Day 60: Eyesight and Vision
Yoga for the Eyes by Meir Schneider, “Relearning to See” by Thomas Quackenbush, Nutrition for the Eyes; Four Kinds of Vision (Body, Mind, Soul, Spirit)
Welcome to Day 60!
Sometimes the beauty of one feature is enough to carry all the others. This seems particularly true with the eyes. On a raw diet, eye color can, and usually does, change over time. Typically, on a raw diet, the eyes soften, lighten, become more luminescent, and show more gold, green, or blue.
Dark circles under the eyes are related to having an exhausted adrenal system. Coffee contributes to this, as do other stimulants, such as refined sugar (soda, candy), cigarettes, and recreational drugs. Dark circles may also be caused by a potassium overdose (eating too many foods high in potassium) such as bananas, dried fruit, avocados, durian, nuts, and sprouts.
Dark circles can be corrected by eating foods high in organic sodium, such as celery, chard, kale, spinach, olives, unwashed sea vegetables, and by using Celtic sea salt. Cucumbers and pumpkin seeds may also be effective in alleviating this condition.
Puffiness under the eyes is often caused by too much sodium in the body. This causes the body to retain water. To correct this, eat more high-potassium foods, such as bananas, dried fruits, avocados, durian, nuts, and sprouts.
Over 500 million nerve endings arrive in each eye. Nutritionist Bernard Jensen perfected the ancient science of iridology (the study of the iris). He demonstrated that the irises accurately reflect the state of the internal organs. The more perfect one’s health, the more perfect is the iris. Imperfections, such as spots and irregularities around the pupil, indicate congestion, constipation, candida, or some other condition.
Eye-beauty is a natural by-product of real and deep tissue cleansing caused by eating a raw-food diet, colon cleansing, a variety of nutritional cleanses, and various forms of fasting. Once one is sufficiently cleansed, fasting brings forth a divine, almost startling, radiance, from the eyes.
Blueberries, bilberries, and lyceum (a Chinese herb) are excellent foods for improving the eyesight. These foods contain high quantities of antioxidants. In fact, of 40 common fruits and vegetables tested, blueberries tested number one in antioxidants (as reported by Dr. Prior, director of the USDA studies).
Correcting poor eyesight is possible by eating raw plant foods, getting plenty of Omega-3 Fats (particularly DHA and EPA from Vegan Sources or Liquid Fish Oil), taking in rich antioxidant sources, avoiding any and all hydrogenated oils and fats (these clog the tiny capillaries of the eyes and lead to cataracts), reading under only full spectrum lights (reading in the dark causes eye stress), sufficiently resting the eyes, and emotional cleansing surrounding childhood traumas (which are often linked to eye-stress and poor eyesight).
We also recommend studying books like Relearning To See by Thomas Quackenbush, and Take Off Your Glasses And See by Dr. Jacob Liberman.
For much more on nutrition and vision, enjoy today’s information, insights, research, and practices. See you in The Green Room!
Meir Schneider on Vision and Self-Healing. Meir Schneider, PhD, LMT, founder of the School for Self-Healing, is an international author and speaker, holistic mind-body educator, and pioneering therapist.
Today’s Downloads
Eyes
Correcting poor eyesight is possible by eating raw plant foods, taking in rich antioxidant sources, avoiding any and all cooked oils and fats (these clog the tiny capillaries of the eyes and lead to cataracts), reading under only full spectrum lights (reading in the dark causes eye stress), sufficiently resting the eyes, and emotional cleansing surrounding childhood traumas (which are often linked to eye-stress and poor eyesight). I also recommend studying books like Relearning To See by Thomas Quackenbush, and Take Off Your Glasses And See by Dr. Jacob Liberman.
Online Articles
Using the Power of the Sun to Improve Eyesight and Boost Immunity by Rich Stacel
It’s becoming common knowledge in alternative medical circles that the sun, far from being the enemy to health that western medicine has made it out to be is really our best friend when it comes to health, healing, immunity and even strengthening our eyesight. How can this be? Well in this article, I’m going to show you how and teach you a little known Taoist technique to not only improve the eyesight and eye strength, but to increase your overall immunity simply by using the sun with a simple eye exercise that only takes a few seconds to do each morning and evening.
Carrots really do help you see in the dark; beta-carotene-rich foods help prevent a variety of eye ailments by Alexis Black
Your mother always told you eating carrots would help you see better, but did she ever tell you why? No, this wasn’t just a trick to get you to eat your vegetables. It turns out carrots really do give your eyes a boost because they contain beta-carotene, which the body is able to convert into vitamin A, an essential vitamin for healthy vision. Vitamin A, also called retinol, is key in fighting vision problems like cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration and night blindness. It is found primarily in fish oils, liver, eggs and fortified dairy products. However, if you don’t eat animal products, you can make sure you are getting plenty of vitamin A by eating fruits and vegetables that contain carotenoids like beta-carotene, which the body then converts to useful vitamin A, called “provitamin A.”
Great Books
By Doug Marsh
A holistic guide to improving one’s vision both physically and spiritually
• Explains how blurred vision is a reflection of other imbalances in the body, mind, and spirit
• Offers natural methods for improvement of poor eyesight and stress-related difficulties, including dyslexia and ADHD
• Combines the core values of the Bates method of natural vision improvement and Taoism
Fewer than three percent of children in North America are born with visual defects, yet as they become adults nearly two thirds will become reliant on prescription lenses to see clearly. Virtually nonexistent in pre-industrialized cultures, this epidemic of blurred vision can be traced to mental, physical, and spiritual imbalances in modern society. The traditional “quick fixes” of eyeglasses and contact lenses only serve to cover the true cause of blurred vision while increasing eye-strain, and often progressively worsen eyesight as the eyes become trained to work within the confines of the corrective lenses. The advent of refractive surgery carries even more serious risks.
In Restoring Your Eyesight, Doug Marsh offers a natural alternative that shows readers how to improve their eyesight by taking conscious control of their vision health. He combines proven methods pioneered a century ago by eye doctor William Bates with the ancient Chinese wisdom of Taoism. Marsh describes how vision goes deeper than the eyes and optic nerves, extending well into the layers of the mind, emotions, and spirit. Eyesight difficulties are often connected to behavioral and stress-related syndromes, such as dyslexia, ADHD, stuttering, TMJ, and anxiety disorders. He draws upon the core values of the Bates method and Taoism–rhythm, softness, return, balance, and wholeness–to provide guidelines for a holistic healing of outer and inner vision.
By Thomas Quackenbush
In this accessible presentation of the famous Bates method, Thomas R. Quackenbush (who teaches the Bates method in California and Oregon) describes how eyesight can improve naturally, at any age and regardless of heredity. This book is a wonderful tribute to the genius of Dr. Bates, who was a pioneer in discovering how vision becomes blurred and how it restores itself naturally to clarity and acuity. Now 80 years later, his findings and teachings remain light years ahead of our contemporaries. His approach to treating vision problems was truly holistic and the theme throughout this book is very much an extension of that holistic approach. Dr. Quackenbush is to be commended for his dedication in getting the truth out and keeping the torch burning in this “bible” on vision improvement.
By Meir Schneider at the School for Self Healing
You have the power to improve your eyesight—naturally. Building on techniques pioneered by ophthalmologist William Bates, Meir Schneider created an effective approach for self-healing and used it to reverse his own blindness. With The Natural Vision Improvement Kit, Schneider teaches his innovative methods for exercising your eyes back to health. Use these proven techniques to see your world with less strain, greater acuity, and a more spacious visual field. Learn more about the principles of natural eyesight improvement; dozens of exercises to increase your visual acuity and ocular health; Tibetan yoga practices to refresh your eyes and mind; “on-the-spot” techniques to ease reading, driving, and computer eyestrain; how eyesight influences your overall well-being, and more.
By Meir Schneider
Born blind and declared incurable after a series of childhood operations, Meir Schneider remained convinced that his disability was not permanent. As a teenager he began to work with teachers who gave him exercises to reverse his blindness. Within four years he gained a remarkable degree of vision, and began developing a system of therapeutic exercise combining movement, breathing, and mental imagery. When he began working with others, miraculous recoveries ensued.
Movement for Self-Healing details Schneider’s methods of stimulating the natural healing powers of the body, with specific guidelines for improving vision, back problems, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, breathing, and muscular dystrophy.
