Okay, first off, yes, the title is made in this "Google me" manner because I hope someday someone will actually google it (or brave it if they're adequate, heh heh) and stumble on this post. As someone who is aiming to do the impossible already with my age reversal project (so far I have little to update you on due to some unexpected health complications), I fully believe that we can full control of our bodies. Believe it or not but there have been recorded cases of people being able to even control their heart rate! Just imagine what you can do with your body: raise or lower your blood pressure to feel better (or worse to avoid school) on purpose, change your eye or hair color, grow a tail or change your biological sex through meditation. Sounds impossible, right? Well, here's the thing. Flight is also impossible and yet with tools we were able to conquer it. Healing plague is also impossible and has always been, please ignore the plague doctors' existence. Having the voice of the opposite sex is impossible except for when it is with people like Technicals, TransVoiceLessons, FairyPrincessLucy, AmaRose and Yukko (why do I even know these things?). Point is, it is possible, we just need the right tools.
I won't delve into details on how DNA works (as I'm still studying it) and the nature of our faulty science and stupidity of cultural beliefs and stereotypes. Instead, here on my hands I have a real problem that causes issues to some people who I bet would want to hear me. So let's go.
Did you know that people had not only dominant hands but also dominant eyes? Some very lucky individuals have developed ambidexterity and now can use any hand and any eye they desire. But why can't others have that luxury? Is the nature just a bench (and it is) to the point of letting some people just suffer with issues like having right dominant eye and left dominant hand while others can just play around those freely no problem? I have found out that many archers and... uh, shooting individuals? Shooters? Seriously, is shooting a gun a sport? Anyway, I have found out that there are people in these sports that suffer with this. Imagine how frustrated you'd be when you've always wanted to do archery, but your dominant eye is just the wrong one, so you have to use extra muscles on your face to close it, which reduces the amount of information you gain from the environment. It's like you're trying to apply for professional soccer team but you only have one leg due to genes. I find it unfair. I only looked it up online out of curiosity only to then find out I was about 80% right eyed and my left eye was pretty much just hanging around helping me imagine distance and nothing else. But since I noticed that I was always only getting half a picture I haven't been able to unnotice it. I'm no archer so this issue doesn't really bother me physically, I don't do anything that requires a dominant eye to be aligned with my dominant hand. However, as I'm not doing too well to work on my age reversal project, I figured I could pick up this side activity and see what happens.
Now, what's the issue? - you ask. The issue is that changing your dominant eye is impossible. Period. Dot. End of the sentence. Full stop. .. If you're a left eyed, right handed archer - tough luck, you'll never be greater than someone else who practiced as hard as you but had both right things dominant. Yeah, go abandon archery and chop wood in Skyrim for 70 hours to afford that Iron Helm of Alchemy that makes all potions 15% stronger.
And now that you are frustrated and annoyed it's time to channel that energy into the actual reality of this situation. On the web I found two facts: 1.switching your eye dominance is impossible and 2. there are exercises to help you switch the eye dominance. It's like saying "It is impossible to grow back a missing limb and here is a step by step tutorial on how to do it". I found that the exercises from the internet were written with pretty much no experience put into them. Seems like someone just suggested to wear an eye patch for a year and called it a day. And this is just wrong. After spending about 20 minutes you'll get very annoyed at the eye patch as your brain will be like "I'm tired of seeing things through this uncomfortable eye, I'd rather switch to watch total black void than something that actually matters. That's how a true alpha big brain logics its way into the world!" and you'll see how half of your vision is now just the useless black screen. It's worth noting that some company developed a special sticky gradient things you put on your safety glasses. While it does help, it only helps for as long as you're wearing the glasses themselves. There's a theory that they actually do work towards changing your eye dominance but I am not that deep in my research yet, I just went a different route and explored the other path. However, if you aren't interested in wearing safety glasses all day, I have a trick for you, the proper exercise.
鈿狅笍 But before you continue you should note that this is not, well, safe. You see, there is a risk to develop several problems that might result in no eye dominance at all, thus ruining your vision, potential loss of balance and maybe something else. I really urge you to do the exercise below very slow at first, and not for longer than several seconds for your first few tries. The exercise may cause a very bad nausea similar to motion sickness, potential occasional loss of balance and overall brain confusion for a bit. Thus, if you want to practice, make sure you have a day off tomorrow and that you do it in bed before sleep, also bring some water bottle near your bed in order to not have to walk anywhere. It wasn't too severe in my case but we are all different. 鈿狅笍
Having read that warning, I'm sure most people would click away thinking "why would I cause myself this much harm for something so insignificant? Good question, move along. I'm writing it for truly desperate people who want to be the best of the best and thus are looking for any and all tools available to get them where they want to be. It's just that some people out there might consider temporary inconveniences like motion sickness for 12 hours to be well worth switching the eye dominance and achieving better results in the long term. Me? I personally want to be ambidexterous as I like my left half just as much as like my right one.
For this, I, yes, that's right, I, myself, have created an exercise that does indeed work. How do I know that? Because my findings indicate it is possible to rewire your brain and it's honestly just a habit. But let's describe the exercise first.
First, lie down on your bed or sofa (it's important to be in the horizontal position to avoid muscle tension that you don't want. You need full focus of your brain for the next few steps).
Second, find some object with "a dot" on the opposite wall. That "dot" can be anythin, so long as it's a small and visible thing. For me it was the center of the analog clock. For you it could be some element on a picture, like a person's nose. It could be a door handle. Just small and circular and ideally not too far away. I have two "dots" in my house, the analog clock, which is about 2-3 meters or 8 feet away and a router on a distant wall past the corridor, which is 4 or 5 times further. What I found is that the second option is too far, and since you'll be working with your hands as well it's recommended to not go past 8-10 feet.
