Which do we start with?  My impending rise to statue-in-the-park status, or active focus Q&A?

Let’s do active focus Q&A.

Ernest has a whole list of questions in the forum, and these might be interesting for you as well.  If you’re new here, active focus is the main stimulus contributor to reliably improving your eyesight.  Not eye exercises, not eye yoga, not eye vitamins.  The eye is a stimulus response machine, and just as glasses cause axial elongation and progressive myopia, our active focus helps take things back in the right direction.

Worthwhile reading for new visitors:  How the eye actually works (pretty key, that one).

Here are Ernest’s questions and my comments, with the arrow –>.

1) Should Active Focus be an instant improvement? Will it be very apparent (instantly from blurry to clear)?

–> Not necessarily. It’s the *change* in clarity that’s the defining characteristic. This will vary quite a bit as you continue to practice.

2) Is it easier to figure out Active Focus at closer distances?
My differential prescription is set at 70cm, so there’s a larger “not-quite-blurry but not-quite-clear” zone.

–> In theory, no. Though students often comment that at first they have an easier time in the 50-60cm range. Not a requisite though.

3) Does font size matter when doing Active Focus exercises? I find small text difficult, maybe because of the lack of astigmatism correction (0.25 in dominant eye, 0.75 in non-dominant eye). So larger text might be better, but how large should the text be?

–> Dropping astigmatism correction does add a bit of an extra challenge, since now your eyes have to figure out two things at once. Nothing to dwell on though, just be aware of it. Ideal font and environment is the printed word. Most regular hardcover books are just about ideal in terms of fonts. Also tends to be easier with paper specifically, rather than screens with their varying pixel densities, backlight, reflections, etc. 

4) Is there a good reference page to look at for feeling Active Focus? I tried Medium.com but didn’t have much luck. I feel the text on Medium.com isn’t very pronounced or sharp (except for bolded text) so I have a hard time using it. I prefer the instructions on the Centimeter page (which is what I do my centimeter measurements on), but the font size is too small at 70+ cm (my differential prescription is set at 70cm). I could increase the font size (ctrl+mouse wheel), but I’m not sure what size it should be increased to, if it maters at all (this goes back to question 3).

–> If in doubt, practice with books first.  :)

5) Is glare on the monitor bad for trying to experience Active Focus? My windows face West so the sunset creates a glare on my monitor when I get home after work. When this happens, I notice that Medium.com is not easy to look at, but the Centimeter page is still okay.

–> Glare is not our friend. It adds a whole lot of extra information that the brain has to filter out, and tends to add to strain (at least in casual experiments with students over time, we found that matte screens are so, so much better for longer term close-up).

Since all screens are super shiny and reflective now, I just don’t bring it up. No sense in trying to reconfigure your whole life over glare – though less is better.

6) Is it fine to do Active Focus one eye at a time? Or do you recommend against it? So far, the times I think I achieved Active Focus have occurred when doing my dominant eye (left) alone. I noticed two things that make it harder for me to do both eyes together.

–> Generally, no. We always want to work with bifocal vision on everything. We want very similar centimeter distances for both eyes with our prescriptions, and experience activities with both eyes. There is a *lot* going on behind the scenes, with your brain processing bifocal vision. Important stuff (maybe a blog article soon).

Lots more on active focus on this page.

If you have forum access (students), you can head over for more details in Ernest’s thread.

Topic two, yes.

I’ve been getting your e-mails.  Our darling friend Mark from Mark’s Daily Apple mentions my recent article on retinal thinning due to contact lenses.  Other various related outlets jump on it.  Traffic to endmyopia spikes, and interview requests are piling up in my e-mail.

Yikes.  Little bits at a time, kittehs.

I’m enjoying a small flow of students heading up to the mountain for chats about eye health.  Sudden influx of attention makes me nervous.  The Internet at large scares little ole Jake.

I’ll definitely get back to everybody who e-mailed me, super great to hear from all of you, just account for the introvert personality and enjoyment of obscurity.

Housekeeping notes:

Lots of new art in the session manager, for students.

Cheers,

-Jake