Lessons

Lesson Info

Introduction and Review

Like I said yesterday when I started talking about vision, I always try and start with some contact so what I want to do this morning to get it started is I want to do a little bit of a review because I always feel like you come to this day two of the course way covered a lot of material way talked about brain plasticity, we talked about the consequences of poor vision, so what I'm gonna do is I wanna talk a little bit about each segment yesterday and I want to get your feedback as faras things that maybe, you know, prompted additional thoughts last night that will also help in the chat rooms because I really wanted to go and try and get as many questions answer today as I can for people s o started off yesterday, the big thing that I tried to get across was a simple idea that the impact of vision goes far, far, far beyond how well I can read the newspaper, how well I can see the computer and hopefully that came across well, we covered a bunch of different ideas about whenever we have ...

visual issues, we tend teo also author our posture, right? You kind of get into that forward head posture and had a bunch of slides about that? I don't know if you remember, but I said the typical human head weighs twelve to fourteen pounds, depending on what what size noggin you've got, and then if it's in good posture, that's how much it weighs, but then if my eyes are going bad and I'm spending most of my day creeping forward, trying to improve what I'm able to see every inch forward that the head moves, it gets ain't gaines about ten pounds in weight, so most people, instead of having a twelve pound head carry around about a thirty three, thirty six pound head throughout the day and, you know, it's it's, ah, epidemic in society right now that people that work in computers complain about headaches, they complain about back pain that complain about neck pain, jaw pain and all that stuff is very much related to what we're doing with our eyes throughout the day. So we said that's one consequence. In addition to that, I taught I did some little drawings of the brain talked about the fact that vision also has a huge impact on what's happening, the brain stem level in the in the body and the brain stem controls a lot of our regulatory functions, like breathing, heart rate, what's going on with our guts and all those things put up a couple of quotes from a very famous orthopedic surgeon who says this forward head posture we can lose thirty percent or so of our loan capacity and all that stuff over time, and so the point that I was trying to make he is not very often because we live with our vision all day every day we actually perceive it as less problematic than it really is it's annoying to not be able to read the menu in the restaurant right? Have someone else do that for you, but the long term ramifications of vision and what it does to the rest of our body are actually far greater than any of us really give thought to and like I said, this is something I've been I've been teaching for over a decade, and I am very rarely run into people who have that, so I want to set that up contextually did you get have questions about any of that from you yesterday? You know, before we move on something that we talked about and you guys on the internet, we mentioned this yesterday, but before we dig dig in, I just wanted to say that I wanted to let you know this course provides information on exercise and wellness and is not medical advice we ask that you seek individualized medical advice and care from a doctor before starting any exercise, diet or nutritional program rely on the information in this course may result in serious injury or injury to you and if you are pregnant your unborn child you assume all risk when using or relying on the information in this course so we talked about a little bit about that disclaimer yesterday as well absolutely can you just talk to that just definitely number one we have to keep the attorney's happy we always have to say that stuff but actually it's far more important to me than that because like I said yesterday your vision is one of your most precious gifts and anything in this course that makes you feel that it's causing any kind of visual deficit or difficulty you're really need to see a health care professional eyecare professional about it andi I'm actually to talk a little bit more about that today because I'm gonna make some specific recommendations ah lot of people that come into vision training with me they come in from a sports context or and as I mentioned yesterday which sounds weird but a pain relief context people come in with the pain and maybe we use I drills to improve their knee function that's not uncommon but if you are doing the training in this course and you're making some progress but it's not as fast as you want it to be or maybe you're running into something that's just not responding well to the drills it could be that you actually need higher level of care you may need lensing may need a bunch of different things so in segment to today, when I'm answering questions, I'm gonna talk about a couple different professionals that I would recommend that you put into your into your contact list as far as people that can actually really help you in in your visual skill development. So so that said any questions from yesterday as faras the first segment were you surprised by may be the potential like body wide ramifications vision I was yeah, I know I was struck with how rapid rapidly things improve too, you know, with with your exercises yeah, but I was struck by all this cross over, you know? You're right just improving the vision doesn't just affect the vision it has all kinds of ramifications, right? Good that's in anything from you you know, you you explain that a lot of the vision goes on in the back, but there's also vision that goes on in the front I'm not a doctor, but I get what you said activates other parts of your brain that work all sorts of functions in your body. So looking at like an overall total health kind of way value it makes sense. I never thought of that I have some pain in my foot I