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Improving Your Visual Skills

What I did is I put together this little summary slide and this is going to take us through some stuff for segment one, segment two and segment three today um because I do want to spend some time talking about how to practice all right? And I actually would love to kind of remove the word practice for a lot of people in their vocabulary because there is there isn't on aspect to practice that should be difficult, right? How many of you guys yesterday doing the exercises found them challenging it's a little bit like whoa, this is a little hard it's harder than I thought just moving my eyes the hard work is good that's one of the things that I always have to remind people because wei thought about this very first segment yesterday you guys had the multi size font chart and I said put it in a convenient or comfortable reading distance and see what you can read and the needle do you remember what I asked you to do? We picked a letter to focus on and then we pushed it away until it was blurr...

y and we brought it until it was blurry and we just went back and forth and I said that that blur is actually good because a large part of what we think is happening with vision training exercises is not the mechanics of the eye but what's happening in the brain and whenever we actually make the brain read something that's blurry it changes the frequency there's there's a couple different ways of the brain processes visual information and it will actually go into d blurring mode whenever we force it to read something that's a little blurry so that is that idea of we worked on that we do the hard work part the braking begin to change but this is this is what I was trying to say earlier. A lot of people who on ly focus on hard work eventually lose motivation because it's not really fun right? And so there has to be a balance of all this stuff I'm gonna talk a little bit about play today and how to make all this stuff into more of a game. Um, several people yesterday mentioned, you know, wanting to be able to do this with their spouse, their partner or whatever. It's a fantastic idea. I actually I wish that everyone that was watching this online would go get someone else and have them watch it with them because doing these drills together and turning it into a game, the level of aa number one accountability goes up but also the fact that it's a little bit more enjoyable us a little competition to it we tend to find a lot greater adherence to the training exercises over time, so I'm gonna talk about that we're going to some mobility work today. We're gonna work on your head and neck. We're gonna work on your jaw a little bit. We're gonna work on your mid back because these are the joints that I was talking about that are very important in terms of improving both blood supply on making sure that your breathing well, that could have a really positive impact on your vision. Eso breathing we're talking about really basic ideas around breathing exercises. How many guys do any kind of breathing on purpose? Like I breathe every day? I've read every day, so I'm gonna give you just a brief rundown on that a cz we get into it, but breathing absolutely essential, even go for several weeks without food and go for three or four days without water few seconds, right few minutes, actually without air. So breathing is exceptionally important. It's mainly handled reflexively, and in fact, a lot of people have poor mechanics around breathing, and that has a big ramification or has big ramifications on our function on dh then these things balanced, tension, relaxation in time, these air all elements that will, if you condemn, brace them, will improve. How you doing your vision work so let's, talk about play if you recognize this this picture, you remember what that was. Way the heck up there it's like weather balloon looking right remember so this was I think last year this guy set the record for the highest freefall jump when he got into a balloon went up almost to the edge of the atmosphere is there's a big red bull credible stunt? You watch it it was funny because one of our one of our pro athletes we work with he's a fifth rate his huge a really strong guy lives in australia top ten power lifter in the world and it was very interesting because I showed this picture that of course he's like what happened in america he said you guys getting the notices? He said all of australia came to a halt like everything in the country stopped whenever this guy made this jump and there's that part of me when I see stuff like that and I don't have you ever go on youtube and watch all these cool videos of people doing crazy stuff part of my brain goes why why would you ever want to do that? But then I think about stuff that I've done in my past and I go well because it seemed cool it seemed fun and there's something very unusual about human beings but really mammals that we like to play yeah and play while it seems really random there's actually a lot of research that shows that play is actually essential building block for the human brain. All right, so I put this up here. This is the doctor's name is stuart brown. And dr braun has been studying a play for many, many years. He actually has written a great book called play, and I would highly recommend that you guys read it at some point is very interesting. And it talks about how play behaviour shapes our brains. Um, if you could read this of all animal species, humans are the biggest players