20th International Conference for Holistic Vision,
October 28 30th, 2005 Genova - Italy
workshops: 26, 27, 31 October
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20th International Conference for Holistic Vision,October 28 30th, 2005 Genova - Italyworkshops: 26, 27, 31 October |
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A description of the Lectures and the Workshops
lectures
Lecture by Dr. Laercio Motoryn and Sylvia Lakeland:
How to combine medical and natural vision approaches to low vision
In 2003, Sylvia Lakeland had recently recovered her eyesight, after six years with low vision. Now, as a Self-Healing Vision Teacher practicing in Brazil, Portugal and Madeira, she began to look for eye doctors she could team up with. She soon found opthalmologist/homeopath Laercio Motoryn, the founder of a multi-disciplinary clinic for low vision patients in Sao Paulo. Laercio has a background in psychosomatic medicine, psychotherapy, iridology, and neurolinguistics, and has taken workshops in natural vision improvement. For the past two years, Sylvia and Laercio have explored new ways to work with these patients together.
Often the challenges are great and the achievements small but sometimes, with effort, ingenuity and inspiration, the results are remarkable. Using case histories, Laercio and Sylvia will discuss who is the low vision patient, what kinds of physical and emotional limitations do such patients struggle with, what methods seem to be effective, and what strategies they are continuing to explore.
Lecture by Tom Quackenbush:
Relearning to See: Right Brain/Left Brain Connections
According to Tom Quackenbush, the modern epidemic of blurred vision arises from our collectively switching off our right-brain characteristics, such as artistry, feeling, and a sense of the whole. He believes that Dr. Bates would have seen vision as primarily a right-brain activity. Tom has found that the vision problems of left-brained (right-handed people) and right-brained people differ. In this lecture, he'll discuss the modern right brain/left brain consequences of improving our eyesight with the Bates Method.
Lecture by Leonora Koller-Eps:
Activating Peripheral Vision with Qigong and Ri-Tai
Traditional Chinese medicine offers exercises that harmonize body, mind and soul, strengthen the immune system and activate the self-regulating energy flow of all organs, including our visual system, which can be blocked by stress and fear.
In this 90-minute lecture/mini-workshop, Leonora Koller-Eps will lead participants in Qigong and Ri-Tai (Chinese meridian exercises). You'll experience the flow of your inner Chi as you practice exercises that activate and expand your peripheral vision. These soft, slow movements can easily be integrated into your daily life.
Lecture by Marie Schils:
Eye Contact, Emotions and Vision
Eye contact plays an important part in social interactions. Our eyes may attract, bargain, flirt, evade, accuse, attack, yield, surrender, or deceive. As our emotional and relationship patterns develop, some of these behaviors become typical of us. Somatic psychotherapist and Bates Method teacher Marie Schils has discovered that serious limits in our seeing can develop around these psycho-visual habits. Marie will discuss how we create these self-imposed limits, how they affect the tone of the muscles in and around the eye and even the health of our eyes, and what we can do about them. In this 90-minute mini-workshop, we will:
Lecture by Liz Middleton:
The Mind's Eye Clinic
Over the years, I've seen the same painful scenario too many times, in eye clinics and in the ophthalmological, orthoptic and optometric literature: People suffering from vision loss come to an eye clinic expecting to get help. When no organic cause is found because the problem is emotionally based, they are stigmatized with a diagnosis of 'malingering' or 'hysteria' and no treatment at all is offered to them. If "psychosomatic eye disorder" were a commonly recognized diagnosis, these patients would be treated sympathetically and referred to a psychotherapist. This kind of referral is much more likely for the patient with emotionally-based digestive disorders or back pain.
Sadly, many of these people are in great psychological pain. The hospital where I have worked for 15 years in central London receives patients from all over the world. Many came from war zones Iraq, Rwanda, and others where they witnessed appalling scenes and terrible suffering. Some of these children and adults had reduced distance vision, others insufficient accommodation, and a number had restricted visual fields. No physical cause could be found for their symptoms. Perhaps they could not bear what they had seen?