have some asthma wow, or I saw a gentleman on the bus today he was really hunched over and it reminded me because in our exercises you caught me a couple times if I took the glasses off I started looking forward man, I need to I need to keep that posture like to improve these more yeah, you know, I love this material so much I could go on and on about just those two topics all day because there's so much there's so much depth in what we're learning about the brain how it functions with the rest the body but what you just said is so important thirty plus areas of the brain respond are activated when we're changing visual when we're changing our visual fields so good vision and we talked about yesterday the brain requires fuel and activation and be healthy and alive so good visual work and actually have a really beneficial effect body wide really and you know the ah ha moment for me I had to do with I'm a golfer and so a lot of focus comes into that game and so I know that as far as the vision stuff that we learned yesterday those exercises I really feel like it's goingto help improve my game dangling and seal any upstairs who's our chat moderator today he went to the gym last night and he said I was when he was doing his pull ups he was really being conscious of where his head was and where he was looking at it made a difference very cool you golf is actually my favorite sports to talk about we can chat about that on a break but they're a couple of our trainers actually worked with a lot of professional golfers on one of the big things they do are a lot of the drills that were doing yesterday vision plays a huge role in that sport plus the fact that we just drive ourselves insane yeah small eyeball it's quiet there's no distractions and yet it's still crazy so wait started off like I said yesterday talking about the ramifications and then the second section yesterday we talked about plasticity now again I don't want to over complicate the idea but the simple concept here is that the human nervous system the brain number one is what makes us us right and while we think about that a lot well I think about that a lot a lot of people that I've worked with our little surprised that the brain because we know it generates our emotions our thoughts, our feelings all that stuff but when you really think about the fact that everything that you've ever experienced in your life every memory of every ever stored every experience you will ever have for the rest of your life would be a good bad or indifferent all of that is brain derived it's all generated by how this is functioning and how it's working in his current environment so I've been thinking about brains probably since I was about ten or eleven years old because I'm passionate about this stuff. And so as I mentioned yesterday, I think one of the greatest changes in honestly in in the history of science started in the mid nineties when we started realizing that the brain human brain is not fixed, it is constantly capable of learning and changing and new neuronal growth and restructuring of pathways and that, to me is incredibly hopeful. So regardless of where you're at, if you've got bad vision, if you've got poor movement skills, if you are, you know, struggling with some kind of emotional distress, whatever it is that's all brain derived and so with a constant work pattern that's in the right direction, we can start to really modify the structures of the brain. I mentioned a guy yesterday, dr norman doi jj he wrote a wonderful book, um and that's that's in the keynote and the the quote that was up on the kino yesterday from him is thought changes structure you remember that thought, change of structure and again for me that's incredibly powerful because what that tells me right now is that at my current age, my current level of functioning I don't have to remain here number one and number two, I do not have to always anticipate a progressive decline in my function so the term that's applied to that with around brain function or visual function whatever is plasticity in plasticity as I said yesterday means mindy your brain's not a fixed object you can actually be restructured through intelligent, purposeful practice and that's the terms that we use yesterday so brain plasticity did that discussion yesterday can generate any additional thoughts for you I know you mentioned it actually in the intro actually both of you did that that was that was kind of a powerful idea any additional thoughts about energis that was cool well, it just occurred to me that there's a lot more implications to what you're talking about just vision and it derives from the plasticity and write so that that's that's a pretty profound a concept that's what I said yesterday it is to me it is the most profound concept in the history of science yeah I mean a lot of people can argue that based on what they love, they love physics or math or whatever but for me in terms of being a better human being the idea that I can reshape my behavior my body my function purposefully is incredible it is just it is an incredible idea to carry around every day I know I know what you're saying is true and I mentioned his history because I started to learn guitar at about thirty two thirty three years old right much further beyond where you said the history books back in the day said, your brain is stuck at a certain age and you can't go no further, right? And what that gives me hope for is just, you know, I've had these guys since fourth grade with that sort of traditional I thought that every couple years you're going to need an upgraded right, we're scraping because you're just going downhill, and then you're going to need reading glasses because they'll go the other way, you know? But we saw some improvement yesterday already, so I already know it gives me hope, if nothing else, I have hope, and I'll be able to work on this. Excellent. So I other things I mentioned in that segment yesterday and I gave you kind of the ten commandments of benny brains or neural plasticity remember any of what those work I give you the first one, the first one was use it or lose it, right? So the brain