Carlos Moreno – Improve Your Eyesight Naturally - Challenging Ophthamology with The Bates Method - Deconstructing Conventional

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone, welcome to episode number 28.
Today my guest is a man namedCarlos Moreno, and he and I
deconstruct the topic of eyehealth and how conventional
thinking, not surprisingly, moreor less got it all wrong.
So I came across his workseveral years ago and until then
I never really had thoughtabout eye health as something
that could be improved naturallyand I basically thought of eyes

(00:23):
something like ear lobes orhair color.
It's just this fixed thing andyou got what you got and you do
the best you can with it.
But my perspective has nowshifted.
So throughout this interview,carlos really gives us different
windows into the hundred plusyears of, you know, recent
history of ophthalmology and theconventional ways to treat eye
health and, not surprisingly,like the rest of Western
medicine, that the conventionalapproach is literally to cover

(00:47):
over the symptoms instead ofaddressing the cause of poor
vision.
So, for context, carlos hadworn glasses and contacts for 22
years and I'll let him tell youthe story of the day.
He woke up and realized he wasdone with contacts, but in three
months time, after he finallyfound someone who could help him
, he trained himself to not needglasses or contacts and he has

(01:08):
never gone back.
He actually improved his visionto be better than 2020.
So Carlos even told afascinating story of a man in
his 80s who made significantimprovements.
On my side, and probably whatwas most fascinating for me as
someone with kind of an exerciseand physiology background is I
was ready for him to teach methe exercises I needed to do to
get my eyes in better shape,right and work them out, and

(01:30):
really what shifted for me in mythinking was that better vision
is actually less aboutstrengthening and more about
relaxing.
And what I'd come to understandand talking to him is that how
much our vision is really just areflection of our internal
mental and emotional landscapeand the physical stresses that
we carry in our body and, notsurprisingly, health is impacted

(01:52):
, or eye health is impacted, bystress.
And it reminded me in some waysof my previous conversation or
the last episode with MikeMerrill, where we talked about
how poor gut health usually hasits roots in some sort of mental
or emotional trauma.
So throughout the episode,carlos just weaves in some very
practical techniques we can alluse to improve our vision and

(02:13):
toward the end of the episode Ibasically just emptied my bag of
questions and asked him prettymuch about every eye condition I
could think of and sure enough,he has helped people heal all
of them, so including blindness.
So we talked about whether ornot to wear our sunglasses or
blue blocking glasses.
We also talked about someexpectation management and
really the brass tacks of whatare you getting yourself into if

(02:34):
you try to start a journey ofhealing your eyesight.
Naturally, I really think you'lllike the conversation.
I hope it gives you a newwindow into how magnificent your
body can be at healing and justarm you with some kindness
toward it as you work through ahealing journey.
This is another fun example forme, because it's so poignant
about how we can go deep on onetopic or think we're gonna go

(02:57):
deep on just one topic and youend up being forced to look at
the interconnectedness of thephysical and the mental and
emotional and even spiritual,relational and logistical
aspects of our life, anythingthat's causing a stress.
We have to look at that andreally those crossroads are
where I spend most of my time asa health coach and I just get
the pleasure of helping peoplesee those connections and find
the perspective where healingcan finally happen.

(03:19):
So if you're in the market fora health coach and you need
somebody to help you find whatthe doctor can't figure out,
then check out our website, truewhole human dot com, because
solving complex health issues iswhat I do all day.
In the meantime, just enjoythis fascinating and inspiring
conversation with Carlos Moreno.
Alright, hello everyone.
Welcome to today's episode.

(03:40):
My guest is Carlos Moreno.
He is a Bates method naturalvision improvement instructor,
so he teaches people how toimprove their eyesight without
glasses, contacts or surgery,and he works with people via
video call really all around theworld, but he does it in person
at the medical offices of theCenter for Wellness in
Montabello, california, and hehas been helping people improve

(04:04):
their eyesight since 1997, sogood long run there.
He has become an expert inteaching the techniques that get
a person to relax into veryspecific ways to improve a
person's eyesight, and he has afree introductory class.
He's given it to doctors,groups, to hospitals,
chiropractor offices, churches,yoga studios and even community

(04:24):
groups throughout the SanFrancisco Bay Area and in
Southern California.
He has taught courses andweekend workshops for adults and
children throughout Californiaand in the Midwest, and even in
online workshops.
Although he is not a physician,he works under the direction of
a licensed doctor in California.
So, carlos, thank you forjoining me today.
Happy to be here, christian.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Good to have you, so tell us the story behind Carlos
Moreno.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
How in the world did you end up getting into the work
?

Speaker 2 (04:51):
How did I end up.
Yeah, so I wore glasses andcontacts for 22 years and I was
always very physically active.
I love sports, always hatedwearing glasses.
For contact lenses I would if Icould play basketball or

(05:12):
football or I rode crew.
And when I was in theUniversity, if I could go
without glasses, I just feltbetter, couldn't see clearly,
but it just felt better thanwearing glasses that were going
to steam up when I was gettingsweaty or in the rain or just in
different kind of activities.

(05:33):
I love going, hiking, beingoutdoors, and I had never really
liked my glasses and contactlenses.
In the maybe in the late 80s, Ihad been wearing these contact
lenses that were extended wearlenses.
They were these lenses thatthey had come up with that you

(05:55):
could sleep with them, so youcould leave them in your eyes
overnight, so you wake up in themorning, you open your eyes and
you could see clearly.
You're supposed to be able towear them for a week and then on
the weekends you took them outand you put them into some kind
of solution, and for 12 hours,and then you were done through
the weekend.
Then you could wear them againthe next week.
Well, one morning I woke upwith wearing the lenses and I

(06:19):
couldn't open my eyes.
My eyelids were stuck togetherso I made my way by touch over
to my bathroom, got some saline,started pouring it over my eyes
and finally my eyelidsseparated and the sclera the,
the white part on the sidesaround around the eye.

(06:42):
There was no white in my eyes,white.
I looked like a monster out ofa movie because all of that was
completely red.
It was just red, red eyes,completely red, no white.
And I still couldn't take thecontacts off my eyes.
They were, they had adhered tomy eyes so they were stuck on my

(07:05):
eyeballs.
I had to put more saline, moresaline, more saline.
So they had basically dried upinside my eyes as I slept.
Wow could you?

Speaker 1 (07:13):
still see through them while you were trying to
take a matter.
Was it blurry?

Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah, so I could.
So I yeah, my vision was notgood with them.
So normally with contact lensesthey're supposed to be floating
on a little bit of your tears,some moisture over the surface
of your eye, and they're.
They're shaped.
Part of part of the way that,when you get a prescription for
contact lenses, is that they'reset up to fit your eyeball and

(07:37):
so that they basically stay overyour pupil, over and most of
your iris, and so that they stayin place, so that sometimes
people have problems with acontact moving off of the center
of the eye and so you knowthey'll have to look around for
it and they could.
It just feels like you have abig blob of something in your

(07:59):
eyes.
These, these had stuck to myeyeballs and I had to put in
more and more saline until theyhad they've hydrated again and
then I was able to remove them.
So it took a little bit of timeand it was the whole time.
I was spooked, my vision wasn'tgood.
Obviously, as I'm doing this,my eyes are really red.

(08:20):
I'm thinking you know, did Idamage my eyes?
You know what did I do?
And I thought I'm not wearingthese things anymore and I
became aware.
So I had grown up with a senseof just being aware of what you
eat, you know what medicationsyou take.

(08:43):
Just from my parents that theywere, you know.
They were attentive to whetherwe're doing things just out of
habit, thoughtlessly, or ofwhether we're paying attention
to what we're doing.
And I thought and I was awarethat just from classes in
sociology and history, historyof science and medicine in

(09:06):
school that medicine isexperiments on us.
So even after there's beentrials on medication or, in this
case, a medical device you know, like contact lenses, it's
really only after they're out inbeing used in public that you
have millions of people usingsomething a medicine or

(09:29):
something like a device likecontact lenses and that that's
where they get more and moreinformation.
There's usually smaller trials.
You have to approves somethingfor use in the general public,
then they usually haveguidelines on how you could use
that.
But I was aware that here this,these contact lenses that cause

(09:50):
problems with me and I only havetwo eyes.
I was, you know, in my,probably in my late 20s when
that happened and I thought Iwant my eyes to last me my whole
lifetime.
I'm not gonna wear thesecontact lenses anymore.
This was like a wake-up callfor me.
Yeah, my sister at the time shewas wearing contact lenses that
were just daily use and littleby little through the late 80s

(10:13):
and into the early 90s, itstarted going into more, these
soft contact lenses that gotdeveloped with new materials
that were and they were justdaily wear, or even the
disposable ones you know youcould have daily wear that you
cleaned nightly and so there wasall kinds of options.
Eventually, at some point Istarted wearing daily wear
contacts again because I justhated glasses.

(10:36):
My sister had asked me duringthat time what I thought of some
of the eye surgeries that youcould do to improve the eyesight
.
So, like PRK, mm-hmm was it wasa common surgery there and and
the Lasik that we have now is anextension of PRK.
But I told her I had seen somemagazine articles that said some

(10:56):
you know things, like you knowyou could look at the eraser on
a pencil up close to your faceand then look far away.
And it was with this idea ofstrengthening the eyes, like
doing push-ups to get the eyesstronger.
Base method is not that at all,mm-hmm.
But so I knew I thought of allthe humans on earth in history.
Somebody's got to have figuredout how to improve the eyesight

(11:18):
naturally.
It had.
I was exposed to yoga and hadseen.
It was very fortunate in mylife of coming across some
people who were like really realyogis who could do things that
seem magical, but they were justand they said if you want to be
able to do this, you just gotto practice for an extended

(11:40):
period of time and you, you canlearn how to do all kinds of
things.
You know he'll heal theemotions, heal the body, heal
the mind from trauma physicaltrauma, emotional trauma.
So I had an idea that there wasprobably somebody who had
figured out how to improve theeyesight naturally and I told, I
started telling my friends andfamily.

(12:01):
I said keep an eye out foranything that you come across.
This you sure enough.
A friend told me all, carlos.
I found this book in thelibrary by a doctor, william H
Bates.
The name of the book is bettereyesight without glasses, and
this is an abridged version ofhis original book.
I wouldn't got the book.

(12:22):
Read through the book.
I know how to read English.
I've been in university.
Didn't understand what the heckhe was talking about.
Tell people how old the book is.
So Dr Bates wrote his perfecteyesight without glasses in 1919
, 1919, 20.
He published it a couple oftimes and even because he

(12:47):
self-published, it has twotitles.
There's like a title on thehardcover outside of the book
and there's another title on thetitle page.
One is perfect eyesight withoutglasses and the other title is
the cure of imperfect sight bytreatment without glasses.
He wrote that in 1919, 1920.
He did some revisions and hewas so.

(13:10):
He was a physician, he was aneye surgeon.
In his original book he goesover the standard theory of how
vision works, so he would and,and he writes a whole chapter
about everything that he'slearned in medical school,
everything that he had studiedpostgraduate to become an

(13:32):
ophthalmologist and eye surgeon,and he shows all the problems
with the standard theory thatthere's.
There's things so he had beentaught that once the vision goes
bad, it can't get better.
And as he started practicing,kids would come in.
They had lost their glasses.

(13:53):
Their glasses have been broken,but their vision was now back
to 2020 without work, you know.
And so he said so this ishappening.
He talked to another doctor whowas seeing this happening also,
which was contrary to what theyhad been taught in medical
school that once the vision goesbad, it stays bad and can can
only get worse, and so peopleare stuck on glasses.

(14:16):
But he was seeing evidence thatthis was not the case out in
the wild, so to speak, you know,with with real people in a
clinic in his office.
Sometimes people had theseautomatic recoveries from myopia
, so near-sightedness when aperson can't see clearly in the
distance.
So the other doctor said whydon't you go look?

(14:37):
Why don't you go check in themedical library and see if any
other doctors have noticed this?
Are we the only two doctors inthe world who have noticed this?
So Bates went and startedlooking in to information that
come from doctors out workingwith patients and there was a
lot of anecdotal evidence fromdoctors that kids vision would

(15:00):
improve, even with some adultsthat their vision would go back
to normal if they lost theirglasses or for whatever.
Their glasses were reallyuncomfortable.
People didn't feel good withtheir glasses there.
They had felt a lot of eyestring with their glasses.
Doctors would typically telltheir patients which I was told
when I had glasses you know,don't worry, you'll get used to
it, the discomfort of wearingglasses, that your eyes will get

(15:22):
used to it.
It's like putting a pebble inyour in your shoe.
Yeah, if you keep it in therelong enough, you get used to it
and but you may be walkingaround with a limp.
Yeah, you know you won't feelthe pain, but something's gonna
be off.
So Bates not only finds casesof my opia clearing up but cases

(15:45):
of cataracts and glaucomaclearing up.
Without treatment people wouldbe diagnosed with some cataracts
.
At the beginning of cataractsthey'd see their doctor.
The doctor says you know, comeback in see me in six months or
a year from now.
And the doctors would say well,you know, this person had the
beginnings of cataracts or hadcataracts in one eye or the

(16:06):
other or both.
You know, had these developingcataracts and now they're gone.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
They're not there hmm , what for the listener who
doesn't know?
Give them to find the termshere.
So what is a cataract and whatis glaucoma?

Speaker 2 (16:18):
so in general, cataract is the development of A
film, you could say it's asubstance that covers the pupil
of the eyes so that the personcan't see out through the pupil
of their eye, like cloudy kindof thing, exactly, exactly.

(16:41):
And it could cloud up so muchso that the person can't see at
all.
And that's one in typical.
In regular ophthalmology theycall it a ripe cataract, so it's
ripe for surgery.
They wait until it's completelyclouded up.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
Yeah, right to them, not to the person.

Speaker 2 (17:02):
So a person could be suffering with cloudy vision and
it may get worse.
It may not get worse with mostpeople who develop some kind of
cataract that without surgery orwithout being working with a
competent Bates instructor, itcan get worse until they can't

(17:25):
see out of one eye.
And there's a thing calledsympathetic cataracts, where a
person has it in one eye andtheir other eye is fine, healthy
, there's no other problems withthe eye.
But as they lose vision in oneeye, the cataract begins to.
First of all, their visionstarts dropping off in the other
eye and then they can also getcataract in the other eye.

(17:45):
It's not a disease as far as abacterial or a viral infection
or a fungal infection, and inregular medicine they can't tell
you what causes it and thetypical treatment for it is

(18:05):
surgery.
So I've even had clients whohave come to me where, basically
, they're removing the lens, sowhat you call the lens, this
membrane on the front part ofthe eye, just under the cornea,
what they call the lens.
It's not like an actual contactlens, but it's something like

(18:28):
that.
The contact lens is actuallybased on this thing, this
membrane that the body has, andthey'll remove the cloudy lens,
they'll do a surgery, they'llcut out, they'll cut apart the
front of the eye and they'llsurgically remove that lens so
that now the person doesn't havea lens and but now they could
see through from the back oftheir eye, and they're usually

(18:51):
they can see things in thedistance, but there'll be
problems with their vision forclose up or depending on what
other issues are going on withtheir eyes.
So the typical surgicaltreatment for it is removal of
the cataract by removing thelens.
What they'll do is they'll putin a replacement lens, so it's

(19:12):
like putting a contact lensinside the front part of your
eye.
I've had clients who have hadthat done and then they you know
, they suture it up and then theperson has this lens in their
eye but like with, you know,with like glasses, those are
lenses.
If your visual acuity changes,how do you change that lens?

(19:33):
They have to go and do anothersurgery and you know how many
times you want somebody cuttinginto your eyeball or both
eyeballs.
Bates was the first guy to do aradio keratotomy in 1898.
So the radio keratotomy is whateventually becomes, what
becomes PRK and then Lasik.
So the Lasik that you're doingwas started by Dr Bates in 1898,

(19:57):
but he stopped doing it acouple of years later because he
recognized that, even though heanatomically changed the
eyeball, so he was he was makingan incision into the eyeball
these radial incisions to changethe shape of the eyeball, in
the front of the eyeball, sothat it would be so a person who

(20:20):
was nearsighted, who couldn'tsee in the distance, could see
better, and he could correct thevision to 2020 by doing the
surgery.
But he noticed that people'svision would fall off after the
surgery, which is indeed whathappens with Lasik.
That happens with Lasik too.
Depends on the doctor that yougo see whether they'll actually

(20:41):
tell you that that is likely tohappen.
At the very least, if you ask,they'll say well, when you turn,
you know, when you get to your40s or 50s, your vision might
drop off for close up.
So you need reading glasses,which is not the case.
You don't need reading glasseseither.
It's not your age.
You know your eyeballs don'tknow what, how many birthdays
that you've had.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
Yeah Well, we're going to get to a fun story
about that in a second becauseyou need to do something, but I
guess it's fun listening to youtalk, because conventional
thinking when it comes to theeyes, for whatever reason, is
that we tend to think of themmore or less like this fixed
aspect of our health, maybesimilar to like hair color or
attached to your lobes orsomething, and don't think of

(21:23):
them as this, like adaptableaspect of physiology.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
We've lost the idea that we could do Very, very much
, yeah, and you know, we know,that if you get into your 40s
and 50s and you were an athletewhen you were in your high
school or in your 20s and thenyou become a parent, you know
you start your nine to five joband you don't have enough time
to exercise and get out and playbasketball or go swimming or

(21:46):
whatever it was that you weredoing when you were younger that
your body loses some capacity.
But you can regain thatcapacity, right, I see that, if
you have trouble going runningfor a mile.
If you run for a mile for a week, the mile will become easy and
then you could add.
You know you can add.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Yeah, and I worked as a trainer for over a decade and
just duh like the amount ofespecially because as a trainer
you tend to stick with people.
I got to add people with me foryears and years and two to
three times a week.
It's remarkable how much betterthey can get at things.
And I'm thinking, well shoot,what if we applied just some of
this discipline toward eyehealth or reap some of the other
benefits that consistency ofexercise has?

Speaker 2 (22:28):
There's a good story from Bates about working with a
guy who had cataracts.
So he had had a younger woman,in her forties maybe, who was a
patient who improved hereyesight for myopia.
And then she says would thiswork for my father who has
cataracts?
Dr Bates says, well, how old ishe?

(22:48):
She said he's 80 years old.
And he says, well, how's therest of his health?
And she says, you know, he'sokay, he's 80 years old.
And Dr Bates says, if he'llfollow my instructions, if he
does what I tell him to do, hisvision will get better.
And Dr Bates, besides treatinghim for the cataracts and

(23:14):
helping him clear up thosecataracts, within a few months
he had the guy begin to walkfive miles a day, drink maybe
like eight glasses of water, soincreases water intake and just
doing some simple things, beingattentive to his sleep.

(23:36):
The article in Dr Bates'magazine is written by the
daughter and she says so that myfather, when he turned 81, was
in much better shape than he hadbeen when he was 80 years old.
He ends Dr Bates ends uptelling him to walk five miles
daily and then, after he's beenable to do that for a period of
time, he tells him one of thosemiles you have to run.

(23:57):
So you know, 100 years ago he'sgot an 80-year-old running a
mile and walking four othermiles.
I just read, I heard a an NPRrecently.
I heard the story aboutmarathons, just the running of
marathons, and how 100 years agodoctors were telling people not
to run that far because theythought that it would be too

(24:21):
much for a body and that itwould be too much for the heart
and that people would end updying.
And now we have things like,you know, the Boston Marathon,
where thousands and thousands ofpeople are running in these big
races and people doing thingslike ultramarathons and all of
that kind of stuff, where you'rejust continually pushing the
boundaries of what the body iscapable of.

(24:43):
Yeah, so, so you know, veryearly on, Dr Bates, initially,
because he saw that kids myopiacould clear up, he started
paying attention like what is itthat makes the vision better or
worse?
He was.
He was working with a child inhis office.

