Michael: “Found Active Focus, Crazy Trick!”

Recent Shortsighted Podcast episode with Michael.

He went from -3.50 to -0.50 (or mostly no glasses), after having a serious bit of challenge finding active focus. Here’s his active focus discovery clip:

Look at that. Straight to the point, not even some sort of guru-cliffhanger. 🧙🏼‍♂️

And yes, there is of course a full episode with more of Michael’s insights from his eyeball journey.

Full episode available soon in Pro Topic Videos section of BackTo20/20.

Cheers,

-Jake

Learn more at http://curemydisorder.com/links/improve-eyesight-tedmaser-site

Newbie Gains: Your First Reduced Diopters

Newbie gains.

The thing all new explorers of the endmyopia get excited for, or perhaps feel (very healthy) skepticism about.  There are many various claims about amazing experiences making 20/20 gains.

Is endmyopia just another destination of Internet crazy?

(yes)

That’s part of the adventure, darlings.  Like a gold prospector in the American west, you’re standing in the river looking for gold in the mud.  So much of online far out non-mainstream health stuff is just … mud.   And you standing in the murky-cold flowing river that is Google search with wet feet and dashed hopes, looking for something that’s shiny and also real.

Per an old grumbly pretend-guru’s personal experience,  good luck.  Keep that skepticism high and try not to burn out on experiments.

And with all that tenuously metaphorical preamble out of the way, here’s a bit of a shiny nugget for you (from our Le Meow forum):

Well, well.  What do we have here.

Newbie gains, that’s what.  I won’t strain your patience with more gold references here, other than to say that newbie gains are great but not necessarily proof that endmyopia is the real thing.

Here’s what I responded with in the thread, which likely applies to you also (if you experience strong newbie gains):

Here’s what I’d do:

#1 Deep breath, be proud of yourself! 

You decided to do something about your eyesight, you researched, spent time, you took a chance on this crazy online idea. You spent money on getting the best possible tool.

In my experience at least, these sort of efforts don’t always pay off. When they do, need to enjoy the moments of things going our way. A win! 

#2 Put initial progress in perspective, set reasonable expectations.

A lot of these initial ‘gains’ may be attributed to a combination of over correction of diopters, and reducing your close-up strain, and realizing that you can ‘actively focus’ – rather than just passively seeing things as diopters do all the work.

A bit of more diopters than you needed, a bit less eye strain, a bit more conscious focus.

I love these since they reaffirm that eyesight is actually variable and can be better and gets you in a place to really commit and build good habits. Don’t use them as a benchmark for expectations (that’s how people reduce too fast), rather as confirmation that you can affect your vision.

#3 Take it slow with diopter changes.

Yes you can see much better than expected. Behind the scenes the biology is being challenged. Like going for your first run or workout – feels great, but the body is getting the “oh crap we have work to do” signal.

You’ll perhaps notice a more obvious dropoff in acuity in less than ideal lighting conditions, when you’re tired, etc. Pay attention to all of it. Focus on what new habits you want to build and maintain (we are our habits).

All that said, it’s not uncommon for new participants to successfully reduce up to 1 diopter within the first 90 days (just a very general ballpark of possibility). Don’t go over net 1 diopter regardless, even if you feel you could.

If your current experience is persistent and you feel strongly about being overcorrected, the minimum time before making another adjustment is 2 weeks (to give room for normal fluctuations to be noticed). After that you want to stick with a 3-4 months between reductions, for best results.

There we have it.

Newbie gains is a mixed blessing.  Mainly because you can get them lots of ways.  You could be doing some “Bates Method” exercises (which usually isn’t what Bates even advocated back in the day) and have similar experiences.  You could run into one of the endmyopia copycats and get newbie gains.  

By the way … best way to recognize endmyopia copycats:  If you find simplified versions of reduced diopters, two sets of focal planes for distance and close-up (a thing definitely pioneered by us), and most commonly promises of much faster gain, via “one weird trick” type of greed traps.

And a better Website than us, without any actual meaningful free content – just a funnel to some $$$ course.

If you end up at endmyopia and get newbie gains, it’s a great boost for confidence and getting you focused.  If you end up elsewhere, you might take the inevitable disappointment of only having newbie gains and never more than that to mean that eyesight can’t be improved.

Mixed blessing.

