Writing:Paint the blurry letters with your eyes

AF is one of those things where for some people like me it’s so obvious that I know when I’m experiencing it. But for some others it’s subtle and they actually already got it but keep seeking for something dramatic.

I’m lucky enough to have experienced drastic temporary focus improvement up close but often all AF is is you looking at some slightly, or for some people quite blurry text (some people need more stimulus) and for me the trick is not to blink for a while, and you will notice it clears up and you can see edges sharp that you couldn’t before.

Try not to blink too soon else you might reset the eye that is just about to clear up that blur. As soon as you notice any small clarity improvement by staring then blinking you have found AF. Doesn’t need to be dramatic.

For some people - as Jake already posted on his blog - it helps to think of describing the blur. I personally like to think that I am “painting” the letters with my eyes - my gaze is the paintbrush - you have to cover each part of every letter.

As posted many times on the forum, if you have ciliary spasm it can be harder to get active focus working (but not impossible, as I found myself). So, the first thing, if you cannot get it, is always to get your differentials, as Jake suggests and use them for a month.

You might experience some stinging when trying to AF, because your ciliary spasm is getting in the way of your eye trying to focus. It might tear up. But after some blinking this should go away, with the ciliary spasm. You generally know you have ciliary spasm by e.g. looking into the distance with your normalised or naked eyes and not being able to look for too long before blinking - your eye cannot focus well - you can almost feel a resistance to trying to focus into the distance for any length of time. Once you resolve ciliary spasm you will be able to look much longer into the distance without any feeling of strain or needing to blink after a few short seconds…

Anyway, back to AF, for me, as I mentioned, the key was not blinking too soon when trying to clear up blur.

Once you have it, you might not get it again for days. Then the gaps will become fewer. Eventually you’ll be able to do it almost any time (when you don’t have ciliary spasm). You won’t need to think about describing the blur or painting letters with your eyes, you’ll just have to look for some seconds at the blurry text. When you get better, you can start on other objects, mostly edges, posts, places with high contrast or even counting leaves on trees - anything where your brain knows what it SHOULD look like and can correct the slight blur.