I Choose Sight…Naturally!

by Dawn Depke

I have been wearing glasses and contacts since I was 16 years old and decided 14 months ago after breaking my last very expensive hard contact that I was committing to healing my vision naturally! Yes, you read that right; I am healing my vision naturally.

If I honestly believed that the body has an innate ability to heal itself, then why not put mine to the test yet again?

It was May of 2009 and I had just began reading for the fist time a book called, Take off your Glasses and See which was a gift from a client of mine about 8 years prior. I remember the exact day my contact broke because I had just finishing assisting a 4-day Cranial Sacral Therapy (CST) Intensive in Chicago and was in Iowa visiting my family. I broke my contact the first day I arrived in Iowa! I had no back up pair of contacts and my glasses had broken a year prior and I had never replaced them. So I was left with no vise.

I don’t how you’d respond, but I felt panic for a long moment, said some 4-letter words, and then took a deep breathe and decided it was time to trust my body’s natural healing ability. Really, what choice did I have? Especially since I was on a strict budget financially.

I immediately opened my book, thank the Angels in Heaven I had it with me! I began practicing the eye exercises the author (an Optometrist) recommended. I also did some Shiatsu and cranial sacral therapy on the orbits of my eyes and face. I had learned a technique called “unwinding” while I was a student of CST. Unwinding is allowing your body to move naturally to release muscular tension, physical trauma and emotional baggage; so I decided to use it to “unwind my eyes”. I almost couldn’t believe how fast my eyes were moving under the closed eye lids. It was astonishing to me. I didn’t experience anything at this point and a headache was beginning.

Once I was home, I continued doing all of the techniques mentioned above as well as dealing with the suppressed emotions that were beginning to surface. On a physical level I experienced headaches for about 2 weeks and they went away. You might be wondering what emotional baggage was surfacing and why. Well according to the author of Take off your Glasses and See, prior to vision changes we experience an emotional trauma, something that is extremely emotionally painful and too hard for us to “see”. We unconsciously suppress the emotions and as a result our vision begins to change for the worse. Now keep in mind, this is all happening at an unconscious level. In order for me to heal this at a core level, I chose to experience the suppressed emotions so that I could move through this with an end goal of seeing 20/20 naturally. Dealing with these memories and emotions surfacing was not easy. In fact there were moments that were so hard for me that I thought about giving up. I remember asking myself, “Is it worth it?” “Am I strong enough to do this?” and “Will this even work?”

Well, 14 months later, I can tell you YES it was worth it! It took me about 4 months to process through the most intense emotions, fears and doubts. I continue doing the eye exercises a few times a week instead of multiple times per day. I can see clearly, (20/20 on my eye chart) I can see at night (this was my greatest challenge, so I still have to do my eye exercises prior to night driving). I can see at long distances and up close. I am truly grateful for this unexpected yet desired challenge to heal my vision naturally.

If you have any questions or comments on my healing journey with my eyesight, please post these for my response.