requires activation, any area of the brain that is not regularly stimulated? Well, actually potentially begin going through a degenerative process if it's not the generating there's kind of this weird thing we talk about that there's competition for chase in the brain, so whatever you're currently practicing, well, actually try and take over part of the brain that you're not using which could get things that kind of confused the maps get off so we want to make sure that we realize if I'm working on my vision I have four basic visual skills that I need to be practicing all the time because if I don't I will begin to lose the ability to do it, which is exactly what most of you are experiencing, right? You get really good at the reading up close or looking in the distance, but most people in today's world's been most of their time doing close work particularly the audience I think we're talking to here right and as a it's kind of a funny thing because if we looked at it in a different context we would all understand like if I spent all day eight hours a day or twelve hours a day or how long I went toe work typing with my index fingers, I would get better at this overtime but when I ever be as good as if I actually learned how to type, probably not right I'm never going to be a fast I'm never going to be a sufficient so we understand the idea of practice and a lot of other rooms but we forget the fact that we're constantly practicing whatever visual skills that were using through the day so that's really important so he said use it or lose it the second one was use it and improve it on. And that was actually a little bit of what I think jim was referring to this morning. The simple idea about brain plasticity. And this is really one that I want to get to today in the review. I want to make sure that you remember this plasticity is neither good nor bad. It just is. All right, is there was one of our slides says it's the rule, not the exception, that this is how your brain works. Whatever you're doing, you are improving in aa with via practice. And so I mentioned a lot of weird things yesterday. I said, have you ever met someone that's fantastic. It finding the bad in any situation, right? They can walk into the perfect situation from everyone else's view and be disappointed. That's a skill right and that's, one of the base level of foundational teachings that we have in our system and help, which is that everything is a skill and we practice it. We improve it, so use it and improve it. Were there other ones that you remember from the ten commandments that struck you? But one of the ones that struck me was transference happens, yeah. You mentioned that the interest you just again there's all this crossover effect yeah, that was pretty cool yesterday that was one of the reasons that we kept doing what we did yesterday which is we'd have you guys test your multi size font chart see how far you could read and we would do different drills and in a lot of cases what you found was that the different visual drill's actually also improves your reading capacity, right? Right. So that's a simple idea that when we give the brain a directive like hey get better at seeing sometimes it gets better at seeing regardless of the drill that we're doing whether anymore that kind of popped up in your head no okay, so is you guys uh you guys review the course that is a slide that is worth actually looking at and if you've got it you know, download and print it out and read it right here leigh because you're gonna remember specificity matters repetition matters like all these little rules about how to practice better and that's one of the things we're going to spend some time on today's talk about how to practice uh these vision exercises but honestly had a practice virtually anything uh in a way that makes your learning better because that really at the end of the day is the key if we're gonna mold our brains we have to practice intelligently and purposefully and there are a lot of things are coming out on research that could help us do that so when we download the course that's one of the pages that that would definitely be if I were watching this and and I've been doing this awhile yeah, I would say when you when you download that actually pull that slide out in print it and put it up somewhere that you can read about okay okay it's actually that important to me okay, so I want to mention to you guys out there on the internet I hope you heard that so that's the ten commandments it really is an amazing page I'd probably like put it up somewhere where I could see it every single day and it is one of the downloads if you pre purchase the course during the live event for seventy nine dollars along with all the other great materials well that's in and honestly I'm the reason bringing that up is I actually ever printed out and I have it up at my desk because I'm constantly interested in being better yeah and being better comes down to how I run my brain and so it is a it's a great reminder now they're a couple of the things from that segment I want to get through and I know I'm taking a while to review this stuff but I think it's important s o that we move in today with the right mind set a couple of the things about benny brains. Do you remember the term? It was one of the slides and the term was meta plasticity, meta plasticity, that's the plasticity of plasticity, which is a crazy term. But if you remember what that meant was that the more we actually challenge our brain throughout our lives, the more we ask it to do different things and better we train it, the mohr injury resistant it becomes and this is just really important to me. I've spent a lot of time working with traumatic brain injuries. You know, I work with a lot of athletes, but I was also saying yesterday have worked with a lot of military personnel after the war began. We also begin training some of our trainers toe work in with the nonprofit agencies that were working with wounded warriors coming back. And so through that whole process, we got a lot of additional experience working with traumatic brain injuries. And one of the things that I constantly