The Five Principles of Myopia

Principle #1: Problems in the eye do not originate in the eye.

The key to understanding the mystery of myopia begins by looking for it in the right spot. If we're not looking in the right spot, then we'll never find the complete problem. To illustrate, let's suppose that a friend of yours calls you up and says, "Come on over to my house. I've hidden a hundred dollar bill somewhere in my living room, and if you can find it, you can keep it." Sound intriguing? I think I need more friends like that! Now suppose that after tearing your friend's living room apart for two hours, you finally give up. In tired desperation, you ask your friend where the money was hidden, and he or she says, "Well, actually, it wasn't hidden in the living room. It was in the kitchen under the sink." Punch now, ask questions later.

In my opinion, this same thing happens with myopia. Since myopia and other refractive errors are manifested through the eye, we assume that the problem is in the eye. No, no, no! Don't forget what they say about people who assume. While there is definitely a problem in the eye, we erroneously assume that the problem has it's roots in the eye as well. This is where I break from conventional thinking regarding the cause of myopia. Not all problems have visible roots or at least roots where we think they ought to be. This is key. Just like the weeds in your lawn and garden have hidden roots, the roots of myopia are hidden and are not located in the eye. If you cut off a weed without pulling it out by its roots, then you will enjoy only temporary and limited success.

The eye is much like an innocent bystander that was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just like the law-abiding citizen who is hit by the negligent driver running the red light or the small child who is injured by a stray bullet, the eyes are susceptible to refractive errors because of their location and physiology. As strange as it may sound, if your eyes were a nose, you wouldn't need glasses.

Your nose works regardless of its shape. Even if you push your nose upward of downward or to one side or the other, you can still smell things with it. In other words, your nose works independent of its shape. Eyes, however, don't work like this.

Principle #2: Good Vision is a Function of Eyeball Shape

How well your eyes work largely depends upon their physical shape or their roundness. Eyes that see well without glasses are more or less round in shape. When the shape of the eyeball changes, however, then so does the vision.

Let's take a quick moment to review how the eyes work.

As you already know, the eye is a complex light-sensitive organ that is capable of distinguishing tiny variations in size, shape, color, brightness, and distance. The function of the eye is to translate light energy into nerve impulses, which are then transmitted to the brain for interpretation.

The eyeball is a spherical structure with a pronounced bulge on its forward surface called the cornea. Though it has no internal blood supply, the cornea has a remarkable capacity for self-repair and regeneration. When scratched, for example, it is capable of repairing itself in a matter of hours. The cornea is actually a transparent lens that provides the main focusing power for the eye. When light rays from all different angles hit the cornea, they are bent inward toward the interior of the eye. On the microscopic level, the cornea has five different layers. The top layer of the cornea is constantly being removed by blinking and replaced by deeper cell layers.

The main body of the eye is filled with a jelly-like substance called vitreous humor, which is enclosed in a thin sac. The outer part of the eye is composed of three layers: the outside layer is called the sclera, the middle layer is called the choroid, and the innermost layer is the light-sensitive retina.

Separating the cornea from the lens is a small chamber filled with a clear, watery fluid called aqueous humor. Funny, but I bet you didn't know the eye was so "humorous" (ba da ba, crash! "Thank you very much, I'll be here all week...!")

The lens is a flattened sphere constructed of transparent fibers arranged in layers. It is connected to the ciliary muscle, which flattens the lens or makes it more spherical to change focus. The colored iris is behind the cornea and in front of the lens. It has a circular opening, the pupil, in its center. A muscle around the pupil's edge makes it larger or smaller depending on the available ambient light: in bright light, it contracts (gets smaller) to protect the retina, and in dim light, it dilates (gets bigger) to allow more light into the back of the eye.

The inside lining in the back of the eye is called the retina. The retina is composed of light-sensitive receptor cells packed closely together. Individual cells are divided into two groups called rods and cones. Directly behind the pupil is a small yellow-colored spot on the retina that is the area of greatest visual perception called the fovea centralis.

Incoming light is focused twice -- once by the cornea and then again by the lens. When the eye is more or less round and the light is focused properly, the light rays converge to a single point on the fovea. When this happens, the vision is clearest. When the eyeball is oddly shaped, however, then the focal point of the incoming light misses the fovea and blurry vision results.

When the focal point of incoming light falls short or in front of the fovea, such vision is considered myopic or nearsighted. Generally, people with myopia see near objects better than they do distant objects. Conventional science attributes this to the fact that the eyeball has grown too long, but I don't fully agree with this conclusion. In a little while, I'll explain why.