(25:04):
One day, just you know, aschool nurse or a principal or a
teacher says you know thischild's squinting when they're
looking at the blackboard, orthe parents notice that the
child is squinting at things athome and so they take the child
in to get an eye checkup and DrBates is testing the vision of a

(25:26):
child.
So a hold up here, somethingthat's kind of like an eye chart
that has letters on it and thechild's reading through going
down the lines of an eye chartand the child gets to a
particular line and their visionis not normal.
The child's vision is notnormal and the child says you
know, that's as far as I couldread.
Then all of a sudden this is atthe beginning of the 20th
century, so trucks and cars arenew things in New York City.

(25:49):
There's the backfire of a truckout in the street.
A big, loud bang.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
So the child gets startled, gets frightened, and
then the child says, oh, I can'tread that line anymore.
That's the smallest line that Icould read on the eye chart.
Dr Bates says what do you mean?
He says, well, I could onlyread three or four lines above
that.
Now Dr Bates says, huh, that'sso, he's paying attention.
And then he continues with theexamination, doing other things

(26:16):
with the kid, and then the kidat some point says, oh, I could
read that line further down thecolumn of letters again.
So Bates paying attention, herealizes that when the child got
startled, frightened, he goesinto sympathetic response fight,
flight or freeze.
So you could picture yourselfcoming out of a scary movie in

(26:38):
the theater and then yourfriends hiding behind a bush or
a car and they jump out andspook you and you're like, ah,
you know what.
I'm saying, right, so and youjump away.
So that's part of oursympathetic response that we're
jumping away from this lionthat's possibly going to eat us.
You know, just like a zebra ora gazelle would out on the

(27:02):
African plains.
You're jumping away from thedanger but your whole body goes
into this tense state, part ofthat tension.
If you think of a zebra out onthe African plains eating grass
with the herd, and also in thehere's a branch break in the
bushes, it stops chewing thegrass, its head goes up, its

(27:26):
ears go up, it starts listeningfor, smelling for and looking
for a lion.
Okay, other animals in the herdmight not have heard the branch
break, but if they see one oftheir number, go on alert.
If they're sitting on the grass, they get up.

(27:48):
If they're near that animal,that's on alert.
Because this is a biologicalfeature of herd animals, like
human beings, that if one of ournumber goes on alert there's
some danger.
The more eyes, ears, noses wehave tuned into possible danger,

(28:08):
the safer the whole herd is.
More eyes are going to see thelion coming, more ears might
hear the lion coming.
Noses might smell the lion,nose sounds.
So Bates writes specificallythat nervousness is contagious.
This is why it's contagious,that it's a biological function

(28:31):
to protect us from the monsterthat might eat us the lion, the
tiger, the bear, somebody fromanother tribe that's sneaking up
on us.
So it's a very ancient kind ofthing that, if you think of
humans as just another animalspecies on earth, it clears up a
lot of stuff of how we work.

(28:52):
And so Bates noticed that thischild, when he got startled, his
vision dropped.
When he relaxed, his vision gotbetter.
So he started thinking how do Iget kids to relax If his vision
went back to what was normal?
What can I do to make the kidrelax more so that the vision
will improve?
Fortunately, mothers didn'talways have a babysitter and

(29:16):
their one son had been referredby the school nurse to have
their eyes checked, but they hadto bring in their other three
or four or five kids too withthem.
So they're all there in DrBates's office and so he would.
He started paying attention withthe kids who had normal
eyesight.
What were the differences inthe way they looked at letters

(29:38):
compared to their sibling whohad imperfect sight?
The kids who had bettereyesight were much more at ease.
They were relaxed, what hecalls they were relaxed.
He refers to relaxation andrest in the same way, so that
when a mind and eyes are relaxed, they easily scan over whatever

(30:02):
they're looking at, whereas thekid, the sibling, who had
imperfect eyesight, they wouldstare and their vision would fix
on a letter and they wouldapply effort to try to clear
things up.
So they would start swinging,they would make a face, so their
face wasn't out of these.
They're in a state of distress,and so one of the first things

(30:26):
that he started teaching kids isjust close your eyes so that
you're not looking at letters Ifyou close your eyes.
If you had a child, close youreyes and you started talking to
them about a little boy at thebeginning of the 20th century.
Start talking to them aboutbaseball in New York City, the
Yankees and the Dodgers and theMetz.

(30:47):
I don't know if the Metz existedthen.
But start talking to kids aboutbaseball a little boy about
baseball and they get excited,they start thinking about
something pleasant and enjoyableand he could see their face
relax.
He has them keeping their eyesclosed so that they're not
distressed by looking at blurredletters and then when they open

(31:10):
their eyes they might say, oh,the letters are better, they're
clearer.
So he started practicing havingkids practice this.
Besides just closing the eyes,a person could also palm.
Palming is where you put thepalm of your hands over your
eyes, your closed eyes, and thepalm helps block out any light

(31:32):
that's coming through oureyelids.
With people who have imperfecteyesight, just the fact of light
coming through the closedeyelids can make a person try,
apply effort to see even thoughtheir eyes are closed.
So this is something that yourlisteners can do right off the
bat.

(31:53):
Take a look at some letters,take a look at a book cover or a
magazine cover where you havedifferent size fonts.
Hold it at a place from yourface, at a distance from your
face, hold it in your hand.
Just kind of get an idea ofwhere your vision is best.
And if you move it closer, ifyou move it further, where it

(32:13):
starts getting worse.
You might not be able to readeverything that's on there
without your glasses or yourcontact lenses.
That's okay.
You're just kind of getting anidea of what your vision is like
.
You're getting your baselineWithout my glasses or contacts.
This is what my vision is.
Then close your eyes and palmand listen to your favorite
podcast.
Listen to Christian.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
Yes, obviously this would be your favorite.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
This is going to be your favorite podcast.
Listen to your favorite music.
I'll ask kids, when they'repalming, what's your favorite
ice cream?
So I have them bring to mindsomething pleasant and enjoyable
.
I start asking you know, whatdo you do?
How do you like your favoriteice cream?
How do you like your chocolate,or your vanilla or strawberry,
or your rocky road?
Do you like it when it's frozenand very hard and be really

(32:58):
cold?
Do you like it when it's softerand mushy?
Do you eat it on a cone?
Do you eat it with a spoon?
How do you like it?
So they start telling me aboutthis wonderful experience of
eating ice cream and theiraddies.
They have their eyes closed,they might be palming and
they're thinking about somethingpleasant and enjoyable, and
it's a way to walk a personthrough, having their eyes

(33:21):
closed and covered.
Where they're talking to me,they're thinking about something
pleasant, but they're notconcerned about seeing, and so
it gets the eyes to rest fromseeing the world blurred and it
moves the attention over tosomething pleasant and enjoyable
which gets the mind to relax,to be at ease.
So if you think of the zebra,coming back to our example of

(33:43):
the zebra out on the Africanplains getting startled because
here's a branch breaking thebushes and then all of a sudden
a bird jumps out from the bushesthat it had landed on something
and just kind of moved thebranches around and that's what
it heard.
So if a bird is coming out ofthose bushes there's probably

(34:04):
not a lion in there, and so thenthe zebra can relax, which is
what happened in that firstexample of the little boy who
had been startled by thebackfire of the truck and then,
after he's chatting with DrBates, his mind goes away from
this loud bang that has startledhim.

(34:25):
He just is having aconversation with the doctor,
normal stuff.
He relaxes and then his visiongoes back to what's normal for
him.
So Bates starts really tuninginto this idea that if a person
relaxes their mind, if they moveaway from the staring that they

(34:48):
typically do, the applicationof effort to try to clear things
up the vision gets better.
So part of that is shifting.
Movement is really, reallyimportant.
If you think of a zebra, frozen, still listening to see and
looking to see if there's a lionin the bushes, it's frozen

(35:08):
still, much like a rabbit wouldbe if it knows all of a sudden
there's a hawk in a tree closeby it just freezes still,
because when you freeze stillfor many animals that's a way to
hide.
You know movement predators arechecking for movement.
You'll see a cat creeping up ona mouse and it's only when the
mouse runs that the cat runsafter it.

(35:31):
You see that happen with manykind of predators, that when the
prey animal runs, that triggersthe predator to chase after it
and kill the prey animal.
This is one of the thingsthere's this famous story of
Siegfried and Roy, the magiciansand animal trainers in Los

(35:55):
Vegas.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
The guys that worked with tigers.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
Yeah, the tigers and lions, that one of the guys so
the guy, I don't remember whichof the two got attacked by one
of their animals on stage, butit's because he fell and so he
moved very abruptly in a waythat was like a prey animal on
stage.
He felt as he was walking onstage and that abrupt movement

(36:19):
triggered the attack instinct ofone of his tigers.
The tiger went and grabbed himby the neck and punctured his
face, his neck, so the guy wasbleeding.
You know, he was in really badcondition for a while, but this
is what animals that were hispets basically, yeah, you, him,
but the tiger.
A tiger is a tiger.

(36:39):
It has these automaticfunctions that make it survive
out in the wild.
A tiger on stage is still atiger.
It doesn't know that it's onstage and that it's being fed
all the time, and so it hasthese automatic instincts.
Same thing with a human beingthat's responding to a loud bang

(37:03):
.
Something that's startling issomething that makes us jump,
and so if you think aboutsomebody jumping, all of a
sudden, all the muscles tightenup and everything, and it's not
just our legs, our arms, ourbreathing changes, but these
tiny little muscles around theeyes also clench up.
And when they clench up this isthe thing that Dr Bates started

(37:24):
discovering in his experimentswas that when those muscles
tighten up around the eyeballs,the eyeballs are not functioning
properly.
So right now I'm watching you,christian, and you're holding
your breath a little bit.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
Oh great, I busted it .
I can't even interview withoutgetting this is a normal thing.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
So we get interested in something, that we become
very attentive and we starttensing up, and part of the
reason why I highlighted it foryou is because it gets you
laughing again, and when you'relaughing you relax, you're more
at ease, you move, your bodymoves and it gets out of the
state of tension.

Speaker 1 (38:03):
You could just watch me all day there and that would
really help, and just have youlike you're doing it again.

