Lessons

Lesson Info

Vision Drills

This is actually a lot of stuff one of the things I've never been accused of is being sparse on material, so if you're feeling a little overwhelmed is a lot of information, I understand, but that's, what the power points for the keynote that's, what videos forcing? Go back and watch this stuff again, to be honest, the level of information I'm giving you, I rarely do outside our professional certification programs on dh actually, the last time I did this kind of intensive class on vision was for a bunch of people that train olympians, so you're getting a lot of information. S so, so don't be like I said, don't be frustrated by that. Um, now, one of the things that I was thinking about over the break was just to make sure, because right now we're working a lot with, you know, he's, cool charts and everything that we're handing out. We wanted this to be available, but hopefully you're already starting to get some ideas of how you could incorporate this stuff into your daily life, right? S...

o we have our multi size font chart that we keep testing with. Can you imagine a couple different ways in your own life that you could do that if he didn't have the chart with you? Well, sure, you get standard window and look at the sink look the mountain right you can do that you knew near far there you go I was tell people that magazines or one of the best places to do multi size right because some of the ads have really small print and then you got bigger print then you have the headlines so you can actually test your eyes with everyday stuff all day every day I don't have my phone or anything up here with me but one of the tips I typically give people is we're working on stuff that we could we could train arrives with the push of a button come to be read on an ipad can computer kendall iphone well you have the ability to change the font size you have the ability to change the background you have the ability to change the font type do that do it with regularity I suggest changing your font sizes every two days most people go well what should I make it bigger now make it smaller sometimes sometimes making bigger sometimes make it smaller just keep changing because one of the things that we talked in the segment two we're talking about having a bendy brain right plasticity one of the other rules I gave you ten commandments but one of the other ones that that's starting to come out that we're learning more and more about and I keep bringing up is the idea that boredom is a sure way to stop neural plasticity in its tracks so the word that gets thrown around in the narrow physiologic world now is novelty the more novel we can make something the more interesting it is the harder it is the more we paid attention and so that's going to be really important going forward tomorrow I'm gonna talk a little bit about play how to turn these exercises in the games because that's one of the things we're also learning is that the more fun you have with it also usually the faster the change okay, so a said you got to do it really well you're absorbing a ton of information and no one's passed out so all in all I'm pretty happy with that um s o a couple other things well let's just jump into our exercises first there were a couple questions and ideas that came up I don't think I'll get to those a little bit later I want to jump into some of the drills now remember we actually started exercising it. All we've been doing is testing and some of some of you already getting really good results that just from the testing I would say in total I was thinking it through during the break probably about seven minutes of work that's pretty much all that that's probably a cz muchas you have done so far and I mean you're having some huge changes for what you came in with, I'm actually really pleased in the same with you, so actually think we're seeing some good results and we haven't even started really training it. Ah, I did want to ask one question we didn't really go back to the multi size chart, but after the pole ming and the eye relaxation, did you notice that maybe the room was a little bit more clear or that you're did you notice any change in vision at all? After the relaxation exercises? You just said it made you feel better? It made me feel better and honestly, in my peripheral vision, it seems, unless cloudy, grainy, yeah, let's, green awesome. Now, that's a great thing to hear, all right, that's, one of the reasons that relaxation is so important because, as I talked about in segment two, whenever we get into our kind of fight or flight response, if you've ever been in a car accident or something, every get tunnel vision heard a tunnel vision like things kind of close down when our fight or flight response gets really high that's a common theme, so the fact that you're a peripheral awareness has improved its a little lesson grainy in a little bit more detail that's a good sign that your whole nervous systems a little bit more home so it's very common. I didn't mention this when we were going through those visual reset exercises. A lot of people actually improve their vision at least temporarily, just from doing those exercises. So that's pretty neat. The only one that's different there is if you actually press on your eyeball, you may be a little blurry afterwards. I am. It distorts my yeah. So, you know, thirty, forty five seconds. Uh, maybe a little bit blurry. So that's one the ones we just you know, you got to be careful with can't use too much pressure. All right? First exercise is called I isometrics. Now, do you know what an isometric is like? A plane like, like a plank? Very good. Like, if I were to grab this arm, go, uh, and tryto do of curl, but resist that curl. I'm shaking and isometric basically means muscular contraction without movement. All right, so what we're going to start off with, we're going to some muscle training drills for our eyes. I showed you the beginning of the day, a picture. It had all those weird eye muscles. You have six extra ocular muscles that move your eyes in all different directions. So the first thing that we start off with is we go into basically the eight if you will cardinal directions right up down right left and then our four diagonals and we work on holding now when we first do this I asked people to hold that like you're doing a plank I asked you do it for five seconds eventually I like to have people athletes work up to about thirty seconds in each position that's a