Meir Schneider is an internationally known therapist and educator, he is the author of Self-Healing: My Life and Vision, and co-author of The Handbook of Self-Healing, each an international bestseller translated into other languages.  His other educational products include a complete natural vision improvement seminar on audiotape, Meir Schneider's Miracle Eyesight Method, and a new videotape program, Yoga for Your Eyes.  His doctorate in Healing Arts was awarded for his work with muscular dystrophy.  The School for Self-Healing is located in San Francisco.  Meir teaches a set of remarkable techniques that unlock the body's power to heal itself.   

Kim        Meir, on behalf of all the people that have been inspired and helped by your life story and experience, I would like to thank you for your contributions to Vision Improvement and for speaking with us today.

Meir       Thank you…wonderful,

 Kim        Do you feel that there may be some things the vision improvement community is doing that may be unproductive in improving our vision?

Meir       Well I don’t think that that exists, except the problem that the people have in the vision community is that they, many of them, too much divide between eyes and body.  They take the medical model for that.   I think there is no way to improve pathologies of peoples, and even regular problems that people have without working on the body.  I’ll give you a few examples…In order to improve retinopathy cases, which are diabetically related which I worked with.  You first of all must work on the body and improve the circulation because the problem of the retinopathy comes from poor circulation.  In Diabetes you have two problems, first poor insulin production and second poor circulation.  Or if there are problems with blood clots in the retina, or poor circulation in the retina there is no way to improve it without good massage and bodywork.  But second to it, even if you have simple myopia quite often your posture is arranging itself around your myopia.  As long as you have that kind of posture the brain will always remind you that you are nearsighted.  But if you change the posture through massage, through movement, through relaxation as a part of your total work, then you can also impress upon your brain that you can have different being, and different existence than the one that includes myopia.  So in order to work on the eyes successfully, we must work on the body in a very profound and deep way.

Kim        In your book, Self-Healing my Life and Vision, you stated that you would palm for hours on end, do you feel that this is one reason you were so successful?

Meir       Yes, but you know if most people would palm for that length they may be irritated and not benefit from it the way I did.  There was a specific time in my life especially when I would palm and listen to nice tapes and relaxing tapes, it was during my early twenties or actually my mid twenties.  And then we would have a palming group; to qualify for it you had to be basically legally blind (laughing).  We would sit down every other weekend, you know just as people sit and talk philosophy, and massage each others shoulders and palm a lot, and listen to tapes and records.  One time I was sitting with one lady that had a problem that a playmate of hers had thrown a glass in her eye that had caused the glass to scratch the cornea and she and I would sit down and palm for very long periods of time.  The end result was, we palmed for 11 hours that day.  There was such a release in her eyes and her whole body responded with a sense of lightness.  She had some sight in that eye that the cornea was scratched, but just like I said, that the body effects the eyes and the brain concept of the eyes both of us walked and we felt so light.  Normally when people are sitting for so many hours they don’t feel light, they feel heavy when they walk.  If you sat in the classroom for many hours, it feels good to walk but it doesn’t feel that relaxing, or you don’t feel necessarily great.  We sat for 11 hours and palmed, we massaged each other’s shoulders and neck in the meantime.  After that I could get my drivers license, so for me it was a very powerful experience.  The only other experiences that I know about that is like mine is in the Bates literature.  No one that I know has benefited from palming like I did, quite a few people have benefited from palming but not such long palming.  I think if you had macular degeneration it is really good for you to palm for an hour or two hours a day.  It makes a huge difference.  It’s nice to meditate when you palm.

Kim        And also to have a good atmosphere like music?

Meir       Yes like music, like meditation, like being away from everything.

 Kim        I think a lot of us these days are too busy and we just feel like we aren’t doing enough when we are sitting still like that.

Meir       I think you are making a very good point.  In our society we basically are restless.  That restlessness has to do with super-highways, you know like computers and all that.  But that restlessness also has to do with poor breathing.  The poor breathing happens because we are very sedentary.  We don’t walk enough, we don’t look enough, and we don’t give ourselves time to be alive.  And what is being alive is experiencing every moment.  Now not every moment of my day I can sit down and relax this way, but I do so in those moments that I can.

 Kim        How important is visualization in successfully bettering your sight? 

Kim        So the more you visualize the better the results?

