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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Speakers, workshop leaders, facilitators
Mario Cigada (Italy)
A holistic ophthalmologist and a psychotherapist, Mario Cigada uses a unique combination of vision care, psychotherapy and dynamic postural improvement to treat the whole person. Since 1992, he has taught at the Italian Medical Association's European School for Hypnotic Psychotherapy. From 1992-1997, he was a guest lecturer on psychological aspects of vision at Politecnico di Milano, a state university for architecture and industrial design. Since 2002, he has been a lecturer at School of Clinical Neuropsychology of the University of Turin. Since 2003, he has been an adjunct professor in the Ophthalmology Department's orthoptics assistant program at the University of Milan; previously, he was a lecturer there. Dr. Cigada lives and practices in Milan.
Sarah Cobb (USA)
Sarah Cobb started her professional life as a specialist in reading problems; once she discovered that these often result from vision problems, she began a 25-year practice as an optometric vision therapist. Sarah now practices Syntonics (optometric colored light therapy), writes fiction, and teaches about light, vision and learning problems.
She has authored more than 20 articles on behavioral optometry and light in Optometric Extension Foundation publications and through the College of Syntonic Optometry, and is the editor of the Journal of Optometry Phototherapy. For more than 10 years, she chaired the Southwest Vision Therapists. She has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Behavioral Optometry and created numerous eye charts used in vision training. Sarah has presented at international conferences on light and sound, at conferences of the College of Syntonic Optometry, and at the Nineteenth International Conference on Holistic Vision. With Dr. Ray Gottlieb, she taught a four-day workshop on therapeutic uses of color for Bates Method teachers in 2004; in 2005, she presented a workshop on measuring visual fields at the Monocrom Institute in London.
Ghislaine de Laage (France)
In her orthoptics practice in Paris, Ghislaine de Laage uses visualization and symbols to help her patients harmonize the rational with the intuitive, the left brain with the right, the left eye with the right. She finds that "mental images can interface between functional and psychological levels, and allow us to create a dialog between these levels, in which we can give sense to the symptom, knowing that the symptom is a perfect vehicle for saying through the body what cannot be said with words."
Carol Gallup (USA)
Carol Gallup, M.A., L.M.P., is a Self-Healing Teacher of Vision Improvement and Self-Healing Practitioner Educator, and a member of the Association of Vision Educators.
Carol spent nine years working and studying with Meir Schneider. At the School for Self-Healing, she taught, produced two videos, authored a student text, and created study guides, exams, and other curricula on vision and other topics. Articles she authored and co-authored on natural vision improvement have appeared in Yoga Journal, Massage magazine, Massage Therapy Journal, Kindred Spirit, and many other publications.
She has presented lectures and workshops on natural vision improvement and other topics to the general public and health care professionals, including conferences of the American Massage Therapy Association. She was a presenter at the Third North American Conference on Natural Vision Improvement. A licensed massage practitioner, her background included yoga, meditation, movement science, physiological psychology and physical therapy. She has a Yoga for the Eyes practice in Pt. Townsend, Washington.
Ray Gottlieb (USA)
A behavioral optometrist, Ray Gottlieb, O.D., PH.D., FCOVD, FCSO, is known for his innovative work in holistic vision training, especially in the treatment of strabismus, amblyopia, visual-motor and visual-perceptual problems, myopia, presbyopia, brain injury, and visual stress.
He has been a leader in the development of colored light therapy (Syntonics) for visual and neurological conditions, and is dean of the College of Syntonic Optometry. His teaching experience includes serving on the faculty of two optometry schools, an ophthalmology medical school, two mental hospitals, and the piano faculty of a music school. He was research editor and general manager of the Brain/Mind bulletin, a newsletter about the brain and society.
As a young optometrist, Ray used the Bates Method to overcome his own nearsightedness, and later, middle-aged farsightedness. He spent years exploring the whole-body aspect of vision improvement, getting professional training in massage therapy and sharing a practice with Meir Schneider when both were beginning their careers. Over the years, he found his own application of the Bates Method, bringing originality and a deep psychological understanding to it.
Ray's many articles and publications include his Ph.D. dissertation and an article on neurological and psychological aspects of myopia, and his recent book, Attention and Memory Training: Stress-Point Learning on the Trampoline. His new Read Without Glasses Method, a program for overcoming presbyopia, is available on DVD and videotape; for further information, see www.withoutglasses.co.uk
Ray has been a frequent lecturer at regional, national and international conferences on behavioral optometry, holistic vision, education, health and psychology. He is an extraordinarily generous and caring teacher.
Wolfgang Hätscher-Rosenbauer (Germany)
Wolfgang Hätscher-Rosenbauer is a natural vision improvement teacher and a Gestalt psychotherapist. Since 1981, he has been director of the Institute for Vision Training (Institut für Sehtraining IST) in Bad Vilbel, Germany, where he teaches The Art of Seeing. In 1998, he was awarded the Naturopathic Healing Prize (Coninentale-Förderpreis für Naturheilkunde) for his innovative work in natural vision improvement.
