Myopia is Mental
Myopia is Mental is a vision improvement method created by Mark Warren.
Emphasizes noticing the relative movement of objects in peripheral vision as a way to relax the eye for clearer vision. Suggests that tunnel vision can cause people to not notice peripheral vision, keeping the eyes in a tensed state.
The method has existed since the start of 2020.
Criticism
Myopia is Mental has been criticized as lacking details on certain topics, such as how to handle complex glasses prescription (There is an emphasis on significantly reduced or no correction.). Emphasizes clear flashes as a signal for improvement, which may be hard to reproduce consistently across various individuals. It also ignores the scientific consensus that myopia is caused by a longer axial length of the eyeball, by suggesting that the eye is squeezed by chronic tension:
- I believe both. Tension is the enemy in both cases. Too much tension in the ciliary body makes the muscle stiff so now the lens can't move/focus. The lens can become hardened over time from lack of movement. Think about an engine that sits for a long period of time. It can eventually deadlock. As for eye elongation. I don't think the eyes grow long or rather grow at all. I believe the tension caused my the extraocular muscles squish the eyeball to make it long. Think about a round balloon and you use your hand to smash it down. It becomes long. Learn to relieve the tension in both the ciliary and extraocular muscles and you fix both!
There are other writings that indicate that MiM advocates that myopia is more mental than physical. This clashes with EM's view that myopia is related to the physical shape of the eye, and that any changes need to be measured and gradual to prevent issues with too much changes in the eye being too difficult for the brain to adapt to (which may manifest as double vision or eye discomfort).
MiM also encourages chasing a feeling of stinging or watering in the eyes while practicing active focus. EM strongly cautions against this attitude, instead recommending that any pain should be used as a hint to moderate any behavior. Rule of thumb for EM: If it hurts, you really should consider stopping what you are doing that is causing the pain.
Marks claims to have improved from "Left -5.00 with a -1.00 / 80 axis for astigmatism and Right -4.0" to "-1.50 in both eyes" between the periods of November 2018 thru August 2019. This is considered very fast improvement by EM standards, and not considered a realistic improvement rate by both EM and mainstream optometry standards. (EM suggests that a good improvement rate is 0.75-1.00 diopters a year, while mainstream optometry says that myopia reversal is impossible.)
Do feel free to give it a go. Make your own mind up - be skeptical and avoid blind belief: Blind belief.
There's a minority contingent of EM participants who find the material interesting from the angle of learning about what to notice in peripheral vision.
Habits, practices, and concepts suggested by Mark Warren
- Tracking multiple objects in 3D space, to aid with "automatic focus" (Myopia is Mental's rephrasing of Active Focus). Specifically, noticing the relative movement of all objects in your awareness as you change your focus between objects at different distances while slowly moving your head position.
- "Rocking" exercise by moving one's body so that the head is moving side to side while the eyes are looking at various objects of interest. To be practiced with multi-object tracking above.
- Stationary movement exercise by rotating one's head while tracking multiple objects at different ranges, and noticing that relative movement between objects changes with distance.
- Combining the practices of multi-object tracking and "stationary movement" by talking walks to see how objects move relative to each other as you move in different directions (either by turning in place, or by walking away/toward/past objects).
- Maintaining awareness of peripheral vision even when looking at objects in central vision. A specific technique Mark calls "peripheral triangulation" involves looking at a target object with your central vision, while noticing the positions and distances of objects in the peripheral awareness relative to the target object in view. One suggestion mentioned in a video comments thread is to turn on a muted TV as a peripheral vision background while looking at a central vision target:
- "A lot of people say the peripheral isn't important but I'm going to tell you why many have trouble seeing the full field of view while looking at something with their central vision. . If you spend a lot of times indoors in rooms, you're surrounded by stationary objects that don't move. This isn't natural! The only way for them to move is for "you" to move! If you think about being outside in nature, nothing is ever perfectly still! The wind blows ever so slightly and it will cause trees, plants and flowers to sway. Also you don't sit in square, confined boxes in nature (which is why it's easier to improve vision outdoors vs indoors). To improve your ability to see movement indoors try reading with a TV running in the background to your left or right. Turn the sound off so you're not distracted by it, but as you read notice the movement on the TV as you read. I'm actually doing this while I type this reply!"
One unofficial analogy to think about the above techniques
... is that they are all combined to perform a human simultaneous localization and mapping, which is a concept normally utilized in the domain of robotics. For a robot to locate itself in an environment using a video camera, the robot needs to track the positions of various features it can recognize in its vision. Robots that are tracking their movement can use the relative movement between objects in a video image to estimate distance. "Stationary movement" is analogous to a robot rotating its camera and tracking the relative movement of objects in the camera image (to oversimplify, you can calculate the distances of the tracked objects by processing the geometry of the object movement combined with the known angle of rotation).