The 80s thought the best way to stop children taking drugs was to absolutely terrify them with a series of hard hitting tv commercials depicting what can happen if you don’t “just say no”. So those adverts did what they were supposed to do… Because at some point I became convinced that drug addiction inevitably ends with people injecting things into their eyeballs.
I don’t know where that came from. But it stayed. And now? I have a full-blown issue with eyes. A fly in my eye is enough to make me swoon. Contact lenses trigger an immediate gag reflex and even writing this my tummy feels a bit dicky.
So you can imagine the delight when my mum casually mentioned she needed cataract surgery.
Oh goodie. Now I am imagining them removing her eyeball, resting it on her cheek while they poke around with knitting needles, and then handing it back to me for aftercare. Me. Standing there, staring directly into the abyss perhaps even catching a glimpse of her brain. Yippee.
It turns out I was a tad wrong.
Cataracts
Cataracts are rather mundane. What happens is the lens of the eye (which should be clear, like a freshly cleaned window) becomes cloudy over time. Things get a bit blurred, colours dull and because it is progressive degeneration, often you don’t notice how bad your eyesight has got. Age is the main culprit, but UV exposure, smoking, diabetes and generally battering your body don’t help your chances. You can’t exactly “do a green juice” and avoid them entirely, but you can slow things down: wear sunglasses that block UV, don’t smoke, eat sensibly, and manage your health properly.
What Actually Happens In Surgery
Cataract surgery is one of the most routine, high-success procedures out there. They basically swap out the cloudy lens for a clear one and suddenly the world is back in HD.
Given what I had imagined, the actual experience was altogether different. There is no eyeball removal at all, not even the need for a complete anaesthetic.
You arrive, the nurse gives eye drops over a period of half an hour to dilate the pupil and numb the eye. Eventually you go to the other room, where the doctor will use ultrasound laser to break up the cloudy lens. (While your daughter remains in the waiting area, breathing deeply trying not to pass out.) You don’t feel pain, just a bit of pressure and apparently see a few vague lights. You don’t even notice the tiny incision.
The lens is removed in soft fragments, and once that’s cleared, a new clear lens is folded, slipped into place, and left to quietly unfold exactly where your old one used to be.
You’re awake the whole time. It takes about 20 minutes. You’re in and out within an hour.
And at the end of it, everything is much sharper… including the sight of your daughter in the waiting room, legs up the wall, with 3 nurses reviving her with smelling salts.
A Quick Aside of Random Eye Facts
Your pupils dilate to light, interest, attraction, mental engagement, and substances eg they can widen like saucers (cannabis, LSD, MDMA, cocaine) or shrink to pinpricks (opioids eg heroin, morphine).
Your brain flips the image the right way up. What hits the retina is upside down and back to front - your brain sorts it out without asking you.
Reading this, your eyes aren’t gliding smoothly across the page. They’re making tiny, rapid jumps called saccades, stopping and starting as they piece together the sentence.
Some people have a fourth type of cone cell (tetrachromats) and can see colours the rest of us can’t imagine.
“In the blink of an eye” isn’t an exaggeration. A blink takes around 0.1 to 0.4 seconds, and your eyes can shift focus in as little as 20–50 milliseconds- so fast you don’t notice.
You blink around 15–20 times a minute, roughly 20,000 times a day, spreading tears to keep the surface of the eye smooth and clear.
A Yoga Solution (Apparently)
As soon as mum mentioned cataracts, I wondered if there was anything ‘yoga-ish’ I could suggest, and of course there is.
In The Hatha Yoga Pradipika there is a technique that “eradicates all eye diseases, fatigue and sloth and closes the doorway creating these problems. It should be carefully kept secret like a golden casket' (chapter 2 verse 32)
Well, I am not great at keeping secrets so let me share it with you. It’s called trataka. And I reckon most of you have done this at some point without realising that it is a ‘thing’ – when you stare transfixed into a fire or candle flame and You stare and stare at it for ages and your mind is off in a world of its own, lost in space, or emptiness.
How to do Trataka (Simple Version)
You don’t need anything complicated. Sit in meditation pose in front of a candle, about an arm’s length away, with the flame at a comfortable height.
Then rest your gaze on the middle part of the flame, just above the wick. Keep your eyes still and try not to blink for as long as possible.
At some point your eyes will water and strain, and your attention will wander, or both. That’s your cue to stop. Close your eyes and notice the afterimage of the flame behind your eyelids. Watch it as it moves or fades.
When it disappears, you can repeat.
Why Am I Doing This?
I would love to claim that this will “eradicate all eye diseases” but my quick search on various modern studies didn’t quite suggest this.
There is some evidence that trataka improves working memory, attention, and cognitive flexibility.
It may also reduce digital eye strain- dryness, fatigue, that slightly glazed feeling after too much screen time.
There was also a small randomized controlled trial with 60 people that found that daily Jyoti Trataka practice for one month significantly reduced intraocular pressure, blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, and fasting blood glucose in patients with type 2 diabetes and glaucoma compared to a control group.
So there is something happening, just not quite in the way the old texts would have you believe.
And In The End…
Mum had the surgery. It was straightforward and entirely lacking in the drama I had created around it. She can now see clearly again.
But I was the one not seeing clearly. Not because my eyes weren’t working, but because I had already decided what I thought I was going to see. And once you’ve done that, it’s surprisingly hard to see anything else.
Which means the drama was entirely my contribution.