How to Use the Burning Glass on Yourself

Here's how I learned to point the burning glass blindly, without assistance from another person and without a mirror.

1. Determine the focus distance of the burning glass. Focus sun rays on a sheet of paper and remember the distance between the glass and the paper, approximately. In my case it's about 5 inches.

By the way, here's how to choose the right burning glass. The burning glass is a convex lens ("+" diopters), such as a magnifying glass. It is important that the glass focuses a sufficient ray beam, such that provides the relaxing effect and doesn't overheat your eyeball too fast.

The light beam is greater when the diameter of the glass is greater, and/or the diopter of the glass is greater. In other words, you can take a smaller glass with more "+" diopters or you can take a bigger glass with fewer "+" diopters.

Here's my own burning glass (the ruler is in cm):


2. Sit down in sun light and direct your face to the sun so that the sun rays are square with your face. Under the eyelids, point your eyes to the sun.

3. Use the burning glass with closed eyes. Bring the glass close to one eye, so that the frame touches your eyebrow. From this reference point, move the glass away from your face along the sun rays until you reach the focus distance. You can tell the right position by the maximum of intensity of the light spot seen through the eyelid. Don't forget to move the glass from side to side, to avoid overheating.

4. Holding the glass in the same position, look far down and lift the eyelid with another hand. Voila, you are now pointing the burning glass correctly. Keep moving the glass from side to side. If you accidentally lose the position, repeat from step 3.

What you should see is a bright white field with a network of darker blood vessels. This is the projection of sclera's blood vessels on the retina. As you move the glass, the vessels will move too. In the center of that field you will see a spot of slightly different color and texture. This spot doesn't move so I think this is the macula lutea (the central yellow spot on the retina).

Make sure your eyes stay far down, because otherwise the focused beam may touch the pupil, which is an unpleasant thing. For this reason I point the glass blindly and don't use mirrors or otherwise try to peep at my hands.

Treat one eye as long as you are comfortable with it, then pass to the second eye, then repeat again if you like.