If you're a creating any kind of content, you are lookin' at a screen!

Doesn't matter if you're planning, editing, writing, recording, podcasting, interviewing...

Your eyes are doing a LOT of work!

No matter our age, our eyes are under great strain - which affects our ability to be clear & creative in our brain, AND it affects our energy to actually create...

So when I met today's guest, I knew I HAD TO have her on the Content Creation Made Easy podcast to help us all save our eyesight and get some immediate relief!

Meet Orit Kruglanski, a Vision Educator, who went from wearing glasses every day for 30 years to being able to completely let go of needing them!

In this conversation, Orit explains her approach to natural eyesight improvement and revealed ...

-Questions about problematic eyesight that we've never been taught to ask...
-Small, daily mistakes we're making that cause problems - and simple switches that improve your eyesight
-Why ZOOM meetings cause problems with our eyes - and how to create relief while looking at ANY screen!

Orit blew my mind throughout this entire conversation, and what she shared was so incredibly thought-provoking and generous...

Listen in to save your eyes - now & in the future!

Are you curious about what Orit does? PLEASE look her up (heh heh - see what I did there?) at:

https://oritojos.com/eng/

It's fascinating to talk about this subject, and I'd love to hear your thoughts or questions! Email me at [email protected]

One last thing: Thank you for leaving a review.

My goal is to serve hundreds of creators this year by way of Content Creation Made Easy! Your sharing it means a lot to me!

Links Mentioned
https://oritojos.com/eng/

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Full Transcript

Jen Liddy

Welcome to Content Creation Made Easy. This is your host, Jen Liddy, and I'm here with Orit. And ORT, I forgot to ask the pronunciation of your last name, which I normally do before I start talking, but I didn't want to mess it up.

Orit Kruglanski

So that would be like a whole episode just to pronounce my last name.

Jen Liddy

How do you pronounce your last name?

Orit Kruglanski

Start recording, you know, from there and and just make a Polish pronunciation workshop because my last name is Polish. It's Krugladsky, but don't switch.

Jen Liddy

I wasn't too far off. Okay, we're just jumping into this conversation today because I have a guest that I have literally been trying to get on the podcast for a year. I met or. It in a group that we're in together, and she is a vision educator. And when I listened to her talk about the stress on our eyes, my brain immediately parked up because I was like, who is looking at their phones, their screens, more than a content creator? And so I wanted to invite her on to talk about how we can kind of ease the strain and pain and stress that's on our eyes to help us make content creation easier for us. If we're going to be looking at our screen all the time, how can we do it better? So, Orit, thank you so much. Thank you for coming in from Barcelona to meet with me this morning. It's afternoon for you, and I'm so glad to finally begin connecting. Thank you.

Orit Kruglanski

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Yeah.

 Jen Liddy

Can you tell us a little bit about how you got into being a vision educator?

Orit Kruglanski

Yes. Well, when I was around eight this is a long story. No. Okay. When I was around eight, I was fitted with glasses and was told, this is life and I would wear glasses for the rest of my life. Fast forward 30 years later and some eight and a half diopters of near sightedness, I found out that eyesight can improve and went to study it for myself in the beginning. And then I just fell in love with a method and decided to drop the other things I was doing and start teaching it. I also did drop my own glasses in the process. So although today I will be talking to you about how to not strain so much in front of the computer, everything about I said improvement has to do with relaxation. So basically, if you could just really relax, everybody just get to let go of your glasses.

Jen Liddy

I think that's a good like, we need that in every area, right? If you could just you could just relax. Everybody just relax.

Orit Kruglanski

But we would have to go area by area. If you could just relaxing on their life, just relax. But we can't, can we know when.

Jen Liddy

I have a similar story when I was seven. I remember very specifically being at this the name of this place was the Pearl Vision Center in West Babylon, where I grew up. And I remember across the street was a Burger King, and there were some trees across the street. And the doctor put my glasses on and I looked at my mom and I was like, mom, there's leaves on those trees. There's there's bricks on that building. Like, I could see everything for the first time, seven years. I've been, of course, wearing glasses since then, but I so that's why I'm so excited to talk to you.

