to help them improve their deteriorating eyesight. And they dread the thought

of someday wearing glasses. When I tell them that I healed my eyesight

in about two weeks, from 20/40 to 20/25, that's around a two lines improvement

in an eye chart, they want to know my secret. So I created this video to help my

friends and to help you guys on the Mindvalley channel understand how you too

could improve your eyesight. Basically, I was able to go from wearing glasses 40%

of the time to 4% of the time. So, my issue with eyesight started when I was

9 years old. I started wearing glasses and my eyesight rapidly deteriorated to the

point where my myopia or shortsightedness was -7.00. That basically means I couldn't

recognize a face this close to me. Now, when I was around 28, I finally had LASIK,

and LASIK restored me to 20/20 eyesight. But as you know, when you go for surgery,

sometimes things go wrong. That's what happened with my

LASIK surgery. Basically, it went awry in my left eye and this left

me with astigmatism. Over the next 12 years,

my left eye started getting worse and worse, and then my right eye decided that

it too had to deteriorate to catch up with my left eye. And 12 years after my LASIK,

I found that I needed glasses once again. And so I had to go back to the doctor and

figure out what to do. Now, the doctor told me that as a man

in my 40s, LASIK would no longer be an option, so I was faced with two choices.

Deal with wearing glasses, which I totally disliked,

or try to heal my eyesight myself. Now, what happened then was,

I was in a conversation with my friend Dave Asprey, the famous biohacker,

the founder of Bulletproof coffee. And Dave told me how working with a vision

coach for one hour a week for 12 weeks totally got rid of his bad eyesight and

allowed him to function without glasses. I was intrigued, so I started researching

the natural healing of eyesight. What I'm going to share with you is what I

found and what I'm going to share with you is my advice for what you can do to help

restore your eyesight so you can, if not get rid of your glasses,

reduce the amount of time you do have to wear glasses.

Now, I'm still experimenting. I've been doing this now for over a year

and although it's not perfect yet, I want to share with you what I know

because I believe this is going to help a lot of people. So, in this video,

I'm going to cover a number of different things, but if you're looking to prevent

bad eyesight developing in your kids, or if you're looking to heal your vision,

or if you're looking to prevent the onset of age-related vision problems

like farsightedness, or if you're looking to reduce your use

of glasses, pay attention because I'm going to share with you everything I've

just learned. So the first big mistake people make is that they go get their eyes

checked at a store that sells glasses. This is never a good idea.

The machines at that store are not accurate. I did a simple experiment.

I had my eyes checked at one of these stores and then I went to a real clinic,

a real doctor, and the difference was almost 40%. I decided to take the doctor's

prescription, as should you. You see, your eyesight varies from day to day,

from year to year. Some studies on children found that a child could

naturally move from shortsightedness to farsightedness year over year,

but here's what happens, if you picked that particular slice

of time where your eyesight is, say, 0.25, and you go to an optician and you get

glasses for that, it locks you in. The glasses become a crutch.

So what you want to do is go to a real doctor. A true vision checkup could take

up to an hour. In an eyeglass shop, right, they'll do it in around 15 minutes because

they want to move you through and sell you glasses. Go to a doctor and get your

vision properly checked. Now, the second tip is this,

after you get your actual prescription from the doctor, get a lens that is one

step lower because like I said, your eyesight actually fluctuates.

You could be at 0.5 in one day when you're really stressed out and after

a relaxing weekend, your eyesight could actually improve. Studies are now finding

that emotional states, that stress influences your vision.

So if your doctor tells you that your eyesight is, say, 0.5 myopia,

shortsightedness, don't get a 0.5 lens. Get a lens that's 0.25,

that will still give you an adjustment, but it gives you room for your vision

to improve. If you get 0.5, your vision cannot go below 0.5,

it has to get worse. So, what's happened is you've effectively

created a crutch. You've created a barrier to your vision getting better.

So always go one step below. So this was the first thing that many

vision therapists recommend. And this was one of the tools I used

to get my shortsightedness from 0.75 to 0.25, which pretty much means I don't need

glasses most of the time. Now, the next thing you want to do is that you

want to install a basic eye chart in your home. So I have something like this on the

door of my study. William Horatio Bates, who lived in the early part of the

20th century, did a study on school classrooms. He would hang an eye chart

on a pillar in school classrooms and what he found is that in classrooms where kids

had that eye chart, and the teachers were trained to get the kids to go and just

look at the chart and see how far they could read once a week,

the amount of cases of nearsightedness was dramatically reduced.

At the beginning of that period, 6% of the children were nearsighted.

By the end of the year, only 1% were nearsighted.

Now because of the success in this one school, the system of using an eye chart

in classrooms was introduced to all schools in Grand Forks, North Dakota,

where Bates worked. These schools used charts continuously for eight years

with as many as 2,000 schoolchildren. And there was an unexpected result.

The kids actually began to see better than normal. Children who already had normal

sight, 20/20, were now able to read at 20/15 or 20/10. It was nuts.

You must have an eye chart installed in your home for you and your kids.

Adults can do the same thing. Now, here's another really important tip.

Studies on kids found that if you allow your children to sleep in a room that is

absolutely dark, that means no nightlight, no door ajar with a light

out in the corridor, your kids are less likely to develop

vision problems in the future. Now, this study blew me away.

It was done by the University of Pennsylvania on around 479 kids.

Now, what they found is that sleeping in a dark room, if you have your kids sleep

in a pure dark room, they are less likely to develop

bad eyesight. So here's what happened. They divided these kids into three groups.

Kids that slept in a dark room, kids that slept in a room with

a nightlight on, and kids that slept in a room with the lights turned on.

And then they traced these kids to see what type of vision problems these kids

would develop. Now, they found this. Of the kids who slept in a darkened room,

only 10% developed nearsightedness. Of the kids who slept in a room with

a nightlight on, 34% developed nearsightedness. And of the kids who slept

with the lights on, 55% developed nearsightedness. So this is an important

conversation you've got to have with your children if they are afraid of sleeping

in the dark. The dark is phenomenal for sleep and science is showing that it has

a correlation with helping kids retain good vision. Now, the final tip is this.

Hire a vision coach or take an online vision course. There are numerous vision

courses out there. I've been experimenting with many of them. I even have a vision

coach who has helped me. We've spent around five hours together

and the results have been really, really, really promising.

Now, a course means you got to have the discipline to do it yourself.

Typically, you've got to do these courses every day. If you do a vision coach,

you'd spend an hour with them a week and then you'd spend around five minutes a day

going through the exercises that they prescribe. Whereas on a course,

you typically are spending between 10 to 20 minutes a day watching a video and

doing the eye exercises which are being prescribed. Now my tip is

don't get obsessed with the Bates Method. The Bates Method was popular

in like the 1930s, and a lot of people talk about the Bates Method because it was

the first method to really heal vision. So much more research has happened.

It's been almost 90 years since that book was released. And today,

modern vision therapists and newer courses on vision know so much more.

So, avoid the Bates Method. It works, but it works slow. There are much faster

ways to improve your vision that have been developed in the last 90 years.

So I hope these tips helped you. Go ahead and share this video with other

people whom you feel need to hear this to improve their vision

and good luck on your vision quest