Peripheral vision
Peripheral vision is everything you can see outside of the central 3%[1] of your vision. These remaining 97% are also an important part of vision improvement.[2]
Community thoughts
There have been anecdotes that peripheral vision awareness has helped participants with active focus and improvements.
- TODO: needs to be sorted through with an objective eye:
- Myopia: A Major World-Wide Problem That Can Be Solved - This research experimented with having children wear special glasses that were low contrast in the periphery. The idea appears to be that in natural settings, when you look at a nearby object, the peripheral background should go out of focus.
- To have some “how to” answer here: I found the (for me) “real” active focus by just staring far away while walking in a quite and safe park or street, not crowded with distractions, paying attention to the moving things in the periphery as I walk. I suddenly got clear flashes, stinging in the eyes and watery eyes. At the beginning I took sometimes 20 minutes of walking to trigger this, now it happens all the time within seconds or an instant. When my eyes are strained the stinging is strong, when they are relaxed there almost no stinging and focusing/clear flashes happen faster and easier. That’s all. I do not feel that I have to do or learn anything else anymore. The overall sharpness still increases and the time needed for focusing decreases. Now I just do that until my vision is normal, maybe 1 or 2 more years. I don’t really do anything different when I look at things than before I found the “real” active focus. I ask that myself a lot, why is this working now and did not for many years before? Maybe my eyes were strained most of the time and I did not know, and now I use the peripheral vision to keep the relaxed and trigger clear flashes. I guess when the eyes are relaxed they can do active focus by themselves. Unfortunately, I dont have a good/really satisfying answer to that.
- Second reduction. ( and the importance of peripheral vision and depth perception )
- Huberman calls this "panoramic vision" or "soft eyes" When you are looking out at a horizon with expanded attention to peripheral vision, this often correlates with the eyes relaxing.