Orit Kruglanski

Well, I mean, probably not for the first time. Usually people's vision story is like this one moment where you find out that you can't see, but actually, most people don't remember so much what was going on for that. And most of us did see well before we got our glasses. So usually the story goes something like this you were a baby, you trained, you learned how to walk, talk and see. Probably well, most people not everyone, but most people. And then at some point in childhood, a lot of times at school, the strain, the stress, the life just became too difficult. And you were just like, hey, how about I lower the volume just a little bit? Maybe if it's a little blurred, it's not so much in my face. And then that's when the blur occurs. And then somebody's like, hey, this girl can't see very well, and you take it to the doctor and they fit you with glasses. So that was definitely my story. Around age seven, my parents were having, like, a really nasty divorce. I was not doing so well in school in terms of my relationships with, you know, society at large.

Orit Kruglanski

And I and I just remember thinking, literally, I wish the world would just take a step back and give me a little more space for myself. And lo and behold, there came the glasses. And they were, I think, one and a quarter diopter when I started. And I was told, as most of us were told, that I should never take them off, I should always wear them. And the funny thing is, now I know that that's a big mistake because the bad girls who did not put on their glasses actually did not their diopters did not rise and rise with the years, but rather they stayed with the initial one and something diopter or even don't need glasses anymore.

Jen Liddy

What's a diopter? I don't know that term.

Orit Kruglanski

Diopter is like the measurement of how much help you need to see.

Jen Liddy

Okay, so when my contact lenses were like, negative 200 and negative 140 on the other side, is that diopters or are we using a different measurement in the US. Or something? Or is that just like the formal term that a layperson wouldn't know? I've never heard that term before.

Orit Kruglanski

I've never heard anyone with 200 diopters. I mean, the measurements that I'm using are totally different because you could not have 200 diopters.

Jen Liddy

Right. So that must not be the right term. It's just like your prescription is like so my prescription would be, I had LASIC surgery done, and now my prescription is completely different. But I've never heard anybody use that term before. Diapers.

Orit Kruglanski

Okay, but it was minus something.

Jen Liddy

Yes. So if your 2020 vision is, I guess, in the middle, and then you're you're negative after that, but that so you're using it. You're talking about a way of measuring eyesight. I think we're both talking about the same thing, but we're using different terms, right?

Orit Kruglanski

Okay. I think so. Diapers is a way the amount of the lens is curved. In a way, yeah.

Jen Liddy

Okay. So this is fascinating to me, because what you're saying is I never thought about asking why eyesight becomes problematic, and you're really attributing it to your brain needing to dial down the stress.

Orit Kruglanski

Yes, totally.

Jen Liddy

I never thought to ask, why are my eyes, quote, unquote, bad?

Orit Kruglanski

That's actually the funny thing about it, because nobody asks that question. People are just like, so you need the glasses. It's like you developed a need for glasses. Is that in the human range of things that can happen, you just develop the need for glasses as if a headache is like, you developed the need for aspirin. Right. It's just weird. But nobody asked that question from the moment that glasses were invented. In a way, not from the moment, but at some point, people stopped asking that question because before that, they were kind of aware that eyesight becomes bad because of strain. And actually eyesight problems became very widely, like, you know, affecting wildly the population when schools started, when obligatory education started. So schools, prisons, stressful places make people near sighted.

Jen Liddy

Let's talk about one of your specialties, is the relationship between eyesight and stress. So can you talk a little bit more? This one specific thing you said, I think illuminates this very clearly. Email apnea the thing that we do when we're holding our breath. And when I read that from you, I was like, I have done that for years, and I catch myself. But how are all of these things related to our eyesight? And then what the heck are we supposed to do about it?

Orit Kruglanski

Okay, so it's not even that I'm specialized in eyesight, in relating eyesight to stress. Everyone who works in this field, in my field of natural eyesight improvement, relates to stress. It's just the way it is. The vision problem, whether you look at it physiologically or emotionally, it's always a stress problem. It's like like chronic strain muscles. Okay? So that's that's what actually deforms the eye. But the thing is, with with the eyesight, if you want to know how naturally like we see, just imagine yourself walking outside. Okay, so you're walking outside. How much of that time will you be looking at just one direction, just in a fixed way, just in one direction. Basically zero, right?

Jen Liddy

Right.

Orit Kruglanski

A bird passing a dog passing, passing a lady, funny lady with a hat. And then you hear a sound and you turn around and it's just like stuff happening all around you right now, how do you look at your screen?

Jen Liddy

Dead on.

Orit Kruglanski

Right, and then hours. How many things when you walk outside are in the exact same distance from you?

Jen Liddy

It's so varied.

Orit Kruglanski

None.

 Jen Liddy

Right.

