Relearning to See:The Second Principle-Centralization
This article is a continuation of Relearning to See: The First Principle–Movement.
“It is impossible to see, remember, or imagine anything [clearly], even for as much as a second, without shifting from one part to another, or to some other object and back again; the attempt to do so always produces strain.”
According to Relearning to See, the human eye can see only one point clearly at any given time. It is impossible to see without centralizing; peripheral vision is never seen clearly. Centralization is a subconscious mental habit such that the central point of interest is the only place within the visual field that is clear and most colorful.
Generally, people who have blurred vision do not centralize–they diffuse. That is when clarity lowers. This is because anatomically, cones are mostly located in the center of the fovea and cones are designed for clarity and color perception in medium or bright light. The fovea is a centralized point in the back of an eye.
“Centralization goes with movement; Diffusion goes with rigidity.”
A person with clear vision is constantly moving from one point of interest to another with both the head and eyes moving. When a person is trying to see everything at once, there is no reason to move. The problem with this is the head, neck and eye muscles become “abnormally and chronically tight”. The visual system cannot tolerate the tension and vision is blurred.
Something you can do to practice centralization is to focus your eyes on an object about ten feet away from you. Then hold a pencil in front of you vertically with the bottom near your mouth. The top of the pencil should be near your forehead. Continue looking at the object farther from you and you should begin to see two pencils rather than one. One pencil is to the right of the object you’re looking at and is seen by the left eye; and the other pencil is to the left of the object seen by the right eye. If you are not seeing two pencils then you are not doing this activity correctly.
Now, as if your pencil and hand were attached to your head, move the pencil, hand, arm, and head together slowly to the left in unison. As you move, keep your attention on the objects in the distance within the “window” or area of focus. Notice that the objects in the center of the window are more clear than the objects outside the window. This helps one to notice one point best at a time.
There is an occasion when the center clarity disappears however. In extremely low levels of light, the cones do not register light so only the rods function. Since there are no rods in the center of the fovea, there is no sight available exactly in the center of the visual field.
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