Keywords

Hawaii, travel, Maui, Molokai, adventure, nature, functional vision, wellness, retreats, exploration

Summary

In this episode, Sam Berne introduces his practitioners training program and membership offerings before transitioning into a personal narrative about his travels to Hawaii. He shares his experiences exploring the islands, particularly Maui and Molokai, highlighting the natural beauty, cultural significance, and personal connections he made during his adventures. The conversation emphasizes the importance of travel and exploration in personal growth and wellness.

Takeaways

The practitioners training program is open to non-eye doctors.
Traveling can provide a sense of spiritual home.
Hawaii offers diverse experiences from ocean to lava.
Maui is known for its breathtaking landscapes and waterfalls.
Molokai has a rich history and is less commercialized.
Camping and hiking in Hawaii can be transformative experiences.
Exploring different cultures enhances personal growth.
Traveling allows for a deeper connection with nature.
The importance of sharing personal stories and experiences.
Creating a library of knowledge can benefit others.

Sound Bites

“I want to talk a little bit about travel.”
“Hawaii felt like home to me.”
“Molokai is a very interesting Island.”
Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Program Announcements
02:23 Exploring the Beauty of Hawaii
03:12 Adventures in Maui and Molokai

Sam Berne (00:00)
Hey everyone, welcome to the program today. So before we get into the main part, I want to make a few announcements. First of all, I am offering a practitioners training program and these are for non eye doctors. This is a program which is called functional vision integrative body and it’s a one-year program where I teach you the methods that I have developed.

in physical therapy, educating your clients on how to improve their vision, their brain health, their body health from a physical, emotional and spiritual perspective. So if you’re interested in this program, and by the way, you don’t need to be an eye doctor. The way I’ve set up this program is you could be a massage therapist, a teacher, an occupational therapist, a psychologist, whatever. And

program is geared as an educational coaching program so you won’t get in any trouble from any licensing boards but the information will be very effective in working with your clients. So if you’re interested you can go to my website DrSanBurn.com you can email me appointments at DrSanBurn.com and we can have a conversation and see if it’s right for you.

The other thing is is I want to tell you about my membership program. We’re on year number three. I have got so much exclusive content in there. I’ve got different courses that I’ve taught and different ideas that I don’t want to put on social media a little too controversial but in the membership program or protected with confidentiality. Also, I’m now putting up some of my written blogs that I’ve done over the years. It’s really good stuff.

stuff and I post three or four times a week just on the membership. So it’s 20 bucks a month. You have a seven-day free trial period. If you want to sign up, you can go to my homepage, dr. Sanburn.com under the word vision. You’ll see join membership and you can join for free and check it out and see if it’s for you. All right. So in today’s show, I’m not going to talk about eyes.

In fact, you know what was interesting? I was having breakfast with a friend the other day and at the end of our conversation, she said, you know, I have a friend who’s got this condition called macular pucker. Have you ever heard of it? And I said, well, yes, I’ve worked with it a lot.

And if you go to my YouTube channel and you type in macular pucker, Dr. Byrne, you’re probably going to get several free video blogs on macular pucker. He’s like, my goodness, you are the best, you know, that you have created this library, this archive.

of eye conditions and you know I can’t say that I’ve created a video for every single eye condition but over the last seven years I have put together so many

content pieces both in podcast form audio video written that it’s time for me to Broaden out a little bit and talk about some of my other interests and this may or may not be interesting to you but I want to talk a little bit about travel because I love travel and Some of the other things that I also am into I may do a podcast on it. So today I want to talk about Traveling to Hawaii. I don’t know how many people out there it

in my community have been to Hawaii. know many of you have come to my dolphin swim retreats, my other retreats in Hawaii. So I want to talk a little bit about why I like Hawaii, some of the tips you can do if you travel there. My first entree in going to Hawaii was back in January of 1990, a few years ago. And I’d sold my Pennsylvania practice. I put all my stuff in my car, which wasn’t very much. I had an old Toyota Corolla

barely could get across the country. I have a lot of money. And so I dropped my stuff off at this apartment that I rented in Santa Fe and I had signed up to meet a group out in Hawaii. I’d never been to Hawaii. In fact, I had hardly ever been to the West Coast and it was a month long.

backpacking trip. I had never done backpacking throughout all the islands of Hawaii. Now, this is back in 1990 before there’s been this tourist explosion where it’s kind of become Disneyland in a lot of ways these big resorts and you know, these big groups and so on. So I landed I remember landing in Maui and my tour leader who’s a woman very nice lady.

She picked me up and I had all my, you know, my camping stuff and my backpack and I met up with the group and we drove up to Holly Ocola. Holly Ocola is this big crater in Maui and you can actually, you can camp up at the top and you can watch the sunrise. So you’re actually above the clouds and it was such an amazing experience. I mean, coming from

Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, the East Coast and Hawaii felt like home to me. I mean, so did Santa Fe, but Hawaii in a different way felt home. It’s kind of like a spiritual home. Well, anyways, the next day we we packed up our stuff and they had a van and they took our van like 14 miles away. We walked through the crater of Haleakala, which I highly recommend even if you just walk down in it in Maui. It’s kind of an otherworldly type of place.

But we did this 14 mile hike and we went through these lava tubes and which is another amazing thing like like caves. I mean, there’s just so many different ways to experience Hawaii from the ocean to the lava to the Hawaiian culture and so many other things. So in Maui, we we spent time at Haleakala. Then we went to a small town where we took this winding

road to a place called Hana. And Hana is a small town. I don’t know if it is anymore. And there’s a wonderful hike there that you can do and go to waterfalls. So synonymous with Hawaii is waterfalls, know, just so many of them. And so we spent about 10 days in Maui and we had a great time. And then we took a plane and we went to Molokai.

Molokai is a very interesting Island again at the time. It was very uninhabited. Now. I understand there’s a lot of eco tourism there and we went to the Father Damien Church. was a settlement in Molokai where people suffered leprosy and so they were all in this community and I remember we were

top of this Vista and we had to do this really long switchback hike down into the settlement area and there are still people living there who had had leprosy and we took up this school bus through the lava fields and we got to the church that Father Damien led for these people.

So in visiting Father Damien’s church in the backyard, the backside of the church outside, you could look out to the ocean. Then there was this big stone rock in the middle of the ocean and there were white caps out there and it was so serene and peaceful to be there. Now, Malachi is, you know, it’s it’s a fairly uninhabited Island again today. It has definitely been discovered, but it’s still worth going to because

is it’s pretty old Hawaiian in a lot of ways and we just had the greatest time camping and hiking in Malachi because it was pretty rough and tumble.

Well, that’s our show for today. I want to thank you so much for tuning in and until next time everyone take good care.

From Visionary Products to Empowering Knowledge: My Next Chapter
My journey has always been about innovation, education, and integrity. While the chapter of selling products has come to a close, my mission to empower others is stronger than ever.
Now, I am dedicated to sharing his intellectual property and leveraging decades of experience to educate entrepreneurs and professionals on navigating product liability, social media marketing, and brand development with clarity and confidence. Through engaging blogs, lectures, and podcasts, I offer actionable insights to help business owners protect themselves, build resilient brands, and make informed decisions in a complex marketplace.
Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, seasoned professional, or advocate of holistic health, my story and expertise can illuminate your path forward.
Join me on this exciting new journey where knowledge becomes the most powerful product of all.

Visit my business website: www.eyeclaritybusinesssolutions.com

Contact me for a consultation; [email protected]

Keywords

marketing, branding, social media, audience targeting, content creation, influencer marketing, data analysis, legal considerations, brand story, pain points

Summary

In this conversation, Dr. Sam Berne shares valuable insights on improving marketing strategies and building a strong brand identity for businesses. He emphasizes the importance of utilizing social media effectively, understanding target audiences, and creating engaging content. Dr. Berne also discusses the significance of influencer marketing, data analysis, and legal considerations in business. Throughout the discussion, he highlights the need for businesses to stay agile and responsive to market demands while crafting a unique brand story that resonates with their audience.

Takeaways

Social media is a free way to build your brand.
Brand identity is crucial for long-term success.
Narrowing your target audience enhances engagement.
TikTok can help your content go viral.
You should think of yourself as a media company.
Repurposing content can maximize reach.
Email lists are a valuable asset for businesses.
Influencer marketing can expand your audience.
Analyzing data helps refine your marketing strategy.
Identifying pain points can lead to business opportunities.

Sound Bites:

“Building a stronger brand identity is crucial.”
“The customer is coming to you with branding.”
“Narrowing your target audience is key.”
“TikTok is one of the hottest platforms.”
“You are now a media company.”
“Your email list is gold.”
“Stay agile and be able to pivot.”
“Identifying pain points is striking gold.”
Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Marketing and Branding Strategies
02:52 Building a Strong Brand Identity
05:53 Target Audience and Social Media Segmentation
08:58 Leveraging Social Media Platforms
12:11 Content Creation and Repurposing Strategies
15:03 Utilizing Podcasts and Newsletters
17:50 Influencer Marketing and Partnerships
20:46 Analyzing Data and Staying Agile
23:55 Legal Considerations in Business
26:50 Crafting Your Unique Brand Story
30:12 Identifying Pain Points in Your Market

Keywords

vision therapy, behavioral optometry, eye health, personal development, holistic healing, functional vision, primitive reflexes, meditation, emotional health, professional coaching

Summary

In this conversation, Sam Berne discusses his journey in the field of vision therapy, highlighting the influence of his mentors, Dr. Albert A. Shankman and Dr. Albert A. Sutton. He shares insights on the importance of holistic approaches to eye health, the role of emotional and physical well-being in vision improvement, and the significance of primitive reflexes in developmental optometry. Berne emphasizes the need for surrendering to the process of healing and the value of continuous learning in his practice.

Takeaways

Functional vision integrates physical, emotional, and spiritual health.
Vision therapy can significantly improve reading comprehension.
Surrendering to the process is essential for healing.
Primitive reflexes are crucial for children’s vision development.
Holistic approaches are often overlooked in mainstream optometry.
Continuous learning from mentors shapes professional growth.
Emotional tension can manifest as vision problems.
Building connections in the professional community is vital.
Vision improvement requires commitment and consistency.
Dr. Sutton’s techniques are applicable in special needs education.

Sound Bites

“Primitive reflexes start in utero.”
“He was way ahead of his time.”
“Take good care of your vision.”

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Functional Vision Integrative Body
04:12 The Influence of Dr. Albert A. Shankman
12:16 Learning from Dr. Albert A. Sutton

Sam Berne (00:00.078)
Hey everyone. Welcome to the program. Before we start. I have a few announcements. First of all, many of you know that I’ve started a practitioners training and it’s called functional vision integrative body. And this has come after 40 years of distilling

A lot of information, not only about improving your eyes and vision, but things like brain health, body health, working on a physical, emotional and spiritual level, using things like color therapy, iridology, craniosacral, somatic movement and many other things.