Third, get both of your hands up, in fists, except rotate them so that if you were to form pipes you could watch through them, like 馃馃. Use your thumbs and point fingers to form a little 鈾︼笍 shape. Your goal is to make the thumbs and the point fingers of both hands touch each other and form this little window for you to look through.
Fourth, align your see through point with the dot, making it possible for you to ses the dot through the opening. Keep your hands as far away from your face as possible, and once aligned,get your hands closer to your eye until you find out which eye it ended up going to. Now you know your dominant eye.
Fifth, you've gotta start the actual exercise from this position. This is what can cause the nausea so if you succeed, please don't keep it up for too long. I did this for 5 seconds and needed about 16 hours to recover after this. So, step 5 is to close your dominant eye, realign your hands with the dot again, and while keeping the hands close to your face, slowly open the dominant eye. Feel free to close the non dominant one to make sure that your dominant one can't see the dot. If you're right eyed then your right eye should not be able to see the dot, only the hand (don't keep it intimately close to your hands, just about the same distance as you would hold your phone). You should be in a position where your hands are aligned to your non dominant eye, your dominant one is closed. Then slowly open your dominant eye and see what happens. If you can still see the dot clearly, then everything is fine. If your dominant eye is trying to take charge, then feel how it does it, feel the muscles it uses to eventually get control over it. If it doesn't do that then try to focus on what your dominant eye can see. Close the non dominant to see what the dominant one focuses on. In my example, my left eye was staring through this "scope" I made with my fingers on a clock 8 feet away from me, while my right eye couldn't see the clock but could see my right hand. So, I would switch my attention from the center of the clock to my right hand and back, which does not require any eye muscles to move mind you, and this helped me gain control over this new muscle that I've never ever used.
Sixth, once you are comfortable with switching attention from one eye to another, slowly (and I mean it, do it slow) move your hands away from each other, at first widening the 鈾︼笍 shaped scope and then putting hands away where they no longer obstruct the dot. If you do it too fast your dominant eye will take charge and immediately put everything back to normal. If you do it slowly, however, you may find yourself still focused on the dot while the hands don't construct the other eye. You can attempt to move the head, the eyes and the body, all separately, to practice keeping the non dominant eye in charge. But be careful as this will most likely cause a lot of nausea.
And with that the exercise is done. It is day 3 of my practice and while I do still feel nauseous when I practice, I can keep my left eye focused for about half a minute without problems. I already learned to move my hand and my body without losing focus and I even once succeeded at moving my eyes without losing it. The main difficulty is to get the non dominant eye to take charge. I still can't do it without getting at least a finger in front of me to align it with some object in the distance. It's worth noting that the further away the object is the less of a "new muscle move" you're going to feel.
And for those who are interested in how it feels but don't want to try it themselves, here's my most interesting of finds:
The only way I could describe the feeling is like as if the eyes have an extra muscle that we never use and thus aren't used to even feeling it or ackowledging it's there. The muscle is placed somewhere below and behind the eyes and the dominant eye muscle feels like it's always tense while the non dominant one's feels like it's always relaxed. This exercise made me use that relaxed muscle while relaxing the other one and it immediately confused my brain as for what was going on. Interestingly, closing both eyes to stabilize did not help at all, as it felt like the eyes were still active and looking at things even while being closed, which didn't calm the nausea down. After about 10 minutes I got more stable and in 15 more I was able to walk again. It's like the effect of caffeine or radiation, it goes down eventually, each next hour it goes down slower though. About 35 hours since the first exercise and a couple of extra ones including the movement exercises, I still feel quite meh. But my findings are fascinating! That means rewiring your brain is as simple as using a new muscle you've never used before. I would assume when people get bionic tails (and they will because, you know, furries) the brain will go through the same procedure, getting fully confused with having the spine prolonged and changing how balancing works for the body now (cats are a great example of how animals use their tails to get into the right position when in the air). Some guy on YouTube learned (and taught) how to make your eyes look in random directions and rotate your eyes, and I'm just proposing a different exercise for a similar goal - to get more control over your eyes, and by extension, body. I can tell that I have definitely improved since my first exercise and if you're some archer, you can use your bow's scope to align instantly, while the focus keeping is just a matter of practice. I may revisit this project later down the line, maybe answer questions if I get any, but one thing before I go. One person on Quora (https://www.quora.com/Can-I-use-an-eye-patch-to-change-eye-dominance-Or-will-my-non-dominant-eye-always-see-everything-weaker) said it takes a year to do. Well, let me ask you, how can someone tell you that something that is impossible only requires a year to do?
Lastly, some people say that you'll always be compromising, that you'll never truly rewire your brain and all that crap. I don't want to discredit passionate shooters with a decade of experience (https://www.reddit.com/r/Archery/comments/2lmkvr/has_anyone_successfully_managed_to_train_their/) but I have seen examples of the opposite before. Remember the Zoe from TransVoiceLessons I mentioned before? She managed to turn her masculine voice into a very convincing female one to the point that when she tries to speak masculine, she just doesn't sound convincing. Or in other words, if you do it for long enough you'll simply get used to it to the point it becomes second nature. But I mean, do you really care which side of brain of yours is actually working the magic? Or do you care about the stuff you can see change and affect you? Or perhaps the brain does change, maybe we just don't have the tools to see these unexpected changes. In any case, this post is over and I thank you for listening. Remember, things are only impossible if you believe them to be.
