Natural Eye Care: An Integrative Approach to Greater Vision with Dr. Marc Grossman

Meg Kearney (00:00)
Welcome back to the Root to Rise Seeds for the Soul podcast. I'm your host Meg Kerney and in this podcast, we talk about all things mind, body, spirit in hopes of planting little seeds for you to remember your soul essence of who you truly are and to awaken into that soul and into that purpose. So.

Hopefully you keep coming back. Hopefully you enjoy these little seeds that you receive of knowledge from the podcast and Today, my host is dr. Mark Grossman Dr. Grossman is a natural eye care Optometrist he's also an acupuncturist and I believe a dietitian or a nutritionist. I'll have to double-check that but he puts the whole

holistic care and his approach to eye care is so radically different from the eye care that I've personally received in my life and I am so excited to share this episode with you and if you have been diagnosed with any eye diseases or problems hopefully this podcast episode empowers you to realize that you have the capacity to

to heal your eyes. Our eyes are made up of brain tissue and as Dr. Grossman says in the episode, brain tissue is plastic, it has the ability to be transformed and therefore so do our eyes. If this does not get you excited, I don't know what will because just the idea that we are not a victim to the aging process or

The screens or having everything up close is such a breath of fresh air. So hopefully you enjoy this episode and yeah, I'll let you get to it.

Meg Kearney (02:08)
Welcome Marc to the podcast. I'm so happy to have you here.

Marc (02:13)
Thank you for having me. This is great.

Meg Kearney (02:15)
Yes, I'm so excited to talk about natural eye care with you. I know you're an optometrist So I love to hear a little bit about your background with natural eye care and what you practice today.

Marc (02:33)
Okay, well, I all believe that we're all on our own soul's journey. So I'll tell a couple little stories of like, how did I become an optometrist? How did I become an acupuncturist? How did I study nutrition? Why am I doing what I'm doing? What is the question that we all ask ourselves? Why are we here? And how do we can be in the greatest service to the planet while we're here? So here I was.

Growing up in New York City, again, I was first born. I have two younger sisters. My mom was only 21, 22 when she had me, so she was very young. And they wanted to leave me back in kindergarten because I was born late in the year. I ended up skipping grades and going to college at 16, but I didn't get left back.

So here I was growing up and third grade, what happened? Third grade we moved and sometimes for people when they move to a different area, that is when Nearsighted comes in. We also, when we are reading, we switch from learning to read to reading to learn. The pictures get off the page, the print gets smaller.

And again, this is way before digital devices, computers, etc. So all of a sudden in third grade, my mom took me to the nurse and she goes, he's having trouble seeing, took me to the eye doctor. The eye doctor gave me some glasses. said, my goodness, now I could see the board. And what happened and what happens to 90 % of people? We give them glasses and guess what happened next year?

I needed stronger glasses. Oh, and what happened the year after that? I needed stronger glasses. But that's all we knew. The diet doctor was doing their job. They put me behind the big machine, which I'll go into later, which is better one or two, A or B. know, God forbid you get it wrong and you're freaking out because, you you don't want to get the wrong prescription that you're going to spend a lot of money on. So here I was third grade going on.

My eyes getting worse and worse. Then I went to a, for those of you who are listening from New York City, I went to high school in New York City to a special math and science high school called Stuyvesant High School. Stuyvesant High School was a school that you had to take a test to get in. So it's a lot of like bookworms, people who studied, right? 90 % of people at Stuyvesant needed glasses.

Less than 10 % of juvenile delinquents need glasses. Hmm, I didn't think about it then, but is how we use and abuse our eyes affect what happens to them? Yes, function does affect structure. If you carried 50 pounds of rice on your back, you would be tilted over. If you're going to look up things up close all day, then...

Your eyes go to adapt to that. That's why accountants are nearsighted, lawyers are nearsighted, computer people are nearsighted, people who do sustain near work. In fact, right now, 80 to 90 % of children in China and Japan are nearsighted. Now, if that's not an epidemic, nothing is. Why? Because they're starting these kids on digital devices when they're in the crib. They're making their near-scented task. We want to look...

Meg Kearney (06:02)
Mm-hmm.

Marc (06:06)
out on the horizon, farmers have a much less incidence of nearsightedness. So back to my story. Okay, so here I was, and again, synchronicity. I always believed that spirit tells us when we're supposed to do what we're supposed to do. So I went to college and I was playing on the basketball team.

and I was getting my ankle taped as a freshman. And I said to the senior who was the medical trainer, I said, hey, and I remember it like it was yesterday, those moments in time that tell us what we need to do in the world stand out. And I looked up, he was on the left, I said, hey, Al, what are you doing next year? He said to me, I'm going to optometry school. You make enough money, you don't make a lot of money, but nobody dies on you. I said,

Meg Kearney (06:55)
You

Marc (06:56)
I liked that. He said, but you have to be good in math and science. Higher level physics. I said, I can do that. So I felt I knew what I wanted to do. I knew I didn't want to be a medical doctor because if your eyeglass prescription comes in wrong, I get stressed out. If I did the right thing and somebody died on me, I'd be a basket case.

Meg Kearney (07:04)
Mmm.