Some children - often girls at age 10 or 11 - whose visual pain seemed to be located inwards, had trouble focusing on their schoolwork. What unhappiness at school or at home was causing their visual distress?
I began to investigate situations like these, so that emotional pain manifesting in visual symptoms could be addressed by appropriate referral to psychotherapists for exploration and help. The outcome, after a long hard struggle over many years, was The Mind's Eye Clinic, which I founded - a hospital-based, multi-disciplinary approach to psychomatic eye disorders. I now offer a consulting service to help other health care providers create such services.
Lecture by Gisela Wesche Nielsen:
What Can Holistic Vision Training Mean for Visually Handicapped People?
Vision educator and social worker Gisela WescheNielsen will discuss the physical and psychological backgrounds of diseases of the eye, the physical and emotional consequences when your condition worsens, and her methods of vision training for specific diseases of the eye.
Lecture by Ray Gottlieb, O.D., Ph.D.:
MY NAME IS RAY AND I'M A RECOVERING MYOPE.
For those unfamiliar with it, the title of the lecture refers to the standard greeting used throughout the world at Twelve Step meetings for overcoming alcohol and other addictions; it underlines Ray's point that nearsightedness is a personality addiction, not just an eye distortion. As a young optometrist, Ray used the Bates Method to overcome his own myopia. Later, as he approached middle age, he invented a new program to stop presbyopia. His deep understanding of the personal psychology of overcoming nearsightedness pervades his work.
Ray will take us through his own richly innovative and practical version of the exercises of the Bates Method: "how I taught myself to relax, breathe, move, visualize, clear my distance and near vision, and use self-massage to improve my sight."
Lecture by Ghislaine de Laage:
Binocular vision and symbols
Binocular vision can be fragile even when it seems well established on a physiological level. At the slightest challenge, symptoms may begin to appear that defy explanation. The symptoms may point back to the way we as children perceived and integrated our parents' very different energies as we were developing, simultaneously, depth perception and our images of our own three-dimensional bodies. To help my clients do this integrative work, I use symbols that, like images in a dream, symbolize the psychic states and relationship of the parents. I have found that the right eye represents the maternal aspect, symbolized by the hearth, and the left, the paternal aspect, symbolized by the sky. These images take the client even further into the trans-generational dimension, to the first meeting of the parents, and elements of their relationships with their own ancestors which made that meeting more or less difficult. In fact, the child's sense of his or her own place in the world, and of his or her binocularity, begins with these perceptions.
Lecture by Carol Gallup:
Low-Tech Solutions to Problems in Eye Teaming and in Relaxing and Refreshing the Eyes
I'm going to introduce a very simple tool that, for almost everyone, immediately brings about a noticeable change in how they're seeing. People consciously experience their visual brain encountering something new, trying different strategies and then adjusting to the challenge over a period of several minutes.
The tool is a pair of glasses, with the two lenses in complementary colors (I've developed three sets of color complements) used with a toy painted in the same colors. Each eye can see some parts of the toy but not others. Most people, as they play catch, see at times only one color, and the other comes and goes. Sometimes, they see only one color at near and only the other at far. After a couple of minutes, their eye teaming has improved; at that point all of the toy is visible, and appears to be softly glowing. This exercise improves eye movement, eye tracking, and binocularity and it's fun.
The most powerful natural vision improvement tools I know of, that I rely on heavily as a vision educator, involve play, color, nature, and meditation. The colored glasses with toys technique is one of the uses I've made of these elements in my Yoga for the Eyes practice. In this lecture, I'll introduce others as well.
