Great Progress with the Universal Swing!

It's been so close for all these years but I always passed by without realizing what it was, and how do I consciously get into that state.

I discovered it by accident. I was in my country house doing some physical work, and I pulled a muscle in my back causing myself acute pain. That day I practiced a lot of long swing (swinging my head from side to side) and I decided to use it to try to alleviate the pain. To my surprise, the pain momentarily disappeared after just a few swings, and also I noticed at that moment my mind felt different, like if I suddenly woke up!

In few days after that I've been studying that state of the mind and I've learned that it's the universal swing that I've been looking for, and that now I am able to enter that state consciously! Not always, but often times I can, and these times are coming more and more often recently.

Here is what it feels like:

• I suddenly feel like I'm awake from "sleepiness". This is a kind of pseudo-sleepiness caused by stare, when the eyes want to close and roll up and you feel discomfort. This "sleepiness" can be taken to its extreme when one looks at the sun with stare. (That's why I think sun treatment is useful -- it demonstrates people what is stare, how it feels, and then how it feels when the stare is gone and replaced with the universal swing.) BTW, it seems that the association of the feeling of stare with "sleepiness" is pretty personal to me, other people do not seem to use the word "sleepiness".
• The entire world seems to be moving in slow, short and easy motion. Sometimes this motion is so subtle that it's almost unnoticeable.
• The entire vision becomes deeper, more vibrant and transparent
• The state is fueled by motion. When I move my head, even a small bit, my mind resonates to the movement and a new wave of awakeness and swing is produced.
• Photophobia goes away entirely. The eyes suddenly open up wide and blink freely, feeling very light and easy, no need to squint at the bright day. I can look at the sun at such moment, without any discomfort and scotomata.
• Flashes of improved vision follow in few seconds, unless I lose the swing.
• When the swing stops, the stare returns immediately. I realized there are only two states: stare and swing, there are no other states. The movement should never stop.

I learned how to enter the state using long swing. I sway my head from side to side for a few minutes, noticing how my shoulders, window frame and the entire world is moving in opposite direction. Recently I've been able to remember the universal swing with only a couple swings of my head. I keep going and swing my head from time to time pretty much all the time, like a Chinese statuette, checking if I still have the swing, and renewing it.

When I lose the swing, it always happens very surreptitiously, so it's easy to miss. It feels like you forget again what is universal swing, and fall into the unconscious sleep. It requires and will require much awareness from me not to lose the moment when it happens and to renew the swing to keep it permanent. But I think it's now just a matter of time to learn to do it under all conditions.

My vision has also greatly improved. In favorable conditions (sunny days which are plenty recently) I have lots of long-lasting flashes, some of them close to 20/20, all through the day.

P.S. My blog has been quite silent recently. That's because I am participating actively in a Russian-speaking community "TRUE BATES METHOD или как ПРАВИЛЬНО восстанавливать зрение по Бейтсу".

How I Enter the State of the Universal Swing

I have realized that noticing the universal swing continuously is fundamental for the cure. It is not optional, you cannot get away with just doing "Bates stuff" from time to time. Having understood this and seen a lot of proofs of the fact, I can now stop worrying and just practice the universal swing faithfully, taking my time. The longer the state can be maintained, the deeper it becomes, and the flashes of improved sight follow immediately. The challenge is to remember to notice the swing all the time.

Here are some steps and hints that I have found helpful to enter the state of the universal swing.

1. Let the blur be. For as "negative" it may sound, I find it the most important first thing that I need to do, and it always helps. In other words, stop worrying if the image you get is blurry, just accept what you see as it is. Tell yourself you don't care to see anything, become totally passive. Sometimes I imagine that my eyes are not even mine, and I somehow perceive a visual signal from another person's eyes. Wow, I say to myself, this poor guy's screen is quite blurry, but that's not my problem.

It sometimes feels like a shock, like when you put off your glasses after wearing them for a long time. It feels helpless, like you are thrown into cold water hardly knowing how to swim. Take a deep breath and relax, don't flounder to see, and you will be rewarded in a few seconds.