Speaker 2 (38:08):
Stop it, yes, and this is exactly what I teach
people.
I'll tell them to look at smalllittle letters that are blurred
and I tell them pay attention toyour breath.
Tell me what's happening inyour breath when you're looking
at small little letters close up, If they're in their 40s and
50s and you're using readingglasses, or if they have myopia
and they have problems seeingthings in the distance.
If, when you look at smalllittle letters far away that you

(38:30):
can't read or that are blurredor fuzzy or same thing, close up
what happens to your breath?
We were touching on this thingof kind of getting your baseline
, getting looking at a bookcover or magazine cover, holding
that closer or further fromyour face.
Just get an idea of what's myvision like and you could look
at the smaller letters on thereand notice what is my breathing

(38:51):
like.
Most people will notice thattheir breathing is more shallow
or that it's gotten rapid, thatit's not at ease, that it's
tight.
People will tell me feels likeI'm holding my breath.
So that's the say, thesympathetic response.
It's like the little boy whogot startled by the loud bang of

(39:12):
the backfire of the truck.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
Yeah Well, let me interlude here, because you,
since you already touched- on alot of things here.
Well you have, but you've likewhen we talked last, you read my
body language.
As you, I do the same thing.
I watch people walk and I'mlike that hip must hurt, or
their back or their knee ortheir neck.
I can spot asymmetries and howpeople move and I can fix that

(39:36):
if you let me.
So when we were talking last,you were reading me and you
asked how my vision was and Ifit the classic.
So I'm 47, about to be 48.
And the last I've never wornglasses before, but probably the
last two or three years I'vehad to start holding things a
little further away from my eyesto be able to read it, and I'm
like my arms.
Only so long.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
Eventually, I'm you know it's sharp plain trombone
with the text that you'relooking at Right.

Speaker 1 (39:59):
And that.
Well, so you, you had me sit,do the same thing.
You just said, hold up a pieceof paper in front of you,
whatever's got text on it.
You had me get it to the edgeof my vision and then you could
kind of you watched me strainwhen I got too close, and then
you took me through thatexercise close your eyes.
And you told me, cut thedistance in half.
And so you took me through thiskind of imagining that some of
the queuing that you did and hadme open my eyes and so it

(40:23):
wasn't in focus but it kind oflike a glitched into focus, like
there would be a half second ora second was I could read it
and I was like, okay, hang on,wait a minute, like how did I do
that yeah?
What if I actually gotconsistent at drawing this?
So that was fascinating to seeit in action, the.
So you took me through likepicturing vacation and just
getting me in that reallysympathetic, relaxed state, and

(40:45):
sure enough that was amazing,but I guess the parasympathetic.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
so you're getting out of sympathetic response the
fight, flight or freeze andyou're moving into
parasympathetic.

Speaker 1 (40:54):
You're at ease or you can go.
That got scared and just fallsover.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:58):
Yeah, cool, that's the same.
That's the thing that youexperienced.
There was the same thing.
That happened to me.
So when I had first read theBates book, I didn't get
anything out of the Bates book.
I realized, okay, there's,doctors figured out how to do it
.
He has chapters about palming.
He has a chapter about palming.
There's all kinds ofinstructions in his book about
how to improve his eyesight.

(41:18):
The version that you can getfrom a bookstore.
Go out and get it from abookstore, don't get it from
Amazon.
Bates' book Better EyesightWithout Glasses.
It's an abridged version.
It's an edited, downed versionof his original book, easier to
read, I imagine.
Yeah, and so his wife.
10 years after he died in 1940,she abridged the book, she

(41:42):
re-edited it and published itwithout all of his science,
without his experiments, withouthis explanation of the standard
medical theory as to hide theeye's work and his refutation of
how there was all theseproblems with the standard
theory he redid.
So in science somebody has atheory, a hypothesis.

(42:05):
They test it out in the realworld.
If I drop an apple, I thinkit's going to hit the floor.
So we're going to go out anddrop a hundred apples and see
what happens.
He found that there was allkinds of problems with the
original theory on how visionworked, that he could not

(42:25):
replicate the results that hadbeen done with candlelight in
the 1800s.
Now he had electric light so heredid the experiments with
electric light.
Part of the experiments thathadn't done in the 1800s were
where they were measuring thelength of a candle flame, the
reflection of a candle flame ina person's eye.

(42:45):
So they were checking to seehow big is the candle flame when
it's reflected off of differentsurfaces on the eyeball.
But if you think about a candleflame, a candle flame is going
to change.
It's the length as it flickersas somebody breathes on it or
something.
The flame changes.
So they were trying to get thesize of this light source

(43:06):
reflected on the surfaces of theeye and that's how the original
theory comes from.
Was developed in Europe andBates redid the experiments he
set up in the lab, took themlike two years.
He took most of his time off ofhis regular practice and just
redid.
The science could not replicatethe experiments and he said

(43:29):
there's all kinds of problemswith the original theory, the
conclusions that came from theresults of these experiments.
There's all kinds of problemswith it, including just the fact
that we're told that once thevision goes bad, it stays bad or
gets worse nothing can be done.
So you know that's part of whatBates had included in his

(43:53):
original book.
His wife took all of that outbecause she said most of the
people that are going to bebuying the book are just lay
people Don't need to hear allthis.
Yeah, they're not going to bescientists, they're not going to
be physicians, it's just peoplewho want to fix their vision on
their own.
And so she just included thechapters that had to do with
Bates' techniques.
You don't want to think of themas exercises.
You're not strengthening theeyes.

(44:15):
You're not doing push-ups tomake the eyes stronger.
What you're really doing isBates' writes in one article
titled Rest.
He says the cure of all errorsof refraction.
So all problems with the vision, the cure of all errors of
refraction, are simply differentways of obtaining rest.

(44:36):
Simple sense.
If you want to cure somethingthat's wrong with the eyes, let
the eyes and the mind rest.
So I ask a kid what's yourfavorite ice cream?
The mind goes wow, I've got akid's mind at rest for sure.
With an adult, as you mentionedwhat I did with you the other
day, I have an adult close theireyes and cover their eyes with

(44:58):
the palms of their hands and Iask him have you ever taken a
nice vacation?
People say, oh yeah, I musthave.
They're just saying in general.
And then I start walking themthrough like, well, what's a
vacation that you took?
Where'd you go?
I say you know.
Some people say you know, I wentto a tropical beach.
I went to Hawaii or theCaribbean.
People who like the beach, Somepeople don't like sand, Some

(45:21):
people don't like water.
Somebody might have gone to abeautiful city or a hike in
nature.
You know, go out into the woods, go to see some beautiful
gardens, go to some museumswhere they see some beautiful
art, just hang out with familywhere they feel welcome and

(45:42):
loved and at ease andcomfortable.
It varies from person to personto person.
What puts them at ease, and sothat's part of why I'm asking a
person when they're palming,what did you bring to mind?
And then I start walking themtowards something that puts them
more at ease and I could watcha person's face relax.
They start smiling, theirshoulders go down as they're

(46:05):
talking, their voice becomesmore relaxed.
As I'm purposely doing it rightnow, I'm not purposely slowing
down my voice, I'm relaxing, andwhen I relax, my cadence
changes.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
Yeah, the way I was thinking about it after we
talked and it was to me it wasalmost like one of my takeaways
was it's kind of like this wayto inventory your internal
emotional landscape.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (46:33):
It's like a check engine light and you realize, oh
shoot, Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
Yeah, it's like your cue to step back and go hang on.
What is making me anxious, orwhat would it mean to your point
?
Are you holding your breath, oryour shoulder's tense, or you
have a pit in your stomach?
And I just kind of realized,shoot, there's so many different
ways that anxiety whether it'syour gut health or your joint
pain or insomnia, like emotionand anxiousness, drops us of

(46:58):
physiological function and sureenough, it has major influence
on the eye.
But to hear you say that it'sreally not as much about
strengthening the eye, it'sabout learning to relax and let
go of anxiousness, and it's likebetter health and just better
function, fills the vacuum ofthat realization.
That was kind of my big likewow, okay, then there's
something very actionable for mein that.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
And it's if you think about the way people will think
of this is like there'ssomething that's causing me
anxiety and I have to learn howto be at ease with it.
That's not Bates' originalexercise, it's not his treatment
Instead of trying to relaxwhile they're looking at the
letters, so the letters arecausing distress because they're

(47:46):
blurred.
And he says a person who'snoticing that letters are
blurred is unconsciously tryingto fix them.
They're looking fixedly, theydon't look away.
So it's like if you're lookingat a monster, I'll tell kids,
you know, we're going to changethese little monsters into your
little friends so that you'recomfortable with them.

(48:06):
The initial thing is to havethe person close their eyes, not
even look at letters, and thenhave the mind go to something
pleasant and enjoyable so thatthe mind is not even thinking
about letters the mind.
So this would be like ifsomebody is anxious about a pain
in their back, you have themclose and cover their eyes.

(48:26):
A person can palm and you askthem when you were younger, what
were things that you liked todo?
Okay, what was a fun thing thatyou used to do with your
friends, your family, that youused to do on your own?
Did you like spending time byyourself.
You know you check with theperson you have them move their
mind over to something pleasantand enjoyable, and when the mind

(48:48):
moves, its attention is not onthe distressful thing anymore.
So one of the ways to thinkabout it is our attention is
like a flashlight in a cave.
Okay, yeah, completely darkcave.
And wherever you point theflashlight, that's what's
illuminated, that's what ourattention is.

(49:08):
Right now.
You're listening to my voicehere on Christian's podcast, and
instead you could listen to theambient sounds of the room that
you're in.
Do you hear other people in thehouse?
Do you have any dogs or catsthat are making noise?
Is your air conditioning on?
Can you hear traffic outside?

(49:31):
So your mind starts beingattentive to these other things.
So it goes away from okay, I'mlistening to Carlos, but there's
these other things that aregoing on.
Another way to do this is withyour sense of touch, your
kinesthetic sense.
Are you sitting down whileyou're listening to the podcast
right now?
Are you sitting in your car?