Lecture by Dror Schneider:
Toys, Gadgets and Gizmos for Vision Improvement
I've used toys and playful eye exercises in my practice for many years and not just with children. As a vision educator, I've long suspected that play causes the brain to facilitate better seeing. When we play, our eyes and bodies become relaxed and joyful; this alone improves circulation to the eyes. I see clients walk in with hard eyes and closed faces, and then, at the very sight of toys, I see a softening and opening. Even simple toys can be used for hand-eye coordination, stimulation of peripheral vision and improved binocularity. Thus, I never pass a toy store without going in and adding to my collection. During this lecture, we'll share some of my experiences, and my toys.
I will also demonstrate the new Exercise Your Eyes (EYE) unit created by Dr. Jacob Liberman, and discuss how it fits into a clinical practice. The unit trains the eye reflexively; it improves eye aiming, tracking, focusing and teaming. Three different studies have shown that, within the first three weeks of its twelve-week program, there is remarkable progress in these skills.
Lecture/demonstration by Marianne Wiendl:
Better Vision with Systemic Eye Therapy
Vision can deteriorate because of dysfunctional emotions. Marianne Wiendl's Systemic Eye Therapy is a new method which uses the dynamics of family constellation therapy to help us recognize and release these emotions. Marianne will demonstrate how our eyes are assigned to persons and put into relationship with our personalities and with family members. Thus, emotions that may have been manifested in family constellations for generations can be recognized and transformed. Often we'll feel safe enough to let go of the blur that has served as a refuge, and allow ourselves to see clearly.
Lecture by Dr. Mario Cigada:
Recent discoveries in the anatomy of the extra-ocular muscles.
Remember how vigorously the medical profession attacked Dr. Bates' assertion that the extra-ocular muscles play a role in accommodation? Ophthalmologist Mario Cigada will present new research that could support Dr. Bates' position.
During the last ten years, neuro-imaging and a series of histological and physiological studies have brought to light new information about the fascia of the eye orbit. This in turn has changed our understanding of the structure and function of the extra-ocular muscles. It appears that previously unknown contractile structures which are innervated by the Autonomic Nervous System may play a role in accommodation. Besides supporting Bates, these studies provide anatomical evidence of the link between vision and emotions, and have important implications for visual re-education.
Lecture by Eva Lothar:
Plumbing the depths of the Bates Method: How attention can refine habits of sight through insight.
Attention. Self-observation. Awareness. These are the roots of the Bates Method, and Eva Lothar, meditator, film-maker, and Bates teacher, brings us back to them in this lecture. Early in her natural vision improvement practice, Eva emphasized pleasing the eye, inviting it to explore the lush details of the visual world. Later, her approach became more and more meditative as she sought to free students from tedious exercises and bring them to the sense of personal discovery that lies at the core of the Bates Method. Just one example: "The awareness, as our eyes pan our surroundings like a movie camera, point after central point, a panorama revolving around our spinal cord . . . the sensation of twirling the spine and the spinal cord within, seat of the transmission of data, of stability and movement alternately, from our feet to our eyes and brain . . . ." Eva tells us how we can bring these moments into our lives and our students' lives.
Lecture by Kunti Nagwekar:
Eyeyoga and Lazy Eye
Kunti Nagwekar, PhD, brought together yoga, acupressure, Reiki and the Bates Method to overcome her child's myopia, and then incorporated them into her Eyeyoga classes. In her lecture, she'll demonstrate how she applies her techniques to amblyopia (lazy eye).
Lecture by David Webber:
Improving Vision through the Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education
David Webber lost his eyesight in 1996 to uveitis and glaucoma. Through practicing and teaching the Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education®, he has successfully restored the health and function of his eyes. David will guide the audience through a Feldenkrais lesson for vision improvement. He'll discuss how he believes the powerful tools of the Method can contribute to the field of natural vision improvement.
Workshop A with Tom Quackenbush:
Relearning to See: Right Brain/Left Brain Connections
Tom Quackenbush believes that left-brained (right-handed) people tend to have different vision problems than right-brained people. In this workshop, we'll learn how to balance the use of the two hemispheres of the brain while improving our eyesight naturally.