When the focal point of incoming light would actually fall beyond or in back of the fovea, then such vision is considered hyperopic or farsighted. Generally, people with hyperopia are able to see distant objects better than they do near objects. Again, conventional science attributes this to the fact that the eyeball is too short. While this may be true, I will explain why eye length can actually change.

When the eyeball is oddly shaped, it's possible to have multiple diverging shafts of incoming light. This condition is described as astigmatism, where perhaps objects both near and far may appear to have multiple images.

To recap, good vision is a function of eyeball shape or contour -- how round or spherical the eye is will determine how well the vision will be. Our goal, then, is to understand what governs eyeball shape and how to change it. To do this, we must first understand muscle tension.

Principle #3: The Mind and Body are connected .

Myopia is a whole body problem that requires a whole body solution. Also, few people ever become myopic overnight; generally, a person becomes myopic slowly over time. Remember, slow and steady will always win the race over fast and furious. Consider the incredible potential for change within a single drop of water -- drop by drop, over time, even the hardest rocks can be smoothed by something as soft as water. This is how myopia develops, slowly over time, and likewise this is how it can be reduced or eliminated.

Generally speaking, we are conditional responding beings. Like Pavlov's dog, we are conditioned to respond physically and emotionally to different situations in very predictable ways. Over time, we have been conditioned to respond to different sights, sounds and smells to ensure our personal safety and wellbeing. Long before a child or adult ever receives their first pair of glasses or contacts, they started practicing a myopic response to different situations, and the longer this myopic response to the world is practiced, the higher potential myopia a person may have.

Just like a computer, people are made up of two sides: hardware and software. Hardware consists of the physical you -- your skin, bones, muscles, tendons, hair, teeth, blood, etc. -- all the stuff you can physically touch, hold, weigh, and measure. The software consists of the spiritual you -- your spirit, mind, emotions, feelings, consciousness, awareness, character, passions, etc. -- all the things that can't be measured in a laboratory but combine to make the Real You.

These two sides of a person, the hardware side and the software side, are connected. Sometimes people refer to this as the Mind-Body connection or something similar. By simply thinking or hearing certain things, we can have a physical response. This was proven by by Dr. Pavlov, for which findings he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1904. Conversely, by doing certain things with our physical body, we can generate an emotional response. For example, if you've ever been depressed, sad or bored, your body and face look and feel a certain way. Basically, if you're feeling sad, you might have a frown on your face, your shoulders might be hunched, and your body might be slumping over generally. When you're happy, on the other hand, your body looks and acts differently -- you feel energized and awake, you might have a smile on your face, and you look and act a little taller than usual. The great secret to all this is that our emotional response to a given situation is hard-coded into our physical bodies.

Did you ever feel happy about something, but forgot how to smile? Or did you ever see something funny on TV but ended up frowning by accident? Generally speaking, emotional patterns of behavior lead to predictable physical responses and vice versa. When you're happy, you smile, and when you're sad, you frown. No one has to be taught how to smile or how to frown -- we are all born with this innate understanding and capability. Conversely, if you're feeling sad and you decide to stand up as tall as you can and put on a big smile, you will instantly start to change the way that you feel emotionally.

Principle #4: Tension changes the shape of your body, and the shape of your body determines the shape of your eye.

Tension is defined as the act or process of stretching something tight, or the condition of being stretched tight. The word tension itself comes from a Latin root which means "to stretch out." Stress, a close relative of tension, is similar in meaning: an applied force or system of forces that tends to strain or deform a body. Basically, when you experience tension and/or stress, shape of your emotional and physical bodies is being changed.

When you're happy, how does your body and mind feel? Light? Buoyant? Agile? Weightless? When under stress, however, do you feel the same? Probably not. When you're "stressed out", perhaps you feel heavy, weighed down, encumbered, and burdened. When describing these two different situations, it's important to realize that both the physical and emotional/spiritual bodies will experience similar feelings. In other words, the mind is capable of feeling as equally light or heavy as the physical body.

By definition, tension leads to contraction, both physically and emotionally. Under extreme stress, your body may feel tight and unable to move freely. The mind will experience a similar condition -- you might feel constricted, stuck and compressed in your thinking. The body is designed to handle a tremendous amount of stress but only for short periods of time. The body, however, does not do as well at handling a thin layer of stress spread over a long period of time. When this happens, then long term effects normally result. Remember, slow and steady will always win against fast and furious.

