Let’s talk about your eyes and foot pain. I mentioned in a previous video, we’re talking about binocular vision dysfunction, that there’s some really interesting research now showing the people who have eyes that don’t team together well, that don’t look at the world and give good information about spatial organization. We can refer to that as binocular visual dysfunction in many cases, because it just means these two camera lenses are not working in sync, and there’s a lot of different causes, a lot of different reasons. But what we’re seeing is that has profound effects throughout the body. It can impact your balance, it’ll change your posture, it will create muscle tension, it can increase pain. And in fact, now we have really strong evidence that it shifts how much pressure we carry on our feet, the muscle tension in our feet, our overall stability, as well as things that happen in the gait cycle.
Now, that may not sound like that big a deal, but what you have to recognize is that even minor problems in the visual system, any kind of minor binocular visual dysfunction can have really long term consequences if it is not identified and corrected.
Now, I’ve been saying this for many years. If you’re a movement pro and you don’t understand the eye, there’s a big problem with that because it is a driver, it’s a huge driver for everything that we do as human beings, at least for those of us who are sighted. So if you want people to move better, feel better, perform better, you cannot ignore one of the most important systems in the human body, which is the visual system.
So we have to have assessments, training exercises, and a great referral network as movement pros in order to help people improve their vision. Because it will change everything in the body. I still remember my world was blown apart when I recognized that as a neuromusculoskeletal expert, I had a patient who had their neck pain and headaches go away, not from anything that I did, but from changing their glasses prescription.
That changed my entire life because it made me realize that I was ignorant of things that I needed to understand. If you are a movement professional of any kind, a doctor, a therapist, a coach, and you’re interested in integrating brain-based information with what you already know, we’re your people. Check out our free resources here, subscribe to the channel, check out our free mini course, because we love working with people who want to bring cutting edge neuroscience into what they’re already good at in a very practical way, because that’s really what we’re all about.
How do I take this complicated stuff and make it easy? Well, to describe that today, we’re going to talk about strings and beads. It doesn’t get much easier or more, uh, or simpler, I guess, than this, but this is one of the best tools available for identifying binocular vision dysfunction and beginning to work on it if you’re going to do some exercises for it.
To be clear, if you’re new to this, you don’t know anything about the eyes, really. You can follow along. You can do this stuff. But you probably should refer your clients to their optometrist and make sure that the basics have been taken care of their eyes are healthy if they need vision correction for now, they are, that’s getting taken care of.
And then you can begin looking at these more movement related issues all right like BVD. To do this, we’re going to be using something called a Brock string, B R O C K. This was developed by Dr. Brock many, many years ago. It is one of the most ubiquitous tools in vision therapy. I’ve talked about it before, but I’m going to talk about it again.
Because I just did a big call with our community last or yesterday, actually, and I got questions again about the brock string because people need to understand it. It is a great tool and there’s so many different things you can do with it. Here’s how we’re going to look at it today. We want to identify if my client has problems with making their eyes team together.
So the string, you can buy one on Amazon for 8.99, I checked this morning, or if you want to be a big spender, 12.99. Uh, and it’s just a string with some beads. In this case, I have three beads. I have a green, a yellow, and a red. Now, if people have eyes that are relatively normally functioning, we are going to tell them, I want you to hold the string in one hand.
You’re going to bring that string to your nose. And you want it to be relatively taut to begin with. And then you’re going to look at the first bead. When they’re looking at the bead, you’re going to ask them, How many strings do you see going into the bead? And how many strings do you see going out of the bead?
The other important question is, If you see two strings going into the bead, which you should, They should be forming an X. Where is that X crossing? Is it in front of the bead? Is it behind the bead, or is it at the bead? Now, what this basically means is this. If both of my eyes are functioning relatively well, my brain is able to synchronize the visual input.
It is also able to control my eyes long enough to stabilize them on the target, which is the hole of the bead. Because I have two camera lenses, I should actually see two strings. People with Severe BVD will look at this and you’ll ask them, Hey, how many strings do you see? And they’ll say, that’s a dumb question.
There’s one string. I only see one string. Seeing one string is incorrect. We should be able to see two. We should also be able to see two strings at each of these other beads. So, if I can see two here and the X is crossing at the bead, I’m then going to look at my yellow bead. Do I see an X there? I do.
And then I’m going to go down to the red bead. And do I see two strings going into the red bead? And once again, I do. We need to understand that binocular visual dysfunction can be distance specific. Meaning, I may have clients that at a reading distance, they’re okay. But if I bring that bead closer, all of a sudden, one of the strings goes away.
Or the X is not at the bead. Instead, it’s in front or behind. And that can tell you some things about how the brain is organizing, uh, its spatial understanding. So the only really correct answer in this test is I see two strings and the X is at the bead. Once I get people to the point that they can see that, I’ll explain it to them.
And there’s a lot of other things I might have them do. Bouncing the bead or bouncing the string can help them see two strings and actually improve where the X is. Reaching up and touching the bead can also help integrate proprioception with the visual system. Having them do some low grade vestibular stimulation where they’re looking at the bead, performing a horizontal vestibuloocular reflex drill.
All of those different things, plus more, can help bring the eyes into a more symmetric working state and improve their ability to pick up the string, uh, or pick up the bead and see the two strings. Once I have them doing that, I then want to make it harder, where we’re going to look at the bead, and then I’m going to look away, and I’m going to come back to the bead, and look away, and come back to the bead, and look down, and come back to the bead.
We want to begin using this as a training tool, where we’re forcing the eyes to quickly pick a different target, come back and immediately be really, really good at a fused kind of binocular visual, uh, picture. And I’m going to do that at each distance. This is a starting point. There are hundreds of other drills that you can do with the Brock string. But if you first need to identify if people potentially have binocular visual issues, this is an amazing place to start.
It is also an amazing training tool. Now I started off talking about foot problems. If people have plantar fasciitis, they have chronic Achilles tendinitis. They have very stiff ankles. They have poor dorsiflexion. They cannot squat further than this because their ankles are so stiff. Try 60 to 90 seconds of Brock string work and then retest them.
You’ll be shocked in many cases that just by stimulating the binocular system and giving it a target to shoot for, all of a sudden you can see changes throughout the postural control system that will be echoed down into the feet, you know, you can see it in gait and in other movements. All right.
This isn’t now weird, wacky stuff. We have hard research evidence that shows again, that binocular visual problems change how we distribute weight in the body all the way down to the feet. So this is something that you can stand behind as a science based practitioner. All right. So give this a shot, spend your nine bucks, get the string, get started working with folks.
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