Marc (07:19)
So what's the worst? Their prescription comes in a little too strong or a little weak? I could deal with that. And you could work with kids from babies to the elderly. So I was focused on going to optometry school. Luckily, I got in and I studied. And then another synchronicity. 15 years later...

at a friend's house. And in the living room of her living room was a book, one of the first books on Chinese medicine called The Web That Has No Weaver. I looked at the book, the book looked at me. I took a walk, I said, I just finished paying off my loans for optometry school. I can't believe I got to become an acupuncturist now. But I said, I don't have to be.

because acupuncture was not licensed yet in New York State. So I go to my friend who was an acupuncturist, I said, hey, Peter, he was a teacher at the acupuncture school. I said, I just got this hit that I have to go to acupuncture school. He goes, well, guess what? Next year, it's going to be licensed in New York State. But if you go now to Connecticut, and you take the first year there, then we're moving the school to New York City.

Meg Kearney (08:08)
Mmm. Mm-hmm.

Marc (08:35)
and you'll be one of the first licensed acupuncturists in New York State. So I went every weekend and one day a week for three to four years and became a licensed acupuncturist. I don't know why I was going. I already had a profession. I didn't need more debt, but I felt drawn. And what did it do for me? It gave me another whole perspective on medicine. In Western medicine,

we look at how does X cause Y. In Chinese medicine, we look at what is the relationship between X and Y. And I believe that all disease, disease in the body-mind has to do with relationships to the stars, to the spirit, to the earth, to your family, to anything that you have relationships with. And when you have

Meg Kearney (09:13)
Mm.

Marc (09:31)
problems in relationships, we get stuck energy and then we get disease. So I went to acupuncture school. And now what do I do? I teach at the acupuncture schools, vision and Chinese medicine. I teach acupuncture all over the world. Acupuncture is how to treat vision problems. I didn't know I was going to do that, but what I really did

It gave me another lens in the use of optometry to look through to diagnose and look at people's eye conditions. Because I don't treat the eye. I have to treat the person behind the eye. And that person, it's like, if you have high blood pressure in Western medicine, we'll pretty much give you the same drug.

Meg Kearney (10:11)
Mm.

Marc (10:20)
If you have the same prescription that we needed to give you to see the chart, we'll give you the same thing, but that's not true. The reason why somebody becomes nearsighted at eight years old is different than if they became nearsighted or astigmatism at 25 years old or 18 years old. We need to look at what is going on with that person. And the book that you mentioned, I've written five books on natural eye care, Greater Vision,

published by McGraw-Hill, goes into the physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of vision. I actually teach that, if you don't mind me saying, in fact I'm in the midst of doing an online course now for Kripalu Yoga Center. It's one of the few times a year I'll be giving an in-person class at Kripalu, which will be in about a week and a half, February 21st to 23rd. I'm also doing an in-person class

in beginning of March at the Sivananda Yoga Center in the Bahamas on Paradise Island. Other than that, I don't do that many in-person workshops or classes. Also giving an online workshop on vision and yoga at Omega Institute. These workshops are available, so you can look at the links on my website, naturalicare.com, and in our free newsletter there.

But what I'm saying is, and here's another secrenicity, I just want to keep saying them. I got so many, I don't want to spend the whole time talking about it. But this man came to see me. I took care of his wife, who was referred from another patient from New Jersey. And he came in his 80s, and I helped her her eyes and some other things. And she goes, I want you to see my husband. He didn't really have much going on.

Meg Kearney (11:47)
I love synchronicities, please bring it on.

Marc (12:04)
but he's lying down on the acupuncture table and he says, you know what, before I became a financial advisor, he has his own financial advising company, he said, I was in book publishing and guess what? One of the books I published, he didn't know anything about my story, was this book called The Web That Has No Weaver by Ted Kapschuk. I said, you are indirectly responsible for me being an acupuncturist.

Meg Kearney (12:30)
That's wild. my gosh, that's wild.

Marc (12:33)
Right? I got

more stories also, but what I'm saying is that when Shakespeare said the eyes are the windows to the soul, it's true. In Chinese medicine, the eyes are the shen, the spirit, the pilot light. So when we look at the eyes, we really can see what the person's soul journey is. Is there a split? When are they born? Are they a Gemini? Hmm, if they're a Gemini,

Meg Kearney (12:51)
you

Marc (13:02)
and they got two different prescriptions, it's going to be harder for their eyes to work together. With good news, they see things from two perspectives. Bad news, they see things from two perspectives. But I'm saying we have to look at the whole when we're looking at that. And again, when we look at the eyes as eye doctors, we'll look in your eye and we'll go, you've got the beginnings of a cataract.

which is an opacity of blurriness in the lens of the eye. And you know, you might be, I just did a telemedicine consult with somebody yesterday from California and he's only 60. I said, I don't understand that. You're a little too young to have a cataract in your left eye at 60 years old. So then I asked him the next question. When did you start wearing glasses? when I was three.

Meg Kearney (13:46)
Mm.

Marc (13:53)
I said, energetically you hold your stress in your eyes. I said, but why the left eye? As eye doctors, we don't care which eye. We just say, going back to the story, we look in the eye, we got the beginnings of a cataract, and the eye doctor says, well, you know what, we're gonna watch it. And when it gets worse, we can do an operation.

You sit there, part of your body's deteriorating, and you're going, okay, part of my body's deteriorating, and this person's just watching it. Is there anything I can do while you're watching it? And they say no. It only can get worse, just like nearsightedness, and I'll tell my own story, because I went from legally blind to almost perfect vision. So no, there's nothing we can do while watching. Come back in six months. You say okay.

