Eyerobics: How to Improve Your Eyesight

Marilyn Roy

1997

A hands-on guide to natural vision training rooted in relaxation, movement, and conscious use of the eyes. Drawing inspiration from the early 20th-century Bates Method, Marilyn Roy presents structured exercises — palming, shifting, sunning, focal changes, and habit retraining — based on the premise that many visual disturbances are influenced by muscular tension, stress, and conditioned seeing patterns. The book frames eyesight not as a fixed mechanical limitation, but as a dynamic process involving the brain, nervous system, and attention. Its tone is instructional and experiential, encouraging consistent practice rather than passive correction.

“Vision is not something the eyes do alone. It is something the mind and body do together. When strain is released, sight often changes.”

Natural vision improvement systems emerged in the early 1900s, particularly through Dr. William H. Bates, who proposed that muscular tension and mental strain contributed to refractive errors. While these ideas gained popular followings, mainstream optometry developed along a corrective lens model supported by measurable refractive testing and optical physics. Clinical studies have generally found limited or inconsistent evidence that eye exercises permanently reverse structural refractive errors such as myopia. As a result, vision training programs have remained outside standard ophthalmological practice. Books like Eyerobics circulate primarily within holistic health and self-help communities rather than clinical eye care systems.

TopicsHealth and Therapeutics