One of the most popular questions I get is to wear sunglasses or not.

For those who closely follow my blog, you’ll know that “sunning” is one of the best vision therapy. Sunning is the controversial practice of exposing your eyes to the sun. (Before sunning your eyes, please follow the link the read the post first. This is crucial.) It’s controversial because today, it’s commonly believed the sun is anything but beneficial for your eyes.

Such belief is so common, in fact, that I see a lot of people whip out their sunglasses when they don’t need them.

But as with anything, you need to find a balance in sun exposure.

While I believe sunning is beneficial for your eyes, it doesn’t mean I don’t advocate the use of sunglasses. It’s a fact that too much UV rays can cause cataracts and a whole slew of problems.

So when the sun is glaring, or when the snow is too bright, protect your eyes! Wear your sunglasses. But when it’s early in the morning and sun is nice, practice sunning.

The darker the better?

When you choose your sunglasses, don’t just look for the “tint” – that is the color of the lens. Look for the protection. Darker does not mean it offers better protection against UV rays.

And if you have to wear glasses in general, look for the same quality.

Shouldn’t I be focusing on my eyes when it comes to vision training?

For those of you who are familiar with natural vision improvement, you’d know that almost every aspect of your life affects your vision. In this article, I’m going to explore one very controversial issue of the modern life: inactivity. Think about it, how much do you move every day?

We spend most of our waking time, sitting down. And we have this idea that “relaxing” means either that or better, sleeping.

But did you know that humans evolved walking? Sitting for most of the day is, in fact, quite unnatural. I’m sure you already feel its effect. Every day when you reach home, your back hurts. Your shoulder’s tense. And your eyes… they are burning, aren’t they?

If sitting is so relaxing, shouldn’t you feel good?

Next time you go to work, try standing and walking around every time you have the chance. Not only will you be more alert, you’ll also find yourself more… relaxed! There are three reasons for this:

1. You activate small muscle groups that would’ve stayed dormant if you hadn’t moved. When they stay dormant for a long time, they actually become sore. That’s why you see people massaging their thigh just as they are standing up from their chair.
2. When you move, you increase blood flow, allowing more of it to reach your brain. More blood = better function. You become more alert, and as your brain wakes up, all of a sudden, you become relaxed.
3. When you move, you also activate your lymphatic system. Your lymphatic system detoxify your body, but unlike your immune system that has a heart to pump blood all over your body, the lymphatic system don’t. It depends on your movement to get around.

But what has this got to do with vision training?

Well, as your body relaxes, and as it becomes healthier, so will your eyes. And when your eyes is relaxed… it improves. Easy as that.

If we are fixing the eye, we should focus on what the eye right? Wrong. In this post, I’m going to show you a technique of vision correction that involves only breathing.

Natural vision improvement is a holistic approach to improving your vision. This means poor eyesight is simply a symptom of a larger problem. Now, of course, living in a modern society comes with it numerous problems, such as the pollution we are exposed to everyday, the junk food we eat everyday and so on.

But did you know that we have learned to hold our breath – sometimes for long periods of time? Think about the last time you watch a TV – or working at something with intense focus. Did you hold your breath? Get someone to monitor your breath for a day.

Holding your breath causes a great deal of stress to your body. Some experiments have been on the correlation between holding your breath and your eyesight. The result is when people hold their breath, their eyesight tend to get worse.

Here are three tips to help you improve your breathing patterns for vision correction:

1. Always take deep breaths. This means your stomach should rise everytime you inhale, not your lungs.
2. Lie down and place your right hand on your stomach and your left hand on your chest. Take a deep breath and take note which of your hands are rising. Practice this for 5 minutes a day.
3. Close your lips but set your teeth apart and take a deep breath. You should feel a gush of cool air through your body. Doesn’t it relaxes you?

Vision therapy is a complex subject, one that I will not attempt to fully explore here in this blog post. What I will try to do here is to give you the fundamentals. The core concepts and the things that if you don’t do, you’ll never be able to regain your vision. Ready?

1. You have to give your eyes a chance to recover. That means you have to significantly cut down the time you’re wearing your glasses. If you can’t see without your glasses, then at least get one that’s two to three degrees lower than your prescription. Note: Always see an optometrist first, preferably one who’s trained in Bates Method. I’ve seen people recover their eyesight just by doing this alone.
2. Do eye exercises. Although these exercises are not exactly approved by mainstream optometry, many people have reported success. Do a quick Google search and watch, listen and read the numerous testimonials. These exercises work because they are designed to imitate the way your eyes are supposed to work. Due to our modern lifestyle, we inevitably picked up various bad vision habit and used our eyes incorrectly – for example, staring and lack of blinking. When you use your eyes as it’s designed to, your vision recovers.
3. Manage your stress. Take deep breaths once in a while. Meditate. You wouldn’t believe the link that exist between your stress level and your vision. A study once found the more stressful a person is, the more likely he/she suffer from a vision problem.
4. Correct your diet. Just like any other parts of your body, your eyes require the optimum amount of nutrition to work optimally. I didn’t mention specific vitamins and minerals because I believe in a holistic approach. Supplements geared towards improving vision is a marketing trick that many people fall prey to. Your eyes will benefit more if you just consume more vegetables. The only exception here is if the supplements consist of natural herbs – not specific vitamins. Also, there’s a reason I placed nutrition last: If you don’t follow the first three suggestions first, the nutrition simply wouldn’t matter.