2. Blink softly and frequently. I thought it was just a wishful recommendation, but it appeared to be very important, surprisingly. Just turn your attention to how you blink. You will find that you blink at irregular jerky intervals, the eyelids shut hardly and with effort, and the muscles under the eyes contract for a moment after each blink. The closed eyelids may be found trembling when you touch them. This is a wrong way of blinking. The right way is to blink frequently, softly and easily. Imagine the eyelids are easy feathers and let them fly easily up and down, all by themselves, withdrawing any effort. The muscles under the eyes should not be involved. Observe your blinking until it ceases to be spasmodic.

Blinking is so important because it's a shortened version of closing the eyes for a few seconds, which is very relaxing, because it reminds me very effectively that I should not fight the blur (see #1). Closing the eyes is also a very efficient technique for balancing in the state of universal swing, recommended by Dr. Bates.

3. Notice the entire view field and practice shifting with central fixation. While in strain, I narrow my view field by an effort. This is a form of eccentric fixation, when I strain to see a big area in the center equally well, at the same time straining not to see the rest of view field at all. Usually when I simply remember that the eccentric view field is still there, though I don't see it as well as the center, I feel an immediate contrasting relief. I guess this is an initial phase of practicing central fixation, when the distance between two points is maximal. Then I proceed with regarding other points closer to each other, as suggested by Dr. Bates. It is important not to stop shifting, because there is always a risk of stare.

4.Look at the white-spaces. Try to look at blank walls, equally colored areas of objects, or white-spaces between letters when you are reading. Imagine the white-spaces and openings are whiter than the letters. Avoid looking at letters and other features directly. Normal eye does not look directly at the letters, but at the white-spaces while reading. Surprised? This is a form of fine-grain central fixation. The feeling somehow reminds me the macro-mode in a camera, like when I was a child, I picked up a beetle and regarded its smallest bits with perfect sight, the rest of world seen not important, but still seen.

5. Imagine small objects and let the micro-movement of the eyes happen. When you strain, you can always notice that you can't move your eyes on a little angle, despite any effort. The best you can do is to move the eyes in a jerky way on quite big angles. Have you ever seen how a couple of eyes with normal sight move? You will be fascinated with the continuous rapid micro movements. Your eyes can't move on small angles because you are holding them by effort. You can't perform the micro-movement, you can only let it happen by itself. Think about it. Sometimes by only thinking about it I unconsciously let my eyes move and it feels very relaxing. Sometimes I imagine small objects and details on the surface of objects I am regarding. Memory of the black period goes here too.

6. Slowness is the key. There is perhaps no other way to make universal swing a habit than to do my work very slowly, at first, while remembering to notice the swing. This is what I am going to pay more attention from now. I don't care if others think I'm slow-brained :). Slowness by itself is also relaxing. As soon as I accept the idea that I will be doing everything slowly, I feel much more relaxed too. I have found that slowly rubbing the pointer finger with the thumb, as described by Dr. Bates, works well to help me remember and agree to stay slow.

If you succeed, you will notice that the objects you are regarding begin to swing in various directions, opposite to the movement of the eyes. The entire view field will also swing accordingly. This is the universal swing. It is important that the swing happens by itself, you do not "produce it" by moving your eyes with effort. At first, this swing may be quite jerky and long, gradually becoming shorter and slower. The eyesight also improves immediately, but try not to look at it, because you may soon forget #1. As Dr. Bates said, "dodge your improved eyesight".

This is what seems to work for me right now, notwithstanding all the rest of techniques suggested by Dr. Bates, of course. Some of my tricks change over time.

Nothing Is Straining, Nothing Is Relaxing

It is a mistake to think that there are some "magic bullets" that will make your mind and eyes necessarily relax or strain every time you use them. I've been misguided by this idea for quite a long time, trying and failing many times to reproduce relaxation "that I had yesterday", while doing seemingly the same thing as yesterday. This is a great source of disappointment for the beginners. 

But in fact, nothing strains or relaxes. It all depends on the state you are currently in, and your attitude to the thing. You can use it, consciously or unconsciously, to strain or to relax your mind (or neither nor). Theoretically any procedure can be both straining and relaxing for you at different times. Even sun treatment, even palming can be straining, and what you think is "a strain to see" can be relaxing. I have experienced these.