So I’ve written up this course for non eye doctor. So it’s a coaching program and it works for any practitioner. let’s say you’re a chiropractor and somebody comes in and they’re complaining about their eyes while they’re exercises and strategies and educational things that you can teach your clients or patients to get better.

I’ve been working with a few body workers like massage therapists, craniosecral therapists, somatic experiencing therapists, and they’re just loving the program. So if you’re interested, contact me appointments at drsamburn.com and we can have a conversation, see if it’s a good fit for you.

Sam Berne (01:39.842)
The other thing I want to mention is my membership program. We’re going on year number three and what I’ve done is I’ve taken a lot of my creative energies that I used to put towards social media and I’ve created content that is exclusively for the membership.

It’s about 20 bucks a month. It’s really worth it. If you’re interested in some of the deeper issues that might be going on not only about your eyes, but about health spirituality meditation energy medicine things like that. So if you’re interested in the membership, I highly recommend it.

You can go to my website, drsamburn.com and right below the word vision. You’ll see membership and you can click on that and there’s a free seven-day period where you can join and you can peruse the content.

What I’ve started to do over the last few weeks is post my written blogs. I’ve written a lot of written blogs over the years and I’m starting to post those in the membership. know some people like like to read and so we’re going to offer you things whether you listen watch or read.

reduce the resistance in your quest of the information. The last thing I’m going to be offering which I’ve actually started is some professional coaching in the area of marketing, social media, brand building.

Sam Berne (03:24.174)
I’ve been very successful at doing those things. In fact, I was recognized by a nonprofit organization here in Santa Fe to offer seminars and do some private coaching. And of course, this is all volunteer, but I want to widen the net. So if you’re a health practitioner, if you’re a young entrepreneur,

Contact me, you can go to my business website, iClarityBusinessSolutions.com and you can read some of my blogs and some of my offerings. And if you want some help in the area of growing your business, I love working with young entrepreneurs, that’s what I’ve done with this nonprofit. Contact me and we can see if we’re a good fit.

Okay, let’s go on to the show today. My number two mentor is an optometrist Albert A. Shankman. Dr. Shankman. You want to know about this guy?

So Dr. Shankman was an optometrist. He was a behavioral optometrist who practiced in the Connecticut area. And after I moved back to the East Coast after my internships were over and I was moonlighting in a lot of different primary care offices, you know, looking for the place where I could start in and open my own office or affiliate with somebody.

I remember getting a flyer in the mail and it was an invitation from Dr. Shankman and he was saying that he is doing a year-long program for any optometrist who’s interested in learning his method of vision therapy and he called it psycho behavioral vision enhancement. In fact, he wrote a book about it. Vision enhancement training, psycho behavioral vision and enhancement. you’re interested.

Sam Berne (05:17.997)
And so I enrolled in the course. Now I was living in Philadelphia at the time and I just started a practice there. And in my own vision, I had a couple things going on for, so I was very nearsighted. And the second thing was, is that reading was not something I was very interested in. Even though I was an A student, I did well in school, I was in the National Honor Society. I was never really good at taking, you know, the, the SATs and you know, those, those kinds of tests.

And comprehension was not easy for me reading comprehension. So when I contacted Dr. Shankman and I went up and I had an evaluation from him, I decided I was going to be a patient of his. So I would go up once a month. It was about four hour drive.

and I would do vision therapy with him over the weekend. Now at that time, he was in his mid 70s, so he had sold his practice and he was living in a retirement community, had a great condo and his wife, Shankman, she also worked in his office as a vision therapist and we became quite close like family.

And every month I would go up there and I would, you know, get an update in my vision therapy program. And then in between I was doing 20 to 40 minutes every day, seven days a week of vision therapy practices that were very different than what I learned in school. They were very involved in movement and balance and working with the eye patch and

looking at psycho-emotional and spiritual and energetic reasons around, you know, my own vision problems. And I remember Dr. Shankman said two things to me at my first visit. He said my myopia was a result of the tension that I carried in my eyes as a way to muscle my way to the answer. And that was pretty accurate. Second thing he said is the reason why I wasn’t a good reader is that my left eye wandered out. I had very poor convergence.

Sam Berne (07:23.631)
with my eyes, especially when I read and this either leads to confusion, double vision, suppression in the eye. When our two eyes don’t work together, the brain gets confused and it tends to suppress, you know, the non-dominant eye. And so I started in an Invisvision therapy practice and within a couple of months, I noticed that my nearsighted prescription reduced and it kept reducing and as I kept reducing,

Consciousness opened up insights opened up things changed for me and you know myopia is related a lot to the kidneys and fear.

and tension. And I noticed that a lot of that stuff was kind of just evaporating. And at the same time, I also noticed that I was reading better, that my comprehension got better, that I understood what I read. I could read more. I could read faster. And I got to a point six months in the program and he made you commit to a year. And that is a actually very important point because

You know, people think, I can go to a behavioral optometrist once and get the changes and that’s not true.

because the habits and the conditioning and the belief systems around our visual system get ingrained very early on. In fact, our eyes are like, you know, videotape library where we as children internalize our parents’ experiences. And Dr. Shankman pointed that out to me and he was right. And then about six months in, I got kind of frustrated because I want my, I was very goal oriented and I wanted to get to a place where,

Sam Berne (09:10.873)
want to get rid of my nearsightedness completely. And it wasn’t happening. In fact, the more I stressed into it, the worse my eyes got, even though it hadn’t been making a lot of progress. So he said to me two things. He said, first of all, you have to give up the goal. I said, I can’t do that. And second thing he said to me was you’re too attached to the results and you have to really dive into the process.

like, man, I love results. I want results. That’s what I live for. So I wrestled with that. I remember talking to my brother and my brother said to me, very smart, he said…

I said, well, you you paid this guy a lot of money. You’ve invested all this time. Why don’t you just do what he says, you know, give it up, man. And so sometimes brothers have the wisdom. So I ended up surrendering. Surrendering is a big thing and letting go as we all know, you know, because change is is constant, right? And we’re always changing. Things are always changing. Sometimes it’s very uncomfortable. But how can we surrender into and

with the change. So after I changed my mindset with him, with Dr. Shankman, some magical things started to happen. My eyesight really started to improve. In fact, one day I woke up and I was late to the office. I lived in Center City, Philadelphia. My office was out on the main line and

I was like halfway to the office. I went, my goodness. I forgot to put my contacts in and I can read the road signs. So that was kind of like a come to Jesus moment where I was like, wow, I don’t really need these lenses anymore.

Sam Berne (11:00.077)
And so we continued on. One of the things that Dr. Shankman recommended that I do is take up meditation, which I did and I still meditate. so doing a lot of different modalities along with vision therapy, I completely dissolved my near sighted prescription and I was 28 years old at the time. So it inspired me to move into a direction where I was going to exclusively work in a practice

where I was helping people improve their vision. Road less traveled because if I’d gone mainstream, sold glasses, gotten into disease-based care, I probably would have made a lot more money. I would probably, in some ways, in terms of the profession, been more acknowledged. But I took the road less traveled, kind of like my modus operandi. I tend to do that a lot.

And it set me off in a career where I’m still doing it today, 40 years later, and probably will continue to do it until I physically can’t anymore. So Dr. Shankman, kudos to you for giving me so many gifts, and you’re right up there in Mount Rushmore with Dr. Sanit.

Okay. The third eye doctor I want to talk about is a developmental optometrist who practiced in Florida. met him when he was in his seventies and it’s an interesting story. His name is Dr. Albert A. Sutton, Dr. Sutton. And when I moved to New Mexico, I had a hard time getting a license to practice because New Mexico is a good old boys state.

and it’s a poor state, 48th poorest state in the union. And so they kind of limit the number of outsiders that come in to get a license. And I was having trouble, even though I thought I passed all the tests and I had to retake the national boards, which is a standardized written test.

Sam Berne (13:04.043)
I had to take pathology slides, you know, things like that. So I was at a conference and I met Dr. Sutton and I told him my dilemma. He said, why used to be on the state board in Colorado? And here’s the strategy. This is what you need to do. You need to call up the president of the board, tell him you’re doing vision therapy, behavioral optometry, and you know, let him get to know you. Don’t try to sue him or, you know, get mad at him. Be friends, make connections.

network. And so I did that for about six months and magically and miraculously. I got my license after the third try. So New Mexico license is very valuable not only for New Mexico, but then I recognize that there was a reciprocity deal with New Mexico and Hawaii. So I also have a Hawaii license and in my next show. I’m going to talk about my relationship with Hawaii and talk a little bit about travel there.

I tend to like to go outside of just talking about eyes. So stay tuned for that show. Anyways, Dr. Sutton and I became friends and I became a student of his and Dr. Sutton was really a pioneer in the field of development in children learning and his testing was very whole body.

He had a test called mind body testing where he tested vestibular visual fixation body movement bilateral integration many different things. And then he brought two of my now close colleagues from Scandinavia Lena and Thorkeld Rasmussen who were

doctors of optometry and they practiced in Denmark and Sweden and he brought them to the United States and they taught us the primitive survival reflexes and the primitive reflexes is such an essential part of vision therapy, especially with kids.

Sam Berne (15:14.925)
OTs, some of them do primitive reflexes. There are a few people out there that are teaching it, but primitive reflexes, those movement patterns start in utero and the purpose of those movement patterns is to help the newborn adjust to being outside the birth canal in the womb. And many, many kids who have vision problems that are school-aged still have the primitive reflexes. And Dr. Sutton recognized that because he worked with Arnold Gazelle at the Gazelle

Institute. It’s place that I attended in the mid 1980s and the gazelle Institute was at that time a beacon of light for vision development. Now again, I’ve talked about the difference between eyesight and vision. Eye sight is eyeballs and glasses and reading the distance chart, but vision is how the eye brain and body work together and there’s a developmental process on when kids develop their vision as it relates to learning and

academic performance. And Dr. Sutton was an expert at this. He had studied it and he developed many different protocols. He also got me involved in biochemistry testing, hair mineral analysis, and the importance of

the energy in the cell having to be really high cellular health to be able to make the developmental changes that are needed, especially in the sensory motor system. He taught at Berry College in Miami and he was a world renowned expert in developmental optometry. In my view, he was not recognized enough by optometry. That was, and I remember towards the end of his life, he said to me, you know, take it to the math.

because the optometrists, they’re just not ready for this. I mean, they had a hard time understanding. You get on the floor with your patient and you do things like primitive reflexes and you do craniosacral and you do, you know, vestibular training. Now, I think it’s a little more accepted in the behavioral optometry world, but back then it wasn’t and he was way ahead of his time in those things. Now, I remember I was giving a seminar at a

Sam Berne (17:32.463)
workshop in Florida and he attended it and people loved it. You know, they thought I was a rock star and at the end it was just him and me. The room was pretty dark and he said, you know, you’ve got some holes in your thinking. I was like what?

