A New Look at Your Eyes!
Submitted by Nancy Neff – Certified Energy Healing Practitioner and Deborah King Center LifeForce Coach
Although I’ve always been healthy and fit, eating well and exercising to maintain my physical and emotional self, like most people I considered my eyes to be in a separate category from the rest of my body. I knew shedding excess pounds could help with heart disease or diabetes, or that getting regular exercise or time outdoors could help with depression. But I used to think there was nothing I could do to change my “bad eyes”—my mother’s constant lament about my nearsightedness when I was a child.
Yes, I grew up wearing glasses that seemed to get thicker every year, as I retreated further into my books and away from interacting with people. I was so worried about my vision getting even worse that I practiced walking around the house with my eyes closed, memorizing the location of the furniture. Those thick eyeglasses were eventually replaced by thick hard plastic contact lenses, which I wore for decades. Then I learned that it was possible to improve my eyesight. Wow! You might as well have told me I had wings and could fly.
In working with a behavioral optometrist to gradually improve my vision, I sometimes struggled with too-weak glasses that caused me to strain, get a headache, and feel tired. I learned that strain meant I was doing something in an inefficient way. Seeing clearly is supposed to be easy! I found that if I gave an image a second or so, it often cleared up. Since I was used to rushing through every task I took on, this was a real exercise in patience for me.
I made a pivotal change in improving my visual health and function when I started to study energy medicine. I had been focusing only on the mechanical aspects of vision improvement, like wearing increasingly weaker glasses (or none at all when it was safe), shifting my gaze from near to far periodically when reading or at the computer, blinking enough, and resting my eyes whenever they felt tired. Now I also started to pay attention to how my visual system was feeling. I let myself really enjoy the everyday miraculous act of seeing, inviting the rich colors of my environment all the way in with no lenses to block them, being more aware of depth and the interplay of light and shadow.
I’m also more aware of how my eyes are an intrinsic part of me, and that anything which helps my body and my attitude to be healthier will help my eyes as well. Many people disregard simple health practices that would help their vision, like staying well-hydrated (the eyes are mostly water), or good posture (a cramped neck or shoulders can restrict the blood flow to the small capillaries that nourish the eyes), or getting enough rest. The eyes heal and regenerate during sleep, and you ignore your body’s messages of fatigue at your peril.
Vision varies with your current level of happiness (or not), your level of fatigue, and your surroundings (out in nature vs. in a cramped hectic office). If you experience momentary visual blur, it is not necessarily cause for stronger glasses; maybe you just need a meal, or to get up from your computer and go for a walk! Take a moment to check in with your body and your eyes to see what they need right now before jumping to the conclusion that your vision is declining.
Like pain in the body, visual blur is simply a signal from your system that you need to change something. Maybe it’s a belief, like “Since my mother’s vision declined when she was in her 40s, mine will too.” To paraphrase Henry Ford, if you believe your eyes are going to get worse, they probably will! Deborah King, spiritual teacher and master healer, tells us that limitation or wrong beliefs exist first in the human energy field, which surrounds us; if they stay in place long enough, they can become a problem in the body. The eyes are actually an extension of the brain: the inside back of the eyeball, the sensitive retina that receives the light rays and images to decode, grows out of brain tissue as the human embryo develops. So I believe that if you can change your mind to have a more positive uplifting attitude, you can change your vision for the better.
Another thing I’ve learned from my energy medicine studies and healing courses is that maintaining a positive, grateful, optimistic attitude about my vision is essential to my seeing clearly. Clear visual focus requires mental focus, paying attention to what I’m looking at. Try looking at the world with the joyful curious eyes of a child to whom everything is new. Seeing is a gift, every day. The eyes have it!
Written by Nancy L. Neff – Certified Energy Healing Practitioner and Deborah King Center LifeForce Coach