Meg Kearney (14:30)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Marc (14:45)
Well, there are things you can do while you're watching it, which we can get into. Then they measure a little bit of high, maybe eye pressure. And they go, you know what? You're a glaucoma suspect. And you go, I'm a suspect? I'm a glaucoma suspect? What should I do? Well, you know, we're going to check that again. We're going to watch that. And if it goes up a little bit more, if there's some changes, we'll give you drugs or surgery for that. Anything I can do while you're watching it? No.

nothing you can do. Then you go to the cardiologist. you got a little bit of high cholesterol, you got some plaque in your arteries, da da da da da. You know, we're gonna watch that, maybe put you on a statin or something like that. And you go, well, is there anything I can do? No, we'll watch that too. So we'll wait till you need a statin drug or a bypass. So you're like, my God.

all the doctors do is watch things and they know and they're very very very well trained, optometry, ophthalmology, cardiology to treat people when it gets worse. But where's the prevention as Benjamin Franklin says? know, the ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So then we say what about Dean Ornish? Dean Ornish published a

Meg Kearney (15:53)
Mm-hmm. Mm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Marc (16:06)
definitive study showing that heart disease can be reversed with meditation, yoga, diet. Well, maybe I can do that, but never mentioned, except for some people. So again, looking at things, and I don't believe, I don't like the word alternative medicine. I use the word integrative medicine. We need to...

Meg Kearney (16:17)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Mmm.

Marc (16:33)
integrate the best of Western medicine, Eastern medicine, somatic therapy, body, mind, and spirit. We need to treat the person. My other book, Natural Eye Care, 800 pages of 2,000 peer review references that go into peer review research on what you can do for glaucoma, cataracts, macular degeneration, et cetera, et cetera.

Meg Kearney (16:44)
Mm-hmm.

Marc (16:59)
So the information is out there. Color therapy, photobiomodulation has been shown to be helpful for macular degeneration. We are energy beings. We are frequencies. So why not use more things in our toolkit? That's the thing. The eye doctors, which, you know, lot of my best friends are eye doctors, we have limited things in our toolkits. The diagnostics are great.

I deal with people all over the world. say, look, send me your testing, send me your scans to the pictures underneath the optic nerve, underneath the macula. And if we see that and we see the beginnings of something, we don't have to wait until it gets worse. We can start prevention. So I'm sorry to talk so much. know you have a lot of, because I could go on for, I mean, I'm going to talk for 10 hours at Cropallo in a couple of weeks. it's, you know,

Meg Kearney (17:44)
no!

No,

I love it. That's actually how I originally found you is I have a Cropallo gift card and I was looking around at workshops and I may have to attend that one because I, like you, I was diagnosed with nearsightedness at a very young age and I was told it was just because, you know, I read a lot and yeah, there's nothing you can do.

contact lenses, glasses, the whole thing. And it's just gotten worse and worse over time. And it's so interesting because in your book, you talk about the history of eye care and natural eye care, I think, and William Bates, I think is his name. Can you talk a little bit about William Bates and what happened to him when he kind of made this connection of...

I don't remember if it was like the psychology behind our vision or what, but can you talk a little bit about him?

Marc (18:47)
Yeah, and I just want to say, if you can come, it's going to be a very small class. It's going to... 80 to 90 % of people improve their eyes within that class. But right now, it's... I mean, just had 350 people on my online class for Cropile, but right now, I think we have less than 10 people. So I'm going to do individual things for everybody. So I'm not telling you to take it, you know, but it's...

Meg Kearney (19:10)
I think I might have to, honestly.

Marc (19:13)
I'm just letting you know it's going to be intimate and I could get to go around and really delve into why things are going and you know it saves a bunch of sessions with me to be in the class. Anyway, Bates. I teach at the Bates conferences. Bates was an ophthalmologist in the 1920s and my feeling is that he learned a lot of his things when he traveled to India. Because I traveled to India a couple

Meg Kearney (19:37)
you

Marc (19:39)
years ago and they have a school for perfect sight integrating a lot of the Bates work. Many of the Bates exercises have to do with relaxation, palming, swinging, sunning, focusing the eyes. So the issue with the Bates method, my issue with it, and I just...

Meg Kearney (19:42)
Mm-hmm.

Marc (20:03)
taught a whole bunch of these things at Kripalu and Omega online, and I will be teaching at Kripalu and in Paradise Island, is that

it doesn't get that individual. You know, it's like again, my reason for becoming nearsighted at third grade, which I'll tell you, is different than your reason. Okay? Also, the reason I teach at these places is that one of my prime mentors was a yogi. He was a yogi eye doctor. So I have a big philosophy of vision and yoga in my classes.

Meg Kearney (20:16)
Mm-hmm.

