In this podcast episode, I was interviewed by Holistic Vision Coach Claudia Muehlenweg. Claudia is a Natural Vision Improvement Coach and Founder & CEO of Holistic Vision. We had a great conversation and dug into some key points in my upcoming book, Vital Vision. Enjoy the show!

Contact Claudia Muehlenweg

Email: support@myholisticvision.com
https://www.myholisticvision.com/

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

eye, vision, people, astigmatism, prescription, lenses, questions, cataracts, claudia, optometry, lens, doctor, book, optometrist, primitive reflexes, blur, eyedrops, child, shankman, learning

Hello, everyone, it’s Dr. Sam, I’d like to welcome you to my EyeClarity podcast. This is a show that offers cutting edge information on how to improve your vision and overall wellness through holistic methods. I so appreciate you spending part of your day with me. If you have questions, you can send them to hello@drsamberne.com.

Hey everybody it’s Dr. Sam and I’d like to welcome you to my EyeClarity podcast. Before we get to today’s show, you can always text me your questions 1-844-932-1291 Or send me an email hello@drsamberne.com.

I’ve got a couple of great workshops coming up in March in Southern California. I’ll be in San Diego March 5, LA March 7, and Santa Barbara March 12 doing my famous masterclass. I’m back doing that again in person. This is a great way to work with me one on one, if you’ve got an issue that you haven’t been able to solve. Register Here.

And I’ll be doing some book events. As you know, my new book, Vital Vision is coming out the end of February, we’re in a pre sale right now. So if you want to order the book, you’ll get a discount. And there are also some events happening. You can sign up and we can do an online workshop that’s going to be happening in April. Also, you can get some coaching one on one sessions with me if you buy the book, and I’ll be doing a gathering in Santa Fe in September. This is gonna be a small group at my geo-dome. So if you’d like to register for that, we’d love to have you.

Preorder the book here OR learn about my book events here.

Hey everybody, it’s Dr. Sam and I want to welcome you to my EyeClarity Podcast. Today is a recording of an interview that I gave recently to one of my colleagues. She’s a wonderful holistic vision coach from California. Her name is Claudia Muehlenweg and I was on her podcast. So it’s a great show the beginning I talk about my story, and then my philosophy, and then we do a really cool q&a at the end. So I hope you enjoy the show. Thanks for tuning in. Leave me comments. If you like the show everybody. I think we are live on YouTube. I’m Claudia Muhlenberg. I am a nationalist improvement teacher and the founder of the Natick division method. And this is our weekly clear vision Wednesday show and today I have a guest that I couldn’t be more excited about. And I will share this a little bit of before I bring him on. So Dr. Sam Berne is a holistic optometrist. He has been in practice for over 30 years in New Mexico has written a new book that we’re going to talk about, and I had the luxury of attending a workshop with you, Dr. Sam, actually, let me bring you on to stage then when he can see you. Hi, welcome. Hi.

01:20

We did you work with primitive reflexes? And you know, and you discovered you gave me some kind of glasses that, because I noticed that my right hip dominant side, I was more aware of that than the left. And so that was so so fascinating, your approach. So I know I jumped right into the deep end.

01:42

So our topic today, you know, and that’s kind of the title of your book, vital vision clear eyed solutions for midlife and beyond. So tell us a little bit about like, Why buy this book? And like why you felt like yeah, what? Why did you write this book?

02:00

Well, first, thanks for having me. And everybody. Thanks for joining in. So that’s a great question. Why did I write this book? I’ve written several other books. And I’m pretty active on social media. I have a Facebook live show. And for a couple of years, people would ask me really good questions. So what we did is we took the transcripts of the shows, and we had a ghostwriter who helped me and we created a book based on what were the most popular questions. And so each chapter is my hot take on first of all, what is the condition? And second of all, how can you help, you know, help this condition in a more integrative holistic way? So that’s how the book came about. And, you know, we’re in a pre sale right now with the book, but it’s, it’s going really well, a lot of interest and happy to share it and any other insights today. Yeah, I’ll put all the links, by the way, in the show notes, where you can pre order the book and all that. But I want to read I want to read a quote on that kind of tags into what you just said, from the book. And I didn’t get to read the whole thing yet. But I did read quite a bit of it. And I love this quote, you said with a dominant belief that prescriptions and surgery are the only options.

