregular movements of high frequency (30-70 per
second) and small excursions of about 20 seconds of arc; (2) flicks, or
saccades, of several minutes of arc occurring at regular intervals of
about one second; and between these saccades there occur (3) slow
irregular drifts extending up to six minutes of arc. The saccades are
corrective, serving to bring the fixation axis on the point of regard
after this has drifted away from it too far, and thus are a
manifestation of the fixation reflex.
The significance of these small movements during fixation was revealed
by studies on the stabilized retinal image: by a suitable optical
device the image of an object could be held stationary on the retina in
spite of the movements of the eye. It was found that under these
conditions the image would disappear within a few seconds. Thus, the
movements of the eye are apparently necessary to allow the contours of
the image to fall on a new set of rods and cones at repeated intervals;
if this does not occur, the retina adapts to their stimulus and ceases
to send messages to the central nervous system. The small flicks
mentioned above are essentially the same as the larger movement made
when the two eyes fixate (fix on) a light when it suddenly appears in
the peripheral field; this is given the general name of the saccade, to
distinguish it from the slower movements occurring during convergence
and smooth following. The dynamics of the saccade have been studied in
some detail by several workers. There is a reaction time of about 120
to 180 milliseconds, after which both eyes move simultaneously; there
is a definite overshoot and, with an excursion of 20°, the operation
is completed in about 90 milliseconds. The maximum velocity increases
with the extent of the movement, being 300° per second for 10° and
500° per second for 30°. A remarkable feature is the apparent absence
of significant inertia in the eyeball, so that movement is halted, not
by any checking action of antagonistic muscles but simply by cessation
of contraction of the agonists; thus, the movement is not ballistic.
Once under way, the saccade is determined in amount, so that the
subject cannot voluntarily alter its direction and extent. The control
mechanism for the saccadic type of movement can be described as a
sampled data system, i.e., the brain makes discontinuous samples of the
position of the eyes in relation to the target and corrects the error,
in contrast to a continuous feedback system that takes account of the
error all the time.
The movements of the eyes when they converge onto a near object are in
remarkable contrast to the saccade; the angular velocity is only about
25° per second, compared with values as high as 500° per second in
the saccade. The great difference in speed suggested to two
investigators that the two movements are executed by different muscle
fibres. In fact, the extraocular muscles do contain two types of muscle
fibre with characteristically different nerve supplies, and some recent
studies tend to support this view of a dual mechanism.
If a moving light suddenly appears in the field of view, and if its
rate of movement is less than about 30° per second, the response of
the eyes is remarkably efficient; a saccade brings the eyes on target,
and they follow the motion at almost exactly the same angular velocity
as that of the target; inaccuracies in following lead to corrective
saccades. When the rate of movement of the target is greater than about
30° per second, these corrective saccades become more obvious because
now smooth following is not possible; the eyes make constant-velocity
movements, but the velocity rarely matches that of the moving target,
so that there must be frequent corrective saccades. Studies have shown
that the following movements are highly integrated and must involve a
continuous feedback system whereby errors are used to modify the
performance. Thus, the systems for control of saccades and tracking
movements are fundamentally different.
Robin Parsons
Scott Seidman - 26 Jan 2005 16:46 GMT
visionsenz@aol.com wrote in news:1106756831.497797.150110
@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

> Anyone disagree with this?

It's a fine review of the state of the field 40 years ago.  Much is dated.

Scott
magnulus - 06 Oct 2004 17:39 GMT
 Aldous Huxley was deluded about the Bates method... he wanted desperately
to find a cure for his poor vision.  But he was deluded nontheless.  He
actually saw very poorly, and when "reading" from a book without glasses, he
actually memorized the book beforehand.
Rishi Giovanni Gatti - 07 Oct 2004 08:34 GMT
> Aldous Huxley was deluded about the Bates method... he wanted desperately
> to find a cure for his poor vision.  But he was deluded nontheless.  He
> actually saw very poorly, and when "reading" from a book without glasses, he
> actually memorized the book beforehand.

In fact, Aldous Huxley was not treated by Batesm, who was long dead,
but by such infamous false disciples like Corbett et al, who destroied
the whole Bates legacy.

We are trying to rebuild it starting again from scratch.

Our website is http://TheCentralFixation.com
Rishi Giovanni Gatti - 07 Oct 2004 08:41 GMT
> > Best regards
> > Robin Parsons

But this idiot Robin was not the super-idiot with whom everybody
litigated a few years ago?

Now what happens???

> I have been obsessed with the working of the human eye for more than
> seventy years and my interest in Bates was first aroused in 1940 when
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>     I practised the drills recommended by Bates and after 18 months
> noticed brief flashes of better vision. These phenomena were brief and

There are NO drills in the original Bates work.
Please explain which books did you read and what did you do.

> no permanent benefit accrued. My early prescription was about ?1.75 in
> the right eye with about ?2 in the left. I wore the glasses only when
> absolutely necessary, sniping at the enemy in WW2 or at the cinema.

