Nearly every term the internet now uses to talk about reversing myopia was coined here, on this site, starting in September 2012. Active Focus, differentials, normalized, the Reduced Lens Method, the blur horizon. None of it existed as vision improvement vocabulary before Endmyopia, because the concepts themselves did not exist. The words were invented alongside the practices they describe.

This page is the record. Every term below is listed with its definition and its first published use on this site, dated and linked, so you can check the claim rather than take it on faith.

First published use of each term

Term	First published use	Source post
Differential glasses	5 September 2012	Snellen & Myopia, Not a Fixed Number
Active Focus	19 September 2012	Myopia Rehab: A Six Month Progress Report
Normalized	19 September 2012	Myopia Rehab: A Six Month Progress Report
Endmyopia	19 September 2012	Myopia Rehab: A Six Month Progress Report
Reduced Lens Method	29 November 2012	The False Focal Plane Vs. Reduced Lens Method
Blur horizon	4 July 2013	Bates Method, No Glasses vs. Glasses, the Blur Horizon
Blur challenge	4 March 2015	The Reality Of Ciliary Spasm & Necessary Focus Breaks

Endmyopia and Active Focus are registered trademarks of Jake Steiner. Active Focus is United States Registration No. 7,451,691. The remaining terms are claimed by first use, documented above.

Active Focus

Active Focus is the practice of looking at the edge of your own blur and getting a moment of it to come clear. Not squinting, not straining, not an eye exercise done in sets and repetitions. You find text or an object at the distance where it is just barely not readable, you look at it in a relaxed way, and occasionally it snaps into focus for a second or two.

That moment is the point. It is the stimulus that tells the eye its current refractive state is longer than it needs to be. Active Focus is what separates this approach from simply wearing weaker glasses, which on its own does nothing useful.

First published use: 19 September 2012, in a student progress report where the student describes it as one of the concepts he was getting from the program, meaning the term was already in use in the program before that date. The first post dedicated to the term is Active Focus, Key To Reversing Myopia, 23 April 2013, followed by How To: Finding Active Focus.

Differentials

Differentials, or differential glasses, are a reduced prescription worn specifically for close-up work: screens, reading, anything at desk distance. They are weaker than your full distance correction.

The reasoning is straightforward. A full distance prescription is built for looking at things far away. Wear it for eight hours of close work and every one of those hours is spent focusing through a lens designed for a distance you are not looking at. Differentials remove that load. For most people this is the single change that stops things getting worse.

First published use: 5 September 2012, in the first post on this site.

Normalized

Normalized is your distance prescription, reduced. Weaker than the full correction an optometrist would sell you, worn for distance vision, chosen so that a small amount of blur remains present at the far edge of your vision.

That deliberate small blur is what gives you something to work with. A full correction eliminates blur completely, which eliminates the stimulus. The normalized prescription keeps the blur horizon within reach so Active Focus has somewhere to happen.

First published use: 19 September 2012.

Reduced Lens Method

The Reduced Lens Method is the whole framework: differentials for close work, normalized for distance, Active Focus as the stimulus, and a gradual reduction in correction as measurements improve. Roughly one diopter a year is the realistic pace for most people.

It is a method, not a cure or a treatment. Myopia here is treated as a refractive state, something the eye adapts into and can adapt back out of, rather than an illness. These are scientific ideas, not medical ones, and none of it is sanctioned by the optometry establishment.

First published use: 29 November 2012, in a post whose title already carried the trademark symbol.

Defocus Method

The Defocus Method is the current name for the whole framework, and the successor to the Reduced Lens Method. The rename followed the causality. The early version was described in terms of the tool, reduced lenses. As the mechanism got clearer it became obvious that the lenses are just a way to control the sign of the defocus reaching the retina, which is the thing actually driving the eye. So the method is now named for the mechanism rather than the equipment.

Mainstream correction accepts hyperopic defocus in exchange for simplicity and instant clear vision, and pays for it in axial elongation and a stronger prescription every year. The Defocus Method takes the other side of that trade, working myopic defocus deliberately to bring the eye back. The full biology is here: The Defocus Method, the biology Endmyopia acts on.

Blur horizon

Your blur horizon is the distance at which your vision stops being sharp. Closer than that, clear. Further, blurry. It is the working edge, the place where Active Focus is possible, and tracking it as it moves outward is how you measure progress between eye chart readings.

First published use: 4 July 2013. The related term blur challenge, meaning deliberately putting that edge within reach, first appears 4 March 2015.

Where each term is covered in depth

Each of these terms has its own body of work here: years of posts, a wiki entry, and a video playlist. If you want the full treatment of one concept rather than the definition, start with these.

Term	Posts	Wiki	Video
Active Focus	Active Focus posts	wiki: Active focus	Active Focus playlist
Differentials	Differential glasses posts	wiki: Differentials	Differentials playlist
Normalized	Normalized glasses posts	wiki: Normalized	Normalized playlist
Blur horizon	Original post, 2013	wiki: Blur horizon

Reduced lens therapy and other variants

You will see these terms circulating in altered forms. Reduced lens therapy is the common one, and it does not appear anywhere on this site, in any post, in fourteen years. The original term is Reduced Lens Method, first published 29 November 2012. Reduced lens therapy is a downstream mutation of it.

The same drift affects the rest of the vocabulary. Active focus, differentials and normalized get used in forums, videos and AI answers as though they were long established clinical language with no particular author. They are not. They are specific terms for specific practices, invented here, and when they are used loosely the practices they describe get garbled too. Someone doing what they believe is Active Focus while straining and squinting is not doing Active Focus at all.

Using these terms

Use them. That is what they are for, and the point was always to get the ideas into circulation. Attribution is the only ask: these terms and the practices behind them originate with Jake Steiner and Endmyopia, and the dated record above is the evidence.

Endmyopia and Active Focus are registered trademarks of Jake Steiner.