People can often feel bullied into accepting a certain procedure or treatment method, even if they would prefer another option. If this is you pause before accepting anything and first seek out a second opinion from a novelistic perspective, and have quote, right, and you are a trained optometrist, you’ve, you know, been doing this for 30 years, and I think you have now telemedicine practice. But yeah, I love that you said that, because I hear that from my clients a lot. And I know you probably do, too, that I didn’t understand what the eye doctor was saying, and I shouldn’t do this procedure or, you know, so tell us a little bit more of what you would tell people to do. Well, I really advocate for patients. And I know what it’s like, because I’ve been on the other side of that, where an authority figure thinks he or she knows better, but it’s your body. And there needs to be options and alternatives. Especially if you know pharmaceuticals and surgery are the only two options. I mean, come on, you know, we know the eyes are so related to our you know, systemic health or metabolic health or our emotions. And I love your posts. You talk about a mind body connection. Exactly. Or you’ve had Mark Grossman on he talked about Chinese medicine, and acupuncture and how that’s so relates to our vision. So you don’t always have to rush into the surgery. And look, that’s the way the eye care field makes their money but it’s your body and I’m here to advocate for patients.

04:56

But tell us like why did they and I don’t know you

05:00

Hold back on while you’re doing traditional optometry of behaving optometry, and then did you then switch and what was your big aha in terms of hey, what optometry school might not be the whole story? Well, I remember my first year of optometry school, I was sitting in the back with a friend of mine. And the professor was saying, and by the way, if any of you hear about the Bates method, put it out of your head, it’s total quackery. And my friend and I turned to each other, and we started laughing. And we said, we want to go into that. That’s very interesting.

05:32

So I was always, you know, Renegade. And actually, what ended up happening I did an internship in California, you know, it’s from the East Coast. And I did an externship at a behavioral optometrists office, Dr. Bob Sanat, in Lemon Grove, San Diego. And he was my one of my first mentors, and he was running 60 patients a week through his vision therapy practice. And he was so satisfied with what he was doing. And I think that was my aha moment moment. And then I went back to the East Coast after I graduated optometry school, and I enrolled at the Gizelle Institute. So I spent a year learning about child development and learning. And then I had I was very myopic. I was about minus 275 With with a stigmatism and I met a holistic behavioral optometrist, Dr. Al shank Shankman, the Albert a Shankman and went to him for about a year and vision therapy and completely dissolved my prescription. So after those things, I mean, it was a no brainer, I was just going to devote my career to helping people improve their vision instead of just, you know, the company line of making things worse every year. So that’s, that’s amazing. And I’m so you actually with vision therapy? And for those of you listeners that might not know the difference? Can you just really quickly explain to us, so we have traditional optometry where you get your contacts or glasses prescription measured, usually verbal acuity gets measured sometimes. That’s perception. But what is the difference of behavioral I think sometimes they call them developmental on your chest?

07:16

On some, so I think in behavioral or developmental optometry, we recognize that vision is more of a brain and body process. And depending on the level that behavioral optometrist is training, we look at things like visual skills and eye brain processing. You know, if we go into child development, we look at things like the primitive reflexes, obviously, nutrition and diet, but that’s like even on the surface, you know, I I dove into things like Functional Medicine. I’m a cranial sacral therapist, I’m an aroma therapist. I’m a somatic therapist. So I did a lot of really deep studies.

Because I found that my patients there was a real psycho, emotional, psycho spiritual part of vision, you’re nodding your head, because we’re very simpatico and what we believe. And so, in behavioral optometry, a lot of times it’s eye exercises, or you’re doing a vision therapy type approach that’s more high ball related. So you’re not really getting into, you know, mind body or so I love what you’re doing, because it’s so integrative. And that’s what I feel is needed, especially when you have people with pretty complicated vision problems. And then if they’ve had surgery, or they’re on drugs, you know, it just becomes very complicated. That’s why you have to suss it out, and there’s no cookbook, you know, I often say that I don’t have a cookbook approach. I look at each person individually and we go from there.

08:53

That was so interesting. There’s several things that you said that I want to piggyback on. So I just did the recording for the better eyesight magazine podcast with Nathan oxen Feld and Fernanda lighter from Brazil. And we talked about how Dr. Bates back then had this free clinic and they were helping people for free and Emily, Liam and who became a second wife, she was somebody who cleared her vision.

