Myomancy ADHD, Dyslexia and Autism

Back in October I went for an assessment at The Sound Learning Centre and enrolled on a light treatment programme. I’m pleased to say that after about a month of usage that it has worked.

The treatment involves spending twenty minutes a day staring at a rapidly blinking light. The colour of the light and speed of the flicker is prescribed by the centre and controlled through coloured filters and a simple ‘flicker rate’ control. The process is done in a dark room or with a blanket over your head to block out the light.

The most noticeable thing about the treatment is how relaxing it is. Some of this is due to the simple fact not many of us get to sit quietly in dark environment for twenty minutes. However staring into the light that you can only just tell is flickering because of its speed causes you to go into a trance like state. Often the twenty minutes were up before I knew it and it certainly was never a chore to sit there. After a session, even the first few, your eyes feel different. The only way to describe it is that they feel more open. On Pauline’s advice I took to not wearing my glasses for as long as possible after the session which for me was about half an hour as I walked into college.

After a week or two I began to think that my vision was changing, that my visual field was widening. By the third week, I was sure it was. As I walked into college down the canal I realized I could see the other bank out of the corner of my eye. Watching TV I could see the area around the TV and not just what was on the screen. At the end of the programme, approximately five weeks, I was seeing the world in away the I had never experienced before.

The purpose of the treatment was to tackle the twin problems of a limited visual field and light sensitivity. My visual field has definitely changed but its harder to tell about the sensitivity. My main problems were eye strain from using a computer all day and headaches caused by bright sunshine. Due to a changes in my working life I no longer use the PC all day but when I have used it I’ve not noticed any ill effects. As its currently in the middle of winter its also hard to tell if sunlight still causes problems but based on the few clear days we have had I think there is a difference.

As I was using the centre’s home based programme I’ve not been reassessed by the Sound Learning Centre. This is part of the package but I have not yet been able to get down to London to see Pauline. When I do I will publish the results.

So why does the light therapy work and how can it help dyslexics? The simple answer is that no one knows for sure but my feeling is that it comes down to the trance like state you enter whilst using it. With a limited field of vision, that doesn’t mean the eyes are not seeing what was around me, it just means the conscious brain wasn’t aware of it. Using the equipment in a relaxed state with no other distractions, I think my brain learnt how to integrate the peripheral visual information into my conscious processing. The relevance to dyslexia may be due to two factors. Firstly when reading, if the eye is only focused on a single word rather than taking in the surrounding words all at once, the focus has to move a lot more to achieve the same effect. This is slower and increases the chance of mistakenly focusing on the wrong word or letter. Secondly balance tends to be problematic in dyslexics and your eyes play a large part in the balance system. If you have a narrow field of vision then your vestibular system has a lot less points of reference to aid your balance thus making it harder. This is the effect of vertigo experienced on top of cliffs or tall buildings. With an empty horizon in front of you, all of sudden your eyes have no information to pass onto the balance system and the inner ear has to do all the work on its own.

As a child I hated having my hair cut and I’ve seen websites that link this behavior or a general dislike of being touched around the head to dyslexia. One possible explanation for this is my lack of visual field. As a pair of scissors moved near to my fringe, it would of dropped out of my conscious field of vision but my brain would still be receiving the information from the peripheral vision. Movement detection is a very primitive part of the visual system so my unconscious brain would of been detecting movement dangerously close to my face but my conscious brain would not be able to see it. This contradiction would of caused confusion in my brain which as a young child I could not handle.
This treatment will not cure dyslexia but a limited visual field may be one of the many factors that need to be addressed before a dyslexic can progress. Contact The Sound Learning Centre for further details.