Jiggling Eyes, Genetics, and The Potential to Recover
“My eyes jiggle when I jump up and down like this …” The six year old boy demonstrated in my clinical treatment room.
“He can’t tell the difference between orange and red or between purple and blue, since the accident.” His mother voiced her concerns, explaining the details of his fall two days earlier. “He hit his face on a chain link fence and bruised his elbows.”
In Integrative Manual Therapy (IMT), a kind of hands-on alternative medicine, there is a reflex point at the hard tip of the elbow that when rubbed, pressed or needled is said to influence the rods and the cones of the eyes. The cones, gathered in the center macula of the retina are responsible for color vision.
I didn’t always know how to help people like six year old, Jack or the 82 year old woman losing her vision to macular degeneration or the young woman with inflammation of the eyes due to multiple sclerosis. But my appreciation of beauty, of light and color started practically from when I was born to an artist and an international businessman. Perhaps my connection with Eastern healing philosophies, like acupressure, Qigong and meditation started with the energetic line connection me to my father who was on a US Naval Ship in Japan, the day I was born.
When I was eight years old my family and I lived in Latin America. One day near a waterfall in a Colombian jungle my father helped me catch a blue morpho butterfly. Its huge iridescent wings were the most beautiful things I had ever seen.
By the time I was twenty-eight, I was working as a professional photographer and a freelance journalist. I had seen Paris from the top of the Eifel Tower, climbed to play around the Belgian Lion of Waterloo, walked the halls of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, ridden a train through the Siberian summer, hiked along the Great Wall of China, enjoyed the lush green vegetation of the Fern Grotto in Kaui, and peered out of the highest windows in the world across Toronto and the Golden Horseshoe of Southern Ontario.
And then that trajectory of my life came to a screeching halt. In his stark white coat, with impressive degrees on the wall, the ophthalmologist said to me, “You need to consider your life in case you become blind. It is genetic, so there is nothing you can do about it.” He diagnosed me with Keratoconus, a genetic condition of the cornea.
For a time I believed his pronouncements about my potential and the world seemed a little darker. I went to massage school, a profession where you don’t necessarily have to be able to see to continue working.
One day in massage school with a big black spot in the middle of my vision and a wicked bad migraine, I literally had to moved my head from side to side to see the test questions. On my way home on the Toronto subway, I reached a new low and something about hitting the bottom changed my trajectory again.
“This is not okay. There has to be something I can do for myself,” I said as I tried to block out the subway car sights and sounds crashing about my head.
That set me on a journey through alternative medicine approaches, with names like Integrative Manual Therapy, Matrix Energetics, Qigong, Acupressure, Craniosacral Therapy, Visceral Manipulation, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT Tapping) and many more in search of solutions for my own vision problems and migraines.
Today I have a clinical practice where I get to work with and see the positive changes in people like Jack. I get to put my hands on his neck and head, relaxing the muscles, mobilizing the joints, improving the blood flow and drainage as well as press on reflex point that results in … after a couple of hours of acupressure-like therapy, he is vigorously hopping and exclaiming, “My eyes don’t jiggle anymore!” Within a week he has reclaimed his rich and vibrant universe. When I speak to groups, I share this story because it illustrates how easily nerves can heal.
At 55, my own vision is better than when I was 28 and probably better than when I was eight years old catching a blue morpho butterfly. I am migraine-free and enjoy consulting in physical therapy, chiropractic and massage clinics around the world.
One of the things I love to ask people is … “What if it is just that easy? What if you can increase the vibrancy of your world by putting one hand over your eyes and the other hand on a reflex point, for example, an Integrative Manual Therapy synchronizer at the hard tip of the left elbow, or a point at the back of the neck along the Traditional Chinese Medicine gallbladder meridian? These reflex points can be touched, pressed, or rubbed, and then connected with the eyes for a few minutes to enhance your potential. Is it worth trying to see, literally, if you can use your hands and mind to heal your brain and your eyes?
Brain science shows that it is easier for your mind to strive for what you desire than to let go of what you don’t want. What do you want more of? What do you want to see in your life? If truly anything can shift concerning your health, life, or your relationships, what do you want? How does “better” look and feel to you?
Originally published at http://www.innerchildmagazine.com/the-community-of-humanity.php on June 15, 2014.