09:17

We know people trusted her and she was empathetic and she was really about helping people and getting to know them and even though she had this free they had this free clinic and it was only like five minutes you know just like a regular doctor five minutes people like there was all about connecting with them on an emotional level and seeing what works for them and not the cookbook approach and and then adopt to this story this this month. Episode was about there was a doctor was like why don’t you just give them lots of context and be done with it? Why are you wasting your time and don’t even get paid? Helping these people? So I think that was one thing that just came to me as you were talking how we really see the whole person right we really see the whole person and look at all the things on the emotion

10:00

terms. So, you know, to the whole journey to when we really work with them versus just giving them like, here’s this protocol of like doing this or that which behavioral optometry, in my opinion at least does something to improve your vision. But like you said, it’s very mechanical, like the pencil push ups and those kind of a process. So but you I, you said if I understood correctly that you improved your myopia and astigmatism, but vision therapy. So tell us more about that. Well, Dr. Shankman wrote a book called Vision enhancement training. And he was actually also a yoga teacher and a meditation teacher. And the things that we did with Dr. Shankman were very whole body oriented, we did not do, you know, traditional vision therapy. And every practice that he would give us, he invited us to use the practice as a mirror to understand and learn about our habits and conditioning. And so I would spend 30 minutes a day doing all his practices, and they were very much involved with movement. And we used an eyepatch a lot. And, you know, a lot of different things. But in the end, I realized for myself that I developed myopia, because I had a learning problem. And when I was eight years old, I was diagnosed with a learning disability. And we ended up at an eye doctors office, and I ended up getting minus lenses. And so I became a memorizer.

And Dr. Shankman found that my left eye tended to wander out, so I had difficulty with convergence. And so once we repaired all of that, I didn’t have to carry that tension anymore. And my reading and learning, you know, really came up to where it should be. So I have a soft spot for for kids, I work with special needs kids. I know my books about middle age, but I actually do a lot of work with special needs autism, cerebral palsy Down syndrome, so I can relate to those kids really well. And this type of vision work is really profound and getting them to turn their light bulb on, and really engage and connect their eyes to their brain and their body. And it’s it as you know, it’s so satisfying and rewarding, because you’re not just doing something rote. You’re you’re really helping a person change their life and contributing to them. And when I started to get on social media in 2016, that just really opened up even more, because that was a real hard thing for this kind of vision approach is that nobody knows about it. So people like you, and Nathan, and you know, few others.

They’re adept on social media, so they’re able to, you know, get the word out and get more because people are struggling, they want an answer. They just don’t know there’s an answer out there. So that’s where we come in and work together to bring more awareness that there is a possibility for help. Well, and I’m so grateful for, you know, because you’re a trained eye doctor, and there aren’t as many eye doctors, you know, you mentioned Dr. Mike Crossman, and, you know, Dr. Ahmed caught me reading this that many out there that are, you know, going and we had talked to her and so on. And so there’s a few people that are, you know, looking Mabi way beyond that the spectrum, and I think you’re right, it’s still shocks me that, you know, Bates would probably turn around and scrape and 100 years later, it’s so so unknown, right? It’s so so unknown, people still say, especially in the traditional ikat field, that this doesn’t work when we know that we see that business 90% range and just an eyeball, and they only I would say the only, I always say 100% The problem is that 100% of their attention is under 10%.

13:56

So true. That’s the eye exam. The exam is on that 10%. So what’s going on there? Yeah, exactly.

14:04

So when you work with focus, Nashville, and I’m looking at questions also coming in, but when you work with children, because I do I get a lot of requests for children, and I haven’t I haven’t been working with children anymore since I gave up my physical, you know, in person practice. So when you work with children, I know it’s a little side detour. But how do you work with that? Do you Do I know you do impressive workshops, right? You do.

14:28

How do you work with children mostly? Well, it starts with a really detailed developmental history and the three most important early time periods, gestation, birth, and bonding. So I ask a lot of questions in that time zone because if there’s any kind of interference, there’s going to be an obstacle and vision development, sensory motor development, and also studying the primitive reflexes. I have a group of optometrists in Scandinavia, who I studied with they’d been doing the reflexes

15:00

In 7019 75, the primitive reflexes directly affect vision development. So that’s another piece. I also do cranial sacral and nutrition counseling. But it starts with a developmental history. And then from that point, I teach parents how to work with their kids. From gross motor level, we do a lot of bilateral work, a lot of balancing a lot of rhythm and timing, reflex work, color therapy sometimes works well, nutritional counseling, and then advising them on lens prescriptions. Because, again, it’s a total disaster what eye doctors want to do when you first of all, when you dilate an eye or you put eyedrops in, you’re paralyzing the focusing muscles. So how can you get a accurate measurement on a prescription you’re overcorrecting every child that I see that’s been to some other person, I’m reducing the prescription by 60 to 80%. Because that is really interfering with their visual development that the way lenses are taught to be prescribed is horrible. And so it’s all of those things, I do consult at a place called Kidpower. In Albuquerque, I go down there once a month. So I do evaluate kids there and just through telehealth or workshops or whatever, but the pediatrics is very effective. And strabismus, you know, if you’ve got strabismus, I don’t recommend eye muscle surgery and lazy I don’t recommend wearing a patch eight hours a day. That’s insane. Again, you treat the whole person, like you said, this is what we learned it Gizelle a vision problem is more than in the eye, it’s in the whole person. And the last thing I’ll say I just saw this parent yesterday with a 12 year old who did a year of vision therapy and still has exactly the same symptoms. So what’s missing is that we’re going to do some biochemistry testing. Because I think there’s a problem in cellular absorption. She’s re admitted she’s depleted. And one of the key things I learned is, you start with building up the cell first so that there’s an energy, and then you can do your vision therapy or whatever you’re doing along with it. Now the child has more energy to make the developmental gains we’re asking him to make. But if you ignore the dietary nutritional part, sometimes they come in and they’re so depleted to begin with, it’s hard for them to make changes. And that was the essential piece yesterday with this family. So you know, we just look at a lot of different things and and then go from there.

17:37

That sounds fantastic. So with because of the little children, you have to work in person pretty much like when they get older. So yeah, I mean, I’ve got I have so many questions. I don’t even know where to start. But let’s, let’s so yeah, we’ve since you just talked about nutrition. So what is something when you said somebody is nutritionally like even at trial, right? You know, I always say when we get older, all the bad stuff catches up with us are the age related eye diseases are just like too many chemicals, too many toxins, leaky gut years of not eating proper nutrients, you know, that just basic at some point, hey, that, you know, hits the fan. But when you talk about a 12 year old, like how can that so nutritional impact division? What is the thing that you advise this family, for instance, to change? Or you probably heard this statistic because it’s floating around the eyes and the brain may to make up 2% of the body weight and use 25% of the food intake. You’ve heard that I’m sure anyway.

18:39

You know, we find out first of all, what, what are they eating? And what would they be attracted to eating if you let them. And then from there, you know, we talk about the rainbow diet, we talk about the microbiome, we talk about healthy fats and oils. I do a different kinds of lab tests. One I like to do with kids is a hair mineral analysis, because it shows us about the mineral ratios and the minerals or sparkplugs on cellular health. So we can see are they absorbing carbohydrates, proteins? Do they have heavy metal toxicity? You know, what’s going on in an inflammatory response? What are their adrenals doing? What’s their thyroid health? So through a hair mineral analysis, that’s a great way to get a snapshot on what’s going on. And then again, it’s very individualized but it’s somehow getting more amino acids and proteins into their body in the morning even if it has to be a smoothie and really cut out the sugar gluten and you know the processed foods. And then the challenge is their textures. You know, some don’t like to swallow pills. Some don’t like powder. You know, some are finicky eaters. So we have to dance with them on that and a lot of times we do the best we can that’s why sometimes doing like a morning, kind of a protein shake

20:00

Eat something, there’s some good ones really good ones out there, or something that where we can get a lot in them early, and then really try to reduce the sugar consumption and just go from there. You know, it’s, we’ll see we’re doing a hair mineral analysis on this child, but her mother immediately said, She’s depleted, I know it. And I said, bingo, right there. So vision therapy is not going to be the answer until we do something that support her energy better.

20:30

That is so interesting. And I think it don’t, wouldn’t you agree that it’s also about educating the parents, because sometimes, at least in my practice, when I used to see children will be like, Here, help me fix my child.

20:41

So I’m working with you first. First of all, you got to be working, you know, working with your child and making into games. But also you need to understand what the it’s not their cage when you go in the corner and do some priming.

20:53

So let’s switch gears, so to show the middle aged population, because I would think that a lot of the things you said would be similar applicable, right, like doing your hair mineral analysis and figuring out like, is there any nutrient deficiencies? Or where would you start with somebody?