Leonora Koller-Eps (Switzerland)
Leonora Koller-Eps started wearing glasses for nearsightedness in kindergarten. She became severely myopic but was unconcerned about her eyesight until 1983, when she had laser treatments to repair torn retinas. She began to study natural vision improvement, with Lisette Scholl, Wolfgang Hätscher-Rosenbauer, Janet Goodrich and others. Her vision improved.
For many years, she had studied psychology, dance and natural healing. In 1985, she began teaching a holistic program that includes dance therapy, Qigong, Taiji (Tai Chi), Ri-Tai, Reiki and natural vision improvement. Her focus is on transforming dysfunctional psychological, spiritual and postural patterns. To strengthen Chi (vital energy), arouse the body's self-healing powers and improve vision, she uses exercises from Chinese medical science and the Bates Method. Leonora is the author of a new book, RI-TAI (Meridian Exercises), which comes with a video or DVD, and of a vision improvement kit. More information is available at www.ri-tai.ch
Sylvia Loretta Lakeland (Brazil)
Organizer of the 19th International Conference for Holistic Vision in Madeira, Sylvia Lakeland overcame a serious vision loss while studying with Meir Schneider. She went on to become a Self-Healing Vision Improvement Teacher and Practitioner Educator, and played a major role in bringing Self-Healing vision improvement to Portugal. With Dr. Sameer Al-Kasab, she has been conducting research on vision improvement since 2002. She maintains vision improvement practices in Sao Paulo, Lisbon, and Funchal.
Eva Lothar (France)
When Eva Lothar became a Bates Method teacher, she brought to it a rich background in psychiatry, film-making and meditation. Eva studied medicine in France and the United States. Toward the end of her psychiatric training in New York City, she moved to California to become a film-maker. She wrote and directed non-fiction films in America and Australia, winning international awards, and was invited to join the American Film Institute as a Directing Fellow.
She was on the brink of undertaking a third career, as a theatrical photographer, when she realized she was about to need glasses for presbyopia and astigmatism. She had read Aldous Huxley's The Art of Seeing years earlier; now she rediscovered the excitement. She moved to California and overcame her vision problems while training as a Bates Method teacher with Gloria Ginn, Tom Quackenbush, and Meir Schneider.
Her teaching style is heavily influenced by her sense of the camera and the painterly eye; increasingly, she is also exploring techniques of self-awareness stemming out of her meditation practice.
Liz Middleton, MSc, DBO, SRO (UK)
Early in her career as an orthoptist (a discipline that addresses eye coordination and eye movement problems) at University College London Hospitals, Liz Middleton noticed a patient group that seemed to be invisible to the health-care world: people with psychosomatic eye disorders. Since then, she has played a major role in researching and addressing their needs.
She was a member of the first multi-disciplinary research teams to study the psychological aspects of eye disorders at Tavistock Clinic, a major psychoanalytic training center in London; their work is still ongoing. Her MSc dissertation, A Survey of the Psychological Well-Being of a Population of People Attending an Eye Out-Patients Department, soon followed. To promote medical awareness of these patients, Liz became a founding member of The Mind's Eye Conference and a founding board member and officer of The Eye and the Mind Society. Recently, Liz founded The Mind's Eye Clinic, the first hospital-based, multi-disciplinary service for people suffering from psychosomatic eye disorders.
Liz is also the distributor for the UK and Europe of the new Ray Gottlieb/Martin Sussman DVD, The Read Without Glasses Method (www.withoutglasses.co.uk).
Laercio Motoryn (Brazil)
Dr. Laercio Motoryn brings a rich and varied background to his practice. An ophthalmologist and homeopath, he has also studied psychosomatic medicine, psychotherapy, iridology, neurolinguistics, and - from workshops with Roberto Kaplan, Meir Schneider and others - holistic vision. Early in his career, Dr. Motoryn began to specialize in low vision. In 1984, he founded a pioneering clinic in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in which patients could gain the benefits of a multi-disciplinary approach to healing their eyesight; that has been very successful.
Fluent in Portuguese, English and Hebrew and conversant in other languages, Dr. Motoryn spent two years practicing surgical and general ophthalmology at a hospital clinic in Jerusalem. He is a frequent presenter at national and international conferences on low vision. Since 2001, he has donated his services at Jewish clinics for the low-income elderly. In June, 2005, Dr. Motoryn took part in the scientific commission of the Brazilian Society of Low Vision's annual conference, and coordinated its symposium.
Kunti Nagwekar (India)
Kunti Nagwekar, PhD, had her introduction to the world of holistic vision in 1992, when her oldest son, Parthiva, was diagnosed with nearsightedness. She and her husband both wore glasses, but she had thought her children would be spared. Kunti wept for three days, then considered a maxim of her spiritual advisor's, which had often guided her: "No problem in the world is bigger than you." She began to study yoga, acupressure and Reiki. When she heard of the famous Sri Aurobindo School for Perfect Eyesight, the whole family traveled to Pondicherry to enroll. She and her husband got rid of their glasses, and Parthiva's eyesight became improved.