He said, yeah, you you’re not really addressing and understanding the sequence of development in a child’s learning. And of course, you know, my ego was bruised by that, but he was a hundred percent right. And so I started to study with him and learned a lot about testing and diagnosing and treating and managing, especially in that developmental model. And to this day, I use many, many of the things that

that he taught me. One of the places I work is a place called Kid Power, which is in Albuquerque. And it’s a place where kids have a lot of special needs, Down syndrome, minimal brain dysfunction, autism, you know, they’re in the autistic spectrum.

and I apply many of Dr. Sutton’s techniques there to this day and learning those primitive reflexes back then has been such an essential part in being able to help kids reach their potential. So I put Dr. Sutton up on the Mount Rushmore with Dr. Sanit and Dr. Shankman. I’ve got a few others that I’ll talk about in another show, but I think that’s a

That’s a mouthful right now. So I think I’m going to end it here. I want to thank you so much for tuning in today. Share this podcast. If you found it helpful again, you can go to my social media me social media feeds and also my website dr. Sam burn.com and until next time everyone take good care.

In this episode, I interview Doug Conwell, founder of Earthwalks, Which Explores the ancient cultural and earth wisdom traditions of the American Southwest and Mexico through guided journeys and service activities.

For more information, contact Doug: www.earthwalks.org.  E-mail: [email protected]

For even more from Dr. Sam, check out his new exclusive membership where you get access to my content and resources, new information, articles, videos, webinars: https://drsambernesmembership.com/

Keywords

Earthwalks, Doug Conwell, geomancy, listening to the earth, indigenous cultures, Celtic traditions, Chaco Canyon, personal transformation, retreats, community service

Summary

In this enlightening conversation, Dr. Sam Berne interviews Doug Conwell, the founder of Earthwalks, exploring themes of geomancy, indigenous cultures, and personal transformation through nature. Doug shares his journey from urban life to discovering the wisdom of the earth, emphasizing the importance of listening to nature and the experiences that shape our understanding of the world. The discussion also highlights the significance of Chaco Canyon and the retreats Doug leads, fostering community and connection with the earth.

Takeaways
• Doug Conwell founded Earthwalks to connect people with nature.
• Geomancy involves listening to the earth’s energies.
• Listening to the earth can be practiced anywhere, even in urban settings.
• Indigenous cultures offer profound insights into nature and spirituality.
• Personal initiations are essential for growth and transformation.
• Chaco Canyon is a vital site for understanding earth energies.
• Retreats provide a space for deep connection and healing.
• Community engagement is a key aspect of Doug’s work.
• The blending of indigenous and Celtic traditions enriches spiritual practices.
• Nature holds immense wisdom that can guide our lives.

Sound Bites
• “There’s so much wisdom in the earth.”
Chapters
00:00Introduction to Earthwalks and Doug Conwell
02:55Exploring Geomancy and Listening to the Earth
05:59Indigenous and Celtic Traditions: A Juxtaposition
09:04Personal Initiations and Transformative Experiences
11:32The Significance of Chaco Canyon
14:52Leading Retreats and Community Engagement

Sam Berne (00:02)
Hey everyone, it’s Dr. Sam and I’d like to welcome you to another podcast. So we have a great show today. I’ve invited a really special guest. He’s been a longtime friend Doug Conwell and you guys need to know about Doug. He’s an amazing person. He does a lot of different things service in the community, but he started this.

guess he started this process many years ago called Earthwalks and I went on one of his retreats in Chaco Canyon last September and it was life-changing for me. And so I wanted to bring him on and I wanted to introduce him to the community. So Doug, welcome to the program. Give us a little bio so that people can get to know who you are.

Doug Conwell (01:03)
Sure, happy to do that. Originally from Colorado, Sam, from Denver. Born in Denver. My family moved from there to Texas and I lived on the border in El Paso for sixth grade through college and got a really good dose of the Mexican culture, which I just adore. And was in the military in the army for a couple years and came back to Colorado thinking it was home.

And it was for a while, but this huge, relentless urban development that John Denver used to sing about, and he was promoting it while he was decrying it, sort of got to me and I realized that I was hearing a call elsewhere. And that call actually got into a book called The Spirit That Wants Me. It’s an anthology of different writers, and I’m one of them that’s in it.

The you know, is the spirit of this region where we’re living here in Santa Fe, the Four Corners region. But I moved to Santa Fe almost 50 years ago, about 47, 47 years ago, to actually go to massage school while I was getting my master’s degree in criminal justice and public administration. I was on a track to be wearing the American noose, which is called a necktie, and go up the ladder and…

Little did I know I had a lot of changes in store for me. So that’s what happened. I started hearing that call and you know, earth energies, earth mysteries, all of those things were kind of new to me. Finding out about this word called geomancy, divining with earth energies. We were in massage school and we were dealing with our earth bodies and the energies within our…

our earth bodies, which you talk about so much, Sam, and you deal with your clients. That’s so important, I know, vital. And I found out, I think it was probably while I was in massage school, about this thing called geomancy. And ended up exploring that whole area of lay lines, sacred geometry, sacred architecture, sacred sites. Definitely Chaco was one of those.

And with a friend of mine, we started leading small groups of people, just kind of exploring the area. And then I went on to develop Earthwalks as it is today. Lots of other things along the way, but that’s sort of brief aspect.

Sam Berne (03:36)
Yes.

Well, you know, it’s something we share in common and I don’t talk about this that much but you know, the divining with the earth energies, you know, going to a nature spot and really listening and I know when you facilitated the group that was a really big part of developing people’s awareness on listening and listening to the earth because there’s so much wisdom in it and

Can you speak a little bit more about geomancy? What it is and you know that process that you facilitate around listening to the earth?

Doug Conwell (04:21)
Certainly, you know, it really is more of a, like you said, a listening meditative experience. But I remember years ago here in Santa Fe, an Australian Aboriginal woman was in town as a guest of somebody and she said what their people do is to go out on the land and lay down and feel the earth, you know, from the top of their head to the bottom of their feet. And when they need to kind of release whatever anxiety or stress that they’ve got, they breathe in to

head, let that breath travel down through their whole body and through their spine and down into the earth, giving thanks to the earth for taking those, you know, that stress and transforming it, neutralizing it. So there’s so much written on this. People can certainly access all of that. But the goal that I think Earthwalks and I have for this kind of experience is really a listening goal.

but it’s one that you can use when you’re in the parking lot at McDonald’s. Okay? Yes, it’s important. You absolutely need to go on retreats to amazing places like Chaco Canyon, a World Heritage site where it’s free of cell phones and asphalt and traffic and all of that kind of a thing. But once you have begun to listen, you can go back into a place like McDonald’s, you know, in the parking lot.

and you start looking at things much more carefully. It’s a process of looking to at the details around you, not just taking things for granted. you know, there are a lot of…

Sam Berne (05:59)
Yeah, I, you know, I’ve I’ve experienced that a lot in both in New Mexico and in Hawaii and you know, the indigenous culture is such a big part of well, what you spotlight and I was wondering if you could talk about the relationship between the indigenous the Celtic because I know that’s part of your background.

and some of the shamanic traditions. That would be a great juxtaposition. So what do you have to say about?

Doug Conwell (06:35)
Well, I didn’t know much about that before I moved to Santa Fe, moved to New Mexico. I think that’s why I moved here, was to learn from the continuing indigenous cultures here in this region. And then I found out, yes, there are similar ways of accessing that information inside ourselves and in nature in my own background, as you said.

Sam Berne (08:35)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it’s really critical. Another thing that I’m taking about is this idea of initiation and we all go through initiations all the time and you had an experience. You shared with me about being at Bear Mountain. Where is Bear Mountain and what happened to you? Yeah.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

Wow.

Sure. So we’re here with Doug Conwell. He’s founder of Earthwalks and he’s involved in a lot of different healing processes. He runs retreats and he’s just a spectacular human being. I hope you guys check out his website. I’ll certainly put all that in the notes and contact him if you’re interested.

So we’re coming down to the end, but I wanted to ask you about Chaco Canyon and why people should know about Chaco.

So how can people learn more about it? What are some resources, you know about that you could, you know, point people to?

Okay.

That’s great. And you also take people to Chaco. Tell us a little bit about… Say again? Sure.

Mm-hmm. So I know you lead groups there. Tell us a little bit about, you know, the process in terms of taking people and what you do and things like that. Yuri.

Yes. Yes. Yeah, what what are some of the things that you you spotlight when you take people on on a trip like what I know you do it like once a year and you know, you have phenomenal people that are attracted. I mean, it’s such a great dynamic group.

Can you talk a little bit about the, yeah.

Very good.

Yes. Yeah, that is. So how do people get in touch with you, Doug?

And I will put your website and that email address on the show notes at the beginning so that people can refer to that and we will be putting this out on a video on YouTube and my website and then it will go through Apple and Spotify. So we’ll we’ll get the word out for you and I want to thank you for your

generosity of spirit coming on today and I look forward to celebrating with you in the future. So take good care and thanks for being on.

Please check out my membership.  Access to my video: The 7 Day Liver Cleanse.  Click link to watch: https://drsambernesmembership.com/zen/7-day-liver-cleanse-members-852bfb

Practitioners!  Consider my practitioners’ course.  Link: https://www.drsamberne.com/practitioners-training/

Show Notes:

Keywords

vision therapy, mentorship, eye health, functional vision, holistic health, Sam Berne, optometry, brain health, emotional health, spiritual health
Summary

In this conversation, Sam Berne discusses his journey in the field of optometry, focusing on the development of his Functional Vision Integrative Body program. He reflects on the importance of mentorship in his career, highlighting key figures who influenced his approach to vision therapy and holistic health. Berne emphasizes the integration of various therapeutic modalities and the impact of vision therapy on cognitive and emotional well-being.

Takeaways

Sam Berne has developed a program called Functional Vision Integrative Body.
The program integrates various therapeutic modalities for holistic health.
Mentorship played a crucial role in Berne’s professional development.
Dr. Bob Sanit was a significant mentor in vision therapy.
Vision therapy can lead to neuroplasticity and cognitive improvements.
Berne emphasizes the importance of emotional and spiritual health.
He offers professional coaching for health practitioners and entrepreneurs.
The membership program provides exclusive content on health and spirituality.
Berne’s experiences in San Diego shaped his approach to optometry.
He values the relationships built with mentors throughout his career.
Sound Bites

“I highly recommend it.”
“I know you East Coast people.”
Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Functional Vision Integrative Body
03:05 The Impact of Mentorship in Optometry
10:05 Reflections on Influential Figures in Vision Therapy

Sam Berne (00:00)
Hey everyone, welcome to the program. Before we start. I have a few announcements. First of all, many of you know that I’ve started a practitioners training and it’s called functional vision integrative body.

And this has come after 40 years of distilling a lot of information, not only about improving your eyes and vision, but things like brain health, body health, working on a physical, emotional and spiritual level, using things like color therapy, iridology, craniosacral, somatic movement and many other things.

So I’ve written up this course for non eye doctor. So it’s a coaching program and it works for any practitioner. let’s say you’re a chiropractor and somebody comes in and they’re complaining about their eyes while they’re exercises and strategies and educational things that you can teach your clients or patients to get better.

