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Photo by Bob Pennell Dorea is teaching a class which she says she can help people get rid of their eyeglasses. The big eyeballs are used as an aid in the class. Ditch those glasses Method aims to counteract poor vision habits By JONEL ALECCIA If you've got to grab your glasses to read this sentence, there's a woman in Ashland who thinks she can teach you a thing or two about better vision. Her name is Dorea -- just Dorea -- and she's a lifelong glasses wearer who, at age 49, virtually has bidden her spectacles goodbye. "In nine months, I've reduced my glasses twice," says Dorea. "I've gone from a medium-strong correction to a low correction. Now I only wear them for driving at night." Dorea attributes this change to a program of "natural vision improvement," a method that she says uses techniques of breathing, relaxation and specific movements to repair eye conditions such as nearsightedness, astigmatism and other ills. "It's not about exercises," explains Dorea, who will teach a seven-week series of classes in the subject starting Tuesday. "Some people get out of their glasses in two to three weeks." Her sessions are based on training she received at the Natural Vision Improvement Center in San Francisco, Calif. Tom Quackenbush, author of the book "Relearning to See," trains teachers in the basics of vision improvement. His work is based on a theory first advanced in the 1920s by William Bates, a renowned opthalmologist whose controversial methods saw him banned from his field. At the heart of the theory is the idea that poor eyesight develops in response to stress and that stress can be reduced, improving vision. "Vision wants to be clear," Dorea explains. "The way we use or mind and body determines who we see. The experience of blur is the result of strain and stress ... The way back to clarity is through relaxation." Specifically, students learn techniques for relaxing the neck and eyes, plus new ways of blinking and moving. "We use what we call a `nose feather' to make signs, like sketching or brushing," Dorea says. "It's as if you had a feather extended from your nose. We're looking out with our nose feather and writing in the air." The methods are aimed at counteracting bad vision habits. "Staring is the largest culprit of strain," she says. The seven-week class will be held at the Unity Church, 1809 Highway 99, Ashland. Cost is $300. Reach Dorea at 488-7085. However, local eyesight professionals who are not proponents of the natural vision method say there's some debate over whether the techniques are effective. "The Bates method is the classic `throw away your glasses' book," says Gary Wheeler, a Medford optometrist. But glasses and other vision aids help correct specific, physical problems, Wheeler notes. And, he adds, relaxation alone can't fix those problems. "It depends on the type of condition," he says. "Some conditions are structural. If the length of the eye is long, for instance, there's not much you're going to do to shrink the eye." Learning relaxation techniques might be useful in some cases, he says. But he notes that people shouldn't forgo professional eye exams to detect illness -- and they shouldn't expect to be free of glasses in a few weeks. "In medicine, the first rule is `do no harm,"' he says. "People always feel better about themselves when they can do something. So if it works for them, more power to them." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA