Active focus is a topic that comes up fairly often in the forum. It’s a big ingredient for stimulus, and initially the main challenge in getting acquainted with your eyes ability to focus.
Hans asks in the Q&A:
I try practicing active focus.
Sometimes, I achieve clearing the blur completely until I blink – then, the blur is back again.
Only when I stare, I can clear the blur and sometimes, it disappears almost completely. But while doing that, as I have said, I have to stare.
If I look normally and try to clear the blur by blinking, I see that the image is “moving”, like a “focusing movement”, but I cannot focus that the blur disappears completely.
It feels weird because it is like someone is dazzling me, as if I am looking in the sun.”
It takes some time to get comfortable with active focus. Everybody has a bit of their own experience with it. Unlike a centimeter measurement or Snellen result, we are dealing with a bit of a subjective description.
I try to explain it like this:
There are several things at play, which the site and course tends to simplify into the one term of “active focus”.
First, I’m sure you have read this: https://endmyopia.org/how-to-finding-active-focus/
Beyond that, there is blur, and there is double vision. The first tends to clear up just over a few centimeters at most. The latter can go a much farther distance but as you describe, takes a stare and doesn’t quickly come back after you blink.
There is a middle ground where you can reproduce the effect more easily. With close-up there is a distance with a bit of blur, but even as you read or scroll, you can blink and quickly get focus back. If you go further than that distance you start to get a challenge if you are dealing with a lot of content on the screen.
Similarly, with distance. You might wear a prescription with which you could just barely see 20/40 while doing lots of active focus. It works when you go on a walk and take your time to read signs. But if you are moving more quickly (riding or driving), now there is too much movement and change to work out blur and double vision.
What you want for close-up and distance, is just a degree of blur that you can resolve without too much effort. Stimulus is what you want, and you don’t have to massively strain yourself to get enough of it for ongoing improvement. The occasional real challenge like you describe is great, but for most of your activity just a bit of blur to resolve will be fine!”
You can add your own observations in the Q&A topic, here.
It is important to enjoy the experience, and realize that there are degrees of challenge. You don’t always have to do perfectly on all topics in the course. Just knowing that there is a blur horizon, consciously always staying close to it, that is most of what matters. If you did just that, and got at least 25% of your daily sight in distance vision time, you would never even have become myopic. :-)
I’m happy that the Q&A is getting a little bit of use! You can always ask us questions there, and if you have an account with us, you can also provide answers.
All the best,
– Neha Gupta