of all were built to play in, built through play. And I love that quote when we play, we're engaged the purest expression of our humanity, the truest expression of her individuality. Is it any wonder that often the times we feel most alive, those that make us up our best memories are moments of play? So that sounds kind of wow, cool philosophy, but it's actually a really important idea whenever you're doing these exercises, all right, and you're gonna walk away from this course with a bunch of different exercises to do if they become a drudgery, I can guarantee you, as I said, I've worked with over twenty thousand individual people, I can guarantee you that when the exercise has become a drudgery, over time, he will stop doing them, and you know that in your own life. You've tried to go to the gym and at some point doesn't work and the whole idea I have is that very few people are wired to do something that they hate all the time it's one of the classic questions I ask people whenever I first start working with them what you do for exercise I'll go to the gym my next question is do you like it and if they say no I go let's find something different for you to do okay? So vision exercises I asked you yesterday which ones were your favorites okay because as we go through and you're starting to identify different exercises and drills note down the ones that were most fund because those are probably the ones that going to stick with it and we want to make sure that you're getting the most out of them all right um just put another slide up on this whole idea of play says in playing we fall for the creation of those new circuits in our brain and we test them by running signals through them and the point that he's trying to make here is that when we're doing these exercises if we approach it from a really kind of competitive aspect or play aspect it's safe all right the more seriously we take him in the more burden we feel by them it actually is going to inhibit some of the growth process so everyone clear on that like I said it's just a simple simple idea but how many of you are you guys already thinking about people that you could do some of these with like could you could you could you do it with a spouse can you do it with someone who's spent time one of the workout for air roommate yeah yeah because it's awesome because to some degree you can set up his competitions our in our office we had a competition around a lot of these vision drills like I said about three months ago and people got busy they were because they knew that there was going to be testing they knew they were going to be competing and it was money on the line so there's so many different ways to get yourself to stick with these and this was just something I wanted to remind you of all right so we have any questions you can answer currently before we move into a next segment I think we're good I think we're under rule sorry the next okay all right so what we're to do now is I said we're gonna start off with some movement stuff okay now I am a huge movement guy actually most people there watching this think hey he's the vision guy well for the decade before I really got into how the eyes and inner ear worked I was really more than anything else focusing on the neurology and moved mint because movement at the end of the day is your basic currency of life how will you move is going to change your body shape is going to change your structure on dh there's a lot of physiological laws that go into this but most importantly how you move and if you move well he's gonna have a huge impact on your brain okay because you have a lot of space dedicated to your brain are dedicated the movement in your brain and so if we fail to practice that stuff our brain pays the price cool all right, so there are two basic rules I always teach people number one mobility training must teach active mobility and what I mean by that is how you guys have had a massage before facade you see someone and they like movie around and all that something it feels really, really good it feels great but having someone move your body for you does not generate the same type or number of nerve impulses into the spinal chord and brain as active movement. And so if we're going to move our spine and you know whatever we want to be able to do that ourselves okay, so that would be number one and number two we want to make sure that we do stuff and kind of an isolated way because if you go to a gym and you watch people starting to warm up right? They're making big circles and whole body's moving around and they're doing all kind of things like this well that's okay, but to some degree what we've figured out over time watching people is that if you don't if you don't practice moving things uh like small joints individually you will skip over them you will just move in a really compensated way. All right, so we're gonna do a little do a little test, right? So hands out like this okay, now how many guys type a lot? Ok. All right, so what I want you to do is this their first little movement test when you start with your fingers you start with your index finger he's warming up over here he's skipping rope so what I want to do is what you take your index fingers and I want you to make circles okay, now you want to keep that joint locked so it's a straight finger and they should be nice and smooth and I want you to keep switching directions every three circles so clockwise and counterclockwise good. All right, now go to your middle finger. Some of you have it too much