By Meir Schneider
Clients of the Meir Schneider Self-Healing Method experience their own capacity to bring about recovery, reversing the progress of a wide range of degenerative conditions such as arthritis and muscular dystrophy as well as eye disease. Based in part on the established Bates Method of eyesight improvement and in part on his own professional and personal discoveries, Meir Schneider’s pioneering approach has helped thousands of people successfully treat a host of eye problems, including nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, lazy eye, double vision, glaucoma, cataracts, macular degeneration, retinal detachment, retinitis pigmentosa, and nystagmus.
Born blind to deaf parents, Schneider underwent a series of painful operations as a young child and was left with ninety-nine percent scar tissue on his eyes, resulting in his being declared incurably blind. At the age of seventeen, he discovered how to improve his vision from one percent to fifty-five percent of normal vision with the eye exercises presented in this book. Today Schneider drives a car, reads, and proves time and again that vision can and does improve with exercise. His contributions to the field of self-healing are recognized by alternative health practitioners and medical doctors alike.
In Vision for Life, Schneider shares forty years of discoveries made on his personal and professional journey. The book details simple but effective techniques to gain great vision such as sunning and palming. Such exercises are not only strengthening but also restorative and deeply relaxing. The reader learns how to reverse developing issues before they cause damage or to remedy existing problems, including pathologies such as glaucoma, cataracts, macular degeneration, retinal detachment, optic nerve neuropathy. Vision for Life is written both for people who see poorly and would like to improve and those with 20/20 vision who wish to maintain their perfect eyesight.
by Ken Wilber
One of the best books I have read by Ken Wilber. In this groundbreaking book, Ken Wilber uses his widely acknowledged “spectrum of consciousness” model to completely rewrite our approach to such important fields as psychology, spirituality, anthropology, cultural studies, art and literary theory, ecology, feminism, and planetary transformation. What would each of those fields look like if we wholeheartedly accepted the existence of not just body and mind but also soul and spirit?
In a stunning display of integrative embrace, Wilber weaves these various fragments together into a coherent and compelling vision for the modern and postmodern world.
By Alex Grey
This is an inspirational book about art’s power to bring about personal catharsis and spiritual awakening. Alex Grey’s reflections combine his extensive knowledge of art history and his own first-hand experiences in creating art on the boundaries of consciousness. Included are practical techniques and exercises that can be used to explore the spiritual dimension of art. Challenging and thought-provoking, The Mission of Art will be enjoyed by everyone who has ever contemplated the deeper purpose of artistic expression.
This unique series of paintings takes the viewer on a graphic, visionary journey through the physical, metaphysical, and spiritual anatomy of the self. From anatomically correct rendering of the body systems, Grey moves to the spiritual/energetic systems with such images as “Universal Mind Lattice,” envisioning the sacred and esoteric symbolism of the body and the forces that define its living field of energy.
Includes essays on the significance of Grey’s work by Ken Wilber, the eminent transpersonal psychologist, and by the noted New York art critic, Carlo McCormick.
Alex Grey is an artist whose work has appeared in the Stux galleries, New York and Boston; the London Regional Art Gallery, Canada; the University of California Museum of Art, Santa Barbara; the Chicago International Art Exposition; the New Museum, New York; the Grand Palais, Paris; the St Paulo Biennial, Brazil; and numerous other exhibitions. He is also the author of the book Transfigurations.
Media, Films, & Documentaries
Yoga for Your Eyes | Meir Schneider
Yoga for Your Eyes with Meir Schneider. Meir Schneider can see—and that's a miracle. Born without sight, Schneider refused to surrender to his blindness and instead began an intensive exploration of sight and self-healing systems. Building on techniques pioneered by ophthalmologist William Bates, he created his own total approach for self-healing and used it to reverse his own blindness.
On Yoga for Your Eyes available from SoundsTrue.com, this respected mind/body authority teaches a complete video course on his innovative methods for improving vision naturally. Viewers watch and learn with Schneider as he shows them how to exercise their eyes back to health.
[Audio Interview] Natural Vision Improvement with Meir Schneider
Did you know that your vision can actually improve? Most people don’t think so and most ophthalmologists would say it’s impossible. But Meir Schneider is here to tell us how it is possible!