think about is with some of the guys because we never met them before I had this, you know, intense, I wish we had been working with them prior to the injuries. I wish that they had been given exercises and one that because as I said, what we're learning is that the stronger the patterns that we've built into the brain them or injury resistant we become and if something god forbid does happen to us the rehabilitation process tends to work better in those who have been constantly challenging the brain and in a bunch of different ways and as I mentioned in the slide there's there's research in this around alzheimer's eh? So it's not just traumatic injury it is also degenerative injury so the brain just like a muscle responds to exercise it responds to use that response to challenge and so if we make it a habit in our lives to challenge and stimulate our brain some really, really huge benefits that aren't immediately available are art immediately noticeable khun b there it's a lot of stuff that I think about with brain development, vision training and all the other stuff that we do in our system I kind of think of like vitamins because sometimes you take your vitamins and you don't really feel anything but at the end of the day hopefully it's it's an incredible preventative skill as well yeah, I think I heard you mention a website yesterday and or are you going to give us some websites later where they're kind of games but those games help you tow exercise different parts of your brain yeah, we'll talk about those later today because there's uh there's a again this whole idea of neural plasticity is really booming right now it's getting very, very popular probably the one to say it right now probably there if you want to write one down the most popular online program right now and it's ah is called posit science pos science and if this is a web site that was developed by one of the leading researchers with neural plasticity and its games it's vision games, memory games, auditory games and go read about it see if it's of interest to you I always tell people that, uh what's neat about programs like that as you can look to see what people are doing but then you can actually be in being created on your own as well. Uh, there's a lot of different things that you can do for yourself. So many plasticity is said super important concept so we've kind of reviews segment one, segment two and then we got into segment three and four yesterday where we did a lot of assessments, right? So it's a quick reminder I'm just going to pull this out. One of the most important concept I tried the share with yesterday is the way our system is designed is we want to make sure that we are doing the right exercises for us and you have to individualize our personal lives training programs I mentioned that there's a lot of research now showing that ten to fifteen percent of people when put on a standard exercise program like everyone else it's actually not only don't improve they get worse over time that's kind of strange but what's coming out of all of that is that we're going you know what? We have to make sure that the exercise is that you're doing the movements that you're doing are appropriate for you on dh so the whole goal in the zeal system is we're going to say we were going to assess things where they're going to do some exercises and I'm going to re assess them if they made you better awesome we're going to use those a lot if they made you worse we're going to take note of them and go we probably should be able to do that but that may not be the high pay after all that I want to be doing all day every day is everyone clear on that conceptually right? Okay, so some of the assessment charts that we went over yesterday the first one's called the smell in chart this is the standard hey, what kind of vision do I have? I have twenty two hundred twenty seventy do I have twenty twenty and we want to test that individually in each eye um we also played with this chart here, which is called the convergence divergence chart we did hand eye coordination we did near far charts yesterday. Um and those are just some of the basics that you're going to be taking away the charts are available you guys have in front of you multi size font chart was the big testing chart that we used it yesterday to see how well you could read so we're gonna keep going back to those today. So what I like to do this morning before we start launching into today is that life has to pull out that multi size font chart I'm gonna hold this up for he has one more time and so pull this one out and what I want you to do is both glasses on and glasses off see what you can read, right? So you started the big one and you work your way down and we'll see how you guys are doing today as opposed to yesterday. All right, you ready for our ready for the first time? I think you and I thank you that was working really well yesterday s o four eyes and sir spiffy would like to know about colored lenses you're carolyn near land here lenses put less stress on the I apparently does dr cobb have an opinion on colored lenses and sunglasses and my friends have told me if you're outside I mean, we're in seattle right? But I'm not arizona like you but can you talk to that please share talk thanks there's a lot of information out there around color, color lenses and kind of their general impacts on the eye the're land system is a very interesting system and basically they would diagnostic work up and they basically tried to create the ideal color to help your vision improve there is honestly some debate on both sides about the general long term effectiveness of that what I gently tell our athletes because I do use colored glasses and color lenses but just like everything else that we do, we require regular testing meaning if you're going to change the color of your sunglasses or we're gonna be using a specific type of contact or whatever I gently will have you test with that same color every week to ensure that you're maintaining good results because in my experience depending on other stresses on the body, sometimes the color lenses have to be changed so we just say