Orit Kruglanski

Because the fire hydrant is there and the window is there and the tree is there. Like things are all around you and they're all like, placed in different places. Yeah. So where's your computer screen?

Jen Liddy

Oh, it's like directly in front of my face.

Orit Kruglanski

Directly in front of your place. So you're always basically staring at the same thing at the same time?

Jen Liddy

Yeah.

Orit Kruglanski

So another thing is blinking. So, you know, when you go have coffee with a friend, you'll see that as you talk, you blink and she blinks and you kind of blink to each other. And that reminds in between parts of the human conversation, is that we breathe and blink. So if your friend for some reason holds her breath, after a while you'll go unconsciously. You'll just like because you cannot be with someone that holds their breath. It just really creates tension in you because we have this communication between humans. Now your computer, on the other hand, can sit all day without breathing even once.

Jen Liddy

Right. I'm like here taking deep breaths.

Orit Kruglanski

Really? The whole situation of sitting in front of the computer or working on your phone or any other screen is very contrary to the way that naturally our eyes are meant to work. Also, if you think again about walking outside, how much of the time are things pretty close up? And how much of the time are things pretty far?

Jen Liddy

Yeah, they're usually pretty far away. I mean, it's very rare. It's funny that you say that, because sometimes I'll go for a walk with the dog and I'll see a berry on a tree or a flower, and I have to get real close. And it's a weird thing to like, you're stopping, you're getting close. But that's not the norm when you're outside.

Orit Kruglanski

But even if you see a flower, your vision can zoom in on it and you can see it from far. There's no reason for you to. I mean, you can get close and even as you get closer, you will be like getting closer. So it's like an action. There's like a change in distance. You're like getting closer and getting further away. You're not just like it's not static. It's not static. Vision is very, very dynamic. So adding to all of that things, to all those things when you're outside, most interesting things come from the periphery. Like, they're going to be like, appearing from here, from here from somewhere that you are not looking at. Things don't tend to come to you like this, right? It's going to be something catches your eye. So the whole periphery is very important. When you look at your computer, where is there nothing interesting around the computer, right?

Jen Liddy

In fact, you probably try really hard to stay focused on your computer because you want to be productive. And so anything distracting is you want to reduce that stuff and remove that stuff for your work environment, right?

Orit Kruglanski

So I would say no, you do not want to reduce or remove that stuff.

Jen Liddy

Okay.

Orit Kruglanski

Wanting to consciously plant that stuff there in a way that's not distracting, as in I'm going to totally concentrate on something else, but in a way that reduces that kind of clench your teeth, hold your breath kind of concentration, which is actually not good for your productivity. It's certainly not good for videos or audios that you want to record because the more relaxed you are, the better things come out, right? If you're not breathing, then it doesn't sound so good.

Jen Liddy

I'm going to pass this last piece of content to you before I'm sorry I died.

Orit Kruglanski

Sorry I died. I didn't make it. Breathe. Like stare very hard at the screen. Okay? I'm going to convince you eyesight improvement is possible and worthwhile. So if you blink, you breathe, you kind of look around. The computer situation creates more strain for our eyes, but strain for our eyes is strained for our whole body. I mean the thing that I said in the beginning about like eyesight problems being related to strain, it's also like a two way street. So the more you strain to see, the more tense you are. And the more you relax your vision, the more relaxed you can be.

Jen Liddy

Do you have any ways for us to get started with some really basic things that we can do? You've already mentioned some great nuggets like having something around your computer to kind of dance your eyes on in a non distracting way, but more in like an intake. I also heard you, I think you're saying get the hell outside, walk around, give your eyes a rest and just be more out in nature, even just walking down your street.

Orit Kruglanski

I am saying that, definitely I am saying that. But I also think there's a lot of things you can do as you work that will improve reduce this tension and improve your productivity, actually. Because if you breathe, everything becomes easier because you need the oxygen to think. The first thing about eyesight is that you need to include the periphery. So you want to not have your computer stuck on the wall, but rather have it maybe near a window. And if not, you can have some like moving stuff, like a mobile or a plant or something that will just occasionally catch your eye. And if the screen is not flush against the wall, then you have some visual distance. You can look at something that's on the wall rather than just, like, staring at the same distance. So it's all, like, things that I want to encourage movement and change. Interesting.

Jen Liddy

So almost like creating depth on your desk, like, the way that my computer is set up. This is a laptop. It's on a thing to hold it up a little bit so I don't have to look down. And then behind it, there's some stuff. There's a window in front of me. But they all create different levels of depth for my eyes to look at.

