LUSTER: Vision Therapy Exercise for Strabismus or Lazy Eye

Hi, my name is Melissa Daniels, and I was born with Strabusiness

I have spent the last four years doing vision therapy, which is like eye exercises, and

even had a surgery to get my eyes working together and straight

And it has definitely been a ton of work, but it's so worth it

Now, by popular request, I am going to share some of the most impactful exercises that

I have done in vision therapy I have learned so much and there's been some

exercises that were amazing and some that were duds so this next few weeks I'm

going to share some of my very favorites that really helped me get to the next

level I also have a course I designed called mastering peripheral that can

definitely help you see some of the most impactful things that really made a

difference for me and I think they can make a difference for anyone who is in

in vision therapy and trying to improve their depth perception so you can get that at learn.strabismissolutions.com

now i of course have to do a quick disclaimer and this is why i've had this channel for a couple

years and i don't share tons of exercises and that's because there's so many of you that want to

have me be your vision teacher or whatever you want to call it and have me give you the exercises

to help you fix your eye turn. And I understand it is such a struggle

and you want to fix it. I was there. The reason I hesitate is because

I don't think it'll work that way. I know it won't work. And so I don't want to lead people astray

and then they get double vision because I'm not a doctor, right

I'm a patient. I have worked really hard and I've learned a ton

but it doesn't make me a doctor. So I definitely recommend going to a vision therapy office

If you want to do vision therapy, they will help you based on your exact diagnosis, know how you need to start, how you need to do the middle, how to finish it off

Like the whole process, they will be able to guide you so you don't end up with horrible double vision like some people do or other problems or just not have any success at all

I tried to do it on my own for six months and it just doesn't work, guys. I promise

So that's my disclaimer. but I still want to share this because I've heard there's people in vision

therapy and vision therapists who are watching this channel trying to figure out what they can do with strabismus patients that might help it be more

effective and so I want to share what was effective for me because I think it could benefit other people um if you want help finding a vision therapy office I do help people do that for free If you go to strabismusolutions slash find VT you just fill out this form And depending on how many

people are submitting, usually within a week, I will email you back, make sure to check spam

and or just add Melissa at strabismusolutions.com to your contact list. And I'll send you two or

three options of vision therapy offices that would be a good pick for you in your area. I know it's

hard to find one that's actually qualified and anyway so I want to help people with that. Okay

so with all those disclaimers behind us let's look at one of my favorite exercises and this is one

that I did in the very beginning and we called it luster and it is a type of dicoptic exercise

so um dicoptic is a whole like these dicoptic exercise that's like a whole

branch of vision therapy and it's actually probably something that you've probably seen whether you're in vision therapy or not and it involves using

like red and green glasses red and blue glasses dicoptic glasses right it's

their glasses were one each eye is seeing something different from through

this eye I see things as more blue and through this eye I see things as red and

And so there's so many different cool exercises. This is one exercise that I've done with like diacoptic exercises

just so you can quickly see through the blue, you're going to see some parts and through the red other parts

And so what happens is they cancel out. So you'll see decks of cards. You'll see games. You'll see there's so many exercises

There's apps galore that use these diacoptic glasses. So all of those activities, most of them require both of your eyes to be turned on at the same time

So you can't be suppressing and they need to be perfectly aligned in order to do the exercise, which is great

If you have that kind of control, it can help you solidify that control

But for me, I, my eyes, I don't have great control over my eyes

I have something called anomalous retinal correspondence, which means like my retinas are messed up

and the way that I take in information is just, it's really hard

Even if my eyes are perfectly straight, my brain tries to move the images apart

And I also suppressed my right eye for 30 years, and so getting my right eye working is harder

So a lot of those types of exercises like this are either extremely challenging or impossible for me even after years of vision therapy And they might always be impossible because of just the way my brain was formed And that okay So does that mean I can get great depth perception

No, right? Like I can work on other aspects of my vision

and those are very central activities and like peripheral. And that's why I made the Mastering Peripheral Course

because peripheral is huge, especially for people like me who are never gonna have perfect vision

So this exercise that you can do with these glasses is great if you have terrible eyes

okay? Like me. And this is one of the first exercises I did where I was really able to feel my brain fusing

what both eyes were seeing at the same time. And so all you do, it's so simple

You put on the glasses. I obviously have amazing ones because my mom made them for me and I do have these on my website

They're fun. They're not any more or less effective. They just look cool

And so what you do is you just put on your glasses and you look at a large piece of paper

Now, if you don't have a big piece of white paper, you could look at a door that's white

or maybe like a window with blinds that's white. You want to look at something that's as big as possible and solid white

And what's amazing is that through this eye, you're going to see everything blue

And through this eye, you're going to see everything red. And so if you cover one eye, you'll say, okay, that's blue

Okay, that's red. and then when both eyes are open you can get something called luster and that's a

mixture of the red and the blue and it took me a really long time to start

getting the hang of this because at first I would just see out of my strong

eye and it would be completely blue and maybe like a little red in the peripheral

areas and as I worked on it I was able to start getting the mixture or the

luster where I could kind of see the colors mixing and they would only mix

maybe in the middle but not on the sides and so this exercise got my brain used to using both eyes

at the same time and getting some fusion in my peripheral that wasn't central and getting weird

double vision and you know when I start getting things that are misaligned and not that are too

central my brain just turns off my right eye and so this was a way to do an exercise where I was

able to keep both eyes on without my brain freaking out and so practice

fusing practice this and so this is something I did in the very beginning to

get both of my eyes okay with being on at the same time um some tips that really made a difference for me I could do it when I was really close right like really close so I would start there and then I would

slowly back up and then there was like some rocking maybe side to side sometimes

I would do different things with my arms um I think I got this tip I can't

remember who it was from but a vision therapist in Canada I think she talked

about doing things exactly the same time with my arms like while I'm looking

using these glasses looking at this white paper trying to get those colors

to get a nice mixture I'm slowly raising both arms I'm trying to get both sides

equally working or going up on my toes and back down working on just

coordinating both sides of my brain um obviously this wasn't the only exercise

I was doing at the time there's so much more to like build the foundation but

this was one of those exercises that was a turning point for me I remember

working on this really hard in the office and leaving and just feeling like when I was driving

home I just felt like my peripheral and like my depth perception it was just huge like I could

feel both my eyes were working and I believe that's because I finally had this simple environment

where my brain wasn't afraid to use both eyes at the same time. So this is just one of many eye

exercises that I've done in vision therapy that made a huge difference. This is definitely one of

the more simple ones most of the ones that made a huge impact were more complicated required lots

of like special tools and things like that but this is one that um i go back to when i can feel

that my right eye is shutting off i'll go back and just look at that wall with the red and blue

glasses get that luster and anyways give it a try i'm curious if you have done this envision therapy

if you've had success with it if you've ever tried it before if you just think it sounds too

boring and you just want to play Tetris. But if you're like me, Tetris in an app with these kind

of glasses is actually impossible. It's not impossible. Really, really hard and frustrating

So it's just too complicated. So anyways, give it a try. Let me know if you are not in vision

therapy yet join the party go to strabismus solutions.com find VT and you

can join me and like thousands of others adults with strabismus who are learning

to use their eyes together in vision therapy I will see you in the next video