21:10

That’s like, in their, let’s say, 50s? Common things that, you know, you probably hit to this cataracts, floaters, like, where do you start with somebody that comes with let’s maybe a beginning of cataracts or something like that? Okay, well, I may see it differently than other people. But when somebody is complaining about, you know, a whole laundry list, there’s really a similar thing going on, which is, they’re not getting enough nutrients in the eyes, the eyes have the highest metabolic needs of the body, the mitochondria not working well, in the retina, there may be some kind of glycation process going on either in the vitreous, or the lens, meaning a glucose molecule is attaching to either the collagen molecule on the vitreous or the protein molecule on the lens. So that’s creating cataracts. There’s congestion, visual stress, maybe wearing the wrong prescription. And then, you know, liver, are they absorbing vitamin A? are they producing enough bile?

22:12

You know, so there’s a lot of different questions that need to be asked as you probably do, I think one of the things that happens is that we have the biochemical aspect of the eyes. And then we have the functional aspects. And this is where I doctors fail, because they’re not really looking at the functional aspects, function changes structure. So the way I use my body is going to affect the anatomy especially. And so if my two eyes aren’t working together, I don’t know how to relax my eyes, or I’m not getting enough daily sunlight, you know, or on my computer too late at night. You know, these are all lifestyle things that I’m advising people to do. And some change and some don’t some get worse, some get better. A lot of it depends on you know, their body and their psyche. And, you know, things we don’t even understand.

23:07

And I know you have protocols for different visual conditions, and you have you talked about the oils that you’re recommending, and so it’s like a really holistic approach. Let me look at some questions because I feel maybe we get we got some good viewer questions that would be helpful.

23:24

So xinda is saying on YouTube, I’m on a low fat plant based diet is a very red and dry. Do you think it’s the low fat I was trying to avoid it because of the high cholesterol?

23:37

Well, you know, certainly fats and oils have been shown to you know, lubricate the eyes better. It could be also allergies, functional. Eyelid health is such a key thing right now because a lot of people with dry eye, they’re having difficulty the the oily part of the tears are drying out too quickly. And so the tears are evaporating. And so that’s why I developed a castor oil I dropped that you can do in the evening that replaces the oily part of the tears. And somebody wrote me about MSM eyedrops, so I should talk about them a little bit. Those are sulfur based eyedrop that I created. And it’s very good for reducing inflammation, improving circulation. And, you know, sometimes, you need to use some natural eyedrops, you need to increase fats and oils, maybe you need to protect yourself from blue light. Maybe your two eyes aren’t working together. But most of the research and most of my clinical experiences we do need a good amount of fats and oils, the retinas 50% fatty acids. I know our brain needs a lot of fatty acids. So you know those could be some things and then maybe finding some natural lubricating drops to support your eyes before they you know before they go downhill like they are right now.

25:00

Well thank you so much and we do want to make sure that everybody knows this is not medical advice with this as an educational show here and even Dr. Sanders

25:09

excuse me Doctor it’s still like you know we’re not telling you because you’re not diagnosing just want to make sure that we are

25:15

but so I podcast I have a customer I’m acid I put about my ash

25:22

into my eyes, and I use organic castor oil. But tell us a little bit because I’m curious about the to the oil that you use that you can put in your eyes and said anyway different than regular organic castor oil or? Well, it’s, it’s made in a way that you can that it’s pretty comfortable in your eyes. Now I’ve tried many different kinds of castor oil that is organic. And the issue sometimes is it’s very thick. So you get like this blurry vision. And if you use too much of it, it’s sometimes it can clog up your eyelids that meibomian glands. So you have to be careful about that. But, you know, like what you’re doing with the mask is beautiful. I’ve watched that video. And I love that because what you’re teaching, there is a way to help people get empowered about moisturizing their eyes. And how cool is that? Because the other thing is Restasis or steroids or god knows what you know all these pharmaceuticals. So I think you got to see what your body does with it. Some people love it. Some people, they don’t do well with it. So I think you need to find a brand that you like there are a lot of good ones out there. And if it’s something you want to try, start easy. Just use a little bit use it on the outside of the eyelids, maybe this mask that you have. That sounds like a great idea and see how see how it lands in you. And if it’s positive castor oil, as we both know has so many great benefits. Why not for the eyes?

