Progressive lenses

[WindingRoad]

Sorry Crankin' I just saw your post, it's been a busy month I saw your post earlier about vision therapy too. It's interesting you mentioned that because I am supposed to begin vision therapy myself due to the fact that I have a pretty severe muscle imbalance in my eyes. That being said, it's my understanding that vision therapy is more of a muscular training and would help with a problem like I have with excess convergence. For unequal or high astigmatism with associate related image disparity I don't think it would help. I am by no means an eye doctor yet but from what I have learned vision therapy works for some, really well, and others, not so much (which is the hoax part we often hear about).

Regarding your contacts and not having the astigmatic correction, that isn't uncommon. I am supposed to have astigmatic correction too but each time I have attempted (an failed) to wear contacts the torics felt like putting a bath mat in my eye and my vision would never 'settle'. I did find out that if you are prone to migraines (as I am) this adds an especially interesting element to wearing contacts. When I have a bad migraine attack my corneal curvature actually changes due to my eye pressure change??? Long story short, the contact no longer fits and I blink it out OK so back to the balance issue. If you have uncorrected astigmatism, yes you will likely have some impaired balance as a result. However, if you try to correct it now it will be a gradual process and your brain may not be able to tolerate the change. It's been compensating all this time just to allow you to see two images that look pretty close to the same, you go messing with that and the brain gets very annoyed. It may just say, ok I don't like this image from this left eye, I'm gonna shut it off. Insert 'eye turn', 'double vision' or any other bizarre thing your brain can come up with. What I'm saying is that once we are adults it isn't always a good idea to try to fix it if it ain't broken. Your balance would likely be much worse if you tried to 'add in' your astigmatism now. I experience this first hand too so I feel your pain. I feel like a total dork sometimes in Yoga when I just fall over Cycling is different though because you can get more 'gravity' cues to compensate for the visual imbalance. FWIW I have never been able to do those kinds of jumps you mention either for exactly the same reason. I'm always afraid I'll half way miss the freaking bench and kill myself. Again my two cents.

[Crankin]

Thanks for that feedback. My DH finally got a toric for one eye last year. He says he didn't experience any change in his balance, and he finally felt that he could "see" perfectly. However, he has above average spatial skills and wasn't having issues in the first place.
I think I may try the toric when I go for my appointment, but I am not hopeful... so far, the two times I have tried, it felt like someone was wiping sandpaper on my eye. The first time, it caused me to have a super allergy attack, which lead to asthma symptoms, and went to bronchitis. Lovely.
So, if I wore my glasses when I was at the gym, things would be easier? Not that I could ever imagine wearing glasses during exercise. But, taking this class has really pinpointed my issues, narrowed them down in ways that are good. I am making some progress trying to stand on the upside down bosu ball, but it's embarrassing to be dorkier than the out of shape, extremely obese person in class.
All of this is very interesting to me. When I first became a teacher of learning disabled kids, back in the 70s, vision training was in vogue to "cure" reading problems. That was discredited quite rapidly, so I've always been leery of any of this stuff.