I’ve been working with a few body workers like massage therapists, craniosecral therapists, somatic experiencing therapists, and they’re just loving the program. So if you’re interested, contact me appointments at drsamburn.com and we can have a conversation. See if it’s a good fit for you. The other thing I want to mention is my membership program. We’re going on

year number three and what I’ve done is I’ve taken a lot of my creative energies that I used to put towards social media and I’ve created content that is exclusively for the membership.

about 20 bucks a month. It’s really worth it. If you’re interested in some of the deeper issues that might be going on not only about your eyes, but about health, spirituality, meditation, energy, medicine, things like that.

So if you’re interested in the membership, I highly recommend it. You can go to my website, drsamburn.com and right below the word vision, you’ll see membership and you can click on that and there’s a free day of free seven day period where you can join and you can peruse the content.

What I’ve started to do over the last few weeks is post my written blogs. I’ve written a lot of written blogs over the years and I’m starting to post those in the membership. know some people like like to read and so we’re going to offer you things whether you listen watch or read.

reduce the resistance in your quest of the information. The last thing I’m going to be offering which I’ve actually started is some professional coaching in the area of marketing, social media, brand building.

I’ve been very successful at doing those things. In fact, I was recognized by a nonprofit organization here in Santa Fe to offer seminars and do some private coaching. And of course, this is all volunteer, but I want to widen the net. So if you’re a health practitioner, if you’re a young entrepreneur,

Contact me, you can go to my business website, eyeclaritybusinesssolutions.com and you can read some of my blogs and some of my offerings. And if you want some help in the area of growing your business, I love working with young entrepreneurs, that’s what I’ve done with this nonprofit, contact me and we can see if we’re a good fit.

Okay, let’s go on to the show today. The things that I think about a lot and my philosophies that I’ve developed is the relationship that I had with many older eye doctors and educators when I was just starting out and they were mentoring me.

And today I would like to talk about three mentors who had a huge influence on me. And every time I start a session with somebody or I’m giving a workshop, I take a few minutes before I start and I am so grateful for all of my mentors, teachers, people who have helped me develop my

philosophy and how I help people. And one of the first people that I met, I was actually still in optometry school and I went to the Pennsylvania College of Optometry in Philadelphia and that was a very medically oriented school. You know, it’s from the East Coast and very intellectual that school really focused on eye disease and pathology as it still does now and

I had the opportunity to go out West and do an internship in a doctor’s office who was practicing vision therapy and behavioral optometry and his name was dr. Bob Sanet. This point. Dr. Sanet is probably yeah in his mid 70s. I think he’s retired. I haven’t spoken to him in a long time.

But I’m so fond of him because I remember landing in San Diego. That’s where his practice was. And the first thing he said to me was well, I know you East Coast people. All you like to do is go to the beach when you come out to California. And I said no, Dr. Sanet actually I’m here to learn your method.

And what was amazing about his practice is that he would see like 60 patients a week who were just doing the physical vision therapy and he and his wife Linda. She was also, you know, one of my teachers and just amazing person and one of the vision therapist Margie Thompson Margie ended up because of her.

Well, what happened with her own kids and getting so much benefit in vision therapy and seeing so many kids flower and be able to go back and learn to read and read to learn and just, you know, just take off after vision therapy. She started an organization called Parents Active for Vision Education, PAVE.

And so the three of them really helped me and I just just going to the office every day and you know, I started to work with some of his patients after he trained me and really saw the transformation.

and the neuroplasticity that our visual system has as it relates to our brain learning, cognition, memory, and so many other things. And his vision therapy program,

was so successful that he had the largest vision therapy practice in San Diego. San Diego is there is kind of a cloud over San Diego in the sense of this big military. There’s also a big military. I’m sorry big medical model up in La Jolla.

with the Scripps Institute and ophthalmology and so on. So there was definitely a little bit of resistance, but Dr. Sanet, because he had so much success with both kids and adults, really developed a great practice. And he had this internship program where I’m sure hundreds of young optometrists came to him and he influenced them.

And I know in my time there, you know, I just learned so many things about how to evaluate, how to diagnose, how to treat, how to set up a treatment plan. And one of the most interesting treatment modalities that I still use today is something called parketry blocks. And these are special blocks. They come in a kit.

And it’s a way to develop visual perception, visual memory, form perception, figure ground. These are some of the kind of more cognitive executive function visual skills. And one of their influences was a optometrist from the Pittsburgh area is actually originally from Washington DC and moved to Pittsburgh and his name is Harry Wachs and Dr. Wachs worked a lot with Piaget.

So he had this whole method of helping kids develop better cognitive skills. He wrote a book called thinking goes to school. you ever want to look it up with Harry Wachs and Hans Furth. Anyways, Bob Sanet and Linda really

really took Dr. Wax’s stuff, especially in the parketry area and developed their own method of helping kids really problem solve learn. And it was, it was a great, adjunct to, you he worked with strabismus crossed eyes, lazy eye. He was just really, really adept at that. And I remember at the end of the training, he actually, there was an opening in his practice and he offered me a job. And I was so flattered by that.

by that offer and it was a really hard decision for me. But I knew it wasn’t the right thing for me to do even though my mantra is go West young man. I ended up moving to New Mexico about five years later. I needed to do some things back in the East Coast and I just wasn’t ready to move to Southern California and go into his practice. But we remained friends and I so appreciate him and think about him every day.

Both he and his wife. So that’s my number one mentor. I think I’m going to end it here. I want to thank you so much for tuning in today. Share this podcast. If you found it helpful again, you can go to my social media feeds and also my website: www.drsamberne.com and until next time everyone take good care.

Are you a practitioner? Learn about Dr. Berne’s practitioner’s program here:
https://www.drsamberne.com/practitioners-training/

For even more from Dr. Sam, check out his new exclusive membership where you get access to my content and resources, new information, articles, videos, webinars: https://drsambernesmembership.com/

Keywords

liver health, gallbladder, eye health, detoxification, herbal remedies, nutrition, holistic health, acupuncture, wellness, vision

Summary

In this episode, Dr. Sam Berne explores the intricate connection between liver and gallbladder health and its impact on vision. He discusses the liver’s multifaceted functions, the role of the gallbladder, and how liver health directly influences eye health. Dr. Berne shares various detoxification strategies, herbal remedies, and a comprehensive seven-day detox program to enhance liver and gallbladder function, ultimately supporting better vision and overall wellness.
Takeaways

The liver is a detoxification organ with over 500 functions.
Liver health is crucial for eye health and vision.
Bile production and fat absorption are essential for nutrient uptake.
Herbs like milk thistle and dandelion root support liver health.
Hydration and bitter greens stimulate bile flow.
Emotional health can be affected by liver congestion.
A liver gallbladder cleanse can improve vitamin absorption.
A balanced diet is key for liver and gallbladder health.
Spending time in nature can enhance overall well-being.
Regular detoxification can lead to better eyesight and energy levels.
Sound Bites

“Milk thistle helps in liver regeneration.”
“Bitter greens help stimulate bile flow.”
Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Liver and Gallbladder Health
01:51 Understanding Liver Functions
03:15 The Role of the Gallbladder
06:04 Connection Between Liver Health and Eye Health
07:56 Detoxification Strategies for Liver and Gallbladder
12:12 Seven-Day Detox Program Overview

Hey everybody, it’s Dr. Sam and I’d like to welcome you to the burn podcast today. We’re to be talking about the liver gallbladder connection as it relates to vision. Before we get to that. I want to remind people about my membership. Dr. Sam burn membership. This has exclusive content things you won’t see on social media my online courses and other very interesting opinions.

That I don’t put on social media. So if you want to join you can go to my website, dr. Sam burn.com and in the home page, you’ll see join membership to today’s show. So I don’t know whether you know this, but I discovered it when I first moved to Santa Fe. It’s been over 30 years and I met an acupuncturist who was

working a lot with liver gallbladder health as it relates to eye health. Now in optometry school, I never knew anything around the connection between the liver gallbladder and the eyes. And when I took some courses in acupuncture, I couldn’t believe as we studied the meridians of the body, how much the liver gallbladder has on our

not only our eye health, but our digestive health, our brain health. And yet it’s something in allopathic medicine that’s pretty overlooked. So I want to talk about that relationship today. What you can do to support better liver gallbladder health. What’s the function of the liver gallbladder? What are some detoxes you can do? So that’s going to be our show for today. So let’s start with the basics. What is the function of the liver?

Well, it’s a detoxification organ. has over 500 functions in the body as a detoxification organ. It helps filter things like toxins in the environment drugs that you might be taking and it also removes metabolic waste from the blood. The liver also produces bile which aids our digestion and helps in the absorption of fat soluble.

Sam Berne (02:20.558)
foods and vitamins. Probably the main ones are vitamin A, which is great for our retina cornea eyelids and lutein and zeaxanthin which help prevent macular degeneration. The liver also helps in the metabolism of our fats proteins and carbohydrates. The liver also stores our glycogen. Here are a list of vitamins that store the liver vitamin A D

E and K also stores vitamin B12. Now, if you’re a vegan or a vegetarian, you want to make sure you’re getting some type of vitamin B12 supplement. The liver also synthesizes blood clotting factors. Liver also boosts the immune system. It has something called cup for cells and these cells destroy pathogens.

and old blood cells. The gallbladder is very interesting because it actually stores the bile that the liver produces. So the gallbladder holds the fats until digestion is needed. Bile goes into the small intestine to emulsify fats for absorption. It also assists in the breakdown of cholesterol. What are the signs we see in the eye if a person has difficulty breaking down and excreting the cholesterol?

is an Archesinellus, a white ring that’s around the edge of the iris. When we see this, we know that there could be a problem either in the liver production of the bile or the storage of it in the gallbladder. So there’s some liver signs that I see in the iris. And if there is a congestion in the liver and or the gallbladder, I like to use herbal remedies.

to flush the liver and increase the liver function. So some of those herbs are number one, milk thistle, which protects against toxins and milk thistle helps in liver regeneration. Another herb I like is dandelion root. This stimulates bile production and it supports detoxification. Also like the Indian spice turmeric, it’s anti-inflammatory, it supports bile flow and it protects the liver.

Sam Berne (04:42.21)
I recommend burdock root. This root cleans the blood and aids in detoxification. And my last one is yellow dock, which also supports detoxification and liver health. So here are some of my favorite strategies that support liver gallbladder health. Number one is hydration. Drinking high quality filtered water, structured water, high pH water like Kagan water.

is great for detoxifying the cells. Number two is bitter greens. This would be things like arugula, kale and dandelion greens, which help stimulate bile flow. Start your day with a squeeze of lemon and some warm water. This also stimulates liver cleansing. four is eating high fiber foods, things like chia seeds, flax seeds.