Orit Kruglanski

Exactly. That's already part of it. And then in the screen itself, I mean, the screen for the eyes is huge. As I said before, you can totally zoom in with your eyes on a berry, on a detail on a flower, and it doesn't mean you lose the periphery. It doesn't mean you forget the periphery, like, everything that surrounded. But I said it's actually meant to focus on small details, and the screen, and even the screen of a phone is huge for our eyes. So we kind of try to take it all in at once, thinking that we're saving time. But really what we want to do is look detail by detail or kind of move your eyes on the screen. I mean, in the same way that I want you to move your eyes in the space right in the screen itself, you can move your eyes. So if you're kind of, like, stuck in the same position and kind of, like, taking everything in, that's very stressful for the eyes. But if you're kind of like looking at one thing and looking at the other, maybe even moving your head, which is one of the things that people notice after years of not so good seeing habits is that they have a lot of tension in their neck because they're just, like, stuck and maybe at the most, moving their eyes.

Orit Kruglanski

Like the Adams family. So you really want to point your nose at what you're looking at and look at a small detail.

Jen Liddy

So really moving your whole head, not just your eyes, not, like your eyes darting around, but actually moving your head, I pretty much can guarantee I'm not doing that. That's really, like, a great nugget.

Orit Kruglanski

And then one great idea is sometimes when I have two things for zoom calls, okay, one of them is that behind the zoom screen, I open, like, a YouTube video with some fish in a pond or some exotic country. There's just, like, around my zoom screen, there's, like, fish or something going on, and that's what slightly kind of calls my attention. So I'm not stuck looking at the zoom screen or at the camera. And then the other thing is, many times, instead of looking at the camera, you can kind of look above the camera and nobody will notice, and that gives you more depth. So a lot of times, maybe not when I'm teaching, but when I'm listening to or I'm in a conference and you don't want to be looking out the window. Although I actually recommend that, but it seems kind of rude.

Jen Liddy

Right?

Orit Kruglanski

It's just like, yeah, so I'm listening, and I'm concentrated by looking at the window. But you can look like, change from looking at the camera to looking above the camera. And you can't really see such a difference, can you?

Jen Liddy

No, I know that our listeners can't see it, but there really is very negligible difference, which the next time you get on a zoom call, you can check yourself. I have a question for you about this, though. So I was on a call yesterday. It was a group call. And I find that it's very fatiguing to always be looking at people's faces, because on a zoom call with not a huge group, but maybe five or six people, you're looking at the people. And it's it's tiring the way that I would do that in an in person meeting. I would you'd be looking down and looking up and looking down and looking up, and I am a doodler and a drawer and a colorer when I'm in a meeting to help my brain stay present. And that's how I learn. And I realized, like, oh, I'm so tired just being super present and looking and looking and looking when what I really wanted to do was put my head down in color and still listen.

Orit Kruglanski

Right, but instead of, like, actually, nobody knows what your eyes are doing. Exactly. Because there's no eye contact on zoom. It looks like eye contact when I'm looking at the camera, but then I'm definitely not looking at you when I'm totally it looks like something else. So, I mean, I don't know how this will do weird things to the generations to come who live their life online and will never know eye contact as we did. But what you can do is just, like, let your eyes kind of instead of like, for instance, you're looking at me, but you can also look at the background.

Jen Liddy

Right?

Orit Kruglanski

You can look at me and look at the background, and you can look at the dark part around the zoom, and it's not going to make such a difference to me. It's not like you're really, really looking. There's no eye contact.

Jen Liddy

Right, okay.

Orit Kruglanski

So just, like letting your eyes wander a bit. And I know it's really a shortsighted thing to tend to do is to want to give your full attention by looking straight at the person. But even in person, people who do not have eyesight problems do not maintain eye contact all the time.

Jen Liddy

It's not realistic in person to maintain eye contact all the time. But I do find online it's a fatiguing thing.

Orit Kruglanski

Yeah, but there's like, no need to do it because anyway, I love this hint, not meeting your eye contact. It's not happening.

Jen Liddy

Well, thank you for the permission.

Orit Kruglanski

More than permission. It's a recommendation. Because I think actually you can be much more present when you release part of the attention on the visual channel and you're more on listening. And that's what you do when you doodle, actually, right?

Jen Liddy

Yes.

