Up next in 10
How to View Magic Eye Pictures for Anyone With Strabismus or Lazy Eye
25K views
Dec 12, 2022
If you have strabismus or amblyopia (lazy eye), then you have probably felt left out as the rest of the world oooed and awed over the magical 3D images in Magic Eye books. Through vision therapy, I am learning to view these images. It isn't perfect and it's still a work in progress, but in this video I offer several tips to help make seeing that 3D more easy. Learn more at https://strabismussolutions.com/
View Video Transcript
0:00
Hi, my name is Melissa Daniels and I have strabismus
0:04
Strabismus is when your eyes don't point in the same direction and your brain doesn't know how to use your eyes together
0:11
And over the last three years, I have worked really hard on getting my eyes from looking like this to how they are right now
0:19
But it's not just about how they look because there's so much more to it. It's all about my brain learning to use both eyes together so that they want to be straight
0:27
one of the activities that I do and that I want to teach you about today is very
0:34
simple but difficult it's called they're just magic magic eye 3d books and there
0:40
are probably 30 different ones this is the best one I'll put the link in the
0:45
description it's called beyond 3d it's got tons of directions it's got a lot of
0:51
the pictures that are easier to see and it's just an awesome book so I
0:56
I definitely recommend that for anybody. Magic eye pictures are something that bring up
1:03
a lot of PTSD, I think, for a lot of people with stravismus
1:07
because we've always felt like something was wrong with us because everyone, all of our friends would be looking
1:12
and seeing these really cool things and oohing and aahing and we would see nothing
1:16
And the reason is because in order to see a magic eye picture, both of your eyes have to be working together
1:22
So if you hold your fingers like this and you look at the finger that's far away
1:25
You should see two fingers closer to your face, right? And so that's good, right
1:30
You want it to be single where you're looking, but it's actually double where you're not looking
1:35
And so some really cool, brilliant people figure this out and use that idea to make these magic eye books
1:42
So what happens is you hold the book here and you don't point your eyes at the book
1:47
You point your eyes behind the book or you look through the book like it's a window
1:52
and then it creating that double vision where the book is Just like if you looking far away and you got this finger close to you is double That what happening when you looking through the book
2:03
It's making this picture go double. And the way that they have the pictures arranged and they have these computer generated images
2:11
it makes it so that that double vision actually creates a 3D image
2:16
which is so cool, such amazing technology. But it's not necessarily easy to see
2:22
So I'm going to give you a few tips on how to make this work
2:27
I will tell you that if you have strabismus and you only use one eye at a time
2:34
this isn't going to work for you. I wasn't able to do this until I'd been in therapy for probably a year
2:39
and I had woken up my lazy eye, my right eye that has amblyopia
2:45
strengthened it and then got both eyes. And this is the part where you're getting your brain to use both eyes at the same time
2:51
So if you have double vision, this is awesome. If you have convergence insufficiency, this can definitely help that
2:58
But yeah with strabismus, you have to be able to have both eyes turned on at the same time for it to work
3:04
Okay, and you should check with your optometrists first before you try any exercises. There's my disclaimer. Okay, if
3:11
you have a magic eye book, you're gonna notice This one, Beyond 3D, actually explains this
3:18
but I've gone through a lot of Magic Eye books. They've never explained it before until this book
3:23
You've got two different types of Magic Eye pictures. We've got these ones over here
3:28
where you've got things that actually look like something. You've got jelly beans
3:32
It's very clear there's jelly beans. And then you've got these ones, it's just like this random computer-generated image
3:40
These ones are hard, these ones are easy. So these ones you look at, basically
3:44
you have to have your eyes perfectly lined up. I do not have that
3:48
I not able to see great images here I starting to get some depth but I can make out actual objects These ones when you are looking at them correctly what happens is you just they called floaters and so some of these
4:03
jelly beans will be floating in front some will be further back some will be in the middle and
4:08
some will be clear behind okay so that's all you're gonna get is just depth with the actual
4:12
images so they've got some that are like butterflies and cats and dogs and all sorts of
4:17
different things step one relax your eyes I mean that in feel the muscles in
4:25
your eyes relax feel your brain relax relax your shoulders relax your face
4:30
also relax in that when your eyes are relaxed they're gonna be going out and
4:38
that's when you're like looking far far away it's called diverging your eyes are gonna slightly diverge when you look close your eyes converge so you're
4:46
going to want your eyes to slightly diverge and so in order to achieve this
4:51
this is step number two you're going to pretend that your book is a window and
4:55
you're looking through it you want to look past it so that you get that double
5:00
vision that I was talking about earlier where the book is because you need that
5:04
double to make these pictures overlap and make cool things okay so you're
5:09
looking through the book so step one relax step two look through the book
5:13
step three you want to make sure both of your eyes are turned on and that's where
5:17
these little squares come in and so what you're gonna do is you're gonna point
5:22
your head to the squares and you're gonna look through the book relax your
5:26
eyes and then if both eyes are working together you're gonna get a third
5:30
square in between and once you get that you can kind of move the book down and
5:35
move the book in front of your face so that you're looking at the actual
5:40
pictures and you want to try to memorize that feeling. So when you if you lose it, this will happen to me a lot
5:45
I'll lose the 3D image. So go back to the two squares Make sure I getting the third square Once I have the third square I move the book back up and try to keep that feeling of relaxation feeling my eyes move out and you can move the book
5:59
forward and back trying to experiment with what works for you you can stand on one foot stand on
6:06
a balance board or a trampoline and definitely relax you can blink blink often um close your
6:15
eyes and rest them and then the last thing give it time the first time I saw something was the time
6:22
I decided I was going to stare at the book until I saw something and it took about 10 minutes and
6:27
at the end of the 10 minutes all of a sudden things started gaining depth and my brain figured
6:33
it out sometimes your brain just needs time to figure it out and one thing I tell myself is this
6:38
can take as long as it needs to and as soon as I say that to myself I can see it so give yourself
6:44
time let it take as long as it needs to take and then you can sit there and you can look at it and
6:51
you can feel it just relaxing it might make you kind of tired but don't strain don't um
6:59
don't get all like this okay it's tempting to be like I will see it I will force my eyes that is
7:08
not gonna work you want to relax and just be as relaxed as you possibly can be and this is
7:14
something that I do for five to ten minutes every day not all the time but
7:18
when I do it I sit there and I just relax look at the book and it helps me
7:22
with all of my other exercises it makes my 3d in real life better and it just is
7:28
a really great exercise for your brain so give it a try let me know how it goes
7:33
in the comments let me know if you had the same experience as me as a kid and
7:37
you could never see magic eye pictures you weren't alone I was there too there's
7:43
bunch of us so let me know in the comments and I will see you in the next video have a good one
#Eye Exams & Optometry
#Laser Vision Correction
#Vision Care