And of course, don’t forget your vegetables and sprouted raw seeds and nuts avocados. This also helps increase bile flow and then of course avoid alcohol processed foods and sugar. I recommend lifestyle practices like putting castor oil packs on the liver gallbladder area. It’s some acupuncture that targets the liver gallbladder meridians get regular exercise which stimulates the lymphatic health.

And then if you have one use an infrared sauna daily traditional Chinese medicine. The liver is connected to our eye health and the gallbladder is connected to our mental clarity and decision-making liver stores the blood which nourishes our eyes. This is a key point. If your liver is congested some of the eye symptoms you might experience would be blurry vision dry eyes and floaters.

If your liver and gallbladder are overburdened, you might experience things like inflammation in the eyes. This is where you get conditions like blepharitis, dry eye syndrome, and even more serious inflammatory diseases like uveitis, which has an autoimmune effect to our body. When the energy of the liver meridian to the eyes is congested, we call this Qi stagnation. It can lead to emotional outbursts.

Sam Berne (07:01.238)
like anger and you experience eye stress, eye tension and dryness. And if you’re working on a digital device all day, it’s only going to make matters worse for the gallbladder, which stores the bile. It’s very important that you have good fat absorption. If you don’t, you’re not absorbing your vitamin A D E or K. This is going to affect your eye health directly.

And even if you take supplements that have lutein and zeaxanthin in it, or you eat foods that contain lutein and zeaxanthin, if you’re not absorbing your fats, you’re not absorbing these ingredients. And this can lead to conditions like macular degeneration, dry eye, glaucoma, and retina issues. So doing a liver gallbladder cleanse can help you absorb those fat soluble vitamins, which are crucial.

for your eye and vision health. So here’s my seven day liver gallbladder detoxification program. Day one, start the day by squeezing half a lemon in some warm water and drink it before you have any coffee tea or breakfast. The benefits of this lemon water stimulate bio production help alkalinize the body and I would get some either herbal formulas or teas.

that contain the following herbs number one dandelion root number two milk thistle number three yellow dock number four burdock root and drink this tea before you have breakfast consider doing a morning smoothie. So my base tea is something called oat straw tea. So it’s a hot drink and I put in a stock of celery a little bit of beet some lemon

maybe a half an apple and a teaspoon of flaxseed. What I like to do to create flaxseed powder is I take some flaxseeds and I put them in a coffee grinder and then I just grind them up and I store them in the refrigerator. That way you can put them on your salads. You can put it in the smoothies. It’s a great way to absorb flaxseeds. Peets are great for the liver. And by taking this smoothie before you eat,

Sam Berne (09:20.142)
It helps your digestion. get live plant enzymes and loads of antioxidants that are easy to absorb mid morning. I would take a milk thistle capsule 250 to 300 milligrams mid morning. Also, you could have some ginger tea, some peppermint tea, something again to support your digestive system for lunch. I need a healthy salad that contains kale avocado dandelion root arugula cilantro include in the salad beets.

carrots and I would add some pumpkin seeds. This contains zinc, which is a very important trace mineral that helps in the absorption of fat soluble foods and vitamins for the salad dressing. I would make my own olive oil and apple cider vinegar. Apple cider vinegar is one of my favorite things to use as a way to alkalinize the body and it’s high in potassium for snacks in the mid afternoon. I would use cucumber celery and maybe a handful of walnuts.

For dinner, I would recommend a soup that contains broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, these cruciferous vegetables. They are sulfur rich that help in detoxification. Make sure to add garlic and onions and a base of bone broth, which will help in your mineral absorption. I would have some turmeric tea with a pinch of black pepper and some coconut oil. And then before bed, I would do a liver.

detox drink which contains one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar. Make sure it’s raw and unfiltered in an 8 ounce glass of warm water. I would also add a dash of manuka honey. If you have it, this will support a gentle detox while you sleep. I would learn a breathing practice things like pranayama or other yogic breathing could be very helpful in terms of stimulating relaxation. I also like to do skin brushing.

before any shower or bath and of course avoid things like caffeine, alcohol, processed foods and sugar. Some other strategies to detoxify and flush your liver would be number one, get some bitters, put them in an eight ounce glass of water, sip it before a meal, take your omega-3s during this time before you eat and also some dietary enzymes. This will help flush the liver

Sam Berne (11:43.806)
and stimulate your digestion before you eat. I also recommend a magnesium formula and if you’re going to do any sweetening things, I would do 70 % cacao. You can make that into a drink or you can have it as a little snack, but keep the sugars and the chocolates in a low glycemic form. Some of the signs of progress could be better eyesight, better sleep, healthier skin, more balanced energy.

Also, one last thing. I think it’s very important to spend some time every day in nature. That’s a way where you can slow down. You get into the rhythm of nature, enjoy the sunshine, especially in the morning. If you do these things, I think you can support better liver gallbladder health. So if you’ve got any questions, send me an email appointments at dr. Sam burn.com. I’m happy to consult with you.

That’s our show for today. I want to thank you so much for tuning in until next time. Take care.

Keywords

myopia, eye strain, reduced prescription, vision correction, eye health, nearsightedness, eye muscles, prescription glasses, vision therapy, eye fatigue
Summary

In this episode, Dr. Sam Berne addresses a common concern regarding myopia and the adjustment to reduced prescriptions. He explains the physiological and psychological factors contributing to eye strain and muscle tension when transitioning to a less strong prescription. Dr. Berne emphasizes the importance of understanding the habits that lead to eye strain and offers practical advice for easing into new prescriptions, ultimately highlighting the potential benefits of reduced prescriptions for improving overall eye health.
Takeaways

Reduced prescriptions can reveal underlying eye muscle tension.
Eye strain is often a result of habitual squinting and straining.
Adjusting to a reduced prescription requires patience and practice.
Wearing a less strong prescription can improve distance vision over time.
Overcorrection in eye exams can lead to unnecessary strain.
Prescription glasses can have side effects similar to medication.
Understanding your prescription is key to managing eye health.
Children may need guidance to adapt to new prescriptions.
Chronic eye issues may improve with reduced prescriptions.
Awareness of eye habits is crucial for better vision.
Sound Bites

“Any prescription that you wear is like a drug.”
Chapters

00:00 Understanding Myopia and Reduced Prescriptions
02:56 The Impact of Eye Strain and Muscle Tension
04:54 Adjusting to New Prescriptions and Habits

Hey everybody, it’s Dr. Sam and I’d like to welcome you to the podcast. So I received a question from a mom who I’m working with her son who’s got nearsightedness. This is a very interesting question. So I gave him a prescription that reduces his myopia and she said that he’s having a hard time adjusting to the prescription that is creating eye strain and his eye muscles hurt and she wants to know

Sam Berne (00:30.71)
what she can do to tell him to get used to the prescription. Well, it’s interesting because when you’re presented with a reduced prescription, your eyes should relax. Basically, any reduced prescription is saying, can I let go with my muscles and can I release and relax?

Sam Berne (00:56.694)
Now in this particular case, there’s two possible scenarios going on. The first is that and this is very common with people that start wearing reduced prescriptions. They start feeling their eye muscles more and they start feeling this area. Whereas before it was very a very unrealized area, meaning they had no awareness of it. And so when you wear something that’s less tight,

Sam Berne (01:26.402)
Guess what happens all of that tightness that you’ve absorbed over years of the strong prescription. You feel that so it’s showing you what’s already there. It’s not causing it, but the relaxation potential is showing you the tension that you’ve been carrying for a long time. The second part of this is

Sam Berne (01:54.921)
It’s not the prescription that’s causing the eye tension. It’s the attitude and habits that we bring to the prescription that creates the eye tension. So this means that we’re so used to having it clear that when we’re given a softer prescription and it’s a little on the soft blurry side, we immediately want to get rid of it by squinting and straining.

Sam Berne (02:23.595)
So we’re back to our old habits again.

Sam Berne (02:28.321)
Yeah, exactly. So the reduced prescription is going to confront the habit of you wanting to squint and strain and muscle it. So what I told the mother is just invite the child to wear this reduced prescription at near at the 14 inches, maybe maybe 20 inches at the most. But don’t try to wear it in the distance for now.

Sam Berne (02:56.171)
I mean the prescription was prescribed for near vision to begin with and it can be a big jump and kind of disorienting if you get this reduced prescription and you have the expectation that it should be clear in the distance. Now what will happen over time is that if you get used to the reduced prescription you’ll notice that your distance acuity improves and you know, you’re there when

Sam Berne (03:25.633)
You then put on the strong prescription and you start getting a headache. You start feeling the eye ache and you go, wow, this is what I used to wear all the time. And now I’m aware that it’s too tight for me. It’s too strong for me. And you know, I have to say that in my years of practice, I would reduce so many prescriptions during the exam.

Sam Berne (03:54.741)
And people actually saw more clearly because the way the eye exam is done.

Sam Berne (04:01.015)
You’re going to overcorrect people. You’re going to make the lens too strong. And you know, this really speaks to some of the adults that have chronic things like flashing lights or posterior vitreous detachment or even some, you know, retinal lattice degeneration all those retina problems. If you are nearsighted your prescription is too strong for you. And if you start wearing something less the retina

Sam Berne (04:30.959)
the flashing lights start to reduce and eventually go away so you don’t have that traction. So it’s very interesting to note that you know any prescription that you wear is like a drug. The prescription, eyeglasses and contacts have been approved by the FDA and they’re side effects.

Sam Berne (04:54.329)
And for nearsightedness, especially if you’re wearing something too strong, you’re going to pay the price and that price is going to be tension, compression, muscle pain, eye strain, eye fatigue and on and on. So I really appreciate the question and I hope that’s helpful. So that’s it for today. That’s my show. I want to thank you for tuning in until next time. Take care.

Keywords
holistic eye care, vision improvement, eye health tips, behavioral optometry, Sam Berne, eye exercises, nutrition for eyes, blue light protection, workshops, private sessions
summary
In this engaging conversation, Dr. Sam Berne shares his insights on holistic eye care, emphasizing the importance of daily habits for maintaining eye health. He discusses the impact of nutrition, sunlight, and eye exercises, while also highlighting his workshops and private sessions aimed at personalized care. The discussion also touches on the effects of screen time on vision and the significance of blue light protection.
takeaways
• Dr. Sam Berne is a behavioral optometrist with a holistic approach.
• Morning sunlight is crucial for resetting circadian rhythms.
• A diet rich in colorful vegetables supports eye health.
• Eye exercises can enhance circulation and oxygenation in the eyes.
• Light is essential for overall health and energy fields.
• Social media has expanded Dr. Berne’s reach to a global audience.
• Workshops are tailored to individual goals and health needs.
• Private sessions focus on treating the root causes of vision problems.
• Blue light from screens can negatively affect eye health.
• The Palm Hum exercise is beneficial for relaxation and eye care
Sound Bites
• “Get some morning sunlight.”
• “Light is a food, don’t be afraid of it.”
• “Blue light can dry your eyes out.”
• “It’s the Palm Hum by Dr. Sam.”
Chapters
00:00Introduction and Welcome Back to Kauai
01:59Understanding Holistic Eye Care
04:59Daily Habits for Eye Health
08:57Exploring Sam’s Books and Workshops
11:55Private Sessions and Personalized Care
16:00The Impact of Screens on Eye Health

Here for my interview on KKCR, Public Radio Kauai. I was here about a year and a half ago and back again with my friend Tracy Shavarone, who’s gonna have me on and interview me. So stay tuned.

to Dr. Sam Berne. Aloha Sam. Aloha. So nice to see you in person. I know we’re face to face. We’re face to face. Eye to eye. Welcome back to Kauai. Yeah, feels great to be here. We just had 15 inches of snow in Santa Fe so nice to be in the tropics. Isn’t that kind of unusual to have that much snow this early? Well it used to be with climate change you know we’re

getting that much snow but back in the 90s yeah we used to get that kind of snow end of October beginning in November what a blessing you know it lowers the fire risk and

Anyway, it’s great to be here in the humidity. was mentioning I was in New Mexico in October and it was very, very dry. I definitely had to put lotion on my skin. It is a high desert environment. I have to warn people about that. It was so beautiful. Mexico is just spectacular.

