ost people with university degrees wear glasses. It seems to be a fact of live. The more you use your eyes, the worse they get. Now, is this really so? Some compelling evidence that the truth may offer other options promoted this subject to "case of the month".

Factors decreasing "good sight"

The theory above that your eyes get worse as you grow older dates from more than 200 years ago. The "official line" is that you can't do anything about it, except wear glasses, lenses or laser treatment. At the turn of the century William H. Bates, a Medical Doctor, began to question this "official line". Finding out what causes eyes to see less good over time, he started to develop exercises to help people to see better again. Aldus Huxley recovered from near-blindness using Bates' methods. He wrote a book about it called "The art of seeing" (1975). Leo Angart has been experimenting with Bates method and other related techniques, combining them with neurolinguistic tools to get even better results. He found out that the following factors influence your sight:

Muscle flexibility - if your eye muscles do not have all the flexibility and strength they should have, your sight will be (primarily Bates' approach) - dealing with this factor alone often won't solve the complete problem. Still, most current book s on the subject are largely based on Bates' work.
Beliefs: (a) Do you believe the official line that your eyesight will degenerate? Then it might become a self-fulfilling prophecy! In neurolinguistic classes we teach "the map is not the territory"! Believing the official line is a limiting map of the world. (b) Other people develop a belief that "wearing glasses is a sign of being smart" - this used to be a joke about Africans in Belgium until the 80s: Africans would wear glasses even if they didn't need them. (c) doing something about the beliefs and the patterns behind vision problems is a key to a holistic approach.
Fatigue and stress: at the end of a difficult day, your sight may be less than at the beginning of the day. In fact, the quality of your sight is a natural variable. Relaxation of the eyes and general meditation will help.
Energy: the blood flow to your eyes may not function ideally. Massage around the eyes will help to improve the blood flow. Modern equipment is a strain on the eyes: the energy coming from a typical computer screen (CRT) bombards your eyes, the scan rate does as well (LCD panels are much better for the eyes)
Reading a lot: the more you studied, the more chance you have to wear glasses. Our eyes are not really made for tasks that require to remain focussed at the typical distance you are watching while reading a book.
Bad habits: To see, you eyes are constantly moving. When wearing glasses, your eyes have to move less. Getting used to glasses will mean that you don't have to use your eye muscles anymore. When you do age-regression with persons (under hypnosis), they might discover that they can see again "as at the time they were 5 years old" - without glasses…


Compensation strategies

Part of the bad habits is getting around with your bad eye sight - developing strategies to cope with the symptoms (taking away any need to solve the "real problem"). Let me give you an example I got from an e-mail conversation.

"The way people walk, the color of their coat, the general body posture are elements that help you to recognize someone at distance. Unconsciously, you start paying more attention to these elements, and as a result you might even recognize a friend before someone next to you with normal vision does. Also, I use my hearing differently."

Compensation strategies are actually also developed by blind people. Recent research has shown that blind people use a part of their brain that is normally used to process incoming images to process sounds - they literally "see" by hearing - a kind of sonar.

Still, using compensation strategies without willing to tell others about your problem, may get you into trouble. If the other is not aware of your impaired vision, he may expect that you see the same things he does, and may lose patience when you seem to miss the obvious. An example someone shared: "I work at a helpdesk service, and sometimes I have to go over to workstations of people to resolve problems. However, I have difficulty seeing a computer screen at more than 30 cm distance (even with glasses). Since the person having the problem might already be annoyed, telling him that I can't see it doesn't really help… If at that point I'm having an off-day myself…"

Conclusion?

Glasses are just one solution to cope with impaired vision. The only alternative most people now are compensation strategies. Still, there are more answers out there. Eye sight seems to be an example where you can change your world by getting beyond your personal boundaries. Leo Angart's seminar shows that the "official line" is only generating a lot of money for those selling glasses. He managed, just likes Bates did, to get rid of his glasses (I think Leo wore glasses for 26 years and had -11 or so…). In his two day seminar he teaches Bates techniques + some other techniques to deal with the other factors mentioned above. If you will succeed at it has a lot to do with your personal character: can you keep doing the exercises when you need them? If you aren't completely happy with the result, I even think that Leo offers the chance to come back to his seminar for free.