Summary
Bates Method instructor Carlos Moreno joins the Wise Traditions podcast to explain how natural vision improvement works. Carlos shares his 22-year journey from wearing glasses and contacts to teaching others, describing his first clear flash during a Bates class and the science behind the method. He explains the difference between Bates' theory and standard ophthalmology, arguing that extraocular muscles change the shape of the eyeball under stress, and that relaxation allows normal vision to return. Carlos also addresses why the Bates Method has remained in the lay population for 100 years despite Bates' credentials, and walks listeners through a practical technique they can try during the episode.
Key Points
- Carlos wore glasses and contacts for 22 years before discovering the Bates Method
- His vision first popped up during a Bates class while doing a shifting technique, moving his head side to side
- Bates discovered that extraocular muscles change the eyeball's shape, contrary to the standard lens-hardening theory
- Relaxation moves the body out of sympathetic (fight-or-flight) response, allowing eyes to function normally
- Bates performed the first radial keratotomy (precursor to LASIK) in 1898 but stopped because it did not fix the root cause
- Vision decline is not caused by aging but by accumulated physical, mental, and emotional load
- Glasses train the body to maintain the tense state, progressively worsening vision over time
- Bates is also credited with discovering adrenaline, demonstrating his scientific credentials
Key Moments
Carlos' first clear flash during a shifting exercise
Carlos describes his first dramatic clear flash during a Bates class while doing the shifting technique, turning his head side to side while looking at letters on a chart without glasses.
"I was basically turning my head from left to right as if I was looking at a computer screen and going from the left edge of the computer screen to the right edge of the computer screen, but not moving just my eyes. I was pointing my eyes by turning my head from side to side. And that was without my glasses, without contact lenses. And then all of a sudden, just from doing that, going back and forth, back and forth, all the letters cleared up."
Bates invented early LASIK but abandoned it
Carlos reveals that Bates performed the first radial keratotomy in 1898, the procedure that became LASIK, but stopped because he realized it did not fix the underlying problem and patients' vision would revert.
"He did the first radial keratotomy, which is what is now LASIK. He did that in 1898, but he stopped doing it because he realized he wasn't correcting the real underlying problem and that people's vision would go back to what it had been after the surgery, even though he had physically corrected what was going on."
Vision loss is not aging -- it is accumulated load
Carlos uses the straw that broke the camel's back metaphor to explain that vision decline comes from accumulated stress, not aging itself, and that squinting and straining in response to blur makes it worse.
"It's the load that a person's carrying. I usually tell people the story of the straw that broke the camel's back, of a camel being led off into the desert, and little by little it gets loaded on with more and more things on its back, misses the oasis, doesn't get any water, gets lost in the desert for a while, finally gets over to a village where just a little gust of wind lifts a piece of straw off of a hayfield, lands it on top of the camel, and the camel collapses. So the straw When we get into our 40s and 50s, we've got a career going, we've got a busy schedule, we may have kids, we may have a spouse, we may have all kinds of mental and physical loads on us. We might have had diseases or accidents, issues that cause problems with our body. We're not eating the right foods, which you know well that if you're not eating the right foods, So, as we get older, the load that's on us, and if we're not rested and at ease when we're looking at text, our vision goes imperfect. And then if we start squinting and staring and making an effort to clear things up, our vision gets worse and worse until we get glasses. And glasses do not fix the problem."
