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Keywords to the podcast today:

myopia, eye health, computer use, prescription lenses, vision improvement, blue light protection, eye fatigue, relaxation, peripheral vision, eye doctor

Summary

In this episode, Dr. Sam Berne discusses the implications of myopia, particularly in relation to computer use. He emphasizes the importance of having the correct prescription for computer work to avoid worsening eye conditions. Dr. Berne suggests that individuals should request a second prescription tailored for computer use, which can help reduce eye strain and improve comfort. He also highlights the benefits of using blue light protection lenses and the importance of taking breaks from lenses to promote eye health.

Takeaways

• Myopia means seeing well up close but struggling with distance.

• Using a distance prescription for computer work can worsen myopia.

• Request a second prescription specifically for computer use.

• Comfort and clarity are both crucial when choosing lenses.

• A reduced prescription can help relax the eyes and improve peripheral vision.

• Wearing a lower power lens can enhance eye health and circulation.

• Taking breaks from lenses can reduce their reinforcing influence.

• Blue light protection is essential for screen use.

• Over time, a reduced prescription can become the new distance prescription.

• Regular eye exams are important for maintaining eye health.

Sound Bites

• “This is a recipe for disaster.”

• “You have to know how far away your laptop is.”

• “Clarity is important, but comfort is just as important.”

Chapters

00:00Understanding Myopia and Its Implications

02:57The Importance of Correct Prescription for Computer Use

Sam Berne (00:00.568)

Hey everyone, welcome to the program today. I’m going to be giving some advice on how to reduce myopia. People ask me questions whether or not you can actually improve myopia. Well, of course you can. In fact, you can improve your vision at any age. Hope you enjoy the show. Here we go. You could do to be proactive is you can download.

A Snellen acuity chart. It’s free and print it out and put it somewhere 20 feet away. And that could be a measuring stick for you to see, you know, how close you are to passing the driver, the vision part of the driver’s test. In most states, you need 2040 and so you don’t need 2020.

And 2020 means seeing a 1 third inch letter at 20 feet. So you’re you’re looking at a fairly sizable letter and as long as you can pass it with both eyes somewhere with a correction. There’s no problem. And now I’m going to deconstruct this a little bit for you and it may or may not make sense. It may not resonate.

But here’s the pattern I see in you. Here’s the pattern.

Growing up, you began to tense your eyes. And when you tense your eyes, you give up the distance to keep your world close to you. That’s the successful part of your seeing up close. Now what goes along with that tension sometimes is you feel

Sam Berne (02:02.978)

Like you have to defend yourself. Like you’re on a constant alert. Yeah, yeah, looking for threats looking for threats. Now that mental energy, whether it’s conscious or unconscious that you’re putting into your eyes because your eyes are the bodyguards for you.

They’re like the advanced sentry, you know, that sits outside where you live and is watching. When’s the next fire? Do I smell smoke? What’s that siren? So your prescription in your eye is everywhere in your body. It’s not just in the eye. So the cataracts, you’re allegedly

forming and I can give you what symptoms are. What a cataract is on a kind of a very deep level is I’m blocking what is coming at me and I’m blocking looking out. So it’s kind of like a boundary that you’re creating. It’s a hardening. You’re getting more fixed.

And then with a floater, that’s like shocking, shocking transformation. Like there’s always this it’s like a pinball machine, a pinball that’s going all over the back of your eye and it’s got some congestion. It’s got the tissue is partly consolidated. It’s it’s very hard to predict. And again, it’s it’s related.

To being really fixed and tight and locked in and You know, there are I exercises. I want to show you but the psychology of this is that You are mentally operating in a way where you’re on high alert all the time

Sam Berne (04:20.746)

And you’re you’re putting that through your sensory systems, especially your eyes and your ears. And what it’s doing is it’s beginning to affect the healthy tissue and the structures of the anatomy. Like it can’t even absorb the good nutrients that you’re feeding it. Thank God you’re, you know, conscious to do that because if you weren’t game over, you know.

So, you know.

