Author: Rosemary Gaddum Gordon

Originally appeared in
Earth Star Magazine April/May 2005
By Rosemary Gaddum Gordon, D.B.O., M.A.

At this time of the year in New England we are often starved of certain colors. As I look outside I see blue sky, very white snow, bare gray trees and some dark green pines. No reds, oranges, yellows or bright purples. It is true that if I stand in just the right place I can see sparkling spectrums in the snow that give me the whole rainbow, but it is only a tidbit compared to what is available to us in the summertime. Our eyes have evolved to respond to a particular portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, from deep violet to bright red. These colors enliven our world and bring us joy. There is evidence that color has also been used for its healing properties since the days of Ancient Persia. Each color has different qualities and is associated with different moods, different chakras.

Good health requires that we be in balance. One way to help maintain that balance is to make sure we are getting a broad range of colors in our visual diet. There is a lovely meditation I learned from Jacob Liberman O.D., Ph.D., which allows us to discover whether we are in need of a particular color. You can do this any time you are sitting quietly, and it is especially beneficial if you do it while palming your eyes. (See Vision Tips October/November 2004). Close your eyes and take a few deep, calming breaths to soothe your nervous system. Now imagine the color red filling your body, from the top of your head to the soles of your feet. Notice if it’s easy or difficult to let yourself be filled by red. Do you welcome or resist it? Be aware of how you are breathing and feeling. After a minute or so, allow orange to fill you from your crown to your feet, and experience your responses in the same way. Continue this process with yellow, then green, blue, indigo and violet. Spend enough time with each color to experience the felt-sense of it and your responses.

If you find you welcome and love every color then you can rest assured that at this time you are in color balance. If you felt resistant or uncomfortable with one or more colors, those are the colors that need replenishing. Look at you surroundings, your current wardrobe and at the food you eat and see if those colors are included in your life. Even if they are, your system is wanting more, so add them somewhere. For example, if blue was a difficult color, you might eat some blueberries, look up at the sky more often and allow you eyes to feast on someone’s blue coat on the bus. Notice, as you look at the color, how it feels in your eyes, in your body and in your mind. For a banquet of colors, take yourself to an art museum, or the Tropics or the mall.

Remember that a banquet can be tasteless if we are not noticing what we are ingesting. Let your eyes bring nourishment all the way to your soul.

More Vision Tips

Originally appeared in
Earth Star Magazine June/July 2007
By Rosemary Gaddum Gordon, D.B.O., M.A.

For optimal sight, central and peripheral vision must be functioning simultaneously. We often strain our central vision and ignore the periphery when we over-focus and concentrate intensely. When we cannot see the forest for the trees, we’ve lost the big picture; we’ve shut out our peripheral vision. As you can tell from the language, this can be as much a mental restriction as a visual one. It is largely a question of awareness.

I suggest you do a few experiments to find out what you are doing. You can start right now as you read these words. Notice if you are aware of seeing whatever is around the page – the room, the trolley, people in the café. If you are not, then you are over-focusing and have lost the big picture. You can also explore this when working at the computer, reading a book or driving a car. How large a visual field do you have when you are busy living your life? What happens when you are driving or walking? Can you turn to speak with a friend while still seeing the road ahead?

As you attend to what you see peripherally you will notice that you don’t see the objects off to the side as well as you see what you are focusing on. Due to the anatomy of the eye, our peripheral vision is not as sharp as our central vision, and the more peripheral the object is, the less clearly we see it. This is normal.

Our central vision specializes in seeing color and detail, while our peripheral vision is sensitive to movement and small variations in light. It is responsible for our night vision. You can explore your visual field by extending your arms straight out from your shoulders while looking at something directly ahead of you and noticing if you can see your fingers. Now wiggle your fingers. Can you see them now? If you can’t, then bring your arms forwards a little, until you can see them. You will notice that it is easier to see them when they are moving. As we spend more time indoors, on computers or watching TV our potential visual field is frequently under used. As this under-use accumulates, the partnership between central and peripheral vision becomes unbalanced and both become diminished.