It really is the land of enchantment. really is and so much space there, open land, great hiking, nature, Chaco Canyon and all those magical places.

Sam Berne (01:34.765)
Well, and of course, kawaii has its own magic, which brings you back. I know it’s like a magnet that keeps bringing me back. So for those of you who have never met Dr. Sam Byrne, I’m going to have him like introduce himself. But he’s the author of many books and he is a holistic, I would say a holistic eye doctor. I don’t know if that’s what you would consider yourself, but.

Yes, well I’m a behavioral optometrist, doctor of optometry, but I have studied many different healing modalities and my mission is to help people regain their eyesight if it’s deteriorating, improve their vision as they get older, work with kids with learning problems and the spectrum disorders, autism, the ADD, there’s a very big vision component.

to it, traumatic brain injury, people that want to reduce their prescriptions. So I’ve devoted my career, you know, it’s four decades, and still going strong, helping people with their health and their vision.

But you do use it well, except your holistic approaches. Yeah, well, know, when listeners, you go to the eye doctor and they give you a stronger prescription and they tell you how you have a disease and you’re going to lose your sight or drug surgery and needles. That’s the,

the standard care. So just learning things like functional medicine, what do you eat to preserve your eyes? How does the sun affect your eyes? What about being on computers? You know, so there’s a lot of things that you can do to take better care of this major modality that we relate to the world with. And usually I get people where they’ve gone to the doctor and it’s, my goodness, I’m going to lose my sight or I have to get surgery. And that’s where I come in and I can…

Sam Berne (03:34.797)
do some interventions to help them. for people listening right now, what are some of the daily habits people can incorporate to keep their eyes as healthy as possible or even improve their eye health? Well, to keep it simple, there three main things. Number one, get some morning sunlight. The research backs that up, that when you get morning sunlight, it actually resets your

circadian rhythm and it puts you into a better mood and it’s great for your eyesight and vision. Number two, eat a diet that involves the rainbow of vegetables and if we think about the red, orange, yellow, green vegetables, those feed the retina, the macula and the cornea.

And so if you eat a healthy diet, low processed or no processed foods, and reduce or eliminate sugar, you have a great chance to preserve your eyesight. And number three, eye exercises work really well to improve the circulation and oxygenation in the eyes. One of my famous ones is called the palm hum exercise. That’s where you rub your hands together for a few seconds

you cup your hands over your eyes and you breathe in through your nose and on the exhale you make a humming sound and you do about six or eight of those after a day on the computer and that will improve your circulation, oxygenation, lubricate your eyes and balance your nervous system. So those are three simple things that you can do to preserve your vision.

And those are all totally doable. And I love the rainbow vegetables because for me I like to have a lot of colors in my food because I feel like I’m also nourishing my chakras when I eat all those colors on that more esoteric level. Yeah, well, there’s a camera that I use called a GDV camera. This measures energy fields, chakras, and acupuncture meridians. And we did research on how the chakras were impacted when we fed people

Sam Berne (05:54.761)
color therapy through their eyes. And we found that when they looked at different colors, overall their chakras got more balanced and more lined up and larger. So the eyes are the organ of light that transports that light throughout the entire body. Light is a food, don’t be afraid of it. And yeah, it affects our energy fields and our…

our meridians and so yeah very much so. If you just tuned in I’ll speak with Dr. Sam Byrne and so Sam I’d love for you to give out your website and like any other information if you want to give out your phone number how long will you be here on Kauai? I’ll be here through next Wednesday and we have a workshop scheduled this Saturday. The registration closes tomorrow morning.

So you can call me 505-9200-317. I’m also doing some private sessions. So if you want some one-on-one time, give me a call. My website is drsamberne.com. I’m also very active on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. So you can type my name in and I have thousands of free videos.

a membership so if you want to go deeper with me you can do that. Lots of ways to learn about what I’m doing. you mentioned like I think every social media out there so I’m just curious what how has social media changed your ability to assist people in their lives?

Well, it helps me connect to people that probably would have never heard from me or about me. And I have a international following. So people say in Germany or Australia, you know, they get to see my content and it gives them another opportunity to, you know, to help themselves. My mission is to educate and I give away my content for free. I also have a podcast.

Sam Berne (08:06.933)
the burn podcast and so with all of those different channels I’m able to reach people video, audio, written and it’s really been a great service to be able to connect with people on so many levels from many different locations.

So once again, if you just tuned in, I’m speaking with Dr. Sam Byrne. And now I know you have authored quite a few books, and do you want to just mention some of those? Because I know you were here, was it last year, or was it this year when you were here for your latest book? It was last April, and it was a book called Vital Vision, and that’s my newest book that’s been out about a year. You can get that on Amazon, both ebook and also written. I’ve written, my first book was called Creating Your

personal vision. I wrote that in 1994. I did a new edition about two, three years ago that has eye exercises in it. I also wrote a book about nutrition called Taking It In and how foods affect our vision and our brain. And then I wrote a book called I Sense, How to Play in the Field of Healing, where I talk about energy, medicine, and my research swimming with the wild dolphins on the Big Island and how that impacted

people’s energy fields and chakras and did that. Our last trip was 2020 before COVID. So there’s books on my website. You just go to DrSamBurn.com and you can order them if you want. So now the workshop, the workshop on Saturday, we want to talk a little bit about what that format will be.

Well, you know, people bring their individual situations to the table. And so we’re going to figure out what each person’s goals and objectives are. And then we’ll tailor the workshop to how it’s going to help people. And it could be through somatic movement. It could be through color therapy, vision, physical therapy, exercises. I also do something called iridology that’s being able to read the iris. You take a picture of the iris.

Sam Berne (10:19.735)
the colored part of the eye and that maps to the body so you can see what your liver health is, gallbladder, pancreas, thyroid, get to see genetic tendencies, things that maybe were in your family and nurture points. What are things that you can do to nurture your systemic health that not only improves your vision but can improve your health and wellness also.

And once again, how can someone register for that? Just give me a call 505-920-0317 and we can do the registration process on the phone. Also, if you want to do a session, we can book one. I am licensed to practice optometry in Hawaii, which is an advantage. So if you need prescriptions or anything like that, I can certainly address those needs for you. And your website again?

www.drsamburn.com. B-E-R-N-E. Check it out, there’s a lot of great stuff on there.

Yeah, if you want to interact, just send me an email and we can talk. So you’re offering private sessions. now, I mean, know, of course, you customize those to what the people’s issues are. But is there anything in particular, things that you are always sort of working with with people? What does the private session entail? mean, do you do it, do you take an iridology picture? mean, what does that entail? Well, you know, people have

problems. so listening is very important and meeting people where they are around, know, what are their symptoms? And of course we want to treat the cause, not the symptoms. So it could be anything from, for example, somebody’s prescription is too strong that they’re wearing and it gives them a headache. So how to reduce it but still allow them to see clearly, maybe giving them some eye relaxation exercises if they work on screens a lot.

Sam Berne (12:25.465)
or let’s say you’ve been diagnosed with cataracts or glaucoma or macular degeneration or dry eye, something that you’re tired of using pharmaceuticals or you’re facing surgery, then there could be some nutritional, herbal, aromatherapy, functional medicine things that could turn things around. One of the new research studies that’s coming out is on something called photobiomodulation. This is using red light on

the eyes to increase the mitochondria function. And when you increase the mitochondria function, you reduce inflammation and oxidative stress. So there’s a way that I’ve developed red light therapy for the eyes that’s not too bright, and it allows a reversal of certain eye conditions. So Glenn Jeffries was an ophthalmologist in the UK who did a study on red light therapy and macular degeneration. You could Google that.

So there’s lots of different techniques with the overall intention is to help people move out of the danger zone if things are deteriorating.

Sam Berne (13:48.813)
private sessions with individuals if you’re interested. He can be reached at 505-920-0317. Once again, that’s 505-920-0317 and he will be here through next Wednesday, or? Yes, that’s correct.

And is there any particular area of the island where you are seeing patients just so people know? In the Princeville area. But if you contact me, I can give you directions. And it’s a nice, comfortable house. So it’s great. Just want to let people know, you’re visiting from the west side, it’s on the North Shore. Sure. We’re on the North Shore. Yeah, exactly.

again your website? DrSamBurn.com. And do you have your own YouTube channel? I do DrSamBurn you can go on that we post our video podcasts we do YouTube shorts long long material so we have tons of free videos on YouTube if you want to go there just type in my name and

Watch away. Watch away. So now you said you also have a podcast. where is that? Well, I do both an audio through Apple iTunes and Spotify and all the major sites. So that’s audio. Some people like to walk their dog and listen or they’re commuting in the city. And then we do a video version which we post on YouTube. So yeah, there’s a lot of different ways to reach that podcast. It’s called the burn podcast. And I’ve done hundreds of shows on a variety

of different subjects.

Sam Berne (16:00.783)
from Port Allen tomorrow and interact. Hopefully maybe we’ll see some whales and turtles and dolphins. And then actually I brought my golf clubs so I’m going to be playing some golf and get a little morning sunlight and then probably do some hiking. it’s already been great so far.

So let’s get back to eyes though. So you mentioned something about the screens, we’re on screens a lot. I know for my glasses I have one of those, what is it, that like blue thing that supposedly helps your eyes when you’re using screens, I forget what it’s called. Yeah, it’s called a blue protection lens or a blue filter or something, you know, depends on the company. So basically what’s coming off screens these days is chaotic blue light. And over time,

this blue light can dry your eyes out, can create inflammation and eye strain, dryness. So the blue light is definitely, in some circles they’ll say it’s actually even like a neurotoxin. So by doing blue protection on the lenses, you can actually get a screen protector as well on your phone or your tablet or your computer.