If you did get great starter gains, consider the sage beardly advice above.  Make the most of the experience, build habits, and spend time to dive in and really understand how ongoing gains work and how to get them.  There is no shortcut or ‘easy way’ when it comes to health and biology tuning.  If you’ve succeeded at other personal health adventures, you already know this.  Initially tempting and promising, in hindsight a lot of work and ups and downs. 

Avoid destinations that are just sales funnels.  Look for the downsides and people talking about negative experiences.  Anything that doesn’t have detractors or failures you can find, and a healthy ratio of haters … my take is you don’t want to be the one to have to figure out all the ways a thing goes wrong.

Speaking of going wrong:  Ten biggest mistakes you’ll make with endmyopia.

And with that bit of Jake-old-man-grumbling … I leave you to go make some more 20/20 gains.  

Also here’s more reviews, some even positive.

Cheers,

-Jake

Learn more at http://curemydisorder.com/links/improve-eyesight-tedmaser-site

Reducing Too Quickly: Why It’s Your Biggest Mistake

Thought of the words of wisdom for gym / lifting weights:

You don’t get stronger while you work out, you get stronger while you rest.

Something like this is also true for improving vision. You note the improvement in centimeter / eye chart / distant landmark as your eye is adapting to the increased challenge, when the reduction is still new.

But the actual sustained improvement happens after, when that improvement appears consistent.

Leave 3-4 months between diopter reductions, even (and especially if) things seem improved and consistent even after a much shorter time span.

Also see the 10 Most Common Mistakes.

Cheers,

-Jake

Learn more at http://curemydisorder.com/links/improve-eyesight-tedmaser-site

“My Top 10 Biggest Mistakes” (Endmyopia Journey)

Repost,  of Netanel’s excellent newbie mistake Le Meow forum thread and Facebook posts:

It has been almost a year now and it is time to share my experience and do a little shaming to myself. :laughing:

In my first draft of this post I wanted to tell the whole story of how I found EndMyopia and what is my philosophy of life to get you the background of what I was thinking and may help many others to avoid my mistakes, but I decided to keep this post short and concise and up to the point so I skipped this part and hope you will not assume that I’m total idiot :see_no_evil:
Nonetheless I will simply put that some of my mistakes came from pedanticism or misunderstanding of the instructions or overdoing or overthinking or mixing other eyesight improvement ideas (like Todd Becker’s print pushing method) or perfectionism or impatience or enthusiasm or all at once.

The order of the mistakes is random and a result of what came up to my head at the time.
However, each one of them is very important and therefore I can’t find the right order for them.
So, treat each one equivalently.

Mistake 1:
Reducing both SPH & CYL correction at once.
It is bad ‘case the eye has 2 different blur types (Double vision and regular blur) to resolve and it is slowing the process of resolving the image.

Mistake 2:
Starting both norms and diffs reduction instead of diffs only.
It is bad ‘cause you don’t have the reference of clarity and you get lost. Moreover, you can miss the baseline of clarity in the beginning of the process for the measurements part.

Mistake 3:
Reducing too much.
My original correction at the beginning of the journey was -7.50 -0.75/-7.5 -0.50 and right away I jumped to -7.00/-7.00 of norms and -6.00/-6.00 of diffs (without CYL correction on both). That was too much.

Mistake 4:
Not buying online.
This is the root cause of my choice in Mistake#3. I was trying to save money with as few glasses as possible and I messed up with my process at the beginning.
My first months of EndMyopia journey was like wander away in the darkness (Literally)

Mistake 5:
Not measuring rigorously.
I was reducing too fast because I felt a lot of improvements in my eyesight but it was never enough for a reduction. I was giving myself credit for seeing letters that I don’t really recognize if I never knew they were there in the first place.
“It’s better to focus on the acuity and blurriness of the letters rather than whether you can just read them or not” @NottNott

Mistake 6:
Thinking that diffs are making the magic rather than the norms.
I was thinking that diff is doing the AF magic and norms are just for not making the regression when you look in crasp clear while looking at the distance.
Therefore I was using my diffs for nearly all of inhouse activity and left norms for only outside vision.
It is totally the opposite. The norms are doing the magic and diff are just to prevent the Myopia regression. You should use your diffs only for close-up focus and norms for all the rest even if you see clearly at mid distance.
“Normalized means normal life” @Reannon

Mistake 7:
Thinking that seeing clearly even for a moment is bad.
I was trying to maintain a constant blur to my eyesight thinking that it will accelerate the process.
I was using 2 diffs for both screens and books to maintain that.
It is not necessary as it is good to see references of clarity from time to time and switching too many focal planes is bad. Lots has been written about it.