dexterity and that one I'm not sure what's up with that on your ring finger my other fingers moved to exactly what we're talking about and your little finger all right what's going on with my hand feels weird so most of us spend all of our day working with our hand kind of war is a unit and we don't do any kind of isolated training ever um and what's really interesting if you will look at brain space devoted to different parts of the body there is an enormous amount of brain space devoted to your hands so having healthy dextrous hands that you can control really really well has this huge impact on brain function okay so that's just kind of an example of what I'm talking about most of us go but my hands are fine but when I actually ask you to do something in a controlled way that feels different than what you're used to most of us can't do it because we actually haven't practiced it okay so what we're gonna do is we're going to a couple different vision assessments and then I'm gonna take you guys to a variety of exercises they're going mobility drills we're not going to do a single vision drill we're going to some movement drills and we're to keep testing your vision that make sense to you guys okay so what a life he to do again pull out your multi size font chart um you guys have already tested it this morning so just make sure that it's still the same so glasses on glasses off see if anything's changed because he did just do some handwork you should take five seconds yet so quick one from g two then for those who do not have any apparent conditions like pregnancy or injury anything like that can you do these drills without consulting a physician if you are in my opinion if you're generally healthy I mean on the legal side I should say you should always consult a physician before you start any any training program very practically if you're healthy all that we're doing is moving your eyes in ways that you're currently moving them ah and so I would consider it safe yeah thank you yeah said yesterday if we start feeling the willies stop anything that feels weird it all stopped and and make sure that you get checked out so all right so everything's still the same they're alright now the other thing that I would like for you guys to do is we're gonna a little distance vision test okay, so yesterday I had you guys basically use this bored and you could pick a letter or a shape you were using the exit sign yesterday um and you just want to see uh what you pick a letter, see how clear it is. So mckenzie, what you looking at? I'm looking at the l a b l hear yeah, ok it is that relatively clear for you? Yeah kind of eyes that see more clear disease war clears more clearly what about glasses off oh gosh yeah, I see the I can I can see down to like the the I'm trying to not I have a hard time with this because once your brain like season and then when you switch her like well I know what's there right? Okay I don't really yeah I'd say down to the p okay awesome. All right on the seventh row liken focusing on the z is that you okay? Yeah yeah there's nothing there so I'm looking at the exit sign and today it's a six seven one so when when that turns into exit all know I'm you better know we're getting there okay awesome alright so whenever we start talking about mobility work for the eyes there's three main spot so I like to focus on we're gonna focus on your, uh your neck your mid back and then your jaw ok, so what I'm gonna ask you guys to do is sit out toward the edges of your chair and the first exercise is just finding where your neck is, which sounds kind of weird, but I want you to take your hand and I want you to reach back and I want you to find the big bump where your neck joins the your mid back it's right down at the base of your neck and I would feel that okay now that's ah that's probably the lowest cervical vertebrae which is your neck your neck bones on dh what we want to do just give that a little rub rub it for about ten or fifteen seconds that way quickly that one invertebrate that one vertebrae just right on that bomb pa's long as the bumps not sore just rub that because what we're trying to do is we're trying to wake up your brain and go hey, pay attention to that spot okay, we kind of get an idea of where it's at yeah, all right now set up nice and tall what I'm gonna ask you to dio and for you guys because we are tryingto work on your eyes a little bit I'm actually gonna ask you to close your eyes and you going to start off with rotating your head and neck just right and left watch me for one second as you rotate I want you to imagine that there's a board underneath your chin so that you don't tilt your head back or tip it forward I also want youto only rotate as faras you comfortably can I don't want you to build up any stress last instruction is I wanted to try to rotate from that spot that you were just rubbing so in other words going to try and move the whole neck as we rotate what will sound a little bit weird but go ahead, give it a shot there you go very nice keep visualizing that board very good I came here because you three repetitions in each direction that nice slow movement you're trying to build awareness here you're not trying to do too much of a stretch or anything just get a lot of motion throughout the neck and good ok, I feel ok easy yeah all right, now we're going to do is going to start in rather than rotating we're going to be tilting we're gonna take our writing or toward our right shoulder notice I did not say right shoulder to right here okay, so