It’s really important to take frequent breaks on the computer and after 6 p.m. when you’re on the screens, the blue light tricks the pineal gland to reduce melatonin, which is our sleep hormone. So it’s a little more difficult to go to sleep if you’re on your screens before bed. I would stop using your digital one hour before you go to sleep, allow yourself to get away from all that chaotic screen time.

do those things and then get out in the natural sunlight, look out into the distance, you know, then you have a good chance to reduce eye strain and dryness. so there three main things just to keep it simple. Number one, get morning natural sunlight about 30 minutes a day, studies of

Sam Berne (18:22.707)
that when you get that morning sunlight it resets your circadian rhythm and puts you in a better mood so your serotonin dopamine levels in the brain start start firing and it also improves your eyesight. Number two

Eliminate processed foods, eat a rainbow diet of vegetables. I’d probably add berries. That’s a really great food for night vision. So the red, orange, yellow, green vegetables are really, really important and that feeds the macula and the retina. And then number three, my exercise called the palm hum. You could Google it and you can watch a demo. Basically you rub your hands together for a few seconds, palm your eyes. You’re breathing in through the nose on the exhale.

you do a hum and you do about six humps and that’s going to bring more oxygenation, circulation and relaxation to your eyes and your nervous system. If do those things, you’re going to preserve your eyesight. Well, I love all three of those and they’re so doable. And just thinking about that, know, palming your eyes and humming, because I know, you know, there’s, of course, there’s all, you know, sound therapy and stuff, but when I think of humming, it’s sort of like your whole body kind of vibrates. it seems like, you know,

would just help with your parasympathetic nervous system. You know, in so many ways it could be beneficial. Parasympathetic nervous system, nitric oxide, which is an ingredient as a natural vasodilator. And your hands are like tuning forks. So when you’re humming and you get that vibration, that sound is going into the compressed tissue of the eyes. Sound is one of the best ways to release compressed tissue, whether you’re basically doing your own sound bath. I like that.

I love sound baths too. they’re great. loved by other people as well. So this is more of a self-produced sound bath that you can direct and regulate which is wonderful. And it’s the Palm Hum by Dr. Sam It’s the Palm Hum, yes. So Dr. Sam Byrne, thank you so much. Once again I’d love for you to give out your website and your phone number. Sure, website drsambyrne.com and my number is 505-920-0317.

Sam Berne (20:39.56)
Dr. Byrne is on island through next Wednesday. He is seeing private clients, having private sessions as well as offering a one-day workshop this Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and all that information is on

website? Is that on your Facebook page too? yeah, so it’s a lot of different places, but you can just give me a call and we can talk about it. So Tracy, thank you so much for having me on and best wishes to you. Well thank you Sam, it’s so good to see you again and I know I’ll see you in the course of the week. So, Aloha!

Keywords

binasal tapes, vision therapy, eye health, neuroplasticity, peripheral vision, double vision, lazy eye, visual coordination, stress relief, alternative therapies

Summary

In this conversation, Dr. Sam Berne discusses the concept and application of binasal tapes, a technique used in vision therapy. He shares his experiences and the origins of this method, highlighting its benefits for various visual issues such as double vision and lazy eye. The discussion emphasizes the importance of peripheral vision and how binaural tapes can help in enhancing visual coordination and relaxation, especially under stress.

Takeaways
• Binasal tapes are used to enhance peripheral vision.
• The technique was taught to Dr. Sam by Dr. Ellis Edelman.
• Binasal tapes can help with double vision and lazy eye.
• The eyes are connected to the brain’s mapping through visual input.
• Using these tapes can lead to profound visual relaxation.
• Stress affects vision and can lead to tunneling of sight.
• Binasal tapes provide a reference point for better vision.
• The technique is beneficial for patients with TBI.
• Neuroplasticity plays a role in how we perceive vision.
• The method is a gentle nudge to engage peripheral vision.

Sound Bites
• “These tapes help you in that process.”

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Binasal Tapes
02:48 The Technique and Its Origins
06:12 Applications and Benefits of Binasal Tapes

Sam Berne (00:02.222)
Hey everybody, welcome to the program today. I’m on my morning walk here in the forest and I thought I’d bring you along. I received a question from a listener on what are binasal tapes and how do they work?

So think about a pair of glasses and on the inside part of the glasses like on the we call it the nasal part or the nose part. We actually apply about one inch of tape on either side of the lenses. So you’ve got it on your right and the left and you have this tape in the middle.

So it’s by the nose, it’s by the nasal, it’s by the sinus. We call these bi-nasal tapes.

What are these and how do they work? Well, I have to rewind and I want to give many of my mentors kudos for sharing this with me. One of my former partners, Dr. Ellis Edelman. I was in practice with him for five years in Newtown square, Pennsylvania near Philadelphia. And when I started working with Dr. Edelman, I had just graduated the gazelle Institute and

Dr. Edelman was a graduate of the Gazelle Institute, except he had graduated about 40 years before I did. So he had a lot of experience and I thought this would be a good place to apprentice. so I began my practice in his office. I started renting space from him and it’s kind of hard to get patients. took a while. We were in a very conservative area of the main line of Philadelphia.

Sam Berne (01:51.598)
And people were not open at that time to alternative therapies. This was in the mid 1980s, but I hung out, hung in there with it and slowly and surely I began to attract my practice, my patients, and I built it up quite successfully, which I sold at the end of 1989 and moved out here to New Mexico.

in 1990 and started a practice in 1992. Just to give you some orientation. One of the techniques that dr. Edelman taught me was how to work with people either who over focused or tunneled their vision. And you know, when you tunnel your vision, you exclude your peripheral vision. One of that has to do with myopia.

where you just tighten up your vision and you you narrow it. So that would be one place where you might want to say, okay, how can we enhance your peripheral vision? Another application that we would see is double vision. So with the two eyes weren’t working together how to work with this and then of course the third situation would be if somebody had a crossed eye or a

even a wandering eye or they had lazy eye. So one I saw more clearly than the other. So he showed me this technique where you put black tape on the inside part of both lenses. And what it did immediately for most people is that gave them a reference point on where they needed to look and where they needed to look is where they weren’t looking.

Meaning that when you put something right in front of your eyes like this, you start opening up your peripheral vision. And if you want to reduce double vision, the way to do that is to enhance your peripheral vision on both sides. You know, the bigger the visual field, the more chance you have for the two eyes to overlap, especially if they’re separating.

Sam Berne (04:13.9)
And so these binasal tapes would get in the way of people’s habits of either tunneling crossing wandering double vision and it also would help wake up the eye that maybe wasn’t seeing as well. we do testing in the area of what we call visual coordination how well the two eyes work together and by putting these tapes on the inside part of the glasses.

First of all, you would feel a lot of eye relaxation and relief and second of all, it would get your two eyes to start to work together with the brain. So by wearing it over time because of the neuroplasticity capability in the visual system. Remember the eyes are the only part of the brain that sit outside the cranial vault. And what you’re doing is you’re creating a new mapping in the brain by changing

how the eyes are inputting the information. So these binasal tapes became a tool in my toolbox. And to this day, if somebody has double vision or a lazy eye or you know, they’re just tunneling their vision and they’re under a lot of stress. We use scotch tape. Now. We don’t use the the black electrical tape. So it kind of gives them the idea that okay, I need to use my peripheral a little more.

And it’s it’s quite a winner of an effective treatment that over a few weeks you can remove the tapes and your vision goes back to homeostasis. It goes back to normal where the double vision reduces in some cases even goes away and you have this really profound visual relaxation because the name of the game is opening up your peripheral vision.

And when you’re under stress, we say the sympathetic nervous system is overworking. You’re either traumatized. You’re in a fight flight freeze response. The eyes reflect what’s going on in your nervous system and your emotions your psychological reactions. And so the binaural tapes give you a gentle nudge to say, a minute. 90 % of my vision is in the periphery, which I’m not using.

Sam Berne (06:41.866)
What if what if I start engaging that so these tapes help you in that process. So I want to give a special thank you to Dr. Edelman. He’s not alive anymore. lot of the older behavioral developmental optometrists use that technique. I also used it in the hospitals with people with TBI who had double vision instead of trying to correct them with prisms. We use the binasal tapes and that kind of helped give them

the necessary stability to start to use their vision with their brain in a better way.

Book Mark this subject. All right. That’s our show for today. I want to thank you so much for coming along on this trip until next time everyone. See ya.

Keywords

visual system, nervous system, neuroplasticity, vision therapy, stress and vision, eye health, cranial nerves, emotional vision, visual processing, brain function

Summary:

In this episode, Dr. Sam Berne explores the intricate relationship between the visual system and the nervous system. He discusses how stress impacts vision, the role of neuroplasticity in vision rehabilitation, and the importance of understanding the visual pathway and processing in the brain. The conversation highlights the significance of the vagus nerve, emotional states, and various therapies that can enhance visual health and overall well-being.

Takeaways:

• The nervous system is crucial for resilience against stress.
• Vision is not just about the eyes; it’s a brain-body connection.
• The visual pathway includes the retina, optic nerve, and brain regions.
• Stress can lead to visual issues like myopia and eye strain.
• The vagus nerve plays a key role in relaxation and vision.
• Neuroplasticity allows for improvement in visual processing.
• Visual therapy can help rewire the brain for better vision.
• Emotions significantly influence our visual perception.
• Craniosacral therapy can aid in visual and nervous system balance.
• Understanding the connection between stress and vision is vital.

Sound Bites
• “The nervous system reflects our ability to become resilient.”
• “The eyes are a sensory organ connected to the brain.”
• “Visual processing occurs in the occipital lobe of the brain.”
Chapters
00:00Understanding the Visual System and Nervous System Connection
02:59The Visual Pathway and Brain Processing
05:57The Role of the Nervous System in Vision
08:52Neuroplasticity and Vision Rehabilitation
11:03Stress, Vision, and Neurological Disorders

Hey everybody. Welcome to the Berne podcast. It’s great to be in today. And today I want to talk about understanding your visual system as it relates to the nervous system. This is one of the topics we talk about in our practitioner training, but I also talked to many of my patients about it because they’re so stressed out and our nervous system reflects our ability.

to become resilient with stress. So there is a very strong relationship between the nervous system and our vision. In fact, it is so deeply interconnected because it’s not just about our eyes, but it’s about the process between our eyes, our brain and our body. And since the eyes are a sensory organ.

We can see the nerves that are connecting into the eyes like our pupil responses as one example. Another example is eye movements. In fact, there are three cranial nerves that innervate the eye muscles cranial nerve 3 cranial nerve 4 and cranial nerve 6. So if we’ve got visual coordination problems strabismus amblyopia, sometimes it’s related to an imbalance in the nerves as it relates to the eyes.

So the first thing I want to bring up in our visual system is something called our visual pathway. And so the eyes convert light when the light strikes the retina. These electrical signals are stimulating the photoreceptors the rods and codes in the retina and sending these signals. They’re transmitting them basically through I call the fiber optic pathway the optic nerve and this visual pathway includes the retina.

which is the photoreceptors the optic nerve, which is that fiber optic pathway that connects the retina to the brain something called the optic chiasm the point where the nerves cross in the brain and then this visual information we then reaches the hemispheres of the brain. have the right brain and the left brain. So we talk about the

visual information processing and another part of the brain. We talk about is something called the lateral geniculate nucleus, which is located in the thalamus and this is related to our visual information to the visual cortex the back part of the brain. This is the occipital lobe of the brain where the majority of our visual processing occurs. This is where we get things like depth perception color processing motion detection.