In order to rebalance this relationship we need to switch on the periphery again. As much as possible, we want to be aware of what we see off to the sides, above and below. Place interesting moving things in your peripheral field, such as a light-catching mobile in your cube, a birdfeeder near the window and a mirror where it will allow you to see people moving around.

At first it will seem very distracting, because you will want to look at those things centrally, the way you are used to. After a while you will find that you can still concentrate on your work and see what’s going on around you at the same time. You will no longer be lost in the details. You will be keeping everything in perspective, and seeing more comfortably and clearly.

More Vision Tips

Originally appeared in
Earth Star Magazine December 2007/ January 2008
By Rosemary Gaddum Gordon, D.B.O., M.A.

By the time you read this, the World Series win by the Red Sox will be old news. Today, though, the images of extraordinary curve balls and splitters hurtling towards the batter at 96 mph are still fresh in my mind. The fact that the batters can hit any of those balls shows magnificent hand-eye coordination. The ability to follow the ball accurately enough to hit it is a learned skill. Yes, some people are naturally better than others and seem wired to excel at sports, but they still had to practice and develop that visual skill in order to be that good.

When we are born our eyes can jump from one object to another but the ability to follow something is learned and develops over time. Since this is an acquired skill we can practice and improve it. In my teaching I come across many people who say they “can’t catch anything but the ‘flu.” In fact, when we start to practice they are afraid of the ball. Some of them have been hurt by flying objects which might account for their fear, but most of these people lived in families who didn’t teach and encourage them to follow the ball. These people often carry shame at not having this skill. They were picked last for team sports and are often shy because they felt left out.

We can start helping kids to develop these smooth pursuit movements, (as they are called in the vision world,) quite young. By around three months a baby can follow a toy or mommy around the room, though the movements are jerky at first. As toddlers they like rolling balls or little toys on wheels back and forth on the floor. Once they are steady on their feet we can play bouncing ball games, first with big balls and then gradually reducing the size.

There are two important things to remember as the “coach”: keep the game within the child’s skill level so that it’s fun and watch their eyes to make sure they are on the ball. Many kids, especially girls, tend to look at the person they are playing with, not the ball. They see it peripherally, but they are not looking at it and they don’t know the difference. In order to follow we have to look. Over time the games can progress to catch and wiffle ball, softball, tennis, Frisbee, squash, baseball etc.

We associate most of these activities with summer and being outdoors, especially here in Red Sox country, but there are ways to practice indoors too. You can play with balloons or games involving nerf balls. A great way to promote more complexity of eye and whole body movements is to bounce on a mini trampoline as you play. This is fun and helps with balance as it challenges the visual system to open to all the movement as we watch the ball. (If you don’t have a trampoline, I recommend a Needak. It’s quiet and easy on the knees.)

There are people who don’t like sports for reasons other than an inability to follow a moving object. This is their choice. However, the skill is still important to develop. It helps us drive more safely, read more fluidly – and catch our socks when someone throws them to us! We may never hone our smooth pursuit movements to the level of hitting a screw ball, but as parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends we can help a child, (or an adult for that matter,) develop these skills and have better sight and more ease in the world.

More Vision Tips

Originally appeared in
Earth Star Magazine October/November 2008
By Rosemary Gaddum Gordon, D.B.O., M.A.

“I used to need my pinhole glasses to read the newspaper, but now they don’t seem to work anymore. I can actually read much better without them”. This was not the only vision improvement technique this student had been using over the past nine months, but it was part of the strategy.

Pinhole glasses are black plastic “lenses” with lots of little holes in them. When you put them on it’s like looking through a big screen. If your vision is clearer when you wear regular glasses, you will notice that the little holes help you to see more clearly too. If you have good vision or vision that cannot be improved with glasses, you will see worse.

These funny looking spectacles work by eliminating the need to focus the light as it enters the eyes. Imagine for a moment, light travelling in a horizontal column, like an unsharpened pencil. When it reaches the normal eye the light is refracted or focused – it is brought to a point, (like when we sharpen a pencil), so that it lands on the retina. The plastic of these “glasses” blocks all but the very central rays of light, which go through the holes and there is no need for the eye to do any focusing. (Similarly, the very center of the lead of a pencil does not need to be sharpened.) This allows the eye to relax and just receive the image.