I want to revisit for a second the that blurry vision exercise. I’m not going to make you go back and do that necessarily. But my point in that was to take away your habit of being used to having things a certain way, which is clear. Well, when you put them on, there’s no way for you to get

clarity. You cannot focus through it and get the same level of resolution as you can with your glasses. And so what that what that lens is doing is an it’s an energy transformer. So think of your eye as a doorway of light that comes in and projects out.

So the eye is one of the is one of the windows where light can get in. And when you wear a lens like from the optometrist, it’s a very specific window that concentrates and tunnels and tightens you up. It reinforces

Sam Berne (06:23.35)

your mental habit of protecting yourself hypervigilance stress. Yeah on high alert and what the blurry glasses do is it invites you to go into the other part of your nervous system, which is the parasympathetic nervous system.

And you know, there’s a saying that what you don’t like or what you’re not really attracted to is probably the very thing you need to bring you into more balance.

And that’s a tricky thing because you know, I don’t like spinach. So do I have to eat spinach to get into balance? No, there might be another way for me to do that. But your eyes have been eating a certain diet and the diet is a certain experience that you have been reinforcing when you wear those

corrective lenses. It’s a whole body consciousness mind body emotional psychological even spiritual change.

Sam Berne (07:48.502)

Now, when you take the lenses off, the light pattern changes into the eyes and it’s more equally distributed. And then when you wear the blurry glasses, what it’s doing is it’s spreading the light into the dark areas of your retina that you cannot get to because it’s been lost. You know, you you spend this time tunneling and narrowing and tightening and making it

resolved so you can see clearly because you can feel safer that way. There is a connection somewhere between safety and security and clarity. Again, you may not be aware. Those are the issues that I would suggest you explore and that’s why

Like when you put on the plus lens, it’s like going to a whole new country. It’s very weird. And one of the things you could do with that is forget the patch for now. Put them on and see if you can walk around for a few minutes. Now, I wouldn’t walk up and down stairs. I wouldn’t walk out on the street, but

Here’s the game that I’m inviting you to play. This is a game and the game is how many different experiences can you give your eyeballs?

Sam Berne (09:35.694)

You just want to make it more broadband. know, be like if you were in high school and I was your teacher and I said, you know, You look like you got some artistic abilities. Let’s send you to Paris. Go study for six months. And you don’t know French, you know, you’re like, well, I don’t know anybody there. This is like a big thing for me, but you go and you do it.

And it gives you something that broadens you gives you more access to resource so that maybe 20 years later you’re applying for an advertising job or something and that creativity that you tapped into in Paris you can you that’s imprinted in you and you can use it. So the parallel is that when you wear the blurry glasses it

forces you out of your habitual way of seeing and it’s really easy. When we do our workshops, it’s amazing. It’s it’s it’s incredible. So we’ll do a workshop, right? And we’ll do a process and I’ll ask people. Okay, what’s changed? Nothing. No, no, you got to come up with one thing that’s changed by doing the process.

I’m telling you nothing is changed. I don’t like it. don’t know. So what what we talk about is when you see no change or there’s you you’re not like I’m not really into this. You’re probably going to stay in the same track. The track and for you to reverse cataracts.

and floaters, you must come out of the track that you’re in. I mean, I like the idea of you going outside without your glasses being in the sunshine grounding yourself. I probably do that long swing exercise.

Sam Berne (11:54.774)

Yeah, I would do that and I would be super mindful of what are what are differences for you when you’re without your lenses and I’d write them down like I’ve started keeping a journal notebook. Okay, when I did dr. Burns blurry vision exercise today, what were three things that I noticed it could be?

You know, I felt a lot more dizzy through those blurry glasses when I was moving. Well, that would make sense because it’s stimulating a lot more of your peripheral vision than you’re normally used to. It could make you very angry. It could make you very frustrated. It could give you a sense of relief like, I don’t have to worry about details.

Sam Berne (12:54.188)

I don’t know, but there is a deep, deep well of information that you’ve internalized into your eyeballs.

It goes all the way back when you weren’t treated right. And I was done. Now I’m going to speak as a clinician. Got some data here. The higher the number in the prescription. The more well trauma. Yes, the more because of your sensitivity. You’re highly sensitive.