Have you ever braced yourself for some kind of shock? How did your body respond? Did you tighten up or were you completely relaxed? Why is that drunk drivers have an amazing survival rate in high speed car crashes? One reason is because their physical bodies are relaxed. Relaxation = flexibility. If a person in a car sees that they are about to crash and they tighten up their body, these are the ones who experience the most broken bones and internal damage.

Muscles contract in only one direction -- they only get shorter when in use. Muscles don't "un-contract" or "re-extend" themselves automatically after use. The only way a muscle that has contracted is restored to its full length is if the muscle first relaxes. Muscles normally work in groups or pairs. Take the biceps (front upper arm) and triceps (back upper arm) for example. When you grab a glass of water and bring it up to your mouth, you're flexing or contracting your biceps. Once you've finished spilling the water all over your shirt, then it's time to grab a towel and dry yourself off. For you to bring the glass down, however, your biceps have to first relax and then your triceps take over to straighten out your arm.

Muscles that are chronically tense become chronically shortened. And no muscle is an island -- you are made up of hundreds of muscles that are all attached. Like a series of highways, you can quite literally start at the top of your head, and move down to your toes connecting individual muscles or muscle groups to each other. It is this connection that allows our bodies to move in so many different directions.

Do you remember that "game" while lining up in elementary school? Someone, normally one of the bigger kids, would hit the person next to him (or her) and say "Pass it down". So before long, everyone down the line, one by one, gets a punch in their arm. Boy, that was a fun game, wasn't it? Muscle tension plays this same notorious game in the body. Muscle tension may be localized to one central spot, but all neighboring muscle groups will feel it's effect, too. When one muscle tightens up, no matter how slightly, the muscles that are attached to it will feel a slight tug on themselves as well. When it comes to muscle tension in the body, it gets passed down the line.

As we've said before, whatever is going on in the body was first or will eventually become what is going on in the mind. The mind affects the body and the body affects the mind. As Dr. Bernie Siegel aptly put it, the body is an expression of the mind. If the mind is tense, the body will likely become tense as well.

When people live in a chronic state of tension, then their physical and emotional bodies become chronically contracted or compressed. They become inflexible and rigid. Tension is felt in the eyes, face, jaw, shoulders, back, and legs. Virtually the entire body has become compressed. Perhaps you've seen myopes whose shoulders are hunched and whose necks are "bent" forward. This is a direct result of muscle tension and body compression.

And when this happens, the eyes change shape.

Principle #5: Eye length is a variable, not a constant.

As stated before, myopia is a total body problem. When the body is compressed with chronic tension, the body changes shape, and when the body changes shape, then so do the eyes.

One thing that other NVI authors point out is that people with myopia normally have tension in their shoulders. The order is wrong in this statement, however. Instead, people with tension in their shoulders normally have myopia. Remember, the tension is what drives the myopia, not the other way around.

Now, we come to an important, defining point to all of this. How does body shape affect eyeball shape? As I've stated before, I strongly believe that eyeball shape is a variable that can be changed and not a constant. Conventional science states that a person is myopic because their eye has grown too long, but this makes no sense to me. By virtue of its physiology and structure, the eyeball can change shape when the body changes shape.

Attached to the eyeball are three pairs of muscles that cause the eyes to move in their sockets. Dr. Bates taught that tension in these muscles, known as the extraocular muscles or EOMs, is what distorts the eye and leads to refractive errors. I disagree with this assertion. I believe that the EOMs function to move the eye and have no impact on its shape.

One of the biggest keys to understanding my theory of refractive errors is the placement of the eyeball in the face. From a profile, you'll notice that the eyeball actually protrudes just a bit from the face. Surrounding the eyeball is a big round muscle called the orbicularis oculi (orbicularis meaning round or spherical, and oculi meaning eye). The eyelid is actually part of this muscle. When older people get bags under their eyes, you can actually see the outline of this muscle.

Do you remember making funny faces as a child and your parents saying, "Don't make faces like that or else your face will grow that way." Sounds crazy, but your parents were right. It's true that over time, a person's facial expressions get carved into their face, and the position and length of these facial lines tell a story.

In the face, there are essentially two basic areas that work to express emotions: the eyes and the mouth. There's a reason why the eyes are called the window to the soul -- you can tell a lot about how a person is feeling just by looking at their eyes. The other area is the mouth. With the mouth, we not only speak, but we can smile, frown, curl the lips, etc.