(49:52):
Are you sitting at home?
Are you taking a walk andlistening to this on your
headphones?
What do you physically feel Ifyou're sitting down?
What parts of your body aretouching the chair?
Are your feet?
Are both feet on the ground?
Okay, so you're smiling becauseyou're.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
No, I'm jammed because I'm like what?
Yes, stop it.
I'm trying to pay attention,carlos.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
So your attention starts going to these other
things Instead of.
I have problems with my visionwhen I'm looking at these
letters.
They're blurred.
It's just moving the mind overto something that you could do
really easily.
This is the flashlight of yourattention that you could think
of it.
So the flashlight is movingaway from.
Oh, when I take off my glassesor my contact lenses, letters

(50:40):
are blurred.
We're moving the flashlightover to have you ever had some
good pie?
Have you ever had a good meal?
Have you ever done exercise andyou felt really good afterwards
?
Have you ever woken up in themorning that had a really,
really good sleep and you feelinvigorated, like, okay, let's
get out there and live life.

(51:01):
So it moves the mind over awayfrom the distressful thing to
something pleasant and enjoyableand that has that's a huge
effect.
Many times when I was in highschool and in psychology classes
, professors would have youclose your eyes.
Teachers would have you closeyour eyes and they'd say I want

(51:21):
you to think of some warm breadfresh out of the oven.
You could smell the bread.
You could imagine puttingbutter on the bread.
They'd walk you through thisimaginary scene of this and then
they'd ask you is your mouthwatering.
So you're in a classroom,there's no bread around, there's
no scent of bread.
The mind bringing again thisflashlight of our attention over

(51:45):
to this remembered experienceof something pleasant to eat
gets our mouth watering.
So our body responds to whatwe're thinking about.
This is an important part ofthe Bates techniques.
Our body responds to what wehave in mind.
When we are in a state ofmental distress, what Bates

(52:06):
calls mental strain, our body isresponding as if we're in
danger anxiety, nervousness.
If we're seeing blurred letters, oh, something's wrong.
If we close and cover our eyesand move our attention over to
something that's pleasant andenjoyable, our body relaxes.
Oh, I've done pleasant andenjoyable things in my life.

(52:30):
The body relaxes.
And then?
So if a person does this, if aperson poems after they've
looked at their magazine ortheir book, as we've touched on
today set your timer on yourphone, set an egg timer,
whatever kind of timer you have,and palm for five to 10 minutes
.
The longer you palm the better.
So you're just letting youreyes and your mind rest After

(52:54):
you palm.
If you open and then cover youreyes and hold the sheet again
the book, the magazine at thesame distance, check to see if
things look any different.
You mentioned, christian, thatwhen you did that it was like
this glitch, like oh, sometimesit was better, sometimes it was
like coming and going.
Many people experience like, oh, I could see some stuff that I

(53:16):
couldn't see before.
Or things look a lot better.
The letters look blacker,there's more contrast, colors
look better.
People will notice that there'sa big difference.
They ask them how do you feelnow with your eyes open?
And they're more at ease?
And then they'll start to looknotice, and then they'll say

(53:39):
like, oh, the letters aregetting blurred again because
the unconscious habit is toapply effort.
They start staring again,they're looking at the letters
and they're trying to like Idon't want to lose this I don't
want to lose this.
And that's a state of anxietybecause, like I'm going to lose
this good thing that I found islike squeezing a wet bar of soap

(53:59):
and you know it shoots out ofyour hand Instead of just
letting it sit in your hand.
If you're on vacation, you justrelax.
You know.
You're just like okay, I'll goeat when I want to.

Speaker 1 (54:10):
Well, I think of it in terms like if you're with
friends, family, if you are anynumber of things you do,
creativity doesn't flow whenyou're in a fearful, anxious S.
You have to relax and let yourmind wander and dig up other
things that are interesting andjust let the creative juices
flow.
It's the.
You know, trying to force it bysheer will makes it worse and

(54:33):
as a trainer, I'm mixed on yourreviews that I can't exercise my
eyes and the better health.
I have to learn to let themrelax and do their thing.
But it makes so much sense thatwhen you do that, you're
pushing anxiety, You're sayingfear, you don't get to rule me
right now, yeah, and moment bymoment, the reminder that we
have the ability to internallyregulate that.

(54:54):
So give us some, I guess, closethe loop on your personal story
of how did you end up trainingyour eyes or what's the?
So we started with contacts.

Speaker 2 (55:04):
I read that book, the Bates book, and so I thought,
okay, there's this Bates bookand I don't get it.
You know, I didn't know how toapply anything from Bates book,
even though he gives specificinstructions on how to do palm
human, many other techniques.
There's many, many Batestechniques.
But a few months later, two,three months later, I found a
teacher like me.

(55:25):
You know, back in the 90s, Ifound somebody who taught Bates
techniques.
The initial class was this kindof public thing.
I think you paid, you know, 25to 45 bucks or something for a
three hour class.
I'm going to try this, okay,went to the class they had us do
interesting stuff.
I didn't notice anything, anybig changes in my vision.

(55:48):
In that three hour classthere's a big group of people.
But I thought I'm going tofollow up on this and I'm going
to take a second class inprivate.
And in my second class we weredoing some shifting.
Shifting is moving yourattention, directing where your
eyes are looking by moving yourhead.
Okay, so most people willrecognize that if they're
looking at their computer screenor reading an email, or reading

(56:11):
their actual mail or reading abook, that they don't move their
head and you don't move yourhead.
Those are the wrong mechanics.
Okay, you want to move yourhead, you want to include these
big neck muscles to direct whereyour eyes are looking.
So, even if you're reading,I'll demonstrate here on camera
for Christian.
Look at some small little texts, people.

(56:36):
So I'm looking at some smalllittle text on the sheet in here
in my hand, and if I don't movemy head, I'm trying to face the
camera here.
So, christian, if I just movemy eyes, notice what that looks
like and I didn't even startholding my breath as I do that
If I just move my eyes, ifinstead I move my head as I read

(56:57):
, how do I look?
What's the difference that yousee, christian, when I move my
head as I'm reading, compared tojust moving my eyes, what do
you see?

Speaker 1 (57:09):
I guess it.
Maybe I'm being too ethereal,but it sounds like there looks
like there's more joy on yourface.
When I do which, when you moveyour head, when you're like yeah
, yeah, you see, I don't relax,I guess is the word you'd put to
it.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
Yeah, it's just more at ease.
So if and we even have a phrasein English, you know says
somebody's shifty eyed, when wesay somebody's shifty eyed, it's
not a compliment, right, it'snot a compliment.
A person's holding their headstill and they're just moving
their eyes.
They're trying to look aroundand see as much as they can
without moving.
So it's kind of like being arabbit that has a hawk in a tree

(57:45):
watching it.

Speaker 1 (57:46):
The rabbit wants to be very very still Wants to know
what's going on.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
It's one, okay, so shifty eyed.
What happens?
The reason why we say that isbecause something's going on in
that mind that's not allcopacetic, okay.
That person is not wanting usto see what they're really
interested in and they'reholding very still so if we
could see something wrong?
Some distress, some anxiety,some nervousness is going on in

(58:14):
the mind of somebody who'sshifty eyed.
They're only moving their eyes,not moving their head, whereas
if you move the head, you don'tcare who sees where you're
looking.
You're happy to move, you're atease, you're comfortable with
being seen.
There's no predator to watch me, I'm okay.
The teacher's not going to yellat me.

(58:36):
The, you know, my boss isn'tgoing to yell at me.
I'm at ease doing what I'mdoing, my work, my school work,
being with my family.
And this is one of the reasonswhy, you know, in general people
can bring to mind somethingpleasant.
You know they might think aboutbeing with their family or
being at home, because they'remore comfortable there, where

(58:57):
they feel they could move.
They're at ease so that whetherthey move or they don't move,
they're comfortable.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
Yeah, they're not being judged by the cruel world
outside.

Speaker 2 (59:08):
They're being judged.
Yeah well, we're being judged.
We're in a state of tension.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
So finish your story then.
So how did you know?
Yeah, yes, sorry.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
Get distracted there.
So I found this teacher in thesecond class.
I was doing the shifting,moving my head to direct where
my eyes were looking at someletters out in front of me, and
I had the experience, like youdid, of like oh, these are clear
, oh, they're gone.
Oh, they're clear.
Oh they're gone.
Yeah, something's going on.
Yeah, you know what am I doing.

(59:38):
And it was the shifting.
It was moving my body while Iwas looking instead of staring
and holding still and going intothat tight, tense state.
So, as my vision would clear up, I had two thoughts.
I thought holy smoke, or wordssimilar to that, this works.

(01:00:01):
The second thing I thought wasSomething along the lines of I
have to learn how to do this toteach other people, because I
was very aware that most peopledidn't know about the Bates
techniques, that it existed,that you could improve your
eyesight.
At some point later, after I hadtaken some classes, or maybe it

(01:00:23):
was after I had read the book.
Initially, when I was gettingfitted for my regular
prescription for my contactlenses, I asked my optometrist
if he had heard of Bates.
He said yes.
I said what do you think of him?
He said he's a quack.
However, my optometrist waswearing glasses, okay, so I knew

(01:00:48):
his vision wasn't normal.
He had imperfect eyesight.
Bates ends up writing about this.
He has a chapter in his booktitled Reason and Authority, and
how he had been in medicalschool and he had been taught
these things by the authority ofwho the professors were in

(01:01:08):
medical school, these physiciansthat had been teaching and
working as physicians for manyyears.
They were just keeping thecompany line, so to speak, like
this is what works, this is whatdoesn't.
What we say is final.
What's the name of the guy whodid the hand washing?
You were telling me about him,not Semmelweiss?

(01:01:30):
Yeah, semmelweiss.
So the doctor who realized thatwhen people wash their hands,
less mothers died in thedelivery of their babies?
Yeah, this is because doctorswere coming into help the
laboring mothers right afterworking on cadavers, right, and

(01:01:53):
so they were coming in with whoknows what kind of diseases on
their hands and they wereworking with mothers and their
newborn babies and that thedeath rate of mothers who
delivered their babies whiledoctors were working on them was
hugely huge compared to thegroup of mothers who delivered

(01:02:18):
their babies where it wasn't adoctor, it was just with nurses
or midwives.