Marc (20:39)
So here I was third grade.

and all of sudden I needed the glasses, worse and worse and worse like I said. And then I started doing the work to improve my eyes and I couldn't see the biggie on the eye chart and now I've passed the driving test and I'll be 70 this year and I can still see up close. So I know it can improve and I've worked with thousands of people but the reason for me and I'm not saying for everybody is I was in psychotherapy and I said to the therapist,

No, they said to me, well, how old do you feel right now? And she said, oh, I feel about eight years old. She goes, what happened when you were eight? I said, I don't know. I thought I had a happy childhood. Go to ask my mom. And Mike said, mom, what happened when I was eight? She goes, don't tell your sisters. I said, what do mean don't tell my sisters? What happened? Because when you were eight, when I was eight, my mom had a nervous breakdown. So here she was.

physically and emotionally there for me, I was the first born, and then all of sudden emotionally she was cut off. So I lost that connection with my mom. So I had an emotional abandonment issue at eight years old that got into my cellular programming. And then what did I do? I tried to study a lot, get good grades, you know, and all those other things, and I went through a very shy stage.

Meg Kearney (21:45)
you

Mmm.

Marc (22:06)
very introverted stage, which happens when we've been developing nearsightedness. So part of my nearsightedness is from studying and doing a lot of close work. Part of it is psycho-emotional. The eye stops growing at 12, 14 years old. So most people can, we can get back to where they were at 12 or 14. At eight years old, it's more, I don't want to set limits, but it could be in the tissues and more structural.

Meg Kearney (22:34)
Mm-hmm.

Marc (22:35)
But Bates was an ophthalmologist who put together a program of eye experiences, eye exercises to help with nearsightedness, farsightedness, eye disease. There's a group of vision educators, some doctors, some just vision educators around the world who do Bates work to improve vision. You can look up visioneducators.org.

There's also a documentary called Vision 2020, where they interviewed some vision educators and doctors around the world. one of the people they interviewed that you can get online as a documentary for this. But the Bates exercises are definitely part of my home-based programs for improving eyesight.

Meg Kearney (23:21)
Hmm. Yeah, it's definitely, I love that you and people like Bates wanted to look at it more holistically because, or integratively as you said, so, you know, there's so many other forms of medicine that we look at for other parts of our body, but I feel like the eyes are just forgotten about. Like you said, it's kind of just,

you're nearsighted. That's normal. Everybody is. in your book, you mentioned about how it's in the United States, it's very prevalent, but in other cultures, it's not as prevalent, which is interesting. So can you talk about vision therapy, what your process is for unpacking what the whole person needs in terms of

vision therapy and how it works.

Marc (24:19)
So the first question we ask is, when did you develop, when did you get your first prescription for glasses? Farsightedness, astigmatism, myopia, and what was going on in your life six months to two years before that? Because remember, the prescription is the end product. How did it get there? didn't get there overnight.

So what was going on? Again, my mom had a nervous breakdown. Eight years old is when I became nearsighted. Okay?

Meg Kearney (24:49)
Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Marc (24:52)
So that's the emotional component for me. So we also want to see what the prescription is. And I believe that 80 to 90 % of eyeglass prescriptions are too strong. Because remember, you go into the eye doctor's office, you're looking through little holes in a semi-dark room, looking at two-dimensional print, and the doctor is asking you, which is better, one.

A or B. And then as my dad, the accountant, nearsighted, said to me, you'll probably hear these stories a little bit again if you come to the class, you know, said to me, tell me what you're going to do as an optometrist because, you know, I get glasses and I thought you'd be an accountant because I could help you. So I said, well, you know, we examine your eyes.

I give you glasses or contacts, check for eye disease, and people thank us and pay us. He goes, tell me more. Like I said, what happened to me? Then they come back a year or two later. And many of the times, Dad, they need stronger glasses or stronger contacts. He goes, OK. And I give it to them, and they thank me and pay me again. And he goes, wait, wait, wait. Let me get this straight. You give them something. I go, yes.

and in a high percentage of the cases, it gets worse. I go, yes. And they come back. I go, yes. And they thank you. I go, yes. And they pay you. I go, yes. And they go, this is not a bad profession. I said, but dad, I want people's eyes to get better. He goes, boy. So think about it. If you went to the chiropractor, the massage therapist,

Meg Kearney (26:30)
You

Marc (26:39)
And every time you went, your back hurt more and more. You might not go back, but the eye doctor, you're just told that you have to go back. You know, it's supposed to just get worse. But it gets worse because of how we use and abuse our eyes. You know, right now, people are on their digital devices 10 to 11 hours a day. We are NDD. We are nature deficit disorder.

Meg Kearney (26:45)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Marc (27:09)
We need to go outside. That's one of the first exercises I give, go outside. So vision therapy, the underlying theme for me from the eye habits, changing habits, like you go to the dentist and they talk about dental hygiene. You floss the teeth, you brush your teeth, but we need to give visual hygiene.

Meg Kearney (27:17)
Mm-hmm.

Marc (27:35)
So we need to learn how to take care of our precious gift of sight. So we need to learn how to be on the computers easier, how to work our eyes more efficiently, develop more flexibility and flexibility in our eye muscles. And then we need to possibly, not every case, it could just be you're in the computer all day, sometimes there is a psycho-emotional spiritual component, sometimes there isn't.

Meg Kearney (28:01)
Mm.

Marc (28:01)
holds true also with

with eye diseases too, whether it's glaucoma, macular degeneration, cataracts, sometimes we have to work on it on all different levels. So vision therapy, yes, it has a therapeutic component to it. And again, one of the things we have to start off when I work with people, I start off with a premise. And what's the premise?

Embryologically, physiologically, neurologically, the eye is brain tissue. No doubt, no doubt. Does science show us that there's neuroplasticity of the brain? Yes, there is. Therefore, there's neuroplasticity of the eyes. Okay? So...