You have this trauma that is energy in your eyes that’s now beginning to turn into floaters and cataracts.

So how do you get out of this? Well, I’m creating an awakening like, okay. These could be and I’m sure this isn’t really new information. But the cause of your myopia is the incredible defense strategy and hypervigilance that you are still operating on.

That was back then, but you’re still in that news cycle.

Sam Berne (14:22.424)

So.

connecting your psychological and emotional perceptions to doing different things with your eyes is a way for you to begin to release it.

Sam Berne (14:43.362)

Like I’ve had people who’ve had emotional releases, right? I’ll have an emotional release, happens and we’re doing a process and it’s like, whoa. And after that emotional release, they can see the eye chart better.

So energy that’s been internalized.

blocks the function.

Sam Berne (15:10.402)

And it’s like we have a lid on the eyes. We open the lid. We open up the cap. There’s a lot of internalized energy that you’ve swallowed over the years. Especially when you were young.

Sam Berne (15:32.13)

So.

There’s the blurry vision experience with just do both eyes, but I want you moving when you do it. Okay, walking, but I don’t want you to give up and if you’re so the the question the two questions you want to ask yourself. What do I see and how does it feel?

Sam Berne (16:02.582)

If I said to you off the top of your head, what does blurry vision mean to you? Okay, blur is danger. Love it. Blur is danger. Okay, so you’re going to do everything in your power to avoid experiencing blur. You’re going to avoid it. But do know what it’s going to give you clear eyesight?

Sam Berne (16:28.994)

And you’ve got a lot on the line here because now it’s starting to affect your independence, your driving. It’s like, I got his attention now.

Sam Berne (16:41.996)

We talk about embracing your blur.

Going into the blur is the way you get clear eyesight. So what’s supposed to happen is if you wear those blurry glasses for a few minutes and you process through yeah, blur is danger blur is scary blur is fear blur is whatever it is and just say can I can I go into it a little more? I learn about my reaction to it?

Can I be with it?

Sam Berne (17:23.522)

When you take those glasses off, what should happen is that your eyesight should now be clearer.

Sam Berne (17:38.892)

That’s what’s supposed to happen.

Sam Berne (17:43.406)

But the more resistance you have to that idea, again, you’re in a track, you’re fixed, right? It’s comfortable. But even I’m losing control of that because now my distance glasses aren’t working as well. So damn, my strategy isn’t working very well.

Sam Berne (18:09.838)

Does that make sense? Your eyes are five years old. There’s a saying that when you wear less prescription your eyes get to be a little older.

When you wear more prescription that reverts you back to earlier time.

That’s why in my view, you should be celebrating being able to wear the computer glasses because it’s taking you a little bit out of the danger zone mentality. But then one of the rules is if I’m not feeling safe in the circumstance, I’m in I’m always able to put my stronger glasses on.

You always have that default because what I want you to do is make choices about what you want to look through so that you can see more clearly when you need to. I mean, it could be very simple. I don’t want to necessarily do this right now, but probably we could increase the distance prescription enough for you to be able to go take the test and pass it.

They would be glasses you would never wear, but I’m sure that we could increase the prescription to the point where you’d have no problem walking in there and taking the test. The floater is the floater and the cataracts are symptoms. They’re not the problem. And I mean, I could give you the answer for the floater tomorrow. Doctors in Beverly Hills. He’s

Sam Berne (19:58.574)

a floater doctor that zaps floaters with a laser. If you don’t want to go to him, I know another guy in Dallas who does it. It’s called the floater’s doctor. So you play like a video game and he zaps your floaters.

So that’s always there for you. One needs to be careful about laser on the eye because I had one case where it made the eye unseeable just created a cloud afterwards with another guy. It helped him. So he was, know, the he tried all the detox things and nothing worked and he was frustrated. So there you go. So you have those options available to you at any time.

I know it’s not really where you want to go. And I think that what needs to really happen here is you need to do a bit of a reprogramming and then updating in your eye experience instead of being back at that five-year-old situation. So your homework

will be a couple things if you choose to accept it. The first is even if you did it two or three days a week.

