PART 7: GARDENING. The Strabismus World Transformed Through Vision Therapy and Straight Eyes

Hi, my name is Melissa and 36 years ago I was born with strabismus which means that my eyes

weren't pointing in the same direction. So for the first 32 years of my life I was only using

one eye and I didn't have any depth perception. Through years of vision therapy and strabismus

surgery my eyes are pretty much straight now and I'm able to use them together to have some pretty

amazing depth perception. This whole video series is all about helping you see the transformation

that I've experienced going from a 2D to a 3D world. It is so amazing and I'm excited to share

it with you. Let's jump in. I am a huge gardener. It's one of my favorite hobbies and it has changed

actually quite a bit since I've gained 3D vision. There's been a lot of different areas in gardening

that have changed. So today I'm going to talk about a couple different of those areas. One is

t trees and pruning my trees. Another is like leveling out the dirt in the soil

And then another is just like picking fruits and vegetables off of trees or plants or whatever

So we're just going to go through each one. So first when I'm pruning a tree, so what happens

is every spring you've got these trees and there's like a million branches everywhere

And that's not healthy for the tree. You have to prune the tree and cut back different branches so there's good airflow

so sun can reach all the branches so the fruit that does grow can get bigger Anyways there a whole bunch of reasons and some of the rules you don want branches that are like overlapping or pointing the wrong direction and before I could see in 3d it was um I would like do a lot of moving around

the tree trying to figure out which way branches were pointed a lot of it is like you want branches

pointed in the right directions and i just really couldn't tell as easily and now it's not hard

like it's still like i'm still not the best tree pruner i'm not a professional but it's so much

easier to tell like the branches trees in 3d are one of my absolute favorite things to look at i

mean man the way that they take up the space and they the branches fill in every inch of space it's

so cool it is it's one of my favorites but it's a practical application is when you're pruning

you can actually see where those branches are going and which ones need to be trimmed and which

ones are overlapping wrong you can just see the relationship between all the branches and each

other so much more easily you know it sounds so simple but it actually it just makes a big

difference um another thing is when I'm smoothing like in the spring when I'm getting my boxes ready

I use above the ground boxes and garden boxes. And so, you know, you might add manure or whatever

and then you till it up and it's like really like lumpy

So it's gotta be as smooth as possible. This has always been so hard for me

I grew up doing landscaping with my dad and it would be like we were raking

getting ready to lay sod. And I just would always be like the areas I was raking were never smooth And I like I think it smooth and it never was and so I would like do this thing where I like crouch down and like try to look at it level and then you could like

actually see the ups and downs and that's how I would make sure it was level

as I would get down to the surface of the boxes right here I would get down and go like that and like look over the edge of the box and make sure that it

was all flat so this it worked it was like kind of but it's just kind of annoying and complicated

right now it's just easier now because I can see depth so much better and part of this is having

like more peripheral vision I can see how things relate to each other over a certain space um but

it it's so much easier to see when it's flat and make things smooth and and see those ups and downs

and hills and valleys you know this applies when you're hiking or driving or um you know I talked

about it when I'm driving ATVs there's so many different places where this applies for me but

gardening is definitely one when I'm trying to smooth out the soil and then the last area that I see a really big difference in gardening is just when I'm

harvesting fruit whether it's tomatoes or green beans or apples for my trees

I just my vision is a lot more vibrant and so if you've ever picked green beans it's just the

I'll show a picture so that you can kind of see. So in green beans the stems look exactly the same as the green beans so finding the difference and finding all the green beans can be really challenging And other types of food can be that same way if they not like a different color

It can be kind of challenging to find them. Well, with all the vision therapy that I've done

my acuity and like the colors even that I see when you're using both eyes, like the texture and color

and just like the shape of things is so much better and more vibrant, that it's a lot easier

to tell the green bean from the stem. It's not so much of a like, I have to reach my hands

and then actually feel which one feels different. I can look with my eyes and I can see the difference

in the texture, I can see the difference in the shape and the roundness or whatever it is

It's just little things like that that, you know, your vision, when you do the work and improve your vision

it changes everything. So that is how gardening has changed after doing vision therapy

And if you want to know more about vision therapy and how I got to where I am now

you can go to my website, strabismusolutions.com. And there are links there

You can schedule a consult with me. I can help you get started on your own journey

You can purchase my course, Mastering Peripheral. You can sign up for my emails

There's so much. So head over to the website. Check it out. I have a lot to offer there

and I wanna help other people get these exact same changes in their lives

So hopefully you can see what a difference it can make to teach your eyes to work together

and you join me on the journey from strabismus to stereopsis. I'll see you in the next video