Astigmatism occurs in the human eye in almost every axial myopia case.

Why?

*Note:  Astigmatism reduces naturally as you reduce prescriptions.  If you have high astigmatism, mention it in your forum posts.  We’ll tweak as appropriate.

Once your eye loses it’s original shape, astigmatism is unavoidable.  As we are beginning to reduce the axial elongation, it makes sense to address astigmatism correction as part of our exercise regimen.

Important to note here is that astigmatism can not be reversed independent of myopia reversal.

Part of the astigmatism will coincide with axial elongation.  For that reason, we do not need to worry about a great deal of exercise to deal with it.  It is the eye shape that we are working on primarily, and we will reduce astigmatism as we reduce myopia.  To some degree however, astigmatism may remain if we do not incorporate some very minor exercise into our overall regimen.  Do not put any more focus on these than suggested in the sessions.

We will use this exercise while outdoors, without prescription:

Look for writing somewhere at a distance where you can read the letters, with some effort.  You will need to experiment a bit, as you ideally want writing that is not very large, to get the desired effect.

Once you find a sign, read it with your left eye closed – right eye only.  Once you have read it, keep focused on the text and slowly move your head left to right, and right to left.  With writing small enough to fill the focus core of your vision, you will notice an effect similar to looking at an image through the bottom of a glass. The image will lose clarity during part of the sweep, and regain it as you continue to move.  We are traversing the fields of your vision affected by astigmatism, changing the degree of clarity.  Since you are at the edge of focus, this effect is particularly obvious.

Now do the same thing with the left eye only – right eye closed.  Read the sign, slowly sweep your head left to right, and right to left.  There is nothing to be done, other than to observe the change in clarity.  Move very slowly, so you can observe the change in clairity.  Stop momentarily, try to refocus (without squinting or significant effort).

Then stop, read the sign again with both eyes.  Clarity is likely to have subjectively increased now.  (If not, don’t worry.  Every astigmatism case varies, as will your experience – for additional comments post a topic in the forum)

Now do this sweep with each eye, three or four times.  After both eyes individually, stop, read the sign with both eyes.

Do this without straining.  It is a relaxed exercise.  Whatever you experience, is perfectly fine.  All we are looking for here is your brain to process the signal for your core and immediate periphery, for the whole focusing surface of your eye.  Think of the focus pushing and focus pulling exercise:  your job is to expose your eyes to the focusing flaw – creating the stimulus.  Your biology does the rest, correcting the flaw over time, through consistent repeat exposure.  You are not straining, merely creating the exposure.  The message is ‘the lens is uneven’.  Just as when you lift weights, you create a stimulus to say ‘I need access to more muscle fiber’.  In this case we just point out the flaw in the parts of our lens that so far we have paid little attention to.

Unless otherwise noted, doing this three or four times for any outdoor period is absolutely enough.

Close to the end of our time outdoors, spend ten minutes with your normalized prescription.  No sweep, just let the sharp focus experience come to you, now particularly pronounced in the contrast to being previously without focal plane change.  Those last ten minutes with normalized prescription are highly beneficial – don’t miss them.  It is the reward system, and the stimulus to show proper focus.  Remember, your physiology will correct with proper stimulus.

This exercise is not as effective if you have myopia over -4.00.  In case you are above 4 diopters, do the exercise with your differential prescription.   You may try without, if you enjoy the experience, well worth the exposure – but in either case, do it with the normalized prescription as well.

Important with this, do not overdo it.  You can not fix astigmatism any faster than your overall myopia.  Little inputs, no strain!

Questions, comments, as always – drop a line in the forum.

Cheers,

Jake

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