Peripheral Vision Exercise - Outside Observations

Recently, someone in a homeschooling group I belong to, asked about vision issues she has with her child. Specifically, her child needs work to use their peripheral vision more. So I thought I would do a mini series of things I have done to help me use my peripheral vision more. 

By the way, over the course of learning about vision therapy, I learned that when I tunnel, it wears out my eyes more i.e.: makes them feel more tired more rapidly. I keep forgetting this, so this needs to be a reminder to me to focus on peripheral vision more today!

The first time I remember working on my peripheral vision, it was a beautiful day outside! I commented this to my vision therapist who was setting me up for my next task. She stopped whatever she was about to do, and we went outside to do the therapy. It's been a year or more, and I can't remember if she patched my eye, but I feel like she did. 

The way she patches my eye is she makes an eye patch for my glasses out of Scotch tape. She covers it in several directions to form one oval-shaped sticker that can be peeled off one side of my glasses and put onto the other side easily. 

Well, I feel like she patched my right eye, and we walked down the sidewalk. There were "parking" signs depicting the businesses to my left, and parked cars or empty parking spaces to my right. There were trees scattered to my left and far to my right. 

So, we walked down the sidewalk and she wanted me to tell her when I could see things to my left - when did I stop seeing them to my left? It got me to pay attention to what was next to me even if I was looking straight ahead. I enjoyed that exercise very much and wanted to do it more another day. We did other peripheral work on other days. I will talk about them in further blog posts. 

We did, by the way, come the other way down the sidewalk (walking back towards the vision therapy office), and I did the identical activity back, from my right eye. 

My vision therapist, by the way, has told me that looking outside and walking outside (like with my dog) is great for my vision - it gets me to widen my vision instead of my normal narrow, tunneling vision habits.