I just wish I could say one way or the other whether these practices affect my intraocular pressure.

And I also wish we knew if your theory is correct: that as a person continues to do TaiChi and/or EFT, their intraocular pressure settles down.

Mary

 Here is what i have noticed after several months of recording my eye pressures. 

• I can sometime detect an immediate correlation between a 'negative' or stressful thought (or anxiety) and an increase in my eye pressure.
• read more...

The God choice

Armed with new technology, scientists are peering into the brain to better understand human spirituality. What if, they say, God isn’t some figment of our imagination? Instead, perhaps brain chemistry simply reflects an encounter with the divine.

By Barbara Bradley Hagerty

The following story illustrates that different forms of meditation build different types of skills. My own research also suggests that different forms of meditation have differing effects on intraocular pressure. 

Meditation May Boost Short-Term Visual Memory

05.21.09, 02:00 PM EDT

Study involving DY meditation could have wide-ranging implications

THURSDAY, May 21 (HealthDay News) -- A certain type of meditation may help the brain retain images for short periods, says a new study on visual-spatial abilities.

In order to come to a fuller use of the senses, the organism has to be in a state of balance, in a state of rest. At the same time, the organism has to be in a state of alertness. So these two necessary things seem to contradict each other: restfulness and alertness. Restfulness is a state of quiet. Alertness is a state of dynamism, aliveness and receptivity. Restfulness allows the impressions to reach us; alertness allows the impressions to be sensed.

Restful alertness is a natural quality of healthy states of consciousness. These states of consciousness are characterized by absense of strain. This is called effortless being.

 Considering current events, including the health care crisis and the global financial crisis, I found Dr. Roberto Kaplan's talk from a few years ago to be very relevant. Here is a summary of his talk I found somewhere (and I have since lost the source). I love the quote because I think it says a lot about how many world leaders are approaching solutions to our current problems -- very short sighted.

I'm copying part of a report from http://www.livescience.com/health/080902-zen-meditation.html. Please see the original link for the full article.

 I had an interesting experience last night while taking my IOP. My measurements were in the low 20's for the first 5 readings, (3 on the right and 2 on the left) before the total was averaged. Just as I was pressing the button to take the last reading for my left eye, my husband called to tell me there was an ambulance at his niece's house across the road. That reading was {30}. We could see that her child was being taken on the stretcher, but he was alert and looked good.

I guess I am like a lot of people, I take vitamins in hopes of preventing desease and to feel better. I started taking lots of Leutin and 2 1000mg of bilberry each day since they are supposed to be eye vitamins. I told a friend about the bilberry and he said it made his eyes water and I noticed mine do too.  Has anyone who tests their own pressure ever taken these vitamins to see if they bring the pressure down? 

True change is possible. I have done it and I am still doing it -- and it is responsible for my healing. Change brings about healing. Only change brings true healing - everything else covers up the source of the dis-ease.

I want to highlight three different approaches to performing home eye pressure monitoring (self-tonometry). Normally, I focus most of my attention in my blog on the approach I use. However, I thought it would be educational to contrast my approach with two other approaches. I'll discuss each one, but to get us started I would like to give each method a name as shown below:

I read this comment recently on FitEyes.com:

"When I was in the ophthalmologist's office my eye pressure was 30 mmHg, and when I was in my optometrist's office (who also happens to be a good friend and strongly believes in alternative, natural eye care), my eye pressure was 20 mmHg. The intraocular pressure readings were taken one day apart, at the same time in the morning."

I know several people in our self-tonometry research group who have had experiences very, very similar to this. I have seen it myself. Typically, this is due to stress. It is typically not, as skeptics like to immediately assume, due to errors in measurement or equipment.

Often, both patient and physician are very pleased if a combination of drugs and/or surgery reduce intraocular pressure by 10 mmHg. A change of this magnitude is highly significant.

My own experience, and the experience of many other people doing self-tonometry, is that our inner state (our thoughts and emotions) are capable of producing intraocular pressure changes in excess of 10 mmHg. In some ways this is a shocking finding because, A) in general, the field of ophthalmology does not recognize or admit that this is even possible -- that stress affects IOP, and B) the magnitude of the change is often similar to the changes produced by the most powerful treatments (drugs and surgery) available in allopathic medicine.

I'm going to keep this post very short and to the point.

Check out Dr. Redwood's interview with Ram Dass here: http://www.drredwood.com/interviews/dass.shtml

Here is Dr. Redwood's introduction of Ram Dass:

Eşref Armağan is a blind painter of Turkish origin according to Wikipedia.

A person participating in our self-tonometry research sent me the following YouTube link this morning. It is worth taking a few minutes to watch!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3AgO6H0H98&eurl=http://widget- 

To quickly verify the validity of the video, I checked a few other links. Here they are: