Active Focus
Active Focus is a very important part of the reduced lens method. It can be described as a negative accommodation of the eye in response to clearing small amounts of myopic blur. It results in temporarily clearer vision, and provides a stimulus to improve eyesight in the long-term. Figuring it out is probably the biggest stumbling block at the beginning of your vision improvement journey.
Active Focus tends to elude newcomers trying to find it for the first time. You should expect to spend a considerable amount of time trying to find it on your own. People with experience are likely to tell the newcomer with delight that it works, how it clears up their vision and the long-term gains they have made. The newcomer will listen, perhaps intrigued, but will still be completely skeptical of its existence until they experience it for themselves. In this sense, finding Active Focus is a bit like taking the red pill.
How it works
Active Focus resolves a small amount of myopic defocus. Performing Active Focus provides the necessary stimulus to reverse the effects of myopia.[1][2] It is also important in managing eyestrain.[3]
Active Focus attempts to push the distant vision of the eyes slightly further. However, as accommodation is an involuntary process, achieving Active Focus is not straight forward. While it is easy to move the skeletal muscles of your body, it is not possible to control the ciliary muscles in the same way. However, by careful manipulation of the blur horizon, it is possible to encourage the eyes to push slightly harder to achieve focus. This extra push is what Active Focus is about.
In order to do this successfully, it is important to introduce appropriate amount of blur challenge to the eyes. This should be accomplished under suitably bright lighting conditions. The most favourable and conducive lighting environment happens to be outdoor daylight. This can be accomplished by the use of normalized and differential glasses. As opposed to full correction glasses where everything is always sharp, normalized and differential glasses provide convenient access to a blur horizon. This blur horizon allows for the practice of Active Focus. Again, the blur challenge should not be so much that it is too difficult for the eyes and not so little that it is unnoticeable.
Finding Active Focus
Many have described their experience with Active Focus not as a voluntary action but rather as an physiologic response, much like a heartbeat. For struggling newcomers, it is better to focus on habits rather than on trying to “find” Active Focus as if it were a literal muscle. Some potential triggers for Active Focus include spending sufficient daily time outdoors, looking around at different objects with varying distances, and being consciously aware of one’s vision and amount of blur.
Implementing Active Focus
Active focus is a distance vision activity. Practicing active focus should not be viewed as an exercise activity. It should be incorporated to your daily lives so that it becomes habitual.[4] With proper use of normalized and differential glasses, opportunities to do active focus throughout your day are everywhere. By turning it into a habit, blur challenges are automatically cleared, thus eliminating the need to “put in effort” to improve. Taking frequent breaks from near visual work to do active focus is critical in preventing ciliary spasm and the worsening of myopia. With consistent practice of active focus, it is estimated that myopia will reverse at a rate of 0.25 diopters every 3 months.
If you feel strained by doing active focus, you can and should take a break.
Active Focus in small words
- Look at something that is only a little blurry. Make it not blurry.
- Active Focus = Paying attention, that's all. Active Focus ≠ Change from Blur to clarity. The latter is a possible but likely outcome of the former.
See also
References
- ↑ Steiner, Jake. "What is Active Focus". Endmyopia. Retrieved 11 June 2020.
- ↑ Vasudevan, Balamurali; Ciuffreda, Kenneth (2009). "Accommodative Training to Reduce Nearwork-Induced Transient Myopia". Optometry and Vision Science. 86 (11): 1287–1294. doi:10.1097/OPX.0b013e3181bb44cf. Retrieved 11 June 2020.
- ↑ Steiner, Jake. "Active Focus: The Link List (+ Video Explainer)". Endmyopia. Retrieved 11 June 2020.
- ↑ Steiner, Jake. "Minimum Daily Active Focus Time? (PRO TOPIC)". YouTube. Retrieved 11 June 2020.