long time when you're going ok, I want you to focus on this up here keep your head still you will actually feel a burn in your eye muscles just like you would when you were working out it'll start to go, huh? It's really hard so we're gonna do five seconds only now the key pieces of this we're gonna have you guys actually I'm gonna have one of you do it with me but we're gonna try a seated first aa lot of people when they do this one standing they start to get all tight and they hold their breath and everything else we're going to try and do it in a relaxed states all dimino demo it up here on gonna have you guys tried on your own? But let me be really clear ideally you would have a partner do this with you all right? Because most of us will be unaware of the fact that we do this so watch me if I'm going to use my cool coffee stirrers my target take it out here about arm's length and you can do it just whatever comfortable distance I'm gonna focus on it and let's say I go up and right as my eyes begin to fatigue I will not notice that I'm doing this I will let people will literally just go a man who that's easier so we want to make sure that you're doing the work so having someone watch your head is very important and number two the other thing that happens a lot and I'm going to this lower so that maybe you can see my eyes so if I come in here you're very often see people do this okay hold over here and I'll be there and they'll see what I'm doing like constantly looking away from it so that in other areas we call this gaze fixation the ability actually stay focused on a target so those are the two things we normally work with we go canyon number one hold it without turning your head and number two can you hold it without looking away there's going to be the key pieces ok, so who wants tio wants coming to be my partner you'll do it. Yeah alright brave man set this out of the way for a second and I'm gonna have you sit um teddy sit just so we can kind of see your eyes have a seat right there kind of almost facing jim a little bit all right, so what were our basic rules? What do we say we were going to do as faras glasses glasses on or glasses off on for the first a couple weeks right on for the first couple of weeks and then work with a mop and work with him off now he's been making really good progress today on dh so because of that would you be willing to do without your glasses? Why would it maybe makes sense to do this one without glasses because of the cage because of the cage right? Remember, we're trying to go the full distance where's gays should extend beyond the frame of the glasses exactly. We want a little beyond the frame of glass, so in general if we could do that we're going to a better shape. Okay, so go ahead and pull those off for me if you don't mind okay? Now if you guys can you guys see if you want to come up and watch with me a little bit I can see you. Okay? All right. So the main thing that you guys going to focus on is you're going to try and make sure that his head doesn't swivel all right and we're gonna keep this and we're gonna go five seconds only and so can you see that? Okay, all right, so keep your head nice and still and follow it five four three two one relax relax your eyes now I don't know if you guys could see he was doing that and get a little bit wildly and a little tight through the face was that uncomfortable wasn't uncomfortable but it was hard to break out of the following the stick good when you said relax sounds like I don't want to laugh alright so with that siren to the left let's go now follow different direction five four three two one and relax good so this is not really super exciting so well but when you come back to the center position you're saying take a beat or two teo relax correct you wanna come back to the center relax for a second and then going and then go to the next in in this exercise your you'd like us to go on all eight people ate quadrants threat we started to his left now we went down and left that were to go down actually in his case I'm gonna go up instead. Okay all right, so you got it all right, follow it up. Okay let's do that one more time. One of the things I'm watching for us we go through here is I want to make sure he's actually following it in that time he kind of jumped away from it there were able to stop right there five four three two one and relax all right, good again uh five, four, three, two, one relax and he did that pretty well one of the things we don't want to see you'll see this very often if you're watching yourself for watching someone else watch me for a second you okay followed up you'll see not only the head tilt back but they also raise their eyebrows your eyebrows are not connected teo to the eyeball so raising your eyebrows shouldn't be part of your strategy for looking up for a lot of people it is so those air just kinda little things that we're looking for a feeling so far good good okay question is do you want his gaze to follow the orange stick back to the center position because he was breaking his gaze when you're that's fine for now I'm letting him break his gaze as soon as I say relax he could do whatever he wants to but eventually we will do will do some tracking got it. Okay. All right. I'm gonna switch over to this signs so hopefully we can see a little bit try not to be in your way too much. All right, you ready? So follow to your right five, four, three, two, one and relax and here black can you can see the quality of difference between his right side in this left side ok, so don't watch his eyes right now watch his face okay, okay were to do it again got it five four, three two one relax. Not much going on here right pretty relaxed he was even smiling about yet ready to follow it three two one relax and you gotta kind of tight through the neck I'm over here you could feel it totally. What does that tell you? Okay, so what that tells me is this and this is kind of a simple idea but I was tell people no movement in the body is by accident. All right? So in other words, what we're figuring it out for him is that his brain does not like to look left there's something about his must like muscularly or something his eyes are having a little bit of a hard time here so normally what the body does what the brain does if I say hey brain I want you to take your eyes to the left of my brain doesn't like to do it it will then try to recruit other muscles on the left side of the body to help out so you will often times