Mistake 8:
Thinking that I will beat the process.
It is so immodest of me to think that I will be the chosen one that will beat thousands of long journey success stories.
I thought that I would find a trick that would make the process much faster. Thanks to eye yoga teacher Yehoshua Malinsky, I was trying his failed method in 2014 which was claimed to fix eyesight in just a year, so I was convinced that there must be a trick that will accelerate the process.
I indeed found that blood flow is helping AF and in some cases it can replace the 20-20-20 rule as it gives the ciliary muscle what it needs but it is not accelerating the process. Not significantly anyway. See this post for more details. (Blood Flow To Help Active Focus 3)

Mistake 9:
Trying to resolve too much blur with Active Focus.
I was doing Active Focus on indistinct letters on my screen while working and it was doing no good for my eyes nor any good for my work either.
I was thinking that resolving too much blur will accelerate the process but I was definitely wrong.
It is better to do AF on much less blur that you CAN resolve to a clear image rather than too much blur that AF is only improving the clarity a bit.

Mistake 10:
Not doing Active Focus on 3D moving objects.
That was only in the first couple of months and I caught the wrong pretty fast but I still think it is worth bringing it up.
In the beginning I was thinking that AF is only possible on static objects as you need the image to be static to focus on. It is true in the beginning when you have to discover Active Focus but after you get on it you should do AF on 3D moving objects at the distance as it is more effective to blur resolution.

Those mistakes made me look like an idiot around my friends, and rightly so.
You can imagine a situation where someone wants to make a conversation with me and I switch to diffs in front of him to avoid looking through my norms in mid distance.
Moreover, those mistakes slowed my process and made the opposite of what I was trying to achieve by overding EndMyopia method with them.

“Keep it simple. It is a long journey and the more you keep it simple the more it will be easy to keep up” @jakey

Learn more at http://curemydisorder.com/links/improve-eyesight-tedmaser-site

Eye Chart’s Hidden Power: Your Magical Vision Translator 👀🦄

The eye chart on its own is fairly meaningless.

Yes, the optometrist will wave it around in front of you like some sort of magical artifact beyond the grasp of your tiny peasantry brain.  It’s part of their whole obscure-money-plz process to rope you into a giant pile of diopter dependence.  Opting you out from informed consent, obscuring your potential understanding of your own visual acuity.

What are you even ever saying Jake, you’re thinking.

I’m saying, the poor eye chart has become a well abused pawn in the 100 billion dollar games the retail optometry industry likes to play.

But actually, the eye chart is an incredibly handy too.  If you know how to use it.

And now, darling kitteh, you do.  

Et voila!

Use the eye chart to translate your visual experience, and then use it as a simple reference guide to always tell you what any given line equates to in terms of real world vision.

That’s what it’s good for. 

What’s also good, is having a gravitaciously flowing beard, from which to eminate all of these intensely insightful wisdoms.  Beyond the measly reach of any text book memorizing bearers of lens seller titles, beyond the limited grasp of the optometrist who is mainly grasping for your wallet, you’ve found the well of wisdoms of recovering your natural 20/20 eyesight.

And if you’re wondering what’s actually going on, Jake just had two coffees.  Double the normal dose.

Go make some 20/20 gains!

Cheers,

-Jake

Learn more at http://curemydisorder.com/links/improve-eyesight-tedmaser-site

Shorter Version: Endmyopia Intro / Steps

Here we go:

@Sharada took pity on everyone who wanted the Jake-intro video, and was faced with the prospects of 20 minutes of peak cringe ramblings.

She made a shorter version. 9 minutes, rather than 20: YouTube

That’s some serious community contributing. reducing the suffering of those seeking answers for their eyeballs. 

Of course I never encourage making things easier or more tempting for plz-bros. Patience and research and skepticism and understanding underlying theory is all pretty useful for the project of reversing your myopia. Nobody who will only do “the stepzzz” is all that likely to succeed. Last thing we need is half committed casual tinkerers monkeying with diopters and then blaming us for their resulting misfortunes. So … in ole Jakey’s tiny mind, not much is lost by guarding the entrance to the temples with some rambles and dubiosities.