Meg Kearney (28:51)
you

Marc (28:53)
We need to bring our attitudes, our belief systems, how we use and abuse our eyes. So when we say vision therapy, when you've read my greater vision book, you might have seen the other books, what I try to stay away from, because it's not how I work, there isn't one size that fits all.

Meg Kearney (29:13)
Mm.

Marc (29:14)
Why you became nearsighted is different than why I became nearsighted. Maybe the first level of exercises and therapy, which I'll be teaching at Kripalu, are the same for everybody, but then I have to go around and individualize that exercise for each person. So, there, you know, and then we have to, and like some people, I say, well,

Meg Kearney (29:19)
Mm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Marc (29:42)
I don't even know if I'd bother. think I would just go right into what's going on emotionally for you. Because all of a sudden you became nearsighted. I have a little girl I just saw the other day. She's 10 to 11 years old, 12 years old. I've known her for her whole life. And she seemed double in one eye.

and she sees double when she sees close, which is affecting her reading. So I sent it to the neuro-ophthalmologist, neurologist. He sent her to the best pediatric ophthalmologist that we know in New York City, and everything checks out normal. In fact, the pediatric ophthalmologist said, after the child left the room, I think she's making this up.

Meg Kearney (30:28)
Hmm.

Marc (30:36)
because we don't find anything physically. I don't think she's making it up. I think there's a deeper component there. And it's not for me to say what that is, but I've seen this in the past. It's like, hmm, why doesn't that eye want to see what's going on? And going back to what we said before, right eye, father eye.

Meg Kearney (30:46)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Marc (31:03)
Yang eye, energy eye, left eye receiving, feminine, mother eye. So we need to look at what is the relationships with mom, dad and in the lineage of the mom and dad. I mean, I had one kid as I was turned and the right eye and there's a family history in the father to grandfather.

Meg Kearney (31:20)
Mmm.

Marc (31:28)
So what do we recommend for this kid? they actually did it before I even came in. Family constellation work. And when they did family constellation work, the eye got straight.

Meg Kearney (31:38)
Wow, I just did an episode, I just recorded an episode on family constellations this week actually, that's it. Synchronicity, that's wild, yes.

Marc (31:45)
Synchronicity.

So now, that's one of my possible referrals for people who have eye conditions. said, look, I can take you so far with my, you've got to put your team together. You know, when people have an eye disease, I you've got to put your team together. Do you have a naturopath? Do you have a nutritionist? Do you do yoga? And so it's like, I am one part of your team. And you are the...

CEO of the team. Don't give your power away to your providers. Be part of the team and you will know and it's not, it's not, you'll know energetically if the person feels like you want to work with them, you know? So anyway, that's my belief system in vision.

Meg Kearney (32:34)
Mm-hmm, yep.

Marc (32:42)
I hope I didn't go off into too many tangents.

Meg Kearney (32:45)
my gosh, no, I love the tangents. I find this so fascinating. So not at all. And you've shared a lot of great stuff there. So I know you kind of touched on this a few minutes ago, but what are some of the other modalities that you recommend people try in addition to the vision therapy? Or does it depend on what their...

experiencing or do you recommend them to try everything until they find what fits?

Marc (33:14)
Well, first thing I have to look at their lifestyle and I have to look at their diet. know, number one food for the eyes is kale. Unless the people have, because it's the highest in lutein, orange peppers, high in zeaxanthin. Now, they might have digestive issues eating kale or, you know, is it better raw or is it better steamed? So I'm saying, the first rule is that there's no rule.

Meg Kearney (33:22)
Hmm.

Mm.

Marc (33:40)
Okay? So that's my purpose. And if you come to the class when people ask questions, it's like most of the answers are yes and no. Okay, so I look at diet, refined sugars, know, meat that's cooked in certain ways. It's not just the food, it's how we cook it that affects like our eyes, like glycation. Like if you...

barbecue and you burn meat, you're going to get a higher incidence of cataracts earlier. Diabetics, you know, what's going on with your insulin spikes, monitoring your blood sugar levels. Inflammation, what's your C-reactive protein? I have to look at blood tests. I'm a biggie, you know, that's why there's 2,000 peer-reviewed research studies on just nutrition. What's going on with the foods you eat, when you eat it, how you eat it? Should you do intermittent...

fasting, should you not do intermittent fasting? So I'm looking at all, especially lifestyles and what's worked for them. What kind of work do you do? mean, one of the things I do is a little bit of, when I look at the eyes is career counseling. I'm looking and I remember I was giving a workshop in person. I looked at the person's eyes and I said, well, let me tell you, you have the eyes that shouldn't be an accountant. And she said, I am an accountant.

Meg Kearney (35:00)
my-

Marc (35:00)
I said,

she goes, but I hate it. I said, and then she wrote me a couple years later, she switched and now she's a veterinary assistant. loves working, but she needed to get into touch. Her eyes were out here. It was such a strain for her to focus in like that. Doesn't mean she couldn't do it, but it was against how her eyes came into this life to do sustained close work for long periods of time.

Meg Kearney (35:03)
Ha

Mm. Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Marc (35:30)
So I'm just saying, doesn't mean that people go against their, you know, but the eyes will give us that message. And then sometimes they'll give us two messages because, you know, they've got the right and left. The eyes are the video cameras to the world. You know? So, again, I look at lifestyle, nutrition, physical exercise, aerobic exercise, yoga, breathing.