go into the go into that with some level of flexibility. Okay? And there are a lot of uh, a lot of groups out there that sell different colored lenses that you can do your own testing with see which ones you respond best to that is a whole whole subset what's called behavioral optometry that I'll talk a little bit about the segment too great. Thank you. All right, all right. How'd you guys do uh with the glasses? Three no glasses eighteen nice okay. And you were twenty four yesterday I believe when you started about the glass you know? Yeah. So that's that's actually good overnight you with glasses three and without glasses eleven it's blurry but I can read eleven which is an improvement over an eighteen. Yeah, definitely it in place. Yes, ma'am. All right, s o with my glasses I got down to five and then without I only got tio which one was it think it was nine nine? Okay, awesome. So if you guys make sure to write those down right today is today is all about the actual practice part, so if you're not keeping records, guess what? You never know if you're improving and that's going to be the whole goal of all this stuff I mentioned yesterday that brains really target driven and what I found that this is just to make this practical. I have found that over the course of the years that there is a very small subset of people who are capable of doing ongoing exercise and training of any kind without a goal without some level of measurement the some people are very kinesthetic they just love to move and they just love to do stuff and if they're that person that's the easiest job in the world for me because I basically go go do this stuff and because they enjoy it and they feel it they go and do it most people aren't wired that way most people need some kind of objective like, eh I'm improving I'm improving because everyone likes to win and everyone likes to earn a so you want to make sure that you're giving yourself you get you gotta give yourself some scores if you really want to stuff to stick um awesome so that's kind of gonna be our baseline today? Now what I want to do is we're starting to move forward we're going to transition into today and this is where I started talking about your eyes in the rest of the body we did about fourteen well not quite waited twelve assessments and drills yesterday, which is an awful lot, so we're only gonna be adding a few additional exercises and assessments to the eyes today, but we're goingto had in some other stuff for the rest of the body because one of the things that a lot of people I find interesting about the health system in about how we go about teaching and working with the human body is that we're very inclusive I use the word sometimes holistic, but I don't like to use the word holistic because it has a very alternative slant when people here they're like, oh, holistic guy well, actually, neurology is holistic, right? If you studied the human brain and the brain controls all this stuff, you have to look at the body in the complete way. So one of the most important slides in yesterday's program was the one that said the two things that the brain we use to stay alive in the first one was, yeah, fuel all right, so let's, stick with fuels it's gotta have good food and oxygen, so it's gotta have fuel and then it needs activation, right? So needs stimulus, it needs to be used. Those are the two things that your brain absolutely relies on, so if I'm interested in improving your brain and improving your vision through improving your brain, I can't ignore how you breathe, and if I'm interested in how you breathe, that also has to make be interested in how all the muscles and tendons and joints that helped that make up your head and neck and your rib cage and all those things how they move, what a lot of people don't understand and this is okay because this is a this is a level of detail that most people don't need to know, but whenever I am moving and I'm you know, move my arms, my shoulders, my head and neck, my spine all of those movements are actually sending little nerve signals into the spinal cord and up to the brain and the brain requires that movement to be active that makes sense, everybody, this is one of the big things that we we lose in the end kind of the current fitness climate people are so interested in the aesthetic they want to see you no do I look good and do I have six pack abs? And I always ask when two six pack abs become more important than fun, you know, but for what? For whatever reason that's that tends to be the mindset that people have, but really the whole point of exercise is a great quote is to feel your body right is to feel it move to understand movement, because when we move the whole body, we move our hands or fingers, our elbows are shoulders are risk whatever that sending great signals into the brain, and I tell people that you're always your you have in your brain multiple maps, all right? You have maps that allow you to move well, if they're clear you also, if you don't, if you haven't practiced movement just like we said, use it or lose it, what happens to your ability to move? Well, if you don't practice moving, you really move well degrades and that is an activation problem that kind of makes sense how at all times together. So whenever we start talking about improving your vision, it would be absolutely in our system, inappropriate toe on lee, talk about your eyes. It is one of the things that that is, as I said, is a little bit different about us. We're not, you know, like I said, I'm not in optometry something up, not an ophthalmologist, so I'm not going to prescribe lenses and glasses for uma teaching vision exercises to improve your brain function, improve your movement. If you need those things I'll say, go see a professional for them. But the thing that we do bring into it it's sometimes, just like you found yesterday when he did, you know you did hand eye coordination, and it improved your ability to focus, sometimes just breathing, moving, getting joints in motion. Activating the brain in different ways can also improve your vision and that's, the stuff that we're gonna start exploring this morning.