You can try it for yourself. Punch a hole in a piece of paper with the lead of a sharp pencil and look through it without your glasses. Or, roll up your index finger to make a little hole and look through that. Does this trick help you to see what you can’t see without lenses? Squinting the eyes does the same trick, but really tires the eyelids, brows and cheek muscles.

Pinhole glasses cannot replace regular glasses and contacts for most activities. They severely restrict our peripheral vision so we must not drive or ride a bicycle while wearing them. However, they can be very therapeutic when worn for reading, TV or the computer because they allow the eyes to relax and to see. Because so much light is blocked by the plastic, we need to make sure there is good illumination while wearing them. When we take them off, we usually see more clearly, unlike when we remove regular glasses, because our eyes have rested.

These glasses can take some getting used to. We are asking the mind to perceive in a different way. As we adjust, we see the “mesh” less and less. At first, it is best to wear them for only a few minutes at a time. You can build up to using them for a few hours as long as you are comfortable.

More Vision Tips

Originally appeared in
Earth Star Magazine June/July 2008
By Rosemary Gaddum Gordon, D.B.O., M.A.

Last full moon I was with a colleague and, as we looked up to admire the sky, she said a man once told her it was good for one’s vision to walk in the moonlight. Since she’s pretty I wondered if this was a come-on, but she told me he came from a desert culture and everyone was encouraged to walk at night.

The exchange reminded me of how many people say they have trouble seeing at night. The human eye certainly sees better during the day, but we also have the ability to see much better at night than we often do. There are ways to get the most out of what we have.

Our eyes only take seconds to adjust to light, but it takes five minutes for them to become partially dark–adapted and a full thirty minutes for them to become fully dark-adapted. Perhaps you remember being a kid playing outside on long summer evenings as the light gradually faded. You saw fine unless you ran inside to get something. When you came back out, didn’t it seem as if it was suddenly darker? We need to give our eyes time to adapt. This means that when driving or walking we want to avoid looking into headlights, flashlights or even the full moon because our eyes will light-adapt and we’ll have to wait another five minutes to regain some of our night vision.

Another way we can help ourselves see better at night is by attending to our peripheral vision. The peripheral retina is very sensitive to low light. That is why we see the faintest stars in the night sky best when we “look” to one side of them, rather than directly at them. This part of the retina is also very sensitive to movement. We often ignore what we are seeing off to the sides, but our eyes are still registering what is there. It is the mind that disregards this information. We know we can change our minds, so we can train ourselves to notice the larger field and regain our ability to see out of the corners of our eyes. At first, as we direct our attention to seeing in this way, the objects are not very recognizable, but as we practice and develop this awareness, it becomes easier to identify what we’re seeing.

During World War II, fighter pilots were stationed in Scotland. They noticed that they could see much better during their night flights after having bilberry jam, a local specialty, on their bread at tea-time. After the war this story spread and some scientists in France did much research on this little berry that grows in Northern Europe. They found that it contains particular flavinoids which increase the eyes’ ability to adapt to the dark. In the U.S. bilberry is sold in capsule form. Bilberry’s effects are most noticeable for the first four hours and it is completely non-toxic.

Take walks at night where you feel safe, with or without your lover. Open up to your peripheral field; give you eyes time to adapt and take bilberry if you want to enhance the process. Enjoy the summer nights.

More Vision Tips

Originally appeared in
Earth Star Magazine December 2008/January 2009
By Rosemary Gaddum Gordon, D.B.O., M.A.

That’s what my mother said when I was a kid. It seems she was tuned into some deep maternal wisdom. A new study out of Sidney, Australia shows the more time kids spend outdoors the less likely they are to become nearsighted. It doesn’t matter whether they are just playing outdoors or participating in a sport, simply being outside seems to be the charm. There are several factors that increase the likelihood of a child becoming nearsighted, this study adds to our knowledge and gives us guidance. As we might expect, the most likely scenario for becoming myopic are many hours a day doing near, indoor activities like reading, drawing and playing handheld computer games. Curiously, midrange activities like watching TV and playing video games appear to make very little difference to the development of nearsightedness and indoor sports doesn’t affect it at all.