Meg Kearney (35:38)
Mmm.

Marc (35:59)
Posture. These are all components. Sometimes I'll refer people for Alexander work. Sometimes Feldenkrais if I see an issue with integrating the two sides of the body. Sometimes brain gym. I have a whole list when I do my PowerPoint. I already list about 30 different possible

different things, but not to overwhelm the person, to give them, it could be flower essences. It could be, I get a sense. I've been doing this for 45 years, so now I've experienced almost all of these myself so that I have a feeling of what could be helpful for somebody. And then again, sometimes I know practitioners and sometimes they have to find it on their own.

Luckily today, you know, one of the benefits of COVID was I had to learn how to be online. I now teach all over the world. I teach courses for doctors in New Zealand, Australia, that I had to learn how to do PowerPoints. I didn't grow up with computers, still not great, but now you can have access to practitioners all over the world if this one that's better.

homeopath in England, you know? So people, I speak to people in New Zealand and Denmark, all my patients. So I'm saying it's, so we're not limited to just the people in our neighborhood now for being people part of our team.

Meg Kearney (37:35)
Right, yeah, we definitely have a lot of access to different practitioners, different types of things, which is great. I'm curious, so in your book, you mentioned that a lot of optometrists are trained on, I think it was behavioral optometry and vision therapy, but a lot of them don't practice it. Do you get a sense of why that is, that it's not offered in most?

optometry offices.

Marc (38:06)
Well, you know, there's two organizations, OEP, Optometric Extension Program, and COVD. These are groups of eye doctors who do vision therapy. Sometimes they have vision therapists working for them who do it. I mean, it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of energy you have to have. And even the ones that do vision therapy,

which is mostly therapeutic orthoptics, eye muscle things, maybe less than 5 % or less will get into the psycho-emotional component, which I feel is a biggie also. But it's still very helpful to do vision therapy. It's very helpful for children with learning problems. Oh yeah, that's my other background. I have a certification in learning disabilities.

Meg Kearney (38:44)
Mm.

Marc (38:59)
But I'm just saying is that, if you look at being the son of an accountant, if you look at the monetary thing, glasses, contact lenses, you get an exam and you buy a pair of glasses, the optometrist can make more money within an hour than weeks of vision therapy. And they need special equipment. And there's not a lot of training of it in schools. There's some. Some schools emphasize it.

Meg Kearney (39:18)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Marc (39:27)
plus the fact that you need more room in your office to do it. It used to be much more prevalent in the 1970s and 80s. There were many more eye doctor's offices that offered vision therapy than today. Optometry and ophthalmology have become more medicalized. You know, drugs and...

medical treatments for things. Doesn't mean those aren't important. They're very important. I refer for them all the time. But vision therapy, I think now the vision educators are the people who are offering it very well. And then there are some great offices that do vision therapy. But the OEP and the COVD.org are the places to look for vision therapists.

And then people could always contact me. I don't know if you have office notes, but my personal email drgrossman2020 at gmail.com. I'm trying to go into semi-retirement, but I'm still working and I know people all over the world and in the country if referrals are needed.

Meg Kearney (40:37)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's great. And I'll definitely link your email and your website and everything down below too. And I wanted to follow up on something you mentioned about learning disabilities and how sometimes they're misdiagnosed as ADD and actually it's a problem with the eyes. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Marc (40:58)
Yeah, well, I could talk about that for about a half hour because I am an adult ADD. Maybe that's why I've got three different professions, you know? Because I can't do the same thing every day. I I have a goal that I have to learn something new every day. So it's like, OK. So I know ADD from the inside out. when I was in school, I remember this

Meg Kearney (41:02)
You

Mm-hmm.

you

You

Mm-hmm.

Marc (41:28)
exactly, I would sit in the back and I'd cut the class and I went up to the social worker and I said, look, I can't pay attention. What should I do? goes, how are you doing in your class? I'm getting mostly A's and B's because don't worry about it. So what I did is I studied on my own. I'm really good studying on my own, that doesn't make sense. I'm in school. So in terms of

The eyes and vision therapy and learning disabilities, think about it. A child can see. They can see the print, they can see far away. They pass the nurse's test, they pass the eye doctor's test. But they have problem tracking. They lose their place when they're reading. They skip the small words because they require a greater focusing. Sometimes the words go double or blurry and then they go in and out of focus.

Meg Kearney (42:07)
Hmm.

Marc (42:19)
These are some of the symptoms of focusing eye muscle issues or convergence issues. So a thorough exam that measures convergence ability of the eyes, divergence ability, accommodative, which means focusing ability, this is important to rule out those issues because remember,

Learning happens in three different ways. Input, how is it coming in? The sensory system, is it coming in okay visually? Is it coming in okay auditorily? Is it coming in okay tactually and kinesthetically? Then after it comes in, if that's coming in okay, and that's for those people, sometimes we have to do glasses or eye exercises.

Then it goes to the visual cortex in the brain, and I call that put-put. So we got input-put-put. How do we process it? Do we have visual memory problems, visual perceptual issues? But if you've got input problems, that could contaminate the testing on the person, the psychologist who's doing some perceptual testing. Then after we check put-put, how's the output? Is there visual motor?

types of things. Is their auditory visual? Can they say what they see? What's the output of what we see process and how does that come out visually? Can we draw it? Can we write it? Can we say it? Can we answer questions on it? So I really break it down to input, put, put, and output. And visually, it has to do with are we seeing okay?