Meir       The more powerfully and the more relaxed way you do it, the better the results and of course yes, the more you do it the better but it has to be done in a relaxed manner because by nature the eyes of the modern person are not relaxed and the reason is that when you look at the primitive tribes like the aborigines and the bush people in Africa, they look very far most of the time and they balance it with looking near, while the modern person looks from near and makes intellectual effort from near and then the lens is becoming convex and the ciliary muscles work very much and the virtuous humor becomes very dense because much fluid is starting to move to the virtuous humor  and the shape of the eye changes.  And I really think that what we really need to do is balance it with looking far, not aimlessly looking and enjoying what we are looking at but looking far.  By nature we’re tense so for eye exercise to work we have to acknowledge that and relax ourselves.  That’s why really so many don’t really believe in quick fixes like lasik surgery, or radio- keratotomy, or even orthocarotology.  I mean to fixate the eye to see better isn’t what you need to do, what you need to do is to relax the eye so it will see better.

Kim        And so you recommend visualizing looking into the distance?

Meir       I recommend looking at a distance.  You can also visualize some distance exercises, but then when you look at something specific, you want to see it better, you probably know a lot about the bates work, right?

Kim        Yes some,

Meir       So when you want to see something better, lets say you look at the page with big and small print and you want to see small print really clearly.  After you looked at a distance, then you looked at a letter, then you close your eyes and visualize that the ink is black and the page is white it is going to be easier for you to visualize it and it is going to be easier for you to see it.   If you don’t relax the eyes to begin with then also your visualization will be tense.  You can definitely tense during visualization; there is no question about that.  To be results oriented defeats the purpose and that is why we need to move from exercise to exercise.  With many of my visually blind people I used to do, let’s say, tennis ball exercise.  We throw the tennis balls before they look at something specific and want to see it.  It could be a huge sign, which for them would be a big deal to see.  Before we would look at the sign we would throw balls, they would look at the sky, they would look at the clouds, they would look at the big buildings then they would look at the sign and all of a sudden they look at it with not much effort.  So that’s the point, distraction is a part of it.  The eyes tend to strain with the modern person quite a bit.  So to distract yourself from straining and looking with the intent you always look is important.  On the other hand when you look and your eyes are relaxed then you see better, then visualization works better, and then intention to see better works better.

Kim        A lot of people would like to know how your vision is now?

Meir       At the age of 28 I got my drivers license.  My vision then was 20/200 and that was an improvement from 20/2000, but I meditated to see well and there was one person who meditated for me, which I felt, was a very powerful meditation. I exercised very much and I went to the D&V and did not pass the test so they assigned me to a driving analyst.  The driving analyst was such a wonderful man, one of the nicest people I’ve ever met in my whole life.  He was so impressed with my personal story that near him I saw much better, I didn’t know from him what I saw, he just said you know one of these days you’ll see 20/40, is what he told me.  When I went down stairs to recheck my vision, it was 20/70, actually 20/67, and I was amazed.  For that day and because of that man I saw so well.  You know so often it happens, people come up to me and they were measured at very poor vision and all of a sudden they see an extra line before we even begin to work.

Kim        I can believe that, you have such a calm voice, you seem like a very relaxing person to be around.

Meir       Thank you, and it’s nice to talk with you Kim.

What happens is when they are safe and relaxed they see better, so that man got the best vision out of me, lets put it this way.  It took me another 10 years to get to the place where I see normally at 20/80.  Then I was measured again with another optometrist whom I like.  He said that I see 20/100 but maybe I could even see 20/80 but basically I see 20/100, that was a few years ago and then my license was renewed and renewed.  I would say my vision fluctuates between 20/70 and 20/150 these days, normally on the side of 20/100.  Now for many people that is very poor vision, but don’t forget a couple of things, my lenses are so scared that 99 ¼ percent of my strong lens is scar tissue.  Also I didn’t have any visual concept when I started.

Kim        You were basically blind from birth…

Meir       Exactly—so if you would have measured my vision when I started this, before I was 17, it was about 20/2000, which is extremely insignificant, so to see 20/100 is to be in the visual world and not in the legally blind world.  Nothing is bad in my driving record and I am very proud of my driving.  I didn’t have any depth perception.  The depth perception was a very hard thing to build but I was able to build it at least partially.  So this is why I am in this world where I am in between working with the people with normal vision who just want to improve it and not have an error of refraction, to people who are legally blind where my goal is not to get rid of their glasses or even their magnifying lenses but to get them to see better through them.

(to be continued)