In the data collected from these 4,000 children, it seems it is less about the tasks or the activities that affect the vision so much, as the light. Even on a cloudy day the intensity of light is greater outdoors than indoors, however brightly we light our homes. There is also the difference in the quality of natural light. There is a broader spectrum outdoors. People say the light in Australia is unique and interestingly, there is a low incidence of myopia there by international standards.

If these conclusions are correct, then we need to get children outdoors. Those in the study least likely to become myopic spent an average of more than three hours outside every day, even though they were city kids. Some people like to be outdoors more than others, so some children will need more encouragement. A few ideas we might try are: encouraging them to play an outdoor sport (even if it’s non competitive and with the neighborhood kids); cheerleading; hiking; helping with the chores; walking to and from school; persuading the ones who spend hours on the phone to sit outside.

These are all easier when the weather is fine. But, maybe harder to do during the long dark winters, when children spend most of the daylight hours in school. Shooing them outside to make a third snowperson when they’ve just taken off all those clothes may seem excessive – but now we know they need as much time in sunlight as possible. At the weekends we can often give them more outdoor time by taking them sledding, ice skating, skiing and goofing about. There is a saying in the Upper Midwest that there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes.

This study was done with children but there’s no reason for us to think that adults’ eyes wouldn’t also benefit from being outdoors. Whenever possible, do the outdoor activities with the kids and grand kids. They love that. Get outside during lunch breaks, park far away from the mall rather than as close as possible and in the winter dress warmly enough at weekends to spend several hours outside. Remember to wear some UV protection if you and your kids are out at midday in the bright sun, but in the early morning and late afternoon, let your eyes receive plenty of daylight.

More Vision Tips

Originally appeared in
Earth Star Magazine October/November 2007
By Rosemary Gaddum Gordon, D.B.O., M.A.

When our vision deteriorates, one of the first things we notice is that our speed of focus becomes sluggish. We may have been driving for a while and when we need to check the map it takes a few blinks to see it clearly. The same sluggishness can occur when we want to see something down the street after we’ve been reading for long periods. If we don’t do something to help our eyes, it can take longer and longer to read those little words until the point when it takes too long and we get a pair of glasses. This sluggishness occurs because the muscles that focus the eyes have become tired and stiff.

Tired muscles need rest and stiff ones need flexibility. We must start with the resting. If you’ve been reading this column for a while you know several techniques for relaxing and resting the eyes. Besides palming, which we discussed in the last issue, there is sunning, where you close the eyes and turn the head so that the sunlight passes over your eyelids. If you focus on how good the warmth and light feel as they travel across your face, you will rest your eyes deeply and quickly. A good night’s sleep is another effective way to rest the eyes. There is also prevention: rest your eyes regularly and keep changing the distance of your focus frequently all day long.

Once your eyes are well rested, a great technique for helping them to be flexible is Tromboning. This helps speed up both far and near focus. It is important that you stay as grounded and at your core as possible when you Trombone. Attend to how you and your eyes are feeling. It’s easy to overdo this, so start slowly. Cover one eye. (If you have one that is weaker than the other, cover that one first.) Hold a postcard or photo in one hand and sit where you can see out of a window or at something twenty feet or more away. Imagine you have an invisible pencil on the end of your nose and move your head so the pencil outlines whatever you are looking at outside the window. This helps your eyes to relax and focus. Now, hold the card at arms length and “nose-pencil” the images on the card as you bring it in towards your nose. Relax and pencil around what you can see, even if it becomes mere blobs of color as it reaches your nose. Don’t “try” to focus but be interested in what’s there. When you reach your nose, move the card back out again as you continue to nose-pencil the outlines. When the card is at arms length look back out at twenty feet again and “pencil” out there. Stop and palm your eyes. You have just asked those eye muscles to stretch and flex and though it may not seem like much, the eye may be quite tired.

