Relearning to See: Improve Your Eyesight -- Naturally!

"This is simply another book trotting out a variation on the Bates method, which has been thoroughly discredited since the 1920s as a waste of time and effort. This sanitized version of Bates won't harm your vision, unless you follow some of Bates original suggestions like staring at the Sun (!), but it also is unlikely to help improve your vision. Harmless pseudoscientific rubbish, I'm afraid."
~ Written on 2008-03-27

"This book and others that are based on the Bates method continue to give false hope to those of us with less-than-perfect-vision over a hundred years after Bates first wrote down his ideas. Better Sight Without Glasses dates from 1896 (yes, 1896!) when knowledge of eyes and vision was very basic when compared with what we know today.
Such exercises do not work! Eyes change focus with changes to the shape of the lens in the eye, not by changes in the corneal curvature. Short-sightedness cannot be alleviated by exercises unless there is an excess of accommodation - in which case the eye is not as short-sighted as it seemed. Older people lose the ability to accommodate as the lens in the eye grows and loses flexibility (whilst the eye muscle retains strength so exercises won't help).
Sorry everyone. Whilst it is tempting to believe in quick fixes and cheap solutions to problems, they often do not exist.
Spectacles (eyeglasses) do not influence or change the amount that eyes are out of focus, they just refocus the light entering the eye by the amount of error that was present on the day they were prescribed.
Optometrists and Ophthalmologists are highly trained scientists. It would be unethical and unprofessional for them to mislead you about this stuff.
Remember to have your eyes checked by a professional every 2 years - many eye conditions and diseases can become quite advanced and so difficult to treat without giving you pain or a red eye or blurred vision. Trust your local eyecare practitioner; he has the expertise to guide you and to explain why books like this, whilst well-intentioned when they were written, are misleading and even dangerous. Why dangerous? Well, if doing exercises like this prevents you from seeking professional help as soon as you need it, you may suffer more in the long run...."
~ Written on 2007-03-19

"I bought this book because lately my eyes have been giving trouble, and I wanted an objective source for information about the anatomy of the eye and what causes eye problems, etc.

The Bates method stems from a unique viewpoint about the eye. The basic premise is that the eye does not focus as we would typically believe but rather that the primary mechanism of focus is the curvature of the cornea, and external eye muscles change the shape of the eyeball and thereby the cornea.

The early part of the book discusses the anatomy of the eye and lenses and Dr Bates' research, which I must admit I found fascinating. It puts forward the case that eyesight should be able to improve naturally because it is anatomically possible. I appreciated this early part of the book.

It then proceeded to theories on how these vision problems arise and how they can be overcome, and unfortunately this part was very pseudoscientific. The author makes such statements as that when improving vision naturally, one should not use contact lenses because as more life energy returns to the eyes, they are more likely to reject the foreign objects.

The author presents eye-exercises surrounded by a host of mumbo-jumbo about why they are good. I don't mean to put words in his mouth, but his justifications stem from the premise that modern health problems are typically caused by our separation from nature. In one of the worst cases, he tells us of someone who healed her cancer by removing harmful foods from her diet.

He extends this treatment to other areas, speaking about relaxation and diet, and including sections on such things as homeopathy and acupuncture.

I think one should read this book as one would read psychoanalysis. Certainly, anyone reading Freud would not take him too seriously, so far for instance to believe that a young boy is sexually attracted to his mother. Rather, one should parse over the information, taking what one can and discarding the rest.

This book is severly tainted by the pseudoscience, to the point that I would not recommend it even though I enjoyed the early part. I don't know how much pseudoscience is in Bates but I suspect one should also accord him a critical reading.

The thing to take from this book is that you should always question what you are told and what you read. Do I think there is some merit in seeking natural alternatives to glasses/contact lenses? Yes, but avoid the mumbo-jumbo."
~ Written on 2007-01-06

"a voluminous work which includes most of bates' original text as well as considerable further information from the author himself. it is easy to understand and a worthwhile read for anyone considering the bates' method - very informative. there are a few exercises to be getting on with to help relax one's vision, but it should be understood that the bates' method is a progression of re-education to eliminate bad habits rather than a quick fix of short daily exercises. simply reading this (or any) book will not improve your vision by itself, and any claim otherwise is nonsense. as a result of the book, i have taken some classes which i have found valuable."
~ Written on 2004-05-25

"I've read a few books on NEI (Natural Eyesight Improvement).
Amongst them, Take off your glasses and see by Jacob Liberman Better Eyesight without Glasses by W.H.Bates (1943 version after W.Bates' death) , The Art of Seeing by Aldous Huxley amongst them.
All of these were quite good books, and I quite liked Jacob Liberman's one.
However none of them are as good at explaining the process of Natural Eyesight as Relearning to See by Thomas Quackenbush.
A lot of Relearning to See (RTS abbrieviation from now on ) is requoting W.H.Bates work, but RTS explains it better in modern terms than W.H.Bates himself managed. I was a bit confused by some of the terms in Bates' Better Eyesight without glasses. RTS cleared these issues up.

RTS also integrates other sources of information on NEI. It's also quite a colourful book, with lot's of diagrams, something most of the other books miss out on. After all there's much more to seeing than just reading alone.

To summarise RTS is the best book I've read on NEI, so if you want to buy just one book then get this one. If after that you still feel like reading somemore try Jacob Liberman's "Take off your Glasses and See".

Don't suffer glasses or contact lenses for 1 second longer than you have to, and NEVER even consider laser butchery , I mean surgery. (Just search the web for complications Associated with laser surgery ) This stuff works. Most opticians over prescribe strong lenses for visual defects that can and are cured with the visual habit's that are described in RTS and other NEI books. Your average optician will not believe this possible is (I've tried talking to a few of them) because medical school has got to them, and also they earn a large amount of their income by encouraging dependence on prescription lenses.

So , can you really trust someone who makes their living selling lenses to tell you that you could live without them ? ( or at least be less dependent on them) Buy this book (and read it!) and you'll SEE what W.H.Bates, Thomas Quackenbush and others would like you to know."
~ Written on 2003-06-24