And so we’ve had say cervical spine compression or if that traumatic brain injury many times the visual cortex that occipital part of the lobe of the brain is not able to handle the visual information processing. This is why we get issues with brain fog visual memory visual confusion. If the visual cortex is not capturing the vision that were

taking in through the eyes. The output is going to be impeded. So we have input we have processing in the brain and then we have output. Now the nervous system plays a critical role in interpreting these signals and they turn them into coherent visual perception our ability to see motion our spatial awareness our spatial IQ and decision-making our shape recognition all of these things.

are in influenced by our nervous system. So when we talk about our autonomic nervous system, we’re talking about some of the involuntary physiological processes. So I need to bring in the gatekeeper of light into the eyes, which is our pupil. So we have the dilation where our pupil gets larger and we have contraction where our pupil gets smaller. So when we’re in a fight-or-flight situation, I call it the fight-flight freeze.

Our sympathetic sympathetic nervous system, is our active state is overworking and we start to see that the pupil remains dilated even when we’re in bright light when it should constrict. And so this is saying that the adrenals are overworking the thyroid may be overworking our depth perception on our peripheral vision is going to be tunneled and our sympathetic nervous system is overworking. This is most of us when we’re under stress.

Now the parasympathetic nervous system causes the pupil to constrict or something we call meiosis. So in bright light, normally it should constrict. So when we talk about the dilation and the constriction, another aspect that we need to bring in is something called accommodation. And this is the ciliary muscles in the lens of the eye, which change the curvature of the eye. So when we have an imbalance

In our sympathetic parasympathetic nervous system. One of the issues that it affects is our accommodation our ciliary muscles and this is one of the reasons why we develop nearsightedness or myopia. It’s also another reason why we might be developing presbyopia. That’s at age 40 you need magnification. All right. Now I have to talk about something which is related to vision and the vagus nerve because the the vagus nerve

Is the major component of our parasympathetic nervous system and it’s related to our relaxation our stress levels our ability to handle trauma and stress. And so when our Vegas nerve is out of balance, we’re going to get things like light sensitivity blurred vision increased eye strain even things like dry eyes. That’s why in many of my techniques my somatic techniques.

We are targeting relaxation techniques that engage the nervous system, specifically the vagus nerve my end palm hum exercise, for example, some of the other somatic movement exercises that we do to help calm down the vagus nerve so that we can come back into a self-regulating balance. And then I want to talk about our visual perceptions in a higher brain function. So our visual cortex.

is related to our initial stages of visual processing, but there are also other parts of the brain that are involved in visual processing. Number one, our parietal lobe. This integrates visual information on a spatial level, our depth perception, our peripheral vision. That’s the parietal lobe. Our temporal lobe processes details, object recognition, facial recognition, enabling us to identify

people places and things and then the prefrontal cortex. This is the higher order cognitive processing. Sometimes it’s called the executive function decision-making a lot of the kids that I work with. They’re unable to get into the prefrontal cortex because there’s an imbalance in their visual processing. And then I want to talk about vision and emotions. We talk about the limbic brain.

The limbic brain which regulates our emotions is highly connected to our vision. That’s why myopia that’s our mate. The major emotion is fear. It’s our kidney connection hyperopia. That’s farsightedness. That’s our anger emotion liver. So the amygdala plays a role in processing the emotional significance of what we see and this relates to our eye contact our facial expressions.

our threats. The hippocampus part of the brain is involved in our memory and our recall experiences. So emotional states have a very strong effect on our eyesight and our vision and our decision-making. All right. The last thing I want to talk about and I talk about this a lot is neuroplasticity and vision. I doctors do not like to talk about neuroplasticity and vision, but

The neuroscientists have recognized that the nervous system, specifically the brain has an incredible capacity for rewiring itself. And when you rewire you refire the axons and the neurons so you can improve not only your vision, but your problem solving your processing of information and many other things. So the physical vision therapy is really a great way

As I call it neuroplasticity training where you’re improving your retraining the brain and the eyes and the body to work more effectively. So conditions like amblyopia lazy eye strabismus crossed or uncrossed eyes where there’s part of the brain that’s suppressing there’s certain visual therapy exercises that can actually create new pathways in the brain and the eyes and restore binocular vision and depth perception.

Okay, before I leave, I want to talk about the neurological disorders. We’re seeing more and more of these like multiple sclerosis Parkinson’s disease people with strokes. This these these conditions create things like blurred vision double vision visual field loss and even complete blindness. Remember damage to the optic nerve creates a problem in our visual field. So if you’ve got conditions like multiple sclerosis.

or papillodema or optic neuritis. This disrupts the nervous system’s ability to process visual information and bring it back to the brain.

Okay, there’s one more bonus. I’m going to talk about and this has to do with stress and vision. I’m going to talk about one of my mentors. Dr. Elliott forest who is a professor of optometry at SUNY. He wrote a book many years ago called stress and vision and he talked about how the sympathetic nervous system if it was overworking it created a dilation in the pupils more myopia blurred vision.

eye strain, headaches, difficulty with visual processing and overall visual performance. So our stress affects our eyes. There’s no question about it. And this relationship between our nervous system and our vision is intricate and both systems work off each other. They kind of work in concert and the brain not only processes what we see, but it also controls the muscles to direct the eyes and the focus in certain

positions. That’s why if our eyes are misaligned, we either get double vision or one of the eyes shuts off. So things like craniosacral therapy, light therapy, vision therapy, some of my somatic practices can help rebalance the nervous system and give you better vision. So if you’ve got questions, feel free to email me appointments at dr. Sam burn.com.

That’s our show for today. I want to thank you so much for tuning in until next time. Take care.

Keywords

pinhole glasses, vision improvement, myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism, eye strain, depth of field, eye health, visual habits, retraining vision

Summary

In this episode of the Berne Podcast, Sam Berne discusses the concept of pinhole glasses, exploring their functionality, benefits, and limitations. Pinhole glasses are designed to improve vision by reducing light scatter and enhancing depth of field. While they can provide temporary relief from eye strain and improve clarity for certain vision conditions, they are not a permanent solution and require retraining of visual habits for long-term effectiveness.
takeaways
• Pinhole glasses reduce scatter of light and improve clarity.
• They can help with conditions like myopia and astigmatism.
• Wearing them can reduce eye strain, especially at the computer.
• They enhance depth of field, allowing clearer vision at different distances.
• Pinhole glasses can help retrain the eyes to focus without magnification.
• They are a temporary solution and not a cure for vision problems.
• Using them requires practice and adjustment to new visual habits.
• Bright light is essential for effective use of pinhole glasses.
• They may not be effective in dim lighting conditions.
• Long-term vision improvement requires deeper retraining beyond just using pinhole glasses.
Titles
• Can Pinhole Glasses Improve Your Eyesight?
• Pinhole Glasses: A New Approach to Eye Health
Sound Bites
• “Are they good for you? Do they work?”
• “Pinhole glasses actually reduce the scatter of light.”
• “They enhance something called depth of field.”
Chapters
00:00Introduction to Pinhole Glasses
00:45How Pinhole Glasses Work
02:12Benefits of Pinhole Glasses
03:35Limitations and Considerations

Hey everyone, welcome to the Berne Podcast. In today’s show, I’m gonna talk about pinhole glasses. Are they good for you? Do they work? What in the heck do they actually do? Stay tuned.

So these are pinhole glasses. It’s a type of eyewear that has tiny holes in the glasses. There’s no prescription. Do they work? How do they work? That’s what I want to discuss today. Pinhole glasses are a type of eyewear that contain a lot of little holes. Unlike traditional glasses, pinhole glasses actually reduce the scatter of light.

and they block the indirect light into the eyes. Pinhole glasses are marketed as a vision improvement technique to help conditions like myopia, hyperopia astigmatism and presbyopia. A description I use for pinhole glasses is limited light entry into the eyes. The holes in the glasses focus the light rays onto the retina.

Light enters the eye from the multiple directions. This leads to blurry eyesight. So in the pinhole glasses, the only light that gets through is parallel and is focused directly onto the retina. The pinhole glasses enhance something called depth of field. This means that it allows you to see objects at different distances very clearly since the pinhole glasses block peripheral vision. It limits the amount of aberrations that we might see normally.

which again creates some blurry distorted eyesight conditions like double vision presbyopia or astigmatism might be helped by using the pinhole glasses. If you put the pinhole glasses on you’ll probably be able to read the distance eye chart more clearly. You see the eye chart more clearly using the pinhole glasses. You start to prove to the brain and the mind that you can actually have clear eyesight.

Sam Berne (02:12.172)
without your regular lenses. Pinhole glasses may reduce eye strain, especially if you use them at the computer. One of the things I have found with pinhole glasses is they work really well for people who are dependent on magnifying glasses. So whether you’ve got hyperopia in the distance and or presbyopia up close when you put on the pinhole glasses, you will be able to see the world very clearly.

without the magnification effects of the regular lenses. One of the side effects of magnification lenses is it makes your eye muscles unresponsive to focusing. This is where the pinhole glasses can reprogram your eyes and your brain to learn how to focus again. It’s miraculous when you put the pinhole glasses on because the print is very clear and this is very unusual.

without the pinhole glasses and without the magnifiers. Usually the print is too blurry to be able to see. So by wearing the pinhole glasses about 10 minutes a day, you start reading through the holes. It begins to change the habit that the farsighted magnifying glasses have done to your eyes. This is one benefit of using the pinhole glasses as a substitute for your magnification lenses.

For myopia, it’s a little different situation because minus lenses that you wear are matching the over focusing that you’re doing. And although the pinhole glasses may make the world a little clearer, it’s not really helping you change the soft focusing that you need to learn to be able to reduce your dependency on the minus lenses. Now for a stigmatism, it’s

a individual by individual case in some people wearing the pinhole glasses. If you have astigmatism can begin to change the astigmatism in the eye. Also, if you wear pinhole glasses in dim light, it could be difficult to read. It’s much better for you to have bright light. If you’re going to try to read using the pinhole glasses see pinhole glasses as a temporary

Sam Berne (04:31.212)
vision improvement technique that creates a change in your mental and visual habit patterns. So in the short term, it’s great to have them because you have to make some changes in order to use them unless you can internalize the changes that the pinhole glasses are asking you to make then it’s just a temporary solution a band-aid and it’s not really treating the causative factors changing your vision permanently.

requires a reprogramming or retraining on a very deep internal level. This requires a lot of practice and daily activities. And although the pinhole glasses can help in the short term by itself. I don’t think it’s the answer. That’s our show for today. I want to thank you so much for tuning in until next time. Take care.