believe it or not you'll see people do stuff like this you go okay, I want you to move your eyes uh to your right and they start taking to stick to their right and they'll literally turn their hand out or they'll move their jaw or their home bill they'll recruit other muscles to try and make the eyes move if you see that that's not cool that's not actually something that we want to encourage so generally we would cut the range of motion in half so that they could do it well so in his particular case now that I look at right side left side where you left side again and follow five four three two one how that feel no problem so basically I start to move out to where I find that the discomfort or where he started to recruit other muscles and that becomes the zone that we want to work in okay this goes back to that minimal effective dose idea I want to challenge him at an appropriate level of difficulty but not so much that I'm seeing like tension and stress buildup but theoretically as time goes by you don't go further for their out yeah ideally he should be able to have full range on all in all a physical beauty go okay you good with that? Yeah. All right. Go ahead in retest your retest something either multi signs now the other thing that you tested before with your glasses on was your distance vision that's true and you were seated right there so won't you sit down put your glasses back on I read over here l e f o deep p o t or c t ct. Very good. So almost a full line improvement over what you had before. Yeah, what I got going on here three is pretty clear. Okay. Cool. Pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity that optimists as your seize opportunity in every difficulty. Very good little bit. I work pretty cool stuff, eh? So what I'd like for you guys to d'oh, we're going. Actually, I want you all to do this er on your own. So grab your coffee stick and I'll just kind of evaluate all of you as you go through standard sum going stand up, let's. See what happens, theo? Theo so did the conditions that you'd like us to do with that. Ideally, all the stuff's gonna be done overtime standing. Yeah, I got that learning that. Okay, cool. So when you stand with a life you guys to do make sure that you're in what I call kind of a comfortable, neutral stance. Watch my feet. I would prefer that you not be out and kind of duck foot position, but your feet directly underneath you so they can stand up nice and tall. So you gonna put your heels down, push top of your head up to the ceiling, not like this, just here, all right? Uh stick out let's do it in your right hand so if it's in your right hand we're going to start off just going directly out to the right so take it out to the right and hold for five okay five four three two one and relax okay, now we're gonna go up and right were you in a diagonal? Okay, so on a dial up into the right ingo followed up don't move that head five four three do not forget that you are allowed to breathe during these exercises good and relax. All right? Little stranger not too bad he'll catch a little strange all right now let's go down and write and good follow five four three and relax okay so far so good right now were to turn the stick like this were to go up so again you're following it go up as high as you can five and relax okay have you guys feeling tight through the shoulders and neck you doing ok, right. Ok. We're gonna go straight down this one's usually easy one because most have spend most of our days looking down. Um when I find the least problems with most people and relax, okay, now that was just working the right side so what I want you to do now that you've moved you've activated the muscles on the right side of your eyes retest something all right so either picked the convergence chart the multi size font chart just something that you tested before and see if you got to change from working on the right side mine's better okay more clear yeah fifty fifteen is getting pretty clear now okay can you get fourteen I have to find it and dr cobb where those guys are you know testing themselves just wanted to let you know that danielle from fu gloria italy says hello to the doc I know how badly did I butcher that that's for daniela perfect okay your friends support it's a friend from southern italy great yeah fourteens I can see it now awesome perfect I could see five without my glasses five without your glasses wow he said he's had a really good day it's still blurred but I can make it out but compared to where you started that's amazing yeah you were fourteen before I think after tomorrow jamie is not gonna need glasses at all. Three and twenty four three and twenty four okay so not a huge change with you with that let's go now to the left side of the body okay and which we go with the left hand left hand yeah just to make it easy don't smack each other don't smack the camera all right so left hand out and just go to the same pattern gonna go directly out to the left side first who oh head uh caught me head and head buried and all three of you on that one okay five four three two one relax hard difficult and difficult I'm assuming I'm feeling like because I'm not able to focus with the glasses off like it's going over here but I can totally staring off okay there's a great point he's having a hard time with his glasses off actually focusing on the target if it's more comfortable bringing in close and do the same drill it does not have to be done at arm's length whenever you have it in close you can't obviously go us far but you can still get the same amount of work in the musculature okay so let's go ahead and now that I've gone straight left let's go ahead and go up and left okay again head control chains down five four three two one rest okay you guys don't none of you like to turn left apparently rob you drive it about us always turn right block roller skating rates maybe we're all politically concerns something like that yeah there's a bunch of conservative all right now let's go down and left that's much better good job guys five four three two one and relax no all right so you just stimulated the last three sections they were interested in so when you do those eight different positions you're working all the muscles of the eyes all right, you're making them, you're stretching them on one side, contract him on the other that's what? I want to make sure that we get relatively equal amount of work whenever possible. The side that's more difficult for you. Probably holds