When reading, you should look at the white spaces between the lines and not directly at the lines themselves.
The reason for this is that there is no effort involved in sweeping your eyes over a plain white background. Fixing the eyes on individual words and letters involves strain, and strain hurts your vision.
When a person with normal sight regards the white spaces with a sweeping shift across the page from margin to margin, he can read easily, rapidly and without fatigue. If the same person looks at the letters, the eyes grow tired and the vision becomes poor.
People who cannot read well at the near point always tend to fix their attention on the print. Consequently they see worse. Improvement cannot take place until they learn to look at the white spaces between the lines.
Reading can be improved by improving the power to remember or imagine whiteness. This improvement can be achieved in the following way…
Close your eyes and imagine something even whiter than the page before you - white snow, white linen, a white board. Then open your eyes again.
If your mental images of whiteness have been clear and intense, you will find that the white spaces between the lines will appear for a few moments to be whiter than they really are.
Repeat this process as a regular drill.
When your imagination of whiteness has become so good that you can constantly see the spaces between lines as whiter than they really are, the print will seem blacker by contrast and the eye will find itself reading easily and without effort or fatigue”
I love this technique. Not only does it help your eyes and make reading more relaxed, you will find that you actually read many times faster than normal!
The reason for this is that there is no effort involved in sweeping your eyes over a plain white background. Fixing the eyes on individual words and letters involves strain, and strain hurts your vision.
When a person with normal sight regards the white spaces with a sweeping shift across the page from margin to margin, he can read easily, rapidly and without fatigue. If the same person looks at the letters, the eyes grow tired and the vision becomes poor.
People who cannot read well at the near point always tend to fix their attention on the print. Consequently they see worse. Improvement cannot take place until they learn to look at the white spaces between the lines.
Reading can be improved by improving the power to remember or imagine whiteness. This improvement can be achieved in the following way…
Close your eyes and imagine something even whiter than the page before you - white snow, white linen, a white board. Then open your eyes again.
If your mental images of whiteness have been clear and intense, you will find that the white spaces between the lines will appear for a few moments to be whiter than they really are.
Repeat this process as a regular drill.
When your imagination of whiteness has become so good that you can constantly see the spaces between lines as whiter than they really are, the print will seem blacker by contrast and the eye will find itself reading easily and without effort or fatigue”
I love this technique. Not only does it help your eyes and make reading more relaxed, you will find that you actually read many times faster than normal!