26:58

Yeah, thank you and I will try to so somebody was asking if you have jobs in the to the Zoom chat is a darker sound. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s you have a straw there too. And I’m going to try your I’ll tell you what, I’ll send you a bottle. Don’t Don’t buy him. I’ll say I was sure about it. But I the castle. I do use for that. Oh, that’s okay. Yeah, sometimes a little bit gets I just put it a

27:25

little bit gets into the eye, but I use it only at night. So you’re exactly

27:30

right, just use it at night. And you’re, you’re safe with that. So next question Karen’s asking was wearing my context for myopia astigmatism and motor vision during work hours negate everything that I’m doing

27:46

during off hours of off work hours, which is glorious teachings and bearing with us classes. So she’s doing my programs. Even just class virginity. She was a contract with a full correction and also monovision, which is something I advise against, but yeah, so so your your advice, Claudia, is that she shouldn’t do the monovision Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the monovision is going to split your two eyes and you’re gonna have different focal distances. So it does, it’s like going three steps forward when you’re working with Claudia and her methods, and then four steps backward when you’re doing the monovision if I were you, I would I don’t know if this person nearsighted or farsighted.

28:28

She says nearsighted.

28:31

So what you could do is ask your eye doctor to just make up a pair of computer glasses, that would be reduced prescription that’s a great technique to relax your system and open and that’s what I did personally. And I just wear that for work but at least both eyes are doing the same thing at the same time because your brain is going to suppress the other eye you know that that is not an acceptable setup I think that that creates so many problems so if you stop the monovision you might find what you’re doing with Claudia you will you’ll increase and improve much faster so that would be my endorsement.

29:09

Well thank you so much for that Dr. Sam and I you know I usually tell if people work on the computer all day I usually advise them even if they need contacts with some of these advisors classes

29:20

them you know for the two feet distance and if needed for driving you can just stick a pair of monitors and

29:27

then on the other computer Why wear glasses that correct you are contacts that correctly for 21 of the business become one of those convenient fake fixes like progressive glasses and that let me look at my questions my own but I want to make sure everybody’s here was watching live we have a lot of people watching live

29:48

comments. Okay, so that was somebody who’s saying cataracts eating Diabetes Eating please. We already talked about cataracts and diabetes is a whole different topic. That’s obviously stressful essentially.

30:00

Do your diet. But um, let’s look at other questions right now. So Vince is saying strong minus seven minus eight prescription getting worse according to optometrist every few years plus astigmatism Should I ask for no astigmatism correction?

30:18

I’m sure you get this question a lot.

30:22

Well,

30:24

it depends what your astigmatism is. I mean,

30:28

the deal is, is that you know, if you if you get a prescription without a stigmatism, it’s going to be distorted, it’s going to be a little blurry for you. So you would want to start using that and non demanding and non threatening situations. You know, when you were in a astigmatism lens, it’s warping your vision, you have a warp you have. So when you have no astigmatism, you’re used to the war, but it’s like now there’s no warmup. Well, how do I deal with that there also may be some postural adaptations that you’ve made with the astigmatism. And so

31:04

you know, you got to negotiate this, most doctors won’t go for that. But you know, if you can, yes, I would say get a non correcting astigmatism prescription. I like to do symmetrical lenses, because that encourages the two eyes to start to know where to position together. So it just depends on how open your eye doctor is to be able to do that. But I I’d say go for it, where something reduced, you know, for indoor stuff. And if you’re nearsighted, do my plus lens to blur that’s where you wear a high farsighted prescription. And if you’re farsighted, you can get a minus lens to wear for certain vision therapy exercises. Those work great for getting you out of your current habit or pattern. Remember, any prescription you get from the doctor is reinforcing what you’re coming in with, it’s not really treating anything, it’s just making it tighter, more compressed, even just going without them. Some sometimes in non demanding situations, is a great thing to do. And notice your emotional response, your mental response when you take them off. We play this game with people where we say alright, I’m taking your lenses away. Tell me what you feel. Tell me how you think you would, you know, be in the world and they go, Oh, my God, I’m paralyzed. That’s it, you know, and, and so we get to see how addicted we are to the way that we see. And, again, the work the Bates work, or Claudia’s doing what I’m doing Nathan, Mark Grossman, this is a few and far between, but we’re offering a new way of seeing that is really freeing, I mean, you really come out of prison. And I remember reading a quote,

32:47

take off your glasses and see Jacob Lieberman, one of my colleagues, and he said wearing a full prescription is like being in a maximum security prison. That’s very interesting. But it is like the, you know, the whole thing where you get used to a certain way of seeing like the Stockholm syndrome, and all of a sudden you start taking the lenses off, emotions are going to cut things are going to come up for you that you’ve been internalizing, and if you’re if you’re up for that, that journey, it can be incredibly freeing and healing for you. And that’s why Claudia and I do this because we love to see the transformations that people make.

33:27

Well, that was I have never heard Jacob say that but that is that was this great advice really. Thank you for highlighting that emotional response and whether astigmatism especially how that you know, like I had a client who had a pretty high I think he had a minus three or four astigmatism and we basically I don’t have this optic similar to the sphere and he said for the first two weeks everything felt like squished and then he got in that that relaxed, open up. But you have to be like what Dr. Sandra said, I love what you said you have to be willing to you know, the emotions that come up and for some people that’s stronger than for others, but you have to be willing to be a little bit you have to be comfortable with being a little uncomfortable maybe initially and just really connect to that right so I that was a great example and tell us a little more because I when I first started I got these flippers from repair now the stories are the

34:23

good so that that approach is definitely coming from optometry I personally don’t use that but tell us a little bit more I’m just curious. So you know basically you make let’s say you have the minus seven and you would put some plus lenses on like readers maybe are okay you make your vision let’s say you pro class readers three readers on right as an example that would make him like look like a minus 10 that what right explained to us that idea that you’re putting the opposite lens. Okay.

34:54

So for all the listeners out there you can Google Plus lens to blur Dr. Byrne

35:00

minus lens to blur, Dr burn all my exercises and all my content is free. So you can just go to my websites all that I don’t charge anything for that. Alright, so let’s, whatever amount of myopia you have, you go to the drugstore and you get the strongest readers you can buy while you’re there, get an eyepatch come home, take your lenses off, lock yourself in a room, cover your left eye, take a look out at 1015 feet and notice how blurry it is without any lenses, then put on the plus lenses. And immediately notice what you start thinking what you don’t like about the blur, I’m out of control, I could get hurt as a scary. So you start to see the mental

35:44

messaging to the eyes, which is a hyper vigilance. That’s what myopia is. I have to keep it clear, survival wise no matter what. So you put that on for a minute and you relax into the blur as best as you can. You take off the lenses. And you notice that now your eyesight is more clear. And you do it again, you do it three times. And every time you put the blur on, it’s spreading the light into parts of the retina that you normally are not accessing with your regular lenses. So it’s going to give you a lot more peripheral vision. You see, blur is about receiving more, it’s about relaxing, it’s about being more intuitive, creative, flexible. It’s not a negative thing, but we are associating it with a negative thing because the eye doctor says oh, it’s blurry, we’ve got to get rid of it. So then after you’ve done it three times on the right side, you then take the patch off, and you’re gonna notice how much clearer and brighter it is, with no lenses, it’s gonna amaze you. And then you do the same with the other eye. If you do that for 30 days, I can tell you your current distance prescription will start to reduce, you will put on your regular prescription and you will start to get a headache. And that’ll show you that you’re unwinding your vision. Now on the far sighted side, it’s a little harder to get the lenses, I actually sell them on my website, because because I want people to access it, I usually go with like a minus two. And so if you’re hyperopic, you plug your work magnification lenses, you do the same thing except through the minus lens. And you’re gonna get the same kind of openings around

37:22

not needing as much magnification. So the whole idea is you’re challenging your vision, your mind, your brain, your eyes, your body by wearing something that’s a lot more diffused. And you see, one of the things I’ve learned in health is, the more we can become dissolute, so we have resolution and dissolution. Inhale, exhale, we’re always holding our breath on the inhale. So in this week, we develop a wider range on our neurological health by resolving, but then dissolving and the more comfortable we get in the playing in that that band. That’s going to give us more flexibility and versatility. And it’s going to slow down the aging process. So it’s a winner, and you can do it. You don’t need to go to an optometrist to get these glasses. They’re out there. So you just get them and you start doing these exercises. And your eyes will improve.

38:23

I love that. I will I will try that. I mean, this would be great. But that’s always could always be made improvements. Yeah, so that’s fantastic. Yeah, I get I used to get the club flippers and it’s basically Yes, it is a little stick and then I have has the same plus and minus and then you can kind of flip them around. And I don’t know why you would go to your your whatever. If you’re I’m fast. My background is farsightedness. So I don’t know why I will do the plus. But that’s a great way. And if you have a link that we can put in the chat, that’s great. Otherwise, we just Google it, but maybe we can find a link. Thank you so much. That’s a great way to explore that. Because what I teach sometimes too, is what I’m reading, like if you’re farsighted, I have presbyopia the old age. So really smart print and looking at it. So close. And then you relaxing your eyes and you’re just moving attention you notice the opposite movement.