I just did a consult to this person in California. I think the kid was six or seven or eight. And all of a sudden they found out that one eye was a minus 12, which means it couldn't see past here. The other eye was perfect. And the dad was a chiropractor. So I said, whoa, first of all, you're not going to put glasses on this kid. The kid's only four or five years old. So I referred them to somebody to do contact lenses.

even on a four or five year old, because if you don't stimulate that eye, it's going to get lazy. Also, what's going on in their posture? Are there cranial faults? Is there jaw issues going on? What created? Was it a forceps birth? What was going on in the birth canal during that? What do we need to do to help that eye learn to process? So again,

I sent them to regular eye doctors to measure, to get a contact lens, but then I worked with them every four to six weeks ago. Now let's get into what's going on underneath. And that would be, anything I'm doing with vision, because there's a difference between looking and seeing. There's a difference between hearing and listening.

So again, it all goes back to the brain, the mind. Quieting the mind, being in receptive tone. My magic eye books, those 3D books in which you relax your eyes, they take in the information and then when your eyes and brain are relaxed, hidden pictures come up. So it's a really cool exercise for that.

Meg Kearney (45:46)
Hmm.

Yeah, you talk about how relaxation is so important and a lot of people with nearsighted in your book, you say they have tension in the shoulders, the neck, back of the head, jaw, that area. And I have a lot of that. So it's interesting now after reading your book, kind of seeing the different threads. So I'm curious over the long term.

If we don't put practices into relax our bodies, relax our eyes, what are the negative impacts of that?

Marc (46:25)
Okay, just what you say, actually one of my assistants in my in-person class is a nurse herbalist craniosacral therapist. So she's going to come in, help teach the exercises and just say, and then we have somebody teaching Qigong for the eyes too. So, and I also not probably not on this one, sometimes I also bring an astrologer in, but that's a whole other thing, you know, because I got to look at the whole thing. So, but in answering your question,

Meg Kearney (46:42)
amazing! Okay!

All the things, all the things.

Marc (46:54)
We are destined, I don't want to say destined, but we're on a road to deteriorating eyesight. Cataracts, macular degeneration, inflammation. mean, there's a type of eye condition called macula pucker, epiretinal membrane, which is an inflammation in the macula area. I didn't see hardly any of that 40 years ago.

But now that we're eating inflammatory diets more, the whole world feels like it's inflamed if you're an empath and it's like if the whole world is going like wacky, we're going to feel it. you know, inflammation, oxidation, these are all things that we have to look. So we're going to get cataracts earlier.

Macular degeneration is now the number one cause of irreversible blindness in this country. We're going to get, we're already in an epidemic in the world of myopia. I mean, I mean that's proven. So, you know, luckily we have very non, you know, glasses or contacts treats the symptom easily. It's not like we have to do an operation.

And then what do people do when they get older? even if I got near said, now I'll get Lasik and then I'll do an operation on my cornea and then I won't need glasses. So, and I'm not saying that's a terrible thing. I'm just, know, medicine is again, going back to the things very, very well trained diagnostically, very well trained in technology for...

Meg Kearney (48:19)
you

Marc (48:36)
medical treatments with lasers and you know now you know knee operations are nothing supposedly compared to where they were in hips. Now they can do all these things so but the eyes I'm a little biased but my feeling is that when your eyes start to shut down part of you shuts down because it is the shin all the meridians go to the eyes.

Meg Kearney (48:42)
Mmm.

Mmm.

Marc (49:02)
All the meridians go through the heart. So when you can get your eyes to be more bright, to be more on, you will see more, you will feel more, and you will be more. Oh, that's a good line. Obviously, I don't use notes. I'm just channeling this. Oh, that's a good one. I'll keep that one. Yeah.

Meg Kearney (49:05)
Hmm.

That is a good one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's profound. Yeah.

And to your point, I think one of the downfalls of Western medicine is just, it's the quick fix and everybody wants a quick fix. Everybody wants the diet that's going to make them skinny.

Everybody wants, you know, the job that's going to make them rich quick, you know, so I think it's again the same thing with eyes and I know multiple people who have gotten LASIK who have then become nearsighted once again, which is why I refuse to get LASIK. And I read, I don't know if you've read this, but I read You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay. And she talks about how one of her clients just repeated this affirmation over and over again. I forget the affirmation.

but they went from having, you know, bad eyesight to having 20-20 vision and they reverted because they couldn't believe it. But when I read that, I was like, there is such a spiritual connection between everything in our body and we do have the capacity to heal. And I love that your book gives so many exercises and a progression to this idea of greater vision, which

is that spiritual connection and you know that feeling of relaxed eyes that are seeing. So in your opinion what's the benefit of taking this work slow and letting your emotions guide you through the process and not getting so fixated on the results of better eyesight?

Marc (51:02)
Yeah, I mean, I have some people who work with me who just want to work on the physical plane. Three people this week, I said, look, it's up to you. Basically, I try to talk people out of doing the work. I say, this is a commitment. This is, remember, you shut down your vision for a reason. Are you really ready to see? Are you giving yourself permission to see? Do you want to see?