Even one day a week put on those blurry vision glasses. And let your psyche come up around. Well, how’s this making me feel? What am I thinking and look how strong that safety response is in you that hypervigilant response and see if you can.

Sam Berne (21:54.686)

Embrace or surrender into the blur. What the blur is asking you to do is relax. Let go.

It doesn’t have to be your way.

So you’re doing that in a therapeutic circumstance, right? And you do some kind of a before and after measurement. Look out a window. Look look across the room. Look at that clock and even if it’s clear for a millisecond after you do the exercise that begins to prove to the mind that you can actually

get clarity by going into the blur because right now I get it. You why would you want to trust that go into the blur? I want to try to get away from the blur. I got this these cataracts and floaters that you know, they’re strangling me.

Sam Berne (23:01.432)

So that would be the first one to do.

The second one to do if this at all appeals to you, I’m not sure we did it. It’s called the eye dialogue.

So in eye dialogue, let’s rewind a little in Chinese medicine. The right eye is the father and the left eye is the mother. It’s the same same in urology. So what you do is you cover you could use a bandana or a patch whatever, you know, you cover the left without glasses on and by the way when you when your glasses are off.

You’re going to be more vulnerable, more internal and more real. When you put your glasses on, first of all, your eyes are way ahead of your body. And second of all, you are now in a persona.

You are not authentic. You’re in something else be more critical. You’re going to be more judgmental because your vision is such where you’ve got that acute artificially created but that acuteness. So you’re going to pick up stuff. But it’s it’s a drug you’re on.

Sam Berne (24:31.352)

Glasses are a drug and they’re side effects. They make you hyper. They make you tighter. They make it’s like Ritalin.

So you patch the left eye and I’ll send you some questions that you can ask your right eye wonder what the left eyes experience. Let’s ask the left eye. So cover the right eye that’s working on your inner vision. That’s part of the internalized energy that you

swallowed because you couldn’t really do anything with

Now, I don’t know whether this is true in your case, so I can’t say, but when I evaluate a child, I can tell exactly what the parent’s marriage is. The eyes are really just a mirror of what we see, what we’re taking in.

Sam Berne (25:29.464)

You know, I’m digesting what I’m seeing with my parents on a daily basis. I don’t know how to process this. I mean, I have clinical experience with evidence because I’ve seen so many kids. The problem is the parents, not the kid. You know, the father is over on one corner and the mother’s over in the other corner. I recently had

an autistic kid. The father is a cardiologist. The mother is an artist. She says I want my kid to be treated by you. And I met with a cardiologist in my office and he railed me out left and right and he said that they would never stand for for this for me that I’m a quack and all that. So what ended up happening is she divorced him.

I mean, they had a bad marriage and they were married and the guy was a jerk had no connection to anything except his rational science mind, which was very narrow. It was really hurting his kid. So, I mean, this is like this is our eyes are our our scroll of history at least for me. I can read somebody’s eyes and I can tell a lot about their life, you know.

because I learned the patterns. And so what I’m saying about your pattern is your cataracts and floater you manifested it as a way to block things more and create more congestion and being fixed in. So what I want you to do is have different net have now have different experiences with your eyes. It’ll give you a new lease on life. It’ll it’ll allow you whatever happens.

It will allow you to have a broader range of what’s possible. And so the blurry vision is the invitation. Can I relax into this blur? What can I learn about myself? What are my reactions to the blur? Write it down every day when you do it. Like you said blur danger. Everybody’s got that that’s nearsighted. I hate the blur. I’m out of control.

Sam Berne (27:57.266)

I hate the blur. could be shamed. I hate the blur because I could get it wrong. My teacher shamed me when I was in school. I mean the stories go on and on. had a lady. She’s an artist now. She said first grade. got a D in art. How do you get a D in art in first grade? She became myopic.

So.

The blurry vision glasses, the eye dialogue, and the third exercise is I’m going to send you a picture of some jelly beans.

