Eye exercises part 3 - Lifesaver card, advanced flipper, tranaglyphs

Im this article I will describe the last types of eye exercises I was doing and do until now. For previous parts see part 1 and part 2. I need to state that for any exercise to work the best way it can, you first have to have your other eye issues (shortsightedness, astigmatism etc.) sorted by the help of prescription glasses. In my case, I was also doing these exercises with prisms in my glasses, which helped to ease the exophoria that I have.

Even if you do not have prisms in your glasses, making sure that both eyes have the same power and sharpness is essential before starting to train their cooperation. In my case of having one eye far more shortsighted than the other, not fixing this issue first would mean I cannot effectively use both eyes for distance training.

Lifesaver card

I do not know why this tool is called a lifesaver card, but it indeed is a lifesaver. It is my favorite exercise tool for binocular training, because you can scale it as you see fit, can do many exercises with it, and it doesn't require a computer, so you can train anywhere.

It is not good to start with this card if you are completely new to eye exercises, as it requires some feel to what your eyes are doing in order to know you are training the right way. The card works the same way as the tranaglyphs, but you do not need 3D glasses for it. If you train convergence insufficiency (training to fix exophoria), you can print it on a normal paper. If you train for convergence excess (esophoria - my case), you need to print it on transparent plastic sheet (paper size a5, advanced a4).

How to use the card:

1. hold it cca 40cm from your face
2. try to connect the images so that you see one 3D circle in the center and two peripherally on each side by converging your eyes (crossing your eyes at a point between the card and your face)
3. try to connect the images so that you see a 3D circle in the center and two peripherally on each side by diverging your eyes (looking through the card into the distance

It is important to make sure you see the middle circle in 3D in each case and that it is sharp. The sharpness might take a moment to kick in, as that is your binocular accomodation accomodating to a different distance than where your eyes converge/diverge. The more you do the exercise, the faster the sharpness (accomodation) will happen.

You can start with the bottom line, where the circles are closest. The further apart they are, the more difficult the exercise. I did varieties of exercises with this card (switching fast between convergence and divergence for 3 minutes, converging for 5s and holding the sharpness, then diverging and doing the same, switching between the lines randomly etc.)

Now I do switching between convergence and divergence as fast as I can in the time span of 3 minutes two times with 30s break inbetween. I was able to get to 50 changes with time left still, so then in the remaining time I just try to hold the divergence while having a clear 3D image.

The approach may differ depending on your specific case of heterophoria. If you have exophoria, it will be more difficult for you to cross your eyes in front of the card, and if you have esophoria, looking through the card while seeing a 3D image will be more difficult.

Advanced flipper exercise

Just as mentioned in part 2, you will use accomodative flipper (more types with powers from easier to harder are provided). However this time you use it for both eyes at the same time and with specially designed tranaglyphs with text or more detailed symbols. This exercise requires the most tools, as you have to have your glasses on first, then the 3D glasses over them, and then use the flipper, all that while looking at the tranaglyphs and switching the pages in the PDF.

How its done:

1. look at the PDF through the flipper, make sure all is 3D
2. while switching to the next page, also switch the flipper to its other part and again make sure all is 3D and sharp
3. switch the page to the next one while again switching the flipper

I do this exercise until I reach the end of the PDF provided and time how long it took me to get to the end. This exercise is most challenging, as it trains accomodation together with binocular vision on reading text or more detailed symbols. I still struggle some days with this exercise, not seeing everything sharp all the time or loosing the 3D and seeing the text double. Other days its fine.

I use flipper with +-2,5 power now, do two PDFs with various text and 25 pages each. It takes me around one minute to finish 25 slides. In the beginning that was about triple the time while using easier flipper powers.

Tranaglyphs jumps

This exercise was also described in part 2. Now I only do far more difficult version of it, with the tranaglyphs being very far apart. Also one page on the PDF is set for convergence, and the following one for divergence. I switch between these two pages, essentialy mimicking the exercise I do with the lifesaver card. I measure 1 minute and see how many jumps I can perform, now being at about 35-40 in one minute. I repeat this 3 times with 30s break inbetween.

In conclusion

These days I do the exercises once a week. Sometimes I forget, and I must say that if I start to feel some symptoms crawling back in and having headaches more often, it's always because I forgot and more than 10 days have passed since I last exercised. I start with the tranglyph jumps, then do the flipper exercise and as a last one the lifesaver card. The time spent is usually around 20 minutes.

Compared to having to exercise 30 minutes every day when I started, this is a huge progress. Keeping track of the times and amounts of jumps and changes you can do in each exercise will give you a good idea of your progress, as well as the much needed motivation to keep going. I had a nice excel sheet prepared by my specialist, where I just input the numbers and times each time I was exercising.

You can try these exercises on your own, but having proper glasses made in the first place and knowing the type of your binocular vision dysfunction is essential for this to work. I can't stress this enough, as when I started I was accidentally exercising for exophoria instead of esophoria and saw no progress for two months because of it.

Generally, if you feel similar pain and eyestrain during these exercises as when you are exposed to troublesome lighting and display technology, you are quite possibly on the right path. If you do not, or did and now don't anymore, it's a sign to move to a more difficult version.

For me now I keep doing the same difficulty for couple months now, as my specialist told me my compensation capabilites are already far beyond what he thought possible. However I am still not completely problem free, so I will try to keep finding how to progress further.

In case of esophoria, there is a big probability that I will never be completely problem free. However these exercises combined with the glasses allowed me to go from instant pain when exposed to troublesome tech and light to being able to tolerate it for hours at a time.

Another benefit is that when I do get pain and headache, the recovery from this state is far faster than in the past, meaning I am not stuck with a debilitating headache or migraine for hours after using a new phone or computer. For that alone, all this work was and is definately worth it. I wish you good luck and great progress!

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If you would like to discuss this matter in person, feel free to book a consulting session with me. I will also be grateful for any donation to help me run this blog and my future research in this field.