Meg Kearney (51:16)
Yeah

Mm. Mm.

Marc (51:29)
what's going on in your life. What do you want to shut it down? You know, I mean, I said, I don't need the work. I will work with it. And I only see people once every six weeks, you know, who want to work. said, here are your things. And I'm actually bringing some of those tools to Kripalu too. And that's another reason. But what I'm saying is the fact that it's like,

Meg Kearney (51:40)
you

Marc (51:52)
The eyes, again, going back to Shakespeare, they are the windows to the soul. So when you are working on this level of really opening up your vision after it's been shut down, things come up. And I have too many, mean, hundreds of examples of that.

not only for myself, but in patients I've worked with, that it's like, okay, I'm not ready to see this, and that's okay. That's okay, I'll just take it like, right now I need glasses, I don't need them for reading, I don't need them for driving, I need them for driving at night. And I'm at a very nice, balanced place, because if I improved my eyes, maybe it's my mental, too much for the distance,

Meg Kearney (52:35)
Mm-hmm.

Marc (52:43)
I would need glasses for reading. So I went from needing glasses all the time to being 98 % glasses free except for driving at night. So I don't want to say, but I started at eight years old too. So I'm just saying my mentor who is the yogi, he said, vision therapy is probably the best kept secret of opening

Meg Kearney (52:46)
Mmm.

you

Marc (53:13)
up ourselves to transformation.

Meg Kearney (53:16)
you

Marc (53:18)
Yeah, so I mean, obviously I believe in it. I've been doing it for 45 years. It's my life's path and I'm always integrating new things with it because it's not even putting that team together like we talked about. And this is where the astrology comes in. That's why I have an astrologer as part of my team.

Is this the right time?

Meg Kearney (53:44)
Hmm.

Marc (53:45)
Maybe you should wait till September. Maybe you're going through your Saturn return. I don't know, I'm just saying. I'm not an expert in everything. It's like, oh, this makes a lot of sense. When you start putting the pieces together, you start to see the puzzle instead of your body saying...

Meg Kearney (53:48)
Mm-hmm.

Marc (54:11)
Like I said, it could be the eyes, could be your prostate, it could be your heart, it could be your lungs. I believe in what Louise Hayes says. It's like there's an emotional, spiritual, that's why I sometimes recommend flower essences or essential oils as part of the treatments, because it's vibrational. And there's a Dr. David Hawkins.

Meg Kearney (54:32)
Hmm.

Marc (54:34)
people look him up, was a psychiatrist, he's passed on. He measured all these vibrational feelings kinesiology wise and gave them ratings and worked with thousands of patients. His name is Dr. David Hawkins, H-A-W-K-I-N-S.

Meg Kearney (54:41)
Mm-hmm.

Marc (54:52)
Yeah, we're almost done.

Meg Kearney (54:52)
Wow.

I know we're

almost at time. I know you've shared so much wisdom and insights and I'm so grateful that there is someone like you, I'm sure multiple people that I don't even know about are teaching vision therapy as well. It's comforting and it's something that in the last couple of years I have been thinking about more because in your book it was sort of a light bulb moment of contact lenses are

the equivalent of a drug for your eyes. You know, if you're, you have depression and you're taking antidepressants, nothing wrong with that, but it's not gonna solve the underlying issues that might be coming up. So I love this and thank you for the conversation. I know you mentioned some ways that listeners could connect with you, but if you wouldn't mind just repeating, if anyone's interested, where can they go to learn more about you and connect?

Marc (55:49)
Thank you. My personal email is drgrosman, drgrosman2020 at gmail.com. My website is naturalicare.com. I have another website that's more educational called drgrosman2020.com. But on the home page of my website and

We have a free newsletter, free eye exercises. My partner does free consults if people have any questions. The phone number of the website is 845-475-4158. His name is Michael Edson. Right now there's a list of my workshops, both online and in person, but this is pretty much the only time of year I really

do this. no, I'm doing a vision summit in May. That's on the website too. And I just want to thank you because knowledge is power. And by what you're doing and educating and sharing information with people, you're empowering them to make informed choices.

That's big. That's big thing. So I'm in gratitude for the work that you're doing with your podcast. And any way can help, we can put it in our newsletter that goes out to 35,000 people and we get a million visits. So yeah, any way that you want to work with us, we're very happy to do that.

Meg Kearney (57:28)
Thank you so much, Marc. I really appreciate that.

Marc (57:32)
And maybe I'll see you in a couple of weeks.

Meg Kearney (57:33)
Yes, hopefully!

Thank you!

Marc (57:36)
Okay.

Meg Kearney (57:49)
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed everything that Dr. Grossman shared. As you could probably tell, he's really passionate about this subject and he, to me, is somebody that is truly living his purpose, living in alignment with his soul and sharing that alignment with everyone. And I really enjoyed the conversation.

I am excited because right after our conversation, I signed up for his natural vision workshop at Kripalu Yoga Center. So I'm really excited for that. And I'll probably do a solo episode about my experience there. So thank you so much for listening. Definitely would recommend picking up Dr. Grossman's greater vision book and just

reading through it, gaining some more knowledge. And about half the book is just exercises that you can slowly work through on your own to improve not only your actual eyesight, but also your greater vision, your spirituality, your insight into yourself, into others. And that is truly so powerful. So thanks again.

I'll see you back here next week and much love to you all.