Our eyes “want” to see clearly. Focusing is achieved by the action of the autonomic nervous system; it is not in our direct control. Through movement, relaxation and interest, the natural focusing mechanism is stimulated and the eyes have a chance of seeing clearly. After palming, you can do the “tromboning” with the other eye and then with both eyes together. As your eyes become more practiced you can increase the number of repetitions. You will notice your range of clarity and speed of focus increase, which is always a joy.

More Vision Tips

Originally appeared in
Earth Star Magazine April/May 2008
By Rosemary Gaddum Gordon, D.B.O., M.A.

We are told that the eyes are the windows to the soul and certainly, when we look into some eyes it feels like we are experiencing infinity. Our eyes not only see, they also receive and express emotions. When this emotional conduit becomes blocked, our vision often suffers and conversely, when we don’t see well, the emotional connection can be diminished.

One of the ways we block the emotional flow is by staring. If you and a partner stare right eye to right eye or left eye to left eye, you will notice the image of your partner’s face distorting and morphing into something else. For vision to be clear the eyes need to be moving.

If you look at your right eye in a mirror, you don’t see your left eye as clearly as you see the right, and visa versa. This means that to “look someone in the eye”, you must look from one eye to the other. Many people don’t do this, they try to see both eyes equally and end up focused between the eyes. They are not quite making contact. Perhaps you’ve had the uncomfortable experience of being with someone who appears to be looking at you, but it feels like they’re looking through you? This is often how it feels when the other person is focused between the brows.

We may develop the habit of focusing between the brows as a defense against the emotions coming at us. For instance, an adult may insist a child “Look at me when I’m speaking to you”. But the child feels overwhelmed or ashamed, so they deflect some of the feelings coming at them. Besides looking slightly away from the frightening eyes, we may blur them to make them less threatening or block our emotional connection to our own eyes and diminish the vibes coming into us. These defensive strategies are good unless they become unconscious habits.

It is also true that we cannot really make contact with another unless we are in contact with ourselves. This means our heart and our eyes must be connected. If you’re not sure how to do this, there is a simple technique you can try. First, sense in to your heart and how you are feeling emotionally. Then imagine two little tubes coming up from the feeling and going to the pupil of each eye. These tubes allow your emotional quality to come out and be expressed, or they can receive the feelings of someone else, letting that feeling come in and touch your heart. It’s often good to experiment with this first by using a mirror and giving and receiving your own feelings with yourself. You may be surprised at how beautiful your eyes look when they are connected to your heart. I remember one time I was very angry and had been hitting my bed, expressing my fury. I then happened to look in the mirror expecting to see something ugly, but in fact my eyes looked surprisingly beautiful.

True eye contact is a wonderful form of non-verbal communication; a way to connect heart to heart, soul to soul. May we be as open to it as we can in each moment and when we can’t, remember to be tender with ourselves and with those around us.

More Vision Tips

Originally appeared in
Earth Star Magazine February/March 2008
By Rosemary Gaddum Gordon, D.B.O., M.A.

The range of discomfort from dry eyes can go from mild to extreme. The eyes can be burning and red, or gritty like they are full of sand, or they may over-water, so tears are constantly flowing down the cheeks. The causes are numerous, from lack of blinking, poor nutrition and allergies, to drug side effects, hormonal imbalance and auto-immune disease.

Tears are necessary for the health of the cornea, the front surface of the eye. They lubricate, nourish and clean it. Our tears are not just salty water, they consist of three layers. The outermost surface is a fatty layer that prevents the moisture from evaporating. It is secreted by glands on the back of the eyelids. Then there is the salty, watery layer that comes from a gland behind the outer brow. The layer next to the cornea is a mucous layer that allows it to be “wetted.” If there is a problem with any of these components we get dry eyes.