That's what you did wrong, unless you discard forever you won't get
any benefit. This is Principle fundamental number one given by Bates.

> With the glasses I could read the bottom line of my optometrist's
> chart, a feat which he claimed was only achieved by about six of the
> thousands of patients he treated a year.

This is just stupidity.

>     After twelve years of failure to achieve any permanent improvement
> using the Bates Method I threw in the towel and wore glasses
> permanently for all purposes including reading.  The ability to see

That's your great idiocy and you not only procured injury to yourself
but also to the great man Dr. Bates, who advised not to wear glasses
anymore and continue with the treatment.

> marks. These efforts produced improved vision even whilst wearing
> correcting lenses which seemed to indicate a decline in vision since
> my last fitting.

This just indicates you are an idiot.

>     It occurred to me that if I could see better by practising the seeing
> drills whilst wearing my latest prescription why not work back to the
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> presbyope and can neither improve nor get worse.  Have my eyeballs
> shrunk do you think?

No, your stupidity has become stuck in the mud of you rotten brain.

>     If the Bates Method is applied to the redevelopment of true central
> fixation/involuntary high speed shifting as possessed by the normal
> sighted eye, no refractive errors will occur (other than presbyopia
> with ageing). Myopia is the result of what I have named Myopic Reading

This what you are: a GREAT IDIOT, the worst of all the idiots who are
here writing.

It is people like you who are a ruin.

You first assess benefits got from the "Bates drills" which do not
exist at all but are invention of your rottenmind, then you destroy
even further the great doctor stating that presbyopia is inevitable...
While the greates contribution of Dr. Bates was that of clearing the
facts that presbyopia is easily prevenable and curable if you pratcice
accordingly.

> Syndrome developed by a minority of the world population where they
> try to recognise too much of the visual field at once. It really is as
> simple as that. I challenge anyone to dispute the MRS hypothesis which
> explains all common refractive conditions.

You cannot challenge Nature, you idiot.
Rishi Giovanni Gatti - 03 Oct 2004 18:17 GMT
> I accept the idea of WH Bates that refractive errors are the result of
> incorrect seeing habits. Myopia is learned very easily during the
> formative years at school where incorrect reading habits are acquired.

What about other imperfect sight disorders?
stuart - 09 Oct 2004 19:04 GMT
>I accept the idea of WH Bates that refractive errors are the result of
> incorrect seeing habits. Myopia is learned very easily during the
[quoted text clipped - 26 lines]
> Best regards
> Robin Parsons

Rubbish. In my formative years as a schoolboy, I also spent between 6 to 15
hours per week looking out of an aircraft window, gazing out anywhere from
100 yards to 100 miles. I am myopic. It is genetic, old boy....Pure and
simple.

> Visionsenz@yahoogroups.com
Rishi Giovanni Gatti - 10 Oct 2004 19:50 GMT
> Rubbish. In my formative years as a schoolboy, I also spent between 6 to 15
> hours per week looking out of an aircraft window, gazing out anywhere from
> 100 yards to 100 miles. I am myopic. It is genetic, old boy....Pure and
> simple.

So you prefer to consider yourself a "genetic" idiot?
Good.
stuart - 10 Oct 2004 21:53 GMT
>> Rubbish. In my formative years as a schoolboy, I also spent between 6 to
>> 15
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> So you prefer to consider yourself a "genetic" idiot?
> Good.

No I stated that I am genetically myopic, or at least before laser surgery.
Only an idiot would imply someone else to be an idiot save for simply
disagreeing.
That's when I get really suspicious of someone's assertions on a particular
topic.

We went through this hair-brained stuff in the 60's. Waste of time. In my
own particular case I could not exercise my eyesight to be any different
than I could exercise my way up to 6'5". Just ain't gonna happen.
Rishi Giovanni Gatti - 11 Oct 2004 18:48 GMT
> We went through this hair-brained stuff in the 60's. Waste of time. In my
> own particular case I could not exercise my eyesight to be any different
> than I could exercise my way up to 6'5". Just ain't gonna happen.

I understand you have been victim of fraudolent and unfair methods.
stuart - 12 Oct 2004 16:52 GMT
>> We went through this hair-brained stuff in the 60's. Waste of time. In my
>> own particular case I could not exercise my eyesight to be any different
>> than I could exercise my way up to 6'5". Just ain't gonna happen.
>
> I understand you have been victim of fraudolent and unfair methods.

They told me I would play in the NBA...
Rishi Giovanni Gatti - 13 Oct 2004 19:02 GMT
> >> We went through this hair-brained stuff in the 60's. Waste of time. In my
> >> own particular case I could not exercise my eyesight to be any different
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>
> They told me I would play in the NBA...

Please be serious, this is a serious newsgroup, it deals with science,
medicine and vision.
 
Sign In
Join
My Latest Posts
My Monitored Threads
My Blog
My Photo Gallery
My Profile
My Homepage

Start New Thread
Enable EMail Alerts
Rate this Thread



©2008 Advenet LLC   Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.