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
Yeah, I think an infant's went from 30% to 1%.
Yeah, it was ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
A big, huge, huge, and they started watching their
hands.
Yeah, and how difficult it wasfor him to convince other
physicians that this is what wasgoing on.
He ended up dying in the loonybin, yeah, yeah.
I read recently, in the lastyear, that he might have died
from some of the staphococcalinfection.

(01:02:49):
That was part he ended up dyingfrom what he had been trying to
prevent.
Yeah, and it was actually fromwhen he got forced in the loony
bin.
He got forced to go into themental asylum and they beat him
up so they caused him injuriesand they think that that's from
him getting infections iseventually what killed him.

(01:03:10):
But anyways, the whole ideawith some of us is this idea
that a new idea could come up inscience and medicine and that
it gets squashed, repressed,because people not only have a
vested interest but because, ashumans, we're proud.
I studied as a physician for 30years.
Everything I know is all thereis to know about health.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
Therefore bait is a quack.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
Yeah and bait.
So there's this one articlewhere this one other eye surgeon
was asked by his patient If shehad gone to Dr Bates.
She had seen some improvementand she wanted to continue the
improvement by the Bates method.

(01:03:58):
And she asked this other eyesurgeon are you familiar with
the Bates method?
Can you help me with this?
First thing, the doctor says no, I'm not familiar with that,
and whoever is teaching you thisshould be in jail.
That was his off the cuff, thatwas his humble moment.
Yes, he had been practicing for18 years as an eye surgeon, as

(01:04:20):
an ophthalmologist.
But at some point he gotcurious and he thought, well, he
knew that there was a book.
He wouldn't got to copy thebook.
He read the book and he thought, okay, this guy makes some good
arguments in here.
This guy's not a quack fromwhat he's writing about.
By the way.
Bates is an incrediblescientist.
He's the guy who discoveredadrenaline at the secretion of

(01:04:42):
the super renal gland.
He did all kinds of sciencestuff.
So this particular doctor atsome point ends up going to see
Dr Bates, like to investigatewhat this other doctor is doing.
They're both in New York Cityand at some point, dr Bates.
So Bates is demonstrating,showing this guy how he works

(01:05:04):
with patients and everything.
The guy's seeing that Bates ishelping people improve their
eyesight, right in front of hiseyes, so to speak.
And then Bates asks him how'syour eyesight?
And the guy says that hestarted having to use reading
glasses and stuff.
And Bates treats him, he hashim do some Bates techniques and

(01:05:24):
the guy has along the lines ofthe experience that you had and
I had when I first started doingBates techniques, that, oh, my
vision's better.
How did that happen?
Yeah, he starts improving hiseyesight.
He ends up improving hiseyesight so he doesn't need
reading glasses anymore.
His vision improves.
He writes this article iswritten in his 20th year of
being a physician, and he saysso two years after he had

(01:05:46):
initially heard about Bates.
And he writes that now, for thelast two years, instead of
putting glasses on people, he'strying to mend his ways and
instead help people take theirglasses off and regain their
normal sight by using the Batestechniques.
So a physician who initiallywas.

Speaker 1 (01:06:09):
They don't wake up one day with eyes that won't
open and blood pressure yeah,yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
Absolutely they won't have.
Yeah, but this doctor realizesso he's.
For 18 years he's been puttingglasses on people doing surgery.
Now, for two years after he'sworked with Bates, he says he's
mending his ways and helpingpeople get rid of their glasses
and improve their eyesight bythe Bates techniques.
So physicians who went to gosee Dr Bates and who had

(01:06:37):
problems with their own visionand who got to see Bates work
with patients and who hadimprovement in their own
eyesight had a very, verydifferent experience.
I think how did you say thatthe other day that once your
body knows, once you've had theexperience, nobody can tell you
that it didn't.
You can't unring that bell.
You can't unring the bell.
That's the way you said it theother day.

(01:06:59):
So this happened withphysicians, and there's multiple
physicians that write articlesfor Dr Bates's magazine with
that experience.
Yeah, it just takes ifanybody's listening to this.

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
It just takes a little bit of humility on your
part once in a while toentertain some other plausible
theory about whatever it is.
It just try to do your best toset your ego aside and evaluate
something on the merits and seewhat logical ways they hold it
together.
And it sounds like enoughpeople did that that that
generationally eventually foundyou and now you're helping so

(01:07:33):
many other people.

Speaker 2 (01:07:34):
So I was very fortunate in that.
So Dr Bates he had an assistant, emily Learman, who had been a
patient and she was so good athelping people relax.
She ends up becoming hisassistant and for over 15 years
works with him in New York City.
At some point she came out toCalifornia and had an office.
In the Better Eye Sightmagazine.

(01:07:56):
They document this.
They write how Emily Learman isin Los Angeles and she's at
this office in downtown LAteaching people how to improve
their eyesight.
So she's out here on the WestCoast because there's been a
request for her to come out andteach on the West Coast or for
somebody to come out and teachpeople the Bates techniques.
So she's out here for a periodof time.
One of the people that sheteaches and that ends up going

(01:08:20):
back to New York City andlearning directly from Dr Bates
also was, I think, margaretCorbett, and so Margaret Corbett
ends up being the person whobecomes the de facto Bates
expert here in California.
She ends up teaching somebodywho ended up teaching my mentor.
So it was a direct line ofpeople learning directly from
Bates.
So I learned from somebody whoreally knew Bates techniques

(01:08:45):
really, really well and I wasvery fortunate in that there's
some Bates teachers now whodon't like using some Bates
techniques because they'rescared of them.
Yeah, so there's a lot ofdifferent things with sunlight
and just having your eyes closedand facing the sun, and the

(01:09:07):
eyeglass and sunglass industryhas really made us frightened of
the sun that we have to havewhere sunglasses when we're
outdoors, right, because of theUVA and B, the different rays
that come from the sun, thatthey're going to cause damage
and we're told that that'sactually what causes cataracts.

(01:09:27):
I'm here to tell you from Batestechniques that's not what
causes cataracts, right, I'mright there with you More I
study the sunlight.

Speaker 1 (01:09:34):
It's just our friend on every other place, it's so so
important.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
for thousands and thousands of years, human beings
have been outdoors in sunlight.
Yeah it's healing, it's notjust lighting.
It does so many positive things, so many things.
You know people will go out andfeel like you know, they relax
in the sun when we're exposed tonature, to exposed to green.
There's all these studies thatare done with city kids when

(01:10:00):
they're taken out into a parkand how their blood pressure
goes down, their anxiety levelsgo down.
You know, when we're out innature.
All these things that are goodfor a human body.

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
So tell us what your vision is like today.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
So I stopped using glasses completely about three
months into my visionimprovement.
My vision was normal, but Iknew that wearing glasses was
not helping me improve myeyesight.
Bates actually has a chapter inhis book titled what Glasses Do
To Us and the Problems WithWearing Glasses.
You don't put on glasses, wearthem for a week and then take

(01:10:41):
them off and say, oh okay, myvision's cleared up.
They don't fix the problem.
They allow you to function withthe disability and they
actually make the disabilityworse.
I took off my glasses threemonths after and that was.
I probably wore them two times,like two occasions.
I put them on, had to seesomething, took them off After
that.

(01:11:02):
This is over.
This is back in the 1990s wasjust improving my eyesight line
by line on an eye chart,practicing improving my eyesight
, and then at some point I movedhere to the Los Angeles area
and then was working directlyout of the doctor's office when

(01:11:23):
I work, and we have an eye chartat the end of a hallway, you
know, in the doctor's officewhere the nurses, you know, and
staff can test people's eyesightwhen they come in.
And when I moved down here 10years ago I realized that I
could read the 10 foot line at20 feet, which meant that my
eyesight was twice as good asnormal.
I don't know when my eyesightwent to 2020, which is thought

(01:11:48):
of as normal eyesight, but itwent to that and passed that my
eyesight.
I used to practice a lot withsmaller texts close up when I
was improving my eyesight withmy mentor.
Not only did I have the myopia,I couldn't see well in the
distance, I had a stigmatism,but I discovered I was still

(01:12:10):
pretty young and it wassomething off with my vision for
close-up.
I wasn't at the place where Iwould have even thought to wear
reading glasses.
I was still pretty young then,but my vision was not normal for
close-up and it was easy for meto improve my eyesight close up
practicing the Bates techniques.
So I got to the point where Icould read microfilm with.

(01:12:33):
Yeah, it was really funny.
I had a client at one point whohad worked at an auto parts
store after computers came intouse and before computers.
You would look up auto partsfor a particular car, you know
your Ford from 1970 or something.
You'd pull up the microfish andthe film and you'd look on the

(01:12:57):
screen and there was thismicroprint that you would look
at.
So he had a bunch of thesefilms, a bunch of these slides
in microfilm and he brought oneover and he said, how small of
stuff can you read?
And I looked and and I hadalready been reading really,
really small stuff and I wassurprised that, you know, the
light wasn't that great in theroom that we were in at the time

(01:13:17):
and I thought, oh, I could makeout the numbers and letter
sequences on these part numbers,looking at the film just held
in my hand.
At that time I used to practicea lot more and I was very, you
know, I was really gun hoe aboutimproving my vision for
close-up and the distance.
It took longer for me toimprove my vision for the

(01:13:38):
distance because that was whereI had the bigger problem.
When I started without glassesI could not read the big letter
E on an eye chart at 20 feetwithout my glasses I had.
I remember getting a physicalexam when I was in my 20s and
the nurse asking me to take offmy glasses, look down at the

(01:13:59):
hallway at an eye chart up on adoor, and I couldn't read the
big letter that was on there.
I wasn't sure what it was.

Speaker 1 (01:14:06):
And then later you could read the bottom line from
the same distance.