the secret to some big, bigger benefits. So now that you've done that, take about five seconds and do some rapid blinking toe. Let your eyes rest, and then I want you to go ahead and retest what you just tested. Bye. I can no mystery. I can read thirteen. I can I can read twelve now. Very great. Like five is even clearer if I was even clearer. I can't read four, but what I could read anyone can get it. I thought if I could read twelve dis improvement yes. I mean, we've just worked on this today for the first time. So that's just a temporary improvement, right? Maybe it might be permanent. This one, this is and this is the thing that a lot of people, whenever I discussed this, they get sometimes, like, seriously, it might stick. Yep, I don't tell people that we're beginning. I don't tell people hey, do one set and you're going to be good for life because that's actually aberrant that's not normal, and that probably encourages laziness and encourages laziness but what I do but does it sometimes happen? Yes, I've had a lot of clients over the years just a few cents of exercise and almost other brain goes oh, I remember what you want me to do I'm going to assume it's not permanent we'll you know we'll find out tomorrow and that's the whole reason that like I said, you guys notice we're doing a drill and we're retesting we're doing a drill and we're retesting because we want to know doesn't make it worse does it make it better because this is going to allow you as a set to build your own program that you don't waste time how did you do work in left side somewhere between the eighteen or twenty I think yeah, you know, down from twenty four yeah, so that's very eighteen seemed easier than the twenty I'm not sure maybe there's a glare so that's something all right, awesome. Go ahead, have a seat for me so does that prompt any questions for you guys or do we have any coming in that you want me to address just around this basic muscular exercise? E I e I have a question yes on so after we get through all the exercises exercise options yes, which you're gonna get into some more of those tomorrow yes okay, so out of that dude, you're are you are you advising that we come up with a total of five to seven minutes a day worth of exercises? Is that your advice? Um did I get right once we get into that that topic tomorrow I think it'll become a little bit more okay, I want you to be able to do like I said some around twenty minutes of total drilling in any given day okay I said maybe you know six or seven get up several sets all right but the nice thing is what we're doing in this course because remember we've just done some isometrics you did the blur drill with the multi size fun chart so imagine that every a couple of hours you did a different vision exercise that you knew because you had tested it actually improved your vision right that's the whole goal here okay, the nice thing is you're not doing the same exercise every single time so there's some novelty to it and this is again reminding your brain of what you want to accomplish which is I want to see better okay. Any other questions that come up? Yes sir. We got some questions over here from the internet so four eyes would like to know do we hold the pen out until it goes past our peripheral vision or is it always the point where our eyes khun still focusing on it directly and then sm sm maths how and focus do you need the target to be during this exercise? Okay, we don't want this one to pass into peripheral vision because this is an actual movement drill so we want to focus on the target and travel out in the easiest way to do this is if you're watching someone else or watching yourself on camera when I get to the point that there's no white over here and no white over here I've gone far enough so in other words I can't see any white on this side or this side I know that I've gone far enough I don't want to go here and then passed where I can no longer see it so this is actually a focal vision drill in the second question was what again, how unfocused doesn't need to be how in focus doesn't need it um that's kind of what we were talking about with you in general the better you can see it, the better the results because we're actually when we're trying to make sure that we're not looking away from it. If it's just a blur there's nothing for us to really look at so ideally it would be in fairly sharp focus that just makes the drill easier, cool okay and then and yet another question I want to break this down to do these exercises improve not just the vision but cognitive processing as well I have a strong personal belief that I think I can back up with some fairly significant research that it also will improve cognitive function um so let me give you just a quick example you guys mind a little narrow here? No alright little little strange so we talked about the idea that the brain requires activation to be healthy, right? Right. Are you guys familiar? I don't wanna flip this over again remember, we were talking about getting different parts of your brain the frontal lobe the frontal section of the brain is the part that holds a lot of fascination for us is neuroscience just because the front part of the brain is really to some degree what really separates us as humans it allows us to perform what's called executive functions like we can do reasoning we have some ethical decisions we can make there. So a lot of cool human type stuff and behavioral control comes out of activation in the frontal cortex. What a lot of people don't realize though is that also in the frontal cortex is a section of the brain that controls movement uh specifically what's called sick aids when these air little we do drills later called I switches but basically if I was here and I'm looking at my thumb and then I decide to look at this over here the directive to make that happen actually comes out of my frontal lobe so I think you can make some interesting idea into interesting discussions around. The idea that I'm movement not only affects the vision. Training only affects the occipital lobe. But it actually impacts on other areas of the brain that are more closely involved in reasoning, thinking skills, et cetera and that's. One of the reasons, like posit science and some of the other kind of internet brain training, uh, games and systems out there focus on vision drills, auditory drills and memory drills, all in an effort to enhance cognitive function. So, I think there's, a fairly direct correlation.