In practice, however, there are procedures and circumstances that are as a rule relaxing, for the majority of people. These techniques are all carefully collected in the great book by Dr. Bates. There is however no guarantee that you will not misuse them and cause yourself even more strain. In fact, you will, many times, before you learn to use them correctly, without effort. There is a special frame of the mind that you need to discover before you succeed with any of these practices. It is the state of universal swing. 

Universal Swing and Variable Swing

I have noticed that during my flashes of improved vision the space appears transparent and three-dimensional. The entire view field seems overwhelmingly deep and swings slowly in whole, objects at different distances swinging with different speeds.

Looking to reproduce this feeling after few attempts I have found, guess what, that it is the same thing that is described by Dr. Bates as "universal swing" and "variable swing". It feels like realizing that the space is not flat and objects are located in different planes. Even if you can't see the detail, you can always see that objects change their relative positions to each other as you move your body, head or eyes. The easiest it is to notice when doing the long swing. Then, you can make the movement shorter and still notice that the perspective on objects slightly changes. You can also remember this feeling with the eyes closed.

An important point is that you do not pay attention to the blur and not try to clear it away, but instead only pay attention to the swing.

When successful, the strain decreases so that I become able to stop physically moving my head and then keep the swing purely imaginary. It is slow and short, as it should be.

If I am aware of the universal swing for long enough - a couple of minutes, my eyesight improves automatically. So I now remember to practice it all the time. It is easy when you walk outdoors. The challenge is however to practice it while working at the computer screen or book, where the view field is mostly flat.

Improved Experience with Memory of Swinging Black Period

My recent experience with the memory of black period has considerably improved.

As always, after discovering what I previously did wrong, I slap my forehead because it's exactly what and exactly how Dr. Bates wrote about it in his great book. Namely, I tried to imagine the period stationary. Such ongoing "discoveries of the evident" always leave me wondering, whether all the preceding mistakes were really necessary steps or I could have been able, if I weren't such an idiot, to come directly to do the right thing? And in the latter case, how rapid would my cure be? Well, I'm dreaming. :)

So here is the WRONG way to imagine black dot: First I imagined kind of background, such as white sheet of paper and then a black round dot on it. I knew that I should shift over the dot, so I imagined the dot as a quite big circle and looked at different edges of the circle. The problem was however that each time I looked at an edge, I still kept imagining the picture stationary and the entire circle equally well.

The right way is to begin by imagining the swing of the dot, even before the picture of the dot appears in the mind. The feeling of swing I borrowed from my flashes of improved vision, when letters swung like crazy and were perfectly black. If I find it difficult to imagine the dot swinging right away, I may at first imagine that I blink frequently and each time after opening my eyes the dot slightly changes its position. Then the dot begins to swing even without blinking. Then all of a sudden, I can see the perfect black dot of very small size swinging in my mind! It feels like my mind switches to seeing the perfect imaginary picture somewhere else in my mind while still seeing the real picture from eyes. I may even see some background the black dot is on, but it feels unimportant and loose. This may last for a couple of seconds now, or come in series of intermittent short intervals. The vision always improves when I am able to do so. Sometimes I am unable to remember the black dot swinging and I know then that I need to palm or do some sun treatment, because I am under strain. Black period is a reliable indicator of strain.

The blackness of the period also improved. I think it's because of the sun treatment I take a lot recently. Brilliant light is somehow connected with its opposite - perfect blackness. Actually, now I sometimes look at the Snellen card, see those gray blurred letters and I just grin, because I can easily discard this illusion of grayness by comparing the letters with the memory of perfect black that is now more readily available in my mind. And I do! Then the letters clear and become blacker, temporarily. Then the strain returns, just like a fluctuation of discomfort goes during sun treatment (see my other post about this).

So, the main two factors that enabled me to remember the black period better: memory of short swing and universal swing from flashes of improved vision, and memory of blackness improved by sun treatment.

Needless to say that the swinging black period has immediately become my favorite game, along with the universal swing and noticing things moving. As Dr. Bates advised, I always carry with me the memory of a small, round, perfectly black, inky, greasy, wet, sexy black period! :)