A little Q&A from forum threads, today:

Christian asks:

quotesToday, I was walking with my normalized prescription at a mall. Usually every time I go out I “pull focus” with my normalized prescription as much as possible. They way I do it is that I stop and pay attention to a specific thing, usually some writing, blink a few times and wait for the image to sharpen a little bit. 

But, recently I was thinking that I was doing too much of it, so today when I was at the mall I decided to just let my eyes let me see whatever they had to show me, without focus pulling (I have done this on some days in the past weeks, I consider those days the “No prescription days”, but today I did it using my normalized prescription). All I was doing is paying attention to my surroundings and that’s it. No focus pull. After an hour or an hour and half I started noticing that my vision was way clearer, some signs at the mall had lines that started looking sharper. So I wonder now if I’m doing too much focus pulling and not relaxing much?”

Balance.  You want some stimulus, and some relaxey-times.  Here’s what I suggest to Christian:

quotes-blueMy rule, though this isn’t a “hard” rule is 10 minutes per outdoor session of real focus pulling.

Sounds like very little but actually 10 minutes is quite a bit of time if you figure it only takes a few seconds to pull some writing into focus.

Here’s how that works out: If you go outside for 10 minutes total, you spend your whole time pulling focus. If you go outside for an hour and a half, you only spend about 10%, or 10 minutes, actively working on focus. 

You’ll end up looking for focus more of the time, regardless. After you get used to the outdoor time, eventually you don’t need any 10 minute rule. You’ll have found an internal balance of enjoying some relaxing outside time, as well as challenging yourself for focus.”

We start out the program with rules and parameters, which you do want to follow closely.

But these rules are just the “training wheels“.  If you don’t follow them, then I don’t have a way to help you troubleshoot, or to make sure that you have as close to an ideal experience as possible.  It took a lot of extra time to come up with all that guidance, specifically created to save you the trouble of having to reinvent the wheel.

There comes  a point though when you’re settled in, and you don’t need the rules anymore.

Olivia asks:

quotesi tend to do things on skewed knowledge.
these few days my eyes felt very tired. i’ve been trying to pull focus near and far whenever i have a break, not so much just let my eyes relax and rest. i wonder if that caused more eye strain than improvement?

actually i did have a question earlier, i’m just going to post it here since we are beating around this topic.
‘blur is stress’, this statement…. i would like to know what it means.
i’ve been living in the blur, not so much enjoying it but my eyes like it when they are not looking (i guess i’m a super demanding user). i comprehend that reading close-up too much is strain to the eyes, but not sure how blur is stress as well. when my eyes relax they see blur right now anyways….”

This is why we need the forum.  There is always some detail that isn’t spelled out in the program, and you’re bound to have your own experience.  

Here’s what I suggested for Olivia:

quotes-blueBlur is stress in context of never wearing glasses. People who do this because they were told that glasses are bad, experience this in a different context that you might.

Walking around and not being able to recognize faces, or street signs, being surrounded by blur, gets to be a rather oppressive experience.

On the other hand, getting away from close-up, and focus activities, and just letting the mind and eyes wander, entirely different. Trust your instincts on that one .. when you feel like just having a bit of blur, then do that. You’re not in some forced blur environment like those who I refer to when I say blur is stress. 😉”

Always interesting things in the forum.  And thanks for taking the time to post your updates, as well!

Cheers, 

– Jake