Workshop I with Sarah Cobb, assisted by Ray Gottlieb:
Mapping Your Client's Visual Fields
An eye chart tells you what's going on in 5% of your client's visual field. In this workshop, you'll learn how to evaluate the other 95% - the periphery, enlarged or extra blind spots, and areas of poor vision. Visual field maps can reveal hidden obstacles to improvement and indicate how well your therapy is working.
You'll get hands-on experience of mapping the size and shape of visual fields. Our visual fields collapse under stress, and expand when holistic vision therapy is successful. During the workshop, we'll confirm this for ourselves, measuring our fields after stressing our eyes and after performing eye exercises.
Workshop B with Wolfgang Hätscher-Rosenbauer:
Beauty and Energy of Colors in Visionwork
Vision educator and Gestalt psychotherapist Wolfgang Hätscher-Rosenbauer will discuss the dynamics of color perception. We'll explore the power of his color after-image therapy, using color cards that take the color-sensitive cells of the retina through cycles of saturation and regeneration. Wolfgang won a prestigious national prize for having developed this technique.
Workshop C with Eva Lothar:
Plumbing the Depths of the Bates Method: How Attention Can Refine Habits of Sight Through Insight
Dr. Eva Lothar draws on her background in psychiatry, meditation, and film-making to bring us back into the core of the Bates Method: the joy of personal discovery through a "sixth sense" that can be called attention, self-observation, or awareness. We'll experience her re-visioning of basic Bates practices - blinking, breathing, brushing, yawning, the swings, and more through attention. And we'll practice consciously integrating these techniques into our sitting, writing, reading, standing, walking, body movements, dancing, and singing all the activities of our daily lives.
Workshop D with Marianne Wiendl
Better Vision with Systemic Eye Therapy
Vision can deteriorate because of dysfunctional emotions. Marianne Wiendl's Systemic Eye Therapy is a new method which uses the dynamics of family constellation therapy to help us recognize and release these emotions. Marianne will demonstrate how our eyes are assigned to persons and put into relationship with our personalities and with family members. Thus, emotions that may have been manifested in family constellations for generations can be recognized and transformed. Often we'll feel safe enough to let go of the blur that has served as a refuge, and allow ourselves to see clearly.
Workshop E with Ray Gottlieb (assisted by Sarah Cobb):
Strabismus Training for the Natural Vision Educator
This workshop will benefit vision teachers and people with strabismus (a visual disorder where the eyes are misaligned and point in different directions). Ray will offer an in-depth look at the nature and varieties of strabismus and its causes. He'll discuss which kinds are easy to fix, which are not, and when to refer. You'll get hands-on experience in evaluating strabismus, and in techniques that straighten turned eyes and improve binocular vision.
Workshop F with David Webber:
The Way of Seeing: Improving Vision through the Feldenkrais Method
The tools of the Feldenkrais Method® can help to unlock our fullest potential to heal and see more clearly. This workshop will draw from David's experience on his journey from sudden blindness to recovery of vision through the practical working out of the principles of the Feldenkrais Method.
In a spirit of exploration and discovery, you'll be led through a series of verbally guided movements. Ease and absence of effort are the secrets to success in the Method. As you make small, slow movements that involve your eyes and your whole body, you'll become more aware of differences in how the movements feel. Your brain and nervous system will integrate the new information and release habitual restrictions your seeing and moving. You may discover a remarkable difference in the quality and clarity of your vision.
Workshop G with Carol Gallup and Dror Schneider
Exploring essential visual abilities through color, nature and toys.
In this workshop we are going to use simple low- tech toys to improve hand-eye coordination, peripheral vision and binocularity. We are also going to explore the function and the psychological world of the non- dominant eye through color and nature. These methods are particularly beneficial and useful for children, but not only.
Participants to the workshop will also have a chance to win one of the new Exercise Your Eyes (EYE) unit created by Dr. Jacob Liberman.
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