Orit Kruglanski

Only listening and you're drawing. So it's not as if you're not present to the conversation. You're just not necessarily present through your visual channel. So you can kind of relax that visual channel. Even on zoom. I mean, just move your head around a little bit. Look rather than straight at the face of the person to the sides and look at the black. And you'll see also that the eyes really focus on a small area. I mean, if you look at my face and then you change and you look at the background, you will see that my face kind of fades away in it. Right? Yeah. So the eyes are not meant to take in everything, focusing on everything at once. They just focus on just like us. They just focus on one thing at a time. Okay, so you want to be like changing that one thing frequently because that's the way frequently, because that's the way the eyes are relaxed.

Jen Liddy

Is there any other little nugget that would be helpful?

Orit Kruglanski

Oh, there are so many things.

Jen Liddy

I know we could probably talk for hours, but I want to find out how you work with people and how people can get into your orbit. So I don't want to use up all of our time with you giving a million tips because I know how much you have to share, really.

Orit Kruglanski

I think breathing is very important, and blinking is very important. So one of the things I tell my clients is to put a Post it note on the computer that says Blink and breathe. It sounds kind of silly if you're if you're embarrassed, you can get your kids or somebody's kids to draw, like, a little cloud on a lie to remind you to blink and breathe. And then even if you don't remember that you're actually looking at that posted note, your eyes kind of very quickly go there, and you're going to breathe more. You're going to do it more just because you have this reminder there. That's actually kind of the thing that I have. I have, like, a little free online training just for reducing computer strain. And it basically says what I said. Now look to the sides, have some visual distance, change focal distance, blink and breathe. And then it has this little PDF that you can print and then cut off, like a little part that you can stick on the bottom of your screen. And it has, like, little drawings that remind you to blink and breathe.

Jen Liddy

I'm going to have the link for that in the show notes so that people can click right on it and access it. I'm so glad that you have that for us. Tell me, how do people work with you?

Orit Kruglanski

Okay, so people work with me in several ways. I have some online courses, but mostly people who come to me want to actually improve their eyesight more than just reducing strain from working in the computer. People who actually want to discard their eyeglasses or not need context anymore or not need the readers anymore and just they go through like a whole process of learning good seeing habits and also visiting this emotional context that got them so tired or so strained that they didn't want to see. And I'm currently working mostly one on one, so you can drop me a line and I will tell you about my program.

Jen Liddy

Great. Are you on social media? Can people follow you there?

Orit Kruglanski

I'm on social media, but since I work in Spanish and in English, it's half and half. So it's kind of that's right. It's kind of weird to follow, but I think yeah, I have a website and a Facebook page in English, which are just in English. Great.

Jen Liddy

I will drop those links so that people can get into your world because I think this is super empowering for people to know that they don't need to be reliant on glasses and their eyes aren't necessarily just going to get worse and worse and worse and worse. And I love also hearing that we can incorporate moving away from our computer and reducing time in front of it, but you have realistic strategies to help us while we work because working is part of our life. So especially writing and creating for content, it takes a lot of time and energy. And so if we can reduce the stress of that I'm so excited to be having this conversation and thank you so much for your insights.

Orit Kruglanski

Do you have anything else? Yeah, one last thing. There's like the 20 2020 rule that every 20 minutes for 20 seconds you look 20ft away.

Jen Liddy

Oh, I didn't know that rule.

Orit Kruglanski

That's that's like the the rule that if you look online how to like, not strain your eyes, that's what you would find. But I'm more of a fan of the one, one one rule. Every once in a while, just like for 1 second, look away from your computer. I'm going to now publicly give you all permission to look away from your computer.

Jen Liddy

I'm looking away, right? Feel rude, but I'm looking away.

Orit Kruglanski

For instance, when you're downloading something or the computer is thinking, yeah, you can look away from it.

Jen Liddy

You don't have to watch your computer.

Orit Kruglanski

You don't have to watch it. A watch pot never boils. Don't watch the downloads. Just look through the window. And that's just like these really small breaks are going to make such a big change in how tired you are when you finish the day because a lot of our fatigue comes from the ice and we're not even aware of it.

 Jen Liddy

Yeah, this is all news to me. I'm so happy to be able to share this with my audience, and I think it's fascinating. I'm also so happy to be connected with you. So thank you for taking the time today. I will definitely have the link so people can get in touch with you. But people look away. Look away, look away, look away. Thank you for joining me on Content Creation Made Easy. I will talk to you next week with another gem to help you make your content a lot easier. Talk to you then. Bye.