Speaker 2 (01:14:09):
So yeah.
So the bottom line typically onan eye chart that you'll see in
a doctor's office is the 10thfoot line.
So yeah, so I went from thebiggest letters on there down to
the smallest letters.
That fluctuates.
My vision is not always twiceas good as normal because I,
like every other human being,can get stressed, Live on a

(01:14:31):
stressful work.
You know, but that's normal.
You know, there's lions in theworld, so to speak.
There's things that spook us.
There's news headlines thatthere's so many things that can
cause us tension.
You know our relationships withour families, our relationships
with the people that we workwith, are physical.
You know Bates writesexplicitly how if we're sick, if

(01:14:54):
we're tired, if we're hungry,if we haven't gotten enough
sleep, our vision will be off.
But it doesn't mean thatthere's something wrong with
your eyes.
If you get the rest you need,if you put yourself at ease,
your vision comes back.

Speaker 1 (01:15:08):
And, I imagine, get some training and some
techniques that help you.

Speaker 2 (01:15:11):
You know I give off the free intro class.
You mentioned it in theintroduction today.
I give a free introductoryclass at the beginning of every
month.
People can find it on mywebsite.
I'm sure you'll put that up onyour details of
thecenteredvisioncom.
People can go on there and seewhat I'm giving classes and I
give a free introductory classevery month.
I tell people if you want totake free classes with me, you

(01:15:31):
could do that every month.
You could join in on the freeclass at the beginning every
month, every month.
It doesn't matter what yourbudget is.
If you have a computer, you canwatch me Zoom and you could
have a free class and you justpractice the stuff that I show
you how to do it.
If you do it over and over andover you'll get better at it and
as you get better you'relearning how to put yourself at

(01:15:53):
ease.

Speaker 1 (01:15:54):
Well, let me ask you some tactical questions.
I'm trying to put myself in theshoes of a listener and maybe
imagine some questions theymight have.
So I want to talk expectationmanagement in a second.
But let's get some simplethings.
Have you ever seen somebodywith a wandering eye be able to
fix or?

Speaker 2 (01:16:11):
call it.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's atypical thing that I help people
with strabismus, where peoplehave cross-ties.
On my website, on thetestimonial page, there's
photographs of a little girlthat I've worked with when she
was three years old.
One of her eyes is turned in alot towards her nose and within
two or three sessions her eyesstraightened out and her mom

(01:16:31):
ended up writing a testimonialand her vision has improved
dramatically.

Speaker 1 (01:16:36):
Okay, what about diabetic retinopathy or floaters
or something like that?

Speaker 2 (01:16:41):
Yeah, so floaters.
Many people can experiencefloaters, even somebody with
normal eyesight.
If they look at a blank wallafter being out in the sunshine
or something, or if they'restraining, if they're in some
kind of mental distress or ifthey're trying to see something,
if they look at a blank wallthey might see things kind of
floating around.
Bates has a chapter in his bookabout that.

(01:17:03):
The general kind of floatersare very easy to treat with
Bates techniques and if you goto an ophthalmologist, some
particular kind of floater, somekind of blacked out areas,
areas in your visual field whereyou can't see, might be
indicative of other kinds ofissues, but those issues also

(01:17:26):
can be treated very successfullywith Bates techniques.
So it ends up treating peoplefor cataract, glaucoma, macular
degeneration, detached retinaall of which I've helped people
with.

Speaker 1 (01:17:38):
What about colorblindness?
Have you ever seen that improve?

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
Yeah, so when I was first working with my mentor,
we'd practice outside in herbackyard and after doing some
Bates techniques I'd open myeyes and it seemed like the
world had been turned on intotechnicolor.
The colors all seemed much morevibrant and everything.

(01:18:08):
And I have worked with a coupleof people not a lot, it's been
under 10 people who have come tome who had other issues and
happened to have colorblindnessalso and that that improved so
that they started distinguishingthe reds and the greens and
that kind of thing.
Yeah, so that that that can betouched on too.

(01:18:30):
There's.
You know, people come to meusually from myopia, for they
can't see in the distance.
They've been wearing glassesand contact lenses since they
were teenagers or something injunior high.
Or when they're into the 40sand 50s, like you were
mentioning, that you know, youstart noticing that you're
having a whole paperwork furtherand further away from your face
, or indeed, when people havestarted using reading glasses

(01:18:52):
and they don't like them.
It mostly come to me for that.
Okay, but I can help peoplewith a lot more than that.
You know the stigmatism, thestrabismus there's.
Call, you know, send me anemail or call me if you have an
issue and we could probably workwith it.
At the very least, You're goingto learn to put yourself at

(01:19:13):
ease, and when you do learn todirect your mind and your body
to be at ease, then you startnoticing oh, my vision is better
.

Speaker 1 (01:19:22):
Well, you probably get rid of gut inflammation and
headaches and joint pain and allkinds of stuff.
Yeah, they come to you for onething and you introduce this
whole host of other benefitsthat was just the waypoint into
distressing them.

Speaker 2 (01:19:33):
You know getting people moving.
You mentioned about all thethings that cause us anxiety,
all the emotional things thatyou help people with too.
Yeah, the Bates techniques arereally really good for applying
to that, and when you're puttingyourself at ease, you have
these ancillary benefits thatyour vision actually gets better

(01:19:55):
.

Speaker 1 (01:19:56):
Yeah, Okay, so tell us your thoughts on you know,
glasses that are sold to reduceeye strain or block out blue
light.
What are your thoughts on those?

Speaker 2 (01:20:03):
Yeah, so I don't know if I put it on the resources
page of my website.
I have to get it on there.
Even just within a regularmedicine, there's been some
studies done out of theUniversity of Texas that where
they show that it doesn't help.
So the original studies orthings like blue blockers had to

(01:20:26):
do with people who were up lateat night and who couldn't go to
sleep after looking at theirphone or their laptop, watching
Netflix at 11 o'clock at nightThey'd close up their laptop or
their phone and they couldn't goto sleep.
And they discovered that if thepeople wore so there was a blue
, some of the spectrum of light,the blue light in white light

(01:20:51):
coming from their computer isactually keeping the person up
because the person's body isinterpreting the white light as
if the sun is still up, so it'smissing what the person's
circadian rhythms.
So if you put on the blueblockers it blocks out that blue
spectrum of the light, yourbody doesn't think it's daylight
and when it's actually 11o'clock at night, so your body's

(01:21:12):
able to go into its system ofshutting down for the day so
that you get sleepy and you goto sleep.
So that for that function blueblockers did work.
Okay.
But then, as salespeople willdo, they want to sell more blue
blockers and they startexpanding this idea of that it

(01:21:39):
helps with the blue light.
When you're watching yourlaptop late at night, they start
saying, oh, it's because of thelaptop, there's something wrong
with that light, so you shoulduse them through the day, which
that doesn't make any sense.
You don't want your body to beshutting down from daylight
during the daytime and thatthere's no benefit to that for

(01:22:02):
your vision.
So this is what comes out ofthat study from University of
Texas and actually they've foundsome big problems with increase
in depression, increase ofsuicidal thinking, if you use
the blue blockers.
So there's a lot of problemswith this.
We all have the internet.

Speaker 1 (01:22:23):
When you don't.
When you say blue blockers,you're not just picturing the
orange colored lenses, it'sanything that's not.
It's anything.

Speaker 2 (01:22:30):
Yeah, it's any kind of lens that's blocking out the
normal spectrum of light, whichalso includes sunglasses.

Speaker 1 (01:22:37):
Yeah, which is hard.

Speaker 2 (01:22:39):
What do you?

Speaker 1 (01:22:40):
for me personally, so I am super sensitive to bright
light Like I can barely yeaheyes open.

Speaker 2 (01:22:48):
So you just squinted there demonstrating, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:22:51):
Appreciate my pain, Carlos.

Speaker 2 (01:22:52):
Yes, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:22:54):
So help me, help me know, okay, well, where is
that's so.

Speaker 2 (01:22:58):
so light sensitivity, photophobia Well, I'm that's.

Speaker 1 (01:23:03):
I like the sun, but it's yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:23:05):
So light sensitivity is easier, right yeah.
We think of phobia as like it'sa.
It's a fault of character.
Whenever we have phobia, it'sjust think of it as light
sensitivity.
When I'm out in normal sunlightwithout my sunglasses, I'm
squinting and I'm strugglingwith the sunlight.
That's also, that's a symptomof imperfect eyesight, and so I
that's a common thing that Itouch on with people on how to

(01:23:27):
get comfortable again withnormal sunlight.
So then you're out in normalsunlight and you're not
squinting, your vision is betterand you feel really, really
comfortable.
I could walk.
I'd be happy to walk youthrough doing that, okay.
So after we get off after we getoff here today or another time
actually, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:23:46):
Well, I'm thinking, even like sun reflecting off the
snow or the ocean or white sand.
Is that your?
You're still talking, we can.

Speaker 2 (01:23:53):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:23:54):
That's feasible, well then, it's it's.

Speaker 2 (01:23:56):
Bates writes about how it was very common, for you
know, the guy who's up in thecrow's nest on a ship had really
really good eyesight, you know,back when ships were the
primary mode of moving around inthe world.
Okay, and how they were.
They weren't wearing sunglassesand they were out looking at
sunlight reflected off of thisocean all day long.

(01:24:18):
But they could have, you know,they would have the best
eyesight.
Bates writes about what theycall primitive peoples weren't
in a Western culture, hadtypically the best eyesight in
the world because they wereoutdoors and they were used to
looking at things really reallyfar away.
They were doing you know, theywere at ease, they didn't have

(01:24:38):
the stressors of modern day life.

Speaker 1 (01:24:40):
Yeah, Wow, like some of these, I think we're, as
Westerners are the people whoare a little more regressed than
some of the people that camebefore us.
But okay, so let's talkexpectation management.
So if somebody's here in youand they're getting some hope
and they're thinking, shoot this, there may be something here,
help them, I guess.
Cultivate a healthy mindset forthe process of healing, because

(01:25:01):
yet people's vision doesn't getbetter because they paid you
for a few sessions.
There's work to do, so you givethem.
That's an important thing.

Speaker 2 (01:25:09):
Yeah.
So in general I tell people youknow, depending on how long
you've worn lenses, contacts orglasses, or even if you've had a
surgery different kinds ofsurgery for cataracts or
glaucoma or a lasik and you haveproblems after those surgeries
I've helped many people withthose issues too it depends on
how, how strong yourprescription is, how long you've

(01:25:31):
been using glasses.
That can affect how long ittakes.
Okay, but it's not going to bethat like if you wore glasses
for 20 years, it's going to takeyou 20 years to fix your vision
.
So, I wore glasses and contactlenses for 22 years and within
three months, was not using anyglasses.
My vision wasn't normal, but Iwas comfortable going through my

(01:25:52):
day without my glassesFunctional and it just improved
from there.
With many people it's a matterof weaning them off of their
their current prescription.
But if you practice, I alwaystell people you know, the
teenager who has access to a carevery day when they're learning
how to drive is going to learnmore quickly how to drive.

(01:26:13):
And the teenager who onlydrives for an hour on the
weekends.
So the more you practice, thebetter you'll get at whatever
you do.
Okay, looking on your nutrition, and so this does take practice
.
You got to sit with letters,but what you're seeing and doing
with letters and looking atthem, whether close up or far

(01:26:34):
away, is you're learning torelax when you're doing that.
So I tell people you're, you'repracticing, relaxing.
You're going on a littlevacation every time we practice,
yeah, which that's what you'relearning to do.
That's tough for people whenthey're into their 40s and 50s
who have the family life, theirwork, their career, all the
things that we're juggling asadults.

(01:26:54):
And so, as an adult, you get tochoose.
You know I'm going to.
Am I going to exercise becauseit's better for my health, you
know?
Am I going to get out and eatgood, better food, or am I going
to be in a rush and just eat myCheetos and Coke at lunch to
get by, so that have some kindof snack and then work through

(01:27:16):
the afternoon.
At some point you want to changethings little by little, so
managing expectations is thething of this is going to take
time.
It's not like putting onglasses.
All of a sudden your vision isclear.
Very few people that I'veworked with.
I work with them one sessionand the vision goes to normal
and it stays at normal.
That has happened, but that'srare.
Bates writes about how rarethat is.

(01:27:37):
Don't expect that to happen,but if you come to classes
regularly, you're going to learnwhat to do, what not to do, and
you're going to feel morecomfortable.
You're going to, as you noted,you start catching yourself.
You don't need me to bewatching you all day to notice.
Am I holding my breath?
Your visual acuity is actuallya sign of whether there's

(01:28:01):
tension inside or not.
If your vision is not normal,your body is telling you you
have tension, you have somestrain going on, something's off
.
When your vision is off, yourbody is telling you that
something's wrong.
So your body is telling you allday long, if you care to pay
attention to it, what your stateis, and so it's practicing that

(01:28:25):
over and over and over.
So usually Bates does a generalguideline.
He says whether it takes threemonths, six months, a year,
usually within a year a personis going to see substantial
improvement.
When I work with people, I'mtypically working on an eight
pack of eight one hour classesover eight weeks.
They'll see substantialimprovement during that time.

(01:28:47):
And then I tell them I'vetaught you how to fish, I've
taught you how to catch fish.
We've gone fishing.
Going fishing is practicing.
Catching fish is you noticeyou're relaxed and your vision
gets better.
So now you go fishing on yourown, without me.
This next week you practice onyour own.
You go fishing.

(01:29:07):
When we get together next weekyou tell me if you caught fish.
If you didn't catch fish, wehave to make some adjustments
and we go from there.
But at some point you're goingto start catching fish.
You're going to have like theexperience that you had of like
oh, it's like what did you say?
Glitches into these glitches ofyeah, where your vision gets
better and it gets worse, andgets better and gets worse.

(01:29:29):
So that's when a person'srelaxing and then they're not
relaxing.
That's what's happening there.
And so as a person learns to gofishing and starts catching
fish, then I tell people I wantyou to at one point say, carlos,
I don't have to take classeswith you anymore, I don't have
to catch fish, thank you, andthat's it's doable.

Speaker 1 (01:29:51):
But you got to go fishing.
Yeah, when the person youbecome in the process, I imagine
it's a better version ofyourself.

Speaker 2 (01:29:58):
Because you're more at ease.
So when you get, healthier.

Speaker 1 (01:30:01):
Same thing with all your other health habits, right?

Speaker 2 (01:30:03):
Everything.
Yeah, you show up for the world.
I heard Gabby Reese in the lastweek.
The professional she was adivision one athlete and
professional volleyball playerback in the 90s.
She's a big health coach nowwith her husband, laird Hamilton
, a famous giant wave writerfrom Hawaii.

(01:30:25):
She said performance.
She was talking aboutperformance.
And she says performance is notjust athletic performance or
mental performance or workperformance.
She says it's showing up inlife and being the best human
being that you can be foryourself or your family, for the
people that you touch in yourlife.
You know we may not be somebodywho millions and millions of

(01:30:49):
people are listening to, as youknow how we're influencing
people, but are we doing wellfor ourselves?
Are we improving our own health?
Are we taking a step in theright direction just from day to
day?
So there's going to be dayswhen we don't eat everything
that we should, when we don'tget enough sleep, when we don't
get enough rest, when we snap atour kids or our spouse, and we

(01:31:13):
learn from that.
You know it's like OK, let metry to do a little bit better
the next time.
And that's what you're learningto do with everything that you
do in life Show up and be abetter human being for yourself
and for those around you.

Speaker 1 (01:31:27):
Yeah, I just call that the gift of giving people
your presence, and there's akindness to the way that you
described it.
There's grace that fills andhelps cover some of the less
than your best moments, and itdoesn't have to be this reason
to beat yourself up.
It's a reason to go.
You know what I can do better.

Speaker 2 (01:31:44):
Yeah, and we all want to do better for you know,
especially for our families andfor the people that we love and
who love us Right, there's goingto be times when we're short
fused, when we're hungry, whenwe're tired, when we've been
sick and we're like why did youbring me this soup?
I wanted chicken soup, andchicken soup is what makes me
feel better when I'm sick.

(01:32:05):
The person brought us the bestsoup that they thought was.
You know, this is the soup thatI was taught to bring to
somebody when they're ill.
It's like, oh, you want achicken soup.
I could do that for you.
It's just communicating and, youknow, showing them better for
ourselves, being kind andforgiving.
What ourselves teaches us to bekind and forgiving with other

(01:32:26):
people too, and then be, andthen learning to be, like you
said, showing up as yourauthentic self.
You know, be the special,unique gift that you are for the
world.
The thing that you're doinghere with your podcast,
christian.
You know all the benefits thatyou're bringing for people by
having this interest.
You know, one thing starts yougoing down this path of like hey

(01:32:50):
, maybe there's somealternatives.
Yeah, there's different ways totell them.

Speaker 1 (01:32:54):
Yeah, that's what's fun about it is there's once you
kind of it clicks thatconventional isn't always best
or accurate or looking out foryou.
You can say well, let me whatother things are out there and
play.
Once that curtains pulled back,it's there's a smorgasbord of
things and yeah, what this?
I love this practical, tacticalway into vision because you

(01:33:16):
know, unless you're blind, weall have that and you probably
tell me you blind people recovertoo.

Speaker 2 (01:33:20):
Work with blind beats .
Work with people who are blind.
I work with people who areblind who start seeing stuff
after an hour.

Speaker 1 (01:33:26):
I'm not about it anymore.
It's so underestimated in itscapacity to heal.
So I don't know.
Carlos has been superenlightening and fun and I'm
thrilled to know you, so tellpeople where they can find you
and follow your work.

Speaker 2 (01:33:38):
So they could go to centered visioncom.
That's C E N T E R E D,centered visionV I S I O N dot
com.
I have, you know, some videoson there.
You could learn a little bitabout bait techniques on there.
You can contact me, you couldsee class schedules and get a
lot of information.
There's a resources page so youknow if you're thinking about

(01:34:01):
lasik, get informed, you know,before you do something like
that.
If you want to end up doinglasik, you're an adult.
You get to choose how to walkforward in your life.
If you want to wear glasses,contact lenses, which most
people do, that's an easy routeto be able to see clearly.
It's easier to go to ourphysician and have them give us

(01:34:21):
a medicine or a surgery, youknow which they're happy to do.
So when you, when you go offoff the beaten path, it can be
very gratifying and bring yougreater health and and you find
people like like yourself thatthat are willing to support you
and help you in trying thesealternatives, these, these

(01:34:46):
different modalities that aresometimes very, very, very
beneficial for us.
Yeah, so, yeah, they can goonto my website there and
contact me there and get moreinformation about that.
How do people so people arelistening to this on the podcast
people go to find out moreabout Christian Elliot Well

(01:35:08):
thank you for asking.

Speaker 1 (01:35:09):
Yeah, we have true whole humancom is kind of the
hub where you can find a lot ofwhat we do.
I also have the websitedeconstructing conventionalcom,
where started as a blog and it'sturned into a blog slash
podcast and who knows where it'sgoing.
But yeah, it's been a funjourney of you know I've been at
this for almost 20 years ofhelping people with their health
and you solve one problem, thenyou realize there's another one

(01:35:30):
and you just it just keepsexpanding to really try to
address the whole human and eyesare part of it and you know
there's so many different waysto heal and it's funny.
I was talking to a client thisweek and one of the things she
realizes, you know, when thestudents finally ready, the
teacher shows up and somebodythat's ready for, finally ready
to address their eyesightdefinitively you were the

(01:35:51):
teacher they were looking for.
That just didn't know it yetand that happens to me a lot, is
they're finally ready toapproach their health from a
nafti responsibility and yeah,these are hard past these, these
last five years, 10 years thatI've been trying stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:36:04):
That stuff hasn't worked and it forces you to look
outside of the normal path.
You know the normal solutionsthat people are going to.
Yeah, that's a good thing.

Speaker 1 (01:36:14):
You know it's for the world.
Yeah Well, thank you for thetime today, carlos.
It's been a lot of fun.
Very happy to do this,christian, very very happy to do
this.

Speaker 2 (01:36:23):
Hope to hear more from you and hear good things
coming from your podcast andfrom your website.
Well, stay tuned, you will.
Thanks again.
All right, great, you'rewelcome.

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Carlos Moreno – Improve Your Eyesight Naturally - Challenging Ophthamology with The Bates Method

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Carlos Moreno – Improve Your Eyesight Naturally - Challenging Ophthamology with The Bates Method