[Audio Interview] Interview With Meir Schneider, Author of Yoga for the Eyes
He is The Master with that Magic Touch! Meir Schneider, Ph.D., L.M.T. Dr. Schneider has a unique life journey; he was born with congenital blindness, but currently drives with a California’s drivers license. He cured himself of blindness via natural vision improvement methods. The principles he discovered while healing himself are the principles behind The Meir Schneider Self-Healing Method through Bodywork and Movement, his holistic health-care program beneficial for both the body and eyes. Meir Schneider has been helping clients, giving workshops and lectures, and speaking to the medical community for almost four decades. He teaches internationally and while he is at home, sees clients out of his nonprofit in San Francisco, The School for Self-Healing. In this interview, Meir will be speaking about his most recent clients. Specifically, he has recently been working with clients with cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy and vision conditions. He will be talking about how gentle movement and regenerative massage works in conjunction with natural vision improvement for better health and well-being.
Alex Grey Visionary Art | Visual Presentation
[Documentary DVD] Artmind – The Healing Power of Sacred Art with Alex Grey
During the course of this exquisite mind expanding presentation, renowned teacher and visionary artist Alex Grey discusses his artistic vision, life experiences, metaphysical journeys, sacred teachings, and painters that have influenced his work . While exploring the sacred art of spiritual traditions from around the world, he offers insight into the power of sacred art to assist us in revitalizing our health and sense of well-being so that we may open the doors of our perception into the luminous nature of reality, and discover our divine potential.
Included are scores of his paintings and sculptures going back over twenty years of creation.
Is it possible that art has the power to heal? Could it be that the sacred paintings, sculptures and monuments from ancient civilizations around the work were created to evoke more than just beauty alone? Do they also have the power to heal and enlighten us, expand our visionary capacity and bring us face to face with divine reality? Join Alex Grey as he takes us on an amazing transformative journey into his unique artistic and spiritual vision.
[Documentary DVD] COSM: Alex Grey and the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors
Following Alex Grey’s first film, Artmind, CoSM is a documentary that further defines Grey’s lofty spiritual ideals by walking the viewer through a series of works made for Grey’s masterpiece, The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. Grey, known for his cosmic, anatomically detailed paintings of humans connecting with the universe, takes the viewer on a journey from birth to death in this non-profit gallery/gathering space created for community gatherings. Starting with artworks depicting the physical body, Grey’s work branches out into an exploration of various stages in a person’s psychic and spiritual development, culled from a complex mix of Eastern and Western philosophical and religious perspectives. One potent example is a painting of humans dissolved into pure light, rendered in a series of hyperbolic curves and light beams bouncing off one another. Filmmaker Nick Krasnic does a fine job of allowing Grey’s narration, as he explains the concepts and inspirations behind each piece, to be the focus of each scene, though CoSM’s rave-era trance music soundtrack adds unnecessary melodrama. Watching CoSM is a meditation not only on art viewing but also on an artist who believes in unlimited human potential.
Worldspirit | Alex Grey (2004)
[Audio Interview] Ken Wilber and Alex Grey: The Integral Artist (Parts 1-4 below)
“There are certain areas, like Chartres Cathedral, where you’re reminded of something, and it brings you home to Yourself in a new way—it’s completely unlike going to Costco….” -Alex Grey
The creator of some of the most transcendent art of our time explores why it is necessary to go beyond the faded postmodern milieu of today’s art world, how psychedelics can play a role in discovering and manifesting one’s deeper realms of being, and how the “two kinds of higher” can impact artists and their work.
In the foreword to Alex’s book The Mission of Art, Ken stated: “Alex Grey might be the most significant artist alive.” At first glance, this can appear to be pure hyperbole, expressing the understandable enthusiasm of a long-time friend and colleague. However, with an Integral Approach, Ken explains, “significant” has a specific meaning, and it was this meaning alluded to in the foreword. “Significant” refers to the degree of depth of an occasion (how many levels of complexity does it contain?), and “fundamental” refers to the span or breadth of an occasion (how many of them are there?). Atoms, for example, are extremely fundamental to the universe—and have enormous span (there are zillions of them)—but they are not very significant (containing little complexity). Humans, on the other hand, are not very fundamental to the universe (e.g., there are far fewer of us than there are atoms), but we are uniquely significant (no other thing or organism in the known universe contains more levels of depth and complexity than a human).
So, how is Alex Grey possibly the most significant artist alive? Looking at the territory we have covered so far, the answer is actually quite simple and elegant: Alex has explored and to various degrees mastered all five states of consciousness, and has grown to integral and transpersonal levels of development, the current leading edge of consciousness evolution.