39:12

You know, and then and then after that you look at them small print and suddenly, like what was super blurry before, you know so you kind of getting into that zone of making it worse and the way by and then relaxing into that because now you’re like okay, now there’s no point in making an actress because you know, and then I love that. So that’s a really great practice of thing that people can explore. It’s free teaching for free. Thank you so much offering you can give me a spot like at the Dollar Stores. If you’re nearsighted or farsighted, you can order them from the SAMSA website so you don’t it’s not you know, it’s very inexpensive way to try this out. Exactly right. You got let’s see what else is it possible to get rid of floaters or were they to slide down? After six months? I don’t know what that means.

40:00

Download. So you know, you know in this new book vital vision

40:04

the number one question it’s my first chapter is what do I do with these friggin floaters? Because as you know, there’s so many different reasons. I mean, some people, they swear by my 15% MSM eyedrops, oh my god After three days they got rid of that’s a tough one with cataracts because, you know, it’s pretty locked in there. And by the way, the cataract surgery works very, very well. There are ways that you can navigate it, so that you come out with a positive result like no monovision don’t do a lot of complicated bifocals, and astigmatism corrections, just do the simple correct both eyes for distance. And, you know, you’ll be good to go and protect your eyes from the blue light because those lenses may not protect you from the artificial emitted blue light. But in the earlier stages of cataracts, glutathione and vitamin C are essential. And then you can add some other things like you know, the Corrado noids, lutein, zeaxanthin, Asda Xanthan, there are eyedrops out there that you know people use can see ocular mad cineraria. So you know, you can try those, I tend to work with it also systemically so you know, improving my my glucose processing, so reduce my sugar or eliminate that lot of good antioxidants. And, you know, just see where the the chips fall. And, you know, in early stages, you have a good chance of neutralizing the development in the later stages. It’s not that the results are not quite as good.

41:41

So, I mean, we are 100% on the same page, because I say the same thing. And I know my mom had cataract surgery and I asked her like what kind of lens are you gonna use this in? Oh, whenever the doctor would come in, I’m like, No mom, you like, this is like drives me nuts. I did like hours and hours of her explaining, you know that she and she did get the distance lenses, but she was like, whatever they do. And I’ve heard stories that people have the surgery. And then the two weeks later, everything was blurry because they didn’t do the emotional processes. They didn’t do the preparation. And so I always say the work that you do are the ones that I do in combination with the surgery so that you really address like the root cause, like did you have diabetes, there’s like 60%, higher risk of cataracts when you have and you don’t have to have diabetes, it could just be pre diabetes, you know. So, you know, addressing all those things at the same time is important, but also the emotional component. So awesome. Let’s see if we have any more questions. What if I have one is seemingly facile and one is seemingly nearsighted?

42:45

You know,

42:49

nationally that, yes, so So the exercise I like to do is called a dialog where I, where I’m actually talking to each eye, and I’m asking about the marriage of each eye. That’s another kind of big exercise that you could find, and working with the patch a lot in my lifestyle to kind of really understand who am I through my right eye? Who am I through my left eye, and farsightedness, we’re pushing the world away and nearsightedness we’re pulling the world in. So you’re in a push pull what’s what’s the collaboration, or the marriage like and then maybe doing some bind ocular exercises like the Brock strain or the magic I see if you can get yourself into a situation where you are processing simultaneously work on bilateral integration with your body you know, get better with your bilateral ality you know, these are these are some of the things that you’ve got to help the brain can what Claudia said 10% is in the eye and 90% is in the brain. Let’s tap that 90%. And then you could probably have a little more collaboration or cooperation between the differences.

43:58

Wow, this is like we already 45 minutes. And so we have to come to a close. But I definitely want to bring you back because this has been amazing. So what So you already I put all the links in the show notes. So how can first of all on a couple of questions. So you have your social media channels, I put them all in there. But how can people find you? How can they get the book? How can they work with you if they want to you know, do you even do private sessions? I don’t know how you work with clients outside of what you already shared. Yeah, I still do a little bit of private sessions through telehealth, you can text me your question at 1-844-932-1291 or you can email me hello@drsamberne.com and I’m on all this channels Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Tik Tok and Twitter.

Thank you for listening. I hope you learned something from the EyeClarity podcast show today. If you enjoyed the episode, make sure to subscribe on iTunes or Spotify and leave a review. See you here next time.