Kunti decided to start a similar school herself. After two years of study and preparation, integrating all of the methods she had learned, she founded the Sanpoorn School for Perfect Eyesight. Now, 13 years later, thousands of people have taken her course, Sanpoorn Eyeyoga, and improved their eyesight. A lecturer at L.S. Reheja College, she also teaches creative visualization, Learning for Excellence, and Tarot reading.
Tom Quackenbush (Netherlands)
Tom Quackenbush has been training and certifying vision improvement teachers since 1986; probably he has trained more vision educators than any teacher now living and practicing. His journey into holistic vision began in 1983, when he overcame his own severe (8 diopters) nearsightedness. He began teaching the Bates Method in 1983 in San Francisco; in 2000 he moved his practice to Ashland, Oregon, and in 2003 left the USA and relocated to Njimegen, The Netherlands. His best-selling Relearning to See : Improve Your Eyesight Naturally, is so comprehensive as to be almost an encyclopedia on the Bates Method. He followed it with a well-indexed collection of Dr. Bates' articles, Better Eyesight : The Complete Magazines of William H. Bates.
Marie Schils (Belgium)
A somatic (body-oriented) psychotherapist and holistic vision educator, Marie Schils is the founder/creator of the Longue Vie à la Vue vision improvement program. Since 1986, she has been a practitioner of the Bates Method and Radix , a neo-Reichian personal growth and transformation method. Her other trainings and certifications include Babette Rothschild Somatic Trauma Therapy, the Godelieve Denys-struyf Method of structural and body image balancing, transactional analysis, Core-Contact, cranio-sacral therapy, and the Biodynamic method. She is a member of EABP (European Association of Body Psychotherapists), ESTSS (European Society of Traumatic Stress Studies), and APGDS (International Association of Practitioners of the GDF method). For further information, see her website at http://www.marieetmarie.be/marieschils.htm
Dror Schneider (USA)
During the ten years she served as director of the School for Self-Healing in San Francisco, Dror Schneider taught natural vision improvement in the USA and Israel, helped train vision educators, and developed educational materials and curriculum. While working successfully with clients suffering from refractive errors and pathologies and injuries of the eye, she made major contributions to the development of the Meir Schneider Self-Healing Method. She was a coordinator of the Second and Third North American Conferences on Natural Vision Improvement; she presented at those conferences and at the 19th International Conference on Holistic Vision. She is a founding member, and has served on the Steering Committee, of the Association of Vision Educators.
David Webber (Canada)
In 1996, David Webber, a 44-year-old computer systems integrator, was diagnosed with uveitis, an inflammation within the eye. Complications - macular edema, cataracts and glaucoma soon followed. His vision deteriorated sharply, and he was in pain. His ophthalmologist told him his condition would probably get worse and that he could expect be on immune-suppressant drugs for the rest of his life. By the year 2000, he felt he had tried everything in Western medicine and the holistic world, and nothing had helped. He was declared legally blind.
By chance, David learned that the Feldenkrais Method® might help. Its founder, Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, was aware of the Bates Method; palming appears in some of his lessons (the more than 1,000 outlines he left for group and individual sessions), and eye movement are included in many of them. A longtime meditator, David was struck by how much Feldenkrais resembles Buddhist healing meditation techniques. He began to explore both. Very quickly, he recovered his eyesight, and his health.
David became a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practioner® and has taught the Method since 2002. In 2003 he began leading workshops in Feldenkrais vision improvement. Today, he teaches at the Feldenkrais Centre in Toronto, Canada (www.feldenkraiscenter.com).
Gisela Wesche Nielsen (Germany)
In her twelve years of practice, vision educator and social worker Gisela WescheNielsen has worked extensively with visually disabled people and organizations that support them. Her training course for low-vision clients is called "Wellness for Eyes, Body and Soul."
She was born with cataracts. After surgery, she was initially able to see very well. Unfortunately, in later years she lost the sight of one eye and 90% of the vision in the other to diseases of the eye, and was advised to learn Braille. Instead, she studied with vision educator Janet Goodrich. Using holistic vision and methods of her own, she brought the vision in her remaining eye back to 70% of normal.
Marianne Wiendl (Germany) practices naturopathy, vision training, kinesiology, and family constellation therapy. She is the founder and president of Healthy Seeing (GESUNDES SEHEN) in Germany, and a member of the Forum for Integral Vision in Munich, where she supervises visual training courses for individuals, businesses or groups. She has adapted the dynamics of family constellation therapy to vision improvement; her method, called Systemic Eye Therapy, will be the subject of a book she is writing with Uschi Ostermeier Sittkowski.
For a short description of workshops and lectures, go to Program
For an extended description of workshops and lectures, go to Presentations
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