If you have dry eyes, no matter what your diagnosis – and it is advisable to get one – you might consider some of the following suggestions:

Increased Blinking: Some people don’t blink enough. The ducts that bring the watery layer to the eye need the action of the blink in order to transport the fluid. Ask someone to count how many times you blink in a minute while you read, watch TV, work on the computer or just have a conversation. If it is less than twelve times, experiment with increasing your blinks. If your eyes feel dry because you haven’t blinked for a while, try Big Fat Squeezes to generate some moisture. (If you wear contact lenses, wait until you remove them.) Close your eyes and bring your cheeks up towards your brows for two seconds then relax them and open your eyes up really wide for two seconds. Do this about five times and notice if you have more moisture in your eyes. If you don’t, repeat the five times. If this doesn’t produce more tears, check with your doctor.

Eye drops can be both soothing and therapeutic. Be sure to get the ones without preservatives and avoid the kind that promise “to get the red out”. The latter reduce the circulation to the front of the eye and over time, make the eyes drier.

Diet and supplements: These can also make a big difference. Sugar, alcohol and caffeine tend to dry the eyes. Essential fatty acids (EFAs) such as evening primrose oil, flaxseed oil and coldwater fish oils are needed for the production of the fatty outer and the watery second layers of the tears. Vitamins A and C are vital for the health of the mucous layer. Being well hydrated is also vital. Someone who had suffered with dry, red eyes for years in spite of blinking, emailed me an interesting recipe which is working well for her. She adds ¼ teaspoon of “high quality” sea salt per quart of filtered water. She drinks six, eight ounce glasses of it warm every day, especially on rising, and she takes a tablespoon of flaxseed oil daily. She now experiences less redness and irritation with an increase of tear flow. She’s delighted.

There is much information online about dry eyes. Don’t let your eyes remain so unhappy, do something to help them feel better.

More Vision Tips

Originally appeared in
Earth Star Magazine August/September 2007
By Rosemary Gaddum Gordon, D.B.O., M.A.

If we have the tendency to hold stress in the visual system, it will often appear there even when the stressor is non-visual. By deeply listening while palming, that stress can be released.

A student I hadn’t seen in a while returned recently. The previous month a family member had had major surgery and she was the chief caregiver. When we last met she was no longer wearing glasses and happy with the way she saw. But now, though the use of her eyes had not changed, she noticed her vision had deteriorated. Not only had her distance vision reduced, but her near vision too. This surprised her, because in the past it was her far vision that usually caused her concern.

We explored how stressful the whole process had been for her. There was the emotional roller-coaster that had traveled through love and fear, anxiety and relief, laughter and tears many times each day both in the hospital and when she brought the patient home. Plus, at home there was all the physical work of caring, cooking, cleaning and gofering. Even though she was happy to do the job, she began to realize how much work it had been.

As my student allowed herself to tune in to her body and relax, she felt how tired she actually was. She palmed her eyes. (She sat in a supportive chair with enough pillows on her lap so she could rest her arms as she covered her closed eyes with the palms of her hands. As she relaxed into this support she centered at her Core and imagined she was surrounded by soothing, black spaciousness.) As she palmed, she felt an even deeper fatigue. She allowed herself to imagine resting in her bed at home, remembering feeling really comfortable and cozy. While she rested, different feelings arose and passed through her, sometimes with a deep breath, sometimes with a little shudder or a few tears.
It is natural during a stressful period to be less aware of what is happening in the body – the shortening of breath, tightening of shoulders, reduction of blinking, etc. We are in “survival mode”. It is later, when we can stop, that we realize what has happened.

After about ten minutes, she felt refreshed and complete. When she opened her eyes the room looked brighter and clearer. We did more resting interspersed with more stimulating techniques until her eyes felt energized. My student’s vision was already much better when she left my office. She called a couple of weeks later to tell me she was seeing well again. It is not just eye-related strain that causes weakened vision; it may be some stress that seems completely unrelated.

Palming, sensing into the body, as the eyes relax in the black quiet, is a wonderful way to come home and focus at a deeper level. (In fact, some people use it as a form of meditation.) It allows space for unprocessed emotions to arise and pass through, so that the eyes can once more move freely and see clearly.

More Vision Tips