Keely's Kures: 1
Unconventional remedies from A to Z from a freedom-loving, globetrotting gadfly
by Bo Keely
Steven 'Bo' Keely is one of the most 'different' freedom-generating individuals I've been fortunate to have met... virtually. Dean Hazel, who is also published occasionally in these Coffee Coaster pages, sent me something roughly last spring by Bo, which, after contacting Bo, I published. That was a gentlemanly critique of the California courts and state bureaucracy developed from using a popular hiking area posted 'No Trespassing'. The article is probably as conventional as you'll read from Mr. Keely. In any case, Keely has some notoriety and well-earned celebrity as a first-class journalist—think of him as "Hunter S. Thompson without the drugs and careless discharge of firearms." What I'm excerpting here is from a collection of alternative cures for common ailments. You can't find FDA approval anywhere, but you can anticipate success.
Vision Problems
What is it? This entry is intentionally general. It includes far-sightedness, near-sighted ness, lazy eye, photophobia, glaucoma, cataracts, double vision, detached retina and more, especially from a neurological viewpoint.
Traditional treatment: One customarily goes without forethought to an ophthalmologist (eye doctor) who prescribes aids.
Kure
Better vision can be had without glasses. Find books on your library shelf if you like on eye exercises for various conditions. I've tried their techniques and heartily recommend them for simple conditions like near or far-sightedness and some others. I postulated the use of eye exercises to improve vision because of a background in anatomy before coming across the books. The eyeball is like a Ping-Pong ball attached by muscles all around to its bony orbit. The eye also accommodates for distance using lens muscles, and the iris is muscular. So seeing is much under voluntary control is akin to lifting weights in that one strengthens and coordinates muscles.
I am a substitute schoolteacher and one way to grab class attention is by holding a book upside down and reading aloud. "How?" Is the reaction, and I reply, "This reminds me of the child who was handed a violin and asked if he could play. He said he didn't know because he hadn't tried yet." Then my class turns their books upside down and begins reading bottom-to-top, right-to-left easily. That is the lead-in to a course I once offered at a community college, "The art and science of backward reading and writing", and is also the best exercise Kure for general vision problems.[1]
The backward reading idea began after I won some national paddleball titles and decided to switch to the opposite hand for competition. I was a natural righty with strong backhand which I secretly attributed to having longhand written so much material. The motion of moving a pen across a paper from left to right is remarkably similar to the swing motion of any sport's backhand, so I began writing in mirror image with the left hand with the goal of a proficient backhand. Within a year I was placing well with both hands in tournaments and dreaming of meeting myself in the finals righty vs. lefty. Convinced I was on to something with the backward (mirror) writing, I looked for ways to read in same, trying a mirror at first and then turning books by the dozens upside down. Later I would type pages by the thousands with the computer monitor upside down. I began to notice a visual difference too.
If you like to read and want greater strength at it then try this. Read an hour with the book positioned normally for 15 minutes, turn it upside down for the next 15 minutes and alternate throughout the hour. You'll have unbelievable stamina and eventually be able to read continually for hours. It's like curling a weight with one hand, then resting that muscle while you curl with the other. Do you do sports like baseball, tennis, soccer, boxing or basketball? If so, try backward reading to cause your eyes to track objects better from right to left. Words in a sentence flow like sports balls, and when you practice reading with flow from right to left you automatically improve your athletic vision.
Next, go to go to mirror image writing. That's what I did after discovering the advantages of backward reading. Leonardo da Vinci called it his secret mirror code, but I developed it independently. At school I write an assignment on the board and the girls pull out their compact mirrors and read it aloud. I show the class how to practice writing the mirror alphabet and simple words, as I had done in learning.
We are a visual society, bombarded by the second with print that flows left to right. I hypothesize we are visual versions of hunchbacks, overdeveloped on one side. This causes eyestrain, headaches, neck and back strain. (View "Stiff neck" and "Sore back" on pages x and y.) Turn a book upside down and after reading a while find as others have that they suddenly adopt a different head, neck and back posture and their little pains disappear. Many visual problems improve also. If convinced of this Kure, the next step is writing in mirror image and turning computer monitors upside down.
Any monitor should be set at eye level or slightly higher. Placing the monitor higher than normal corrects a lot of neck and back strain since the head is like a bowling ball with muscles attachments at the neck to keep it from rolling off. With this more relaxed posture the eyes function better in the long haul. (View "Neck pain" and "Back pain" on pages x and y.) Some other tips: Dim the contrast. Pick a print that is sans-sans, i.e. simple and pleasing to the eye; I prefer Arial in 8 point. Use black and white rather than color. I've learned to see things around me and recall them in black and white because recall is quicker, more acute and after image disappears more rapidly. It isn't as pretty or fun, but that's the trade-off. These applications hold for TV's too.
I was a child diagnosed as myopic, photophobic, strabismic and having one of the worst cases of depth perception the doctor had ever seen. I conquered these without glasses or professional help, and encourage others to try the same Kures before consulting an expert. Note that the book Keeley Kures was born when I got an e-mail from a
photojournalist acquaintance, Art Shay, who was having a terrible time with double-vision. "I've been to all the specialists and nothing works." I introduced him to eye exercises, backward reading and writing, and made some changes in his computer habits. As his eyesight improved I got an e-mail, "You ought to write a book on Keeley Kures." He became the co-author and the rest is history. One day perhaps this book will be printed in mirror image, sold with an attached mirror as a training aid.
[1] Bo points out that on some operating systems—it works on my Windows 7—you can achieve the effect of turning the page on your monitor upside down and reading from right to left, top to bottom, by pressing Ctrl-Alt-DownArrow. Press Ctrl-Alt-UpArrow to return to normal. [Note: kind of a dirty trick to play at the office, so respect the Force, Luke.]
### 2011 February 21
Posted by The Coffee Coaster™
Bo Keely | Unconventional Remedies | Vision Problems | Keely's Kures