When a person is under stress, a common place tension to be stored is in the jaw, mouth, and chin. It is so important to express emotions to others, whether directly in person or on paper. Otherwise, these unexpressed emotions have a way of "storing" themselves in different spots of the body. Unresolved fears and hurt seem to get stored in the chin -- have you ever seen someone's chin quiver because they were afraid or upset? Resentment and anger seems to get stored in the jaw -- have you ever seen someone clench their jaw when they're angry? Effort and trying seems to get stored in the mouth and tongue -- have you ever seen someone making a great effort of some kind and their tongue sticks out of their mouth or their lips get pursed together?

Over time, if these above tensions persist, then the muscles in the face and neck will become chronically shorter. When this happens, the facial muscles are actually pulled downward. Some of the strongest muscles in the body are in the jaw. The muscles in the forehead, around the eyes, and in the cheeks are no match for the strong jaw muscles.

Dr. Bates noticed this same phenomenon taking place when he took pictures of people who exhibited facial tension. After practicing relaxation and other vision promoting activities, the facial expressions of these people changed to appear more relaxed over all. This is because the facial muscles themselves are relaxing, not simply the extraocular muscles attached to the eyes.

The face is a microcosm of the entire body. Emotions expressed in the face are also expressed in the body at large. Likewise, when there is tension in the body, there will likely be tension in the face. And when there is tension in the face, then the shape or roundness of the eye are susceptible to change.

With prolonged tension in the face, especially in the mouth, chin, and jaw, the shape of the orbicularis oculi muscle is changed. Normally round, it becomes flattened and oval. Under the weight of the falling orbicularis oculi muscle, the eye is pushed out of shape. The eyelids and eyebrows of myopes look different from those of emmetropes or people who don't need glasses. In the myope, there is an extra build-up of skin directly above the eyes. This is because the face has quite literally been pulled downward. When this happens, again, the downward pull of the orbicularis oculi pushes the eyeball out of shape. Depending on physical makeup, this downward pushing on the eye could lengthen it or shorten it. When the downward push lengthens the eye, myopia results, and when the downward push shortens the eye, hyperopia results.

Like innocent bystanders, the eyes did not produce the problem they are being accused of. Instead, they have been misshapen by the collapsing orbicularis oris muscles that surround them.

Removing the tension will naturally lead to better vision. When tension is relieved, muscle length increases. When this happens, the facial muscles will change their resting shape, especially the orbicularis oculi. When the orbicularis oculi muscles become more round, then so do the eyes. This is why a face or scalp massage can actually relieve tension felt near the eyes and improve the vision. Tension described as being "in" the eyes is normally tension that is actually "around" the eyes.

Eye doctors know that there is a difference in the progression of myopia between glasses and contacts. Generally, myopia becomes worse faster when glasses are worn, and with contacts, the rate of myopia is actually slowed down a bit. When asked why, eye doctors will tell you that it has to something to do with the fact that the contacts are sitting on the cornea and they help to maintain a smooth shape or something like that. I don't believe that. I believe that the weight of the glasses actually pull the center of the face downward, namely the orbicularis oculi muscles. The heavier the glasses, the stronger the pull. With contacts, however, there is no such downward pull. The face is free from the downward force of glasses, and the orbicularis oculi muscles do not have this added force to contend with.

A while back, there was a vision improvement program called Vision Freedom. One of the steps in Vision Freedom was to raise the eyebrows and blink the eyes while reading. As a customer of Vision Freedom, I practiced this type of reading for several months. It took a while for me to realize, however, that this exercise was actually reshaping my orbicularis oculi. The muscles that raise the eyebrows are different from the orbicularis oculi. By lifting the eyebrows and blinking in a relaxed manner, I was actually relieving tension around the eyes. Once this tension was relieved, then the muscle changed its resting shape, and once the orbicularis oculi muscle changed shape, then so did the eyes.

I will have much more to say about the causes and cures in the future. For now, this is kind of shotgun approach to get the reader introduced to my theory of myopia.

Why, then, is the theory called the Biomechanical Congruency theory? Biomechanics is primarily the study of forces exerted by the muscles and gravity on the human body. When these forces are exerted in specific ways over long periods of time, the shape and length of resting muscles actually change. Again, chronically tense muscles become chronically shortened in length. When this happens, the body actually becomes incongruent or out of alignment. Forces are exerted where forces should not be exerted. For example, there should be zero force exerted on the orbicularis oculi muscles. When a downward force is exerted on these muscles, however, then the muscle shape is changed, and the net effect is a change in the eyeball shape.

Stay tuned as I will be adding much more material and information to this website in the coming weeks.

DISCLAIMER: The information presented on this website is for informational purposes only.