I don't want you to lift the shoulder I want you the shoulders to stay heavy and you start and just gently tilt to the side here to the shoulder ice closed do it eyes closed again try to feel the little stretch if you will down low you're gonna feel it in the shoulder but you want to feel like you're moving from that same lower next spot okay, so go ahead do that three times each direction obviously you could do these standing out to make sure you didn't fall over. Okay very good do one more and good relax okay, now all that you've just done you've done two exercises to mobilize your neck a little bit check your multi size font chart again from sms do you think pinhole glasses could complement your exercises yes simple answer I have and I don't know what those are penhall glasses are exactly what they sound like they're glasses with the the lenses are actually solid but they've had holes punched in them on dh they've been used a lot of different vision therapy stuff over the years I used them quite extensively in training some athletes and so yes I actually recommend playing with them there's um there's some great resource is around how to use them as well I think I need pinhole glasses too work on my golf game just looking just about the ball yeah, they could be larry my head's randall blinders so yes that's a great question yes we've all right any change with the no just neck mobility no change no change a little bit sixteen instead of the eighteen. Sixty instead of eighteen okay, awesome. So grand set those down again now we're gonna do next is since we've rotated ahead and we've tilted it remember that I said one of the most important things that happens with our eyes is it as they get worse what is our head? Do we begin to come forward? So now we're going to reverse that alright in this exercise looks goofy but I call it the chicken okay, so you're gonna get focus on that same spot go ahead, rub it again I want to make sure you know where you're moving from and once you remember that lower next spot what you gonna do you gonna sit up nice and tall you know imagine there's a board into your chin and going to do a chicken so in other words going to bring your chin a little further forward than normal but then most importantly you're actually pull it way back some people call this the double chin exercise pull way back and make sure that you're actually feeling a stretch right at that spot that you were just rubbing okay so fordham back good and don't worry they're only thousands of people watching you do this online don't don't be concerned our self conscious that people are watching you like a chicken very good looking really good guys all right now you want to make sure as much as possible that your chest isn't moving like your trunk isn't moving it's just a head and neck good one more alright now relax okay she got any attention from that now just after doing that one retest again I gotta get into that the mode here going faster which I like you okay uh still at eleven without my glasses but a little bit more clarity with more clarity after that was about to say the same because the same thing okay good. So if you're not getting a big vision improvement from that that's still ok because like I said we were starting to do with establish a baseline of movement that's also gonna help our breathing which we're gonna get into it a little bit so the next thing that we're going teo in this was probably the most complicated of the drills I won't teach you this morning rushing to work on your spine okay, now if you look up here uh this guy right here these arrows are basically pointing to what's called the jurassic spine which is your mid back it's where your ribs attaching the back um and this area has a lot of implications and for most people with poor posture it's where a lot of the rounding comes so if I've got my eyes and I'm looking I'm sitting at the computer my head comes forward and then eventually around okay, so it's our strong cave man position so the easiest way to start to work on this is you guys are just going to sit up and you want to be on the edge of the couch I'm gonna take your hands gonna wrap him around your knees his best you can. Okay, now what I'm gonna ask you to do is gonna take a deep breath in and then when you exhale you're actually gonna pull yourself forward so your chest is going to come up and out like up toward the ceiling and you should feel a little stretching your mid back and then you want to reverse it okay so you're just gonna be bending forward and back and really trying to emphasize that motion happening in your mid back now if it feels like there's a just a board there you're not really able to move that's fairly normal especially in the beginning this was one of the exercises we spent a lot of time working with people on good I want you guys to actually over exaggerated so really around forward and really come up whenever possible there you go breathe in coming up and down you can play with it in both you can play with it in both directions ah lot of people in the beginning may find it more comfortable to exhale as you go down so and then inhale on the way up there you go that's looking better I just want you to kind of keep going with that for a minute he connected with your breathing all right give me two more repetitions good and relax all right now so I feel a little strange feel okay okay try moving your neck again now see if your neck feels a little bit more fluid mine does yeah. So what most people will find is that once