So there, a simple 4-step vision therapy. It’s really quite straightforward but I have to admit, it’s easier said than done. Truth is, implementing it requires persistence and patience. Vision therapy is a long process that may require a year or more for some people although for some others, it required merely a few weeks. But even then, it takes effort to change your habits to rebuild your vision.

Vision therapy can be very intimidating for people who has just begun. Where to even begin right? In this article, I want to introduce you to the basic concepts of natural vision therapy and end with one basic eye exercise for you to try out. With that said, let’s get started.

Unlike traditional vision theory, natural vision improvement involves relieving stress out of your eyes. Stress on your eyes originates from bad vision habits that you may have unconsciously learned. Some of the bad vision habits include staring, refusal to blink or prolonged period of usage despite the need to rest.

These bad habits places strain on your eyes. Meaning, your eye muscles have to exert itself, much like your biceps have to strain itself when you’re carrying weights. When the strain is continuously placed on those muscles, the muscles soon become chronically strained. That means it went out of your control. No longer can you relax it when you want to.

Unlike traditional approaches, the objective of natural vision therapy is to relax those eye muscles by correcting your vision habits. Once you’re back to seeing the way your eyes is meant to be used, those eye muscles will naturally go back.

But you and I know both know that habits are difficult to kick… especially those we are not even aware of. This is where eye exercises come in.

The term “eye exercises” should not be interpreted literally. The meaning is more like “breathing exercises” – they don’t strengthen your lungs, they merely teaches you how to breathe properly. When you perform eye exercises religiously, over a period of time, you’ll once again learn how to see correctly. These eye exercises, of course, are specifically designed to simulate how healthy eyes see.

That is the gist of vision therapy. Here, try this eye exercise:

Close your eyes and place your palms on them so that you block all light. Be careful not to press on your eyes though. When you’re “palming”, breathe abdominally and think of the most relaxing scenery you can imagine.

What you imagine – you literally see. To your brain, there’s no difference. Brain scans showed the same neurons are activated when you imagine and when you see. Thus when you imagine a relaxing scene, you’re actually relaxing yourself – including your eyes.

This vision therapy is great not just to improve your eyesight, it’s also great when you’re under a lot of stress and you just want to “chill out”. Instead of watching TV, try this instead. Palm at least for 10 minutes, 3 times a day. Once right after you wake up, once during your break from work and another one before you go to bed.

If you’ve been following this blog, I’m sure you already notice that there are a lot things you need to do to improve your eyesight. But all these are just theories until you’ve applied them – and theories don’t change the fact that you’re myopic – or long sighted.

To reverse myopia, you need a plan in which you’ll stick to. I personally know the importance of planning and the discipline to stick to them. I work at home and I’m my own boss. More often than not, I have the freedom to do anything I want at any time of the day… but if I did that, I wouldn’t be here today.

If you’re having trouble sticking to your vision improvement plan, copy what I did:

1. Have someone you’re responsible to. Tell you friends about your plan and what you hope to achieve. The shame that you’ll face if you don’t do it alone should motivate you to stick to the plan. If you’re not one to be ashamed easily, tell your friend you’ll do her a difficult favor if you don’t stick to the plan.
2. Use both a cane and carrot approach. If you DO stick to a plan, reward yourself. I like to treat myself to a spa visit if I sticked to my business plan for a whole week.
3. Place your plan somewhere visible so that you’ll show it to as many people as possible and so that it’ll always be there to remind you. I place my plan right on top of my working monitor and everytime my friends enter my working room, I’ll have to explain what it’s about.
4. Burn all bridges. Some of the great battles are won when generals burn the bridges in which his soldiers can retreat. The same principle applies to sticking to the plan. If you always have your glasses handy, you’ll revert to them whenever thing get a little problematic. Get yourself a weaker pair of glasses and literally throw your old one away!
5. Surround yourself with supportive people. When I first tried to improve my vision (and start a business, for that matter), some of the people I told this to literally laughed at me. I didn’t exactly cut them off my life and significantly reduce the amount of time I hang out with them. Their doubt WILL make you stop sticking to your plan.

There is a group of sea gypsies off the Burmese archipelago. They live half of their lives on boats and they often dive into the sea for food and pearls.

The interesting thing about these people is that they often dive up to 75 feet deep without any diving equipment. This feat would be impossible for most us. For one, light rays are augmented so deep in water, such that they don’t land of the right place in the retina.

But these sea gypsies were able to see so deep in water. How did they do it? They subconsciously constrict their pupils. Now, for normal people like us, our pupils expand in deep water (just as in dark places)… and it has long been assumed by scientists that this reaction is reflexive and cannot be changed.

But just by diving repeatedly, these sea gypsies were able to change how their brain control their eyes.

Does the story of the sea gypsies sound familiar? Can you change the wirings of you brain to see clearly again? If so, would continuous practice achieve that outcome? I believe so. Much of the process involved in “seeing” goes on in your brain, not in your eyes.

And if your brain can send the signal to your eyes to relax their muscles, instead of to tense, then perhaps you’ll not have a problem with myopia. This is why “eye exercises” that claims to “strengthen” eye muscles is pure bull. Eye exercises are meant to allow your brain to learn the right way to see. Their purpose is to train your brain the way the sea gypsies trained theirs.

It is generally true that most vision degenerates not because of the lack of eye vitamins. However, the progress that you experience from eye exercises CAN be boosted if you are consuming healthy meals. A balanced diet benefits everything in your body – and that includes your eyes.

If you are looking to supplement your diet to improve your eyesight, I would generally advise that you consume only wholefoods. This is because there are numerous of other vitamins, minerals and other nutrients that modern science has yet to discover. If you exclusively consume multi-vitamin tablets, you’re risking not consuming the essential nutrients yet to be discovered.

Plus, all vitamins and minerals do not work in isolation. They require other vitamins, minerals and fats to be absorbed, processed and used by your body. By consuming wholefoods, you’ll ensure that you’re consuming all the “raw materials” required to properly absorb and make use of the nutrients.

With that said, let’s start with the three fruits and herbs I highly recommend for improving eyesight.

1. British pilots in World War 2 used to consume Bilberries to improve their night vision. What they didn’t know is that Bilberries are not only beneficial for night vision, they are beneficial to eyes in general. They are rich in flavonoids, a plant pigment rich in anti-oxidants, that can potentially save you from blindness.
2. Eyebright has been used for centuries to treat eye irritation. The herb contains antibiotic properties and high anti-oxidant levels. Its astringent properties tighten membranes and mucus surrounding the eyes, and thus strengthens and improves blood circulation in your eyes.
3. Bingko Bilboa is one of the oldest herbs often used to boost brain function. But its other little properties is that Gingko contains a powerful anti-oxidant that prevents macular degeneration.

These three are my favorites. When you purchase the Rebuild Your Vision eye exercises program, you’ll receive a free bottle of the Ocu-Plus Formula, in which contains all three of these powerful fruit and herbs.

If you’ve read around for a while on the subject, you’ll find a lot of ways to improve your eyesight. Some people say eat more carrots. Some say don’t watch so much TV. Some others would say not to read in the dark.

But  do those advice really address the underlying problem? I believe not.

I believe your eyesight degenerates because there is unnecessary placed on it. You place strain on your eyes when you stare – a common practice especially when watching TV or reading. This strain if often worsened by wearing glasses, which will then place more strain on your eyes because it encourages to stare more.

Eye exercises addresses this underlying symptom. Repetition is the mother of all skill. If you perform eye exercises religiously, soon you’ll find yourself once again learn how to see the way you used to – the way without strain. This is because eye exercises are designed to simulate the way your eyes are meant to be used.

Eye exercises, therefore, do not “strengthen” your eye muscles. There is no need to. Your eye muscles are already too strained, and therefore do not require “strengthening”. What it requires is relaxation.

I have to admit – the term “eye exercises” is a little misleading. But the term is meant to be more like “breathing exercises”. The practice relaxes you – do it enough times and you’ll subconsciously learn the principles behind the action.

In my years of helping people improve their eyesight, there’s one fact that stood out for me. And that is the poor success rate.

Don’t get me wrong. I think natural vision improvement is the best hope (or even the ONLY hope) for you to improve your eyesight… permanently. The poor success isn’t because the eye exercises don’t work. I know for a fact they do.

Most of them fail because they enter the arena with the misconception that it’s going to be a sprint, not a marathon. Imagine an athlete giving it his all in the first 100m when the race is for a marathon at 40km! That’s how most most people end up.

The get all excited. They performed the necessary eye strengthening exercises and followed all the useful advice. One week later, they didn’t see the result and they give up. And if you think about it, that’s pretty much what happen for most things in life.

Partly to blame, of course, is the sugar coating sales letters of products that sell these natural vision improvement kit. They lead you to believe it would be quick. Well, I’m here to tell it’s not.

The missing piece of the puzzle is continuing motivation. If you can keep your excitement for a prolonged period of time – at least 6 months – then I can pretty much guarantee you’d notice a difference. That’s why unlike other programs, the Rebuild Your Vision program comes with a 1 year guarantee.

If you want to learn how to keep your motivation up, go to this Rebuild Your Vision website and follow the instructions to get a free book on continued motivation.