Either way. 9 minutes, far more tolerable than 20. Thanks @Sharada!

Learn more at http://curemydisorder.com/links/improve-eyesight-tedmaser-site

Normalized Glasses – Animated

Last of the animated series I had promised to make.

Yes, this one got a bit more weird.  Or as I like to think of it, way more interesting.

We’ll still be making more animated content.  Not because we need to make things child-like and simple, because that’s definitely not something we’re going to do.  Plz-bros will continue to plz, and we will never give them the stepz in a five minute video.  

All this, just because now the animation thing is kind of fun and intriguing.  

Back to the endmyopia roots.  The roots of weirdness and random humor.  

If you’re just here for a massively credible resource, with well organized instruction and simple guides, this very hopefully may not be meeting your satisfaction.  Actual myopia reversal is still steeped in plenty of personal experiments and your own responsibility and reading and reviewing and discovery.  It’s not the sort of thing I’d personally promote as some simple fix for the masses.

Plus if you know yee ole guru, you know all the entire lacking fondness for the proverbial and actual masses.

Go forth and make some 20/20 gains.

Cheers,

-Jake

Learn more at http://curemydisorder.com/links/improve-eyesight-tedmaser-site

How To Measure Your Eyesight: Animated

Quite a lot has been written by a tottery old wholey sage, about measuring your eyesight.

There’s the whole glasses category to peruse and our very lovey how-to’s section.   Yes first thing all the spoiled, entitled brats will huff about how it’s just too much content.  Imagine for a second none of that content and just sitting in front of a blank page of Google Scholar.  

But let’s assume our favorite reader is in a very positive frame of mind, excited to find lots of resources.  Our Wiki even, which filters out a lot of the (otherwise very wortwhile) rants and inside jokes you find here.

You can also try our not-so-perfect search function, just type in ‘measure’.

And just for the short animated intro to it all, this video:

Why all of these short animated videos?

Really it’s just another little experiment in how to relate endmyopia core concepts to new arrivals.   For the last many endless years it’s been either text posts here, or unscripted ramble videos by yours truly.  There’s a whole playlist for just normalized and differentials, even.  

A lot to dig through, and much of it weighed down by a lack of planning and brevity.

Let’s see how far we get with these videos.  Unlike the rambles these cost real money to produce, plus the time and attention to actually write a script and do the voiceover and yet another thing on the ongoing to-do list.  If you like them let me know, furthering various ambitions to keep making them.

Most importantly, go make some 20/20 gains!

Cheers,

-Jake

Learn more at http://curemydisorder.com/links/improve-eyesight-tedmaser-site

How Glasses Make Your Eyesight Worse: 1 Minute Animation

Here we go, the first and maybe one of many more, explainer animation videos:

Useful?  Let me know!

Of course doing this sort of video takes a ton more resources (read: money) than the usual old guru rants.  Scripts have to be written, voiceovers have to be recorded, animators have to be animated.  Or paid.  Or kept captive in the production basement.  

Either way, yet another of the countless experiments of endmyopia, and sharing ideas.

Hope you enjoy, do share and comment, let me know if you’d like more of these.

Cheers,

-Jake

Learn more at http://curemydisorder.com/links/improve-eyesight-tedmaser-site

Best Screen For Your Eyes?

Which screen is best screen?

Today, a quick video to help you figure out ideal screen choices for your eyeballs.  

Spoiler alert: Firs thing is, size.  The smaller the screen, the closer you’ll get to it, the more ciliary spasm you get, the less your eyes will be happy.  Second, hand held screens are usually going to be a bit closer than ideal.  

Important note:  If you want to get started improving your own eyesight, I offer a number of courses, including options for one-on-one support with me personally.  Check out the courses page for what’s currently available to help your eyeballs.

Best thing to do is to move content consumption away from smartphones.  

Past that, however fancy you want to get with display technology is up to you.  Just realize that there’s no such thing as “healthy” screens.

The face of beardly wisdoms.

I hope you’re enjoying these, even though they are a bit few and far between lately.

Keep them eyes happy!

Cheers,

-Jake VonderJakensteen