Okay, you’re to print it out. It can be black and white or color. If you got a color printer, you do that. All right. So this picture of jelly beans is what we call a soft focus 3D exercise. And you’re going to wear your computer glasses for this. This is the only time you wear the glasses. Wear the computer glasses. You take the jelly beans and you hold it up to your nose. So it’s touching your nose. Okay, touching your nose.

You mentally look through it. So pretend you’re at Venice Beach and you’re looking out at the ocean. All right, but the jelly beans is here, but I’m seeing out in the ocean. You start pushing it away from your face and you start to look at the spaces between the jelly beans. You keep pushing it out pushing it out. The picture pops and you see 3d meaning that your two eyes are now synchronizing.

Sam Berne (29:34.92)

So some of the floaters look close. Some of the jelly beans look closer. Some of them look farther away that opens up the circulation in the lens of the eye and the vitreous where the floater is. I’d like you to do that exercise three times a day for like a minute or two. I you go on that computer all day. I’d love to see you. That’s a break from your you’re focusing. So that’s more of a physical therapy.

exercise the other two the blurry vision glasses and the the eye dialogue are more of the internal vision and your your habits and conditioning and patterns.

Sam Berne (30:22.53)

Yeah, it’s it’s huge. I mean, I can’t underestimate it because if we don’t at least interface with that a little bit, you’re not going to make the changes just doing the physical exercises. Booming when you go to psychotherapy, you take your lenses off. If you don’t you should.

You know, I guess, you know, it depends if you need to see the person but here’s the thing that I can say to you. When you take your lenses off, you don’t have the same obstacles and blocks. In defense. Remember your energy is going to be more equally distributed. Like I have a lot of massage therapists over the years. I’ve worked with.

And I’ve said to them take your lenses off when you’re doing your treatments. And they’ll all come back and say to me, you know, when I have my lenses off, I’m much more intuitive. I’m much more connected.

Sam Berne (31:25.847)

And I want you to make that that crossover so that you get that.

Sam Berne (31:34.066)

I mean, I’m not saying do this right now. This would be your vision quest. Take a Sunday when you have no demands. Maybe Sunday isn’t the day Saturday or whatever day go on a vision retreat meaning don’t wear any of your glasses for four hours and notice what comes up for you.

There’s going to be a detox. And energetic detox.

Sam Berne (32:10.494)

because we’re taking away the drug that you’ve been made dependent upon.

Sam Berne (32:19.812)

Exactly. It numbs you. Thank you. Yes, it does. It sure does numb you out. It disassociates you. That’s what it’s really doing. Part of you is out there your eyes. Maybe most of you is out there. You’re not in your body. When you take your lenses off, you are going to be more in your body because it’s so blurry out there.

your fixation and your attention comes in.

You develop the habit of being outside of yourself because of the danger.

Sam Berne (33:02.804)

You don’t have to do that anymore, but it’s going to take time for you to get your eyesight clear and wear less prescription. There’s because it’s split again. It’s a dissociated pattern, right? Yeah. So, you know, keep taking the supplements that feel good to you.

that you feel like, okay, this is I like this and the ones you don’t put off to the side you to be much more mindful energetically what you’re putting into your body. What you’re seeing the difference when you take your your your lenses off.

I want you to get more mindful. Mindfulness will heal you.

Sam Berne (34:03.9)

It will make you more connected to yourself and you’ll know what’s working in what’s not right now. I’m helping you, but I want you to get that and the floaters in the cataracts are symptoms. want you to start thinking of them as symptoms and not the diagnosis. The diagnosis is hypermental vigilance. That’s the diagnosis. So

wear the blurry glasses and soften your attitude. Embrace the blur and do it in a circumstance where you feel a hundred percent safe be in the safest environment you can and nurture yourself. And this is a this is a loving act what you’re doing. You’re taking back your vision under the deepest healing things in your life.

You know, that’s why you were able to meet me and do that. Everybody going in there. They’re not thinking like you. They’re not. They just say, give me the contacts. Give me the glasses. Give me the lasik surgery, you know, so very few escape the insanity.

But you did.