The Ophthalmologist answered: Floaters are bits of protein that pass along your retina like spots on a leopard. Past age 65 everyone has them. But when they are a new event for you, it may be a sign of Detached Retina.
Are they ever a symbol of an Aha! Experience? He answered with a question, Huh?
Dr. Wolfgand Kohler, 1917, from German – Erlebnis, meaning experience. An insight, epiphany or revelation?
No? I have a scientific inquiry. Does moving your eyes improve your memory, and aid learning? He obscenely gestured me to leave his grand presence.
Eye Movements
Would you spend one-minute of your time for 21 consecutive days to reduce up to 80%, or even eliminate eye-floaters?
Professor Andrew Parker, Manchester Metropolitan University, England, published his research in the journal, Brain and Cognition 4.25.07. It had nothing to do with eye-floaters, but he offered evidence that thirty-seconds of moving your eyes side-to-side (horizontally), produces a quick memory fix.
The theory: voluntary horizontal eye-movements seem to integrate both cerebral hemispheres, improving the memory retrieval because of better communication between your left and right brain halves. How about improved neuronal-firing in your hippocampus, the structure in the brain for long-term memory?
Vas-You Dere, Sharlie?
We have tracked the use of voluntary eye-movements in the improvement of attention, concentration and reading speed over ten-years. Keep an open mind, unlike the ophthalmologist because it is baby-easy, and it works like a charm.
If you do a 30-second warm-up drill of horizontal eye-movements, prior to a reading assignment of text, your reading speed increases up to 32%, and comprehension and long-term memory, up to 25% improved. It works for students at school, and executives in their career.
Two-Strategies
One, is based on exercising your peripheral (side) vision enabling your eyes to increase the number of words in each saccade (small jerky movements of the eyes when changing focus from one point in reading, to another). Right now you read
like a snail runs, one-word at a time. Imagine tripling your speed while increasing your comprehension and long-term memory?
How?
One-minute is required. Stare about ten-feet ahead at a spot on the wall, and do not move your head, just move your eyes left-to-right, and alternatively, right-to-left. You are exercising your Extra Ocular Muscles.
There are six eye-muscles in each eye, not counting the muscles to lift you eyelids open. They are underutilized and follow the Law of Atrophy (use-it-or…)
Graduate students report this ocular warm-up is no gimmick, but substantially improve exam scores. At the end of 21 days, you have improved the structure and function of your retina. Pull it out again for exams.
Second
This baby-easy exercise requires a total of one-and-one-half minutes of warm-up using horizontal voluntary eye-movements. Sit down, find that spot 10 feet on the wall or the point of someone’s nose.
There are three (3) sets of two-ocular muscles each to exercise. Remember, thirty seconds for each set.
First, do not move your head, just your eyes horizontally exercising your two-eye muscles, extreme left and extreme right using your peripheral vision.
Next, exercise your two upward eye muscles to the extreme left and right (alternatively). Search for the ceiling on the left and right with your peripheral vision.
Finally, two downward eye-muscles to the extreme left and right. Search for the floor on the left and right with your peripheral vision.
This exercise appears to reduce or even eliminate those damn eye floaters. Some eye-specialists venture to suggest continuing these exercises may reduce the risk of cataracts, detached retina or macula degeneration in aging.
Google: Extra Ocular Muscles (Rectus and Oblique muscles).
Google: Vestibulo-Ocular-Reflex.
EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. This is one of the leading approved procedures for the treatment of Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder. Check out Dr. Francine Shapiro, senior research fellow at Mental Research Institute, Palo Alto, California.
So what?
It is presently used by 40,000 certified practitioners and uses peripheral vision eye-movements to overcome (delete) stressful thoughts and imagery. It is also called bilateral stimulation.
Our Contribution
Over the past ten years we have trained students and corporate executives to massively improve their learning skills. The research confirms that CEOs, Presidents and divisional Vice Presidents read and absorb up to 300% more information than their subordinates.
We suggest to get on the fast-track for promotion, become a knowledge magnet. Albert Einstein said, "Experiencing is knowledge, everything else is information."
We train graduates to peruse text using a Pacer (hand-held pen) to underline the sentences. Human instinct includes: our eyes follow a moving object, like Greyhounds at the dog track follow (chase) the Mechanical Rabbit.
So...
When your hand moves the Pacer along the sentences, underlining (retract the point) the text, the pen moves up to three times as fast as your unaided eye. Your eyes automatically speed up to track your pacer, improving your eye-movements and learning speed up to a factor of three.
Would it improve your competitive position in your career to read and remember three (3) books, articles and reports in the time your peers can finish one?
Ask us how.
copyright © 2008
H. Bernard Wechsler
Author of Speed Reading for Professional, published by Barron's, business partner of Evelyn Wood, creator or speed reading, graduating 2 million, including the White House staffs of four U.S. Presidents. Visit his web site at SpeedLearning.org, email hbw@speedlearning.org, or call toll-free 1-877-567-2500