they start to mobilize the spine the head and neck freeze up a little bit so now we've done that do another test for me see if we got any change from that one. We have another question while there looking at their charts, you know, we sure d'oh okay, jim north carolina asked I've read that women are hardwired with naturally wider range peripheral vision better for foraging men are hard wired with a long distance vision can you confirm nor deny is potential that's like that's something that I've heard? I have not actually seen any hard research that I would definitely say says that's exactly how things were wired because everything in this class is really about the fact that practice, um, changes how we see changes, our visual skill set, right? The high likelihood is that there's gonna always be some confounding factors in that kind of research because it base it's based on who you've been testing. So all right, how do you do with that same level? Same one here, the exit sign is a backwards k on it, so okay, so you're actually a little additional line, they're good thing, okay? Awesome. So we got one more than we want to do and remember, like I said, if we're not getting vision change, that's okay? Because what we're starting to work on is just the the joints in the mobility to improve our breathing, so last we're going to focus on, and this one does seem to have an impact on a lot of people in terms of vision is the jaw the jaw has lots of muscles. A lot of those muscles influence what we do with our eyes how we move our face so we'll do some really simple exercises once again on camera, which is always awesome. So we're gonna find her jaw first you take your fingers and put them on your cheekbones, you slide him all the way back to your ears and then come down just a little bit. All right, so just about one finger tip off the bone. Now, if you open your mouth, you should feel a couple little bumps rolling out into your fingers. You made you end up with a cavity there? Yeah, there's a little cavity and you? Maybe if you're down to low, you won't feel it. So you got to be right underneath the bone that she's home got it now, okay, watching like, I don't know where and when and when you opened when you open your drop your job it creates a little cavity there. Correct? You feel little hole now first thing I want you to do is I just wanted to open and close slowly and notice if your jaw actually opens the same on both sides. What most people will notice right away is that one, maybe is a little slower or faster or one pops out a little bit more okay, so they're most people have some level of asymmetry. Feels weird. Yeah. Okay, now what I'd like you to do and make sure you're just touching. I don't want your pressing in here because of you. Press it hurts. So you gonna open gently about halfway and then really slow again try and move your jaw forward of your lower teeth forward and back and what's gonna happen is gonna feel a little stretching sensation right in the job. Okay, good. Two, three or four reps. And then relax. Okay? Now the next thing that we're going to, you know, we've done front to back is we're to do side to side. Now watch me for a second before you do this because a lot of people wanna go, ok? And when you open your mouth, move your jaws side aside. Going like this, they go and they like slam it side to side. We don't want you slamming a side to side. It has to be really, really slow and controlled, seeing open and really gently move that back and forth. Now, one of the reasons I'm making you guys do this. I mentioned that we look at the brain and how much space is devoted to different body parts there's, a huge space devoted to the hands guess where else has a huge space job the lips, the tongue and the fate of the jaw right? Because it is for eating and talking and it's a huge survival component so so many people that we run into actually have poor motion or confused motion in the jaw that has some fairly big ramifications as well. Okay do you ever find that that helps people who have t m j yeah, absolutely yeah and one of the things that interest you bring it up t m j dysfunction so this is called the temperament realer joint and so problems in this joint very often people will not only complain about job pain but headaches eyestrain, poor vision, blurred vision all of that is some kind of well known components with that condition. So this is one of the reasons I'm having you do a little bit of jaw work in an eye class that makes sense to you. Okay, so we did some rotations we did some tilts, we descend chickens we did we call this just a glide a front a back glide in the mid back and then we took our jaw. We moved it forward and back inside aside now if you learn how to do those and you can get through all those exercises literally in about ninety seconds two minutes and begin building some better movement map number one for your brain but number two, like I said, we're setting europe you up to breathe better and also decrease some of the stress and tension around the eyes. Did you have a change from the jaw work? No, go ahead, test real fast for me, I see what you guys have. And then as soon as we're done with these, we're going to start jumping into some, er, niu I drills. Are there cem? Is there any proof of improvements on vision relieved, too raw food, lifestyle you have any experience with? I? I wish I could say that I had seen research on that, but I actually have zero zero dad on that one for sorry, no brahmin, okay, any change from the draw? No. Okay.