For even more from Dr. Sam, check out his new exclusive membership where you get access to my content and resources, new information, articles, videos, webinars: https://drsambernesmembership.com/

And his upcoming workshops: https://www.drsamberne.com/workshop/

Learn more about his pracititioner's program

"Your eyes are more than visual organs. They are emotional and neurological pathways that reflect your **life history**, your **nervous system**, your **relationships**, and the ways you’ve learned to protect yourself.

In this presentation, Dr. Sam Berne shares his personal journey of healing his own vision, and what he discovered about the connection between **trauma, grief, stress, and visual function**. You’ll learn how the eyes adapt to emotional overwhelm, how vision changes during loss and transition, and why restoring visual clarity often begins with restoring **safety** in the body and nervous system.

We will also explore the rapidly emerging world of **virtual and augmented reality**, how these technologies influence the visual brain, and how you can stay grounded in your natural vision system as digital environments become more immersive.

This is a conversation about **healing**, **self-connection**, and reclaiming your **innate ability to see clearly**—inside and out.

Opening Remarks

“Welcome everyone. I’m really grateful that you’re here today.

The theme of this retreat is *The Eyes Never Lie,* and that comes directly from my own experience healing my own vision. When I was younger, I had significant myopia and astigmatism. I was told that my eyes were defective—that I was simply born this way, and there was nothing I could do except wear stronger glasses over time.

But that didn’t feel true. Something in me sensed that my eyes were responding to my **life**—to stress, to pressure, to trying to see more than I felt safe to see, or sometimes, not wanting to see what was in front of me.

As I began to study the eyes—not just anatomically, but emotionally—I learned that **vision is not just optical. It’s neurological. It’s systemic. It’s somatic. And it’s deeply connected to our lived experience.**

Trauma, grief, chronic stress, early attachment patterns—these don’t just affect our posture or our mood. They reorganize how the **visual system** functions. The eyes tighten. The focus narrows. The world becomes harder to take in.

And when we soften the eyes, when we reconnect them to breath, to safety, to the body—our perception expands again. Light returns. Color returns. Presence returns.

Today we are living in a world where our vision is being challenged in new ways. Virtual and augmented reality are asking the brain to process space, depth, and meaning in environments that don’t exist physically. And while these technologies are powerful, they can also disconnect the eyes from the body—and the body from the world.

So today, we’re going to explore:

* How **your emotional life shows up in your vision**

* How I personally reversed my own prescription by working with the **nervous system**, not just the eyeball

* How to gently unwind the visual patterns that come from grief, stress, or past trauma

* And how to stay **centered and embodied** in a world increasingly mediated by screens and simulation.

Your eyes are not broken.

They are **communicating.**

They are telling your story.

And today, we begin to listen.”

Keep Up with Dr. Sam

Website: https://www.drsamberne.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SamBerneOD/?fref=ts

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/samberneod/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/drsamberne

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drsamberne/

Dr. Sam Berne has been in private practice in New Mexico for over 25 years and where he works with patients to improve their vision and overall wellness through holistic methods. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Pennsylvania State University, Doctor of Optometry from Pennsylvania College, and did his postdoctoral work at the Gesell Institute in collaboration with Yale University. He has been awarded The Special Awards for Service from the Behavioral Optometrists in Mexico for his innovative and holistic work with children.

His protocols take a proactive, rather than reactive, approach to health and wellness. He understands and treats the body as one integrated system rather than a collection of independent organs in order to identify and address the root causes of disease. His whole health protocols improve vision and wellness by healing the mind-body-spirit through nutritional protocols, vision therapy, and self-care techniques. This views each person as genetically and biochemically unique and enables the individual to make lifelong improvements to their well-being.

 

Sam Berne (00:00.335)

When I was eight years old, I was diagnosed with a learning disability. I couldn't read. And my mom took me to a lot of different places. And I ended up at an eye doctor's office. And I did get a pair of glasses that didn't really help. But it made me nearsighted. And as I progressed through school, the way I got through school was by memorizing. That's how I got through. But my eyes got progressively worse and worse. And I left the eye chart in here.

I couldn't see the big E on the eye chart. I was really disabled. And I got through optometry school and I met a, what do they call it, optometrist, holistic optometrist. I grew up on the East Coast. And his name was Dr. Schenkman. And I went to him and he said two things. He said, first of all, your left eye wanders out and that's why you always have double vision. And then second of all, he said, your nearsightedness is due basically because of tension.

that you put into your eyes to get through school. So I went through his program and within six months my learning disability went away and I didn't need my glasses and I haven't worn lenses in 40 years. So it was a really huge epiphany and then I went back to my optometry school and I told my professors what happened and they respected me but they said, you know, we can't invest into what you changed. You're basically on your own.

And so I knew that I wasn't going to get support from the allopathic people. So I decided to devote my career to helping people improve their vision because I was able to do it. And one of the things I would say is that, you know, from a genetic standpoint, the medical community really says it's all genetics, like your nephew.

And there is a field called epigenetics, which I know you all know of. Bruce Lipton is one of those people. And basically with that, it's saying that we're more than our genes and that we can actually...

Sam Berne (02:15.874)

We can actually change our genetics if we do that. I've made some notes. you ever come across the Bates method or eye exercises, put it out of your head because it's just quackery. And my friend and I were in the back going, that's what we want to go into because I was a radical back then. And so, you know, this whole thing around

You can't improve your vision. And it's like, I think more people would come to see me if they could penetrate the intense obstacle that's been created in eye care saying you can't improve your eyes. Basically, eye care is about symptom management. You you've got a certain condition, needles, drugs and surgery, you know, pays for their Mercedes, you know, everything is a new, you know, a new procedure and

You know, in this state now, it's laser surgery and optometry laser surgery. They want to have us do that and Botox injections because that's where the money is. And you know, I would I go to the meetings. I got I don't want any of that. What about the functional parts of a vision? Because most eye exams are pretty incomplete, you know, we're going to do a test in a minute to see why you're not focusing and why you're getting blur. I've done this test on.

everybody else, but anyway. So I want to start and I want to speak about trauma and you know, everybody that comes into the body in this lifetime is going to be dealing with trauma, whether it's birth trauma, whether it's prenatal, whether it's postnatal, we're all dealing with trauma and what trauma does to our brain is it sets up a certain track, like a certain programming.

And since the eyes originate from the brain, the eyes are the only part of the brain that sit outside the cranial vault. So the eyes are really brain tissue. And so when we start absorbing trauma in our body at whatever age, it really impacts our nervous system. And there's a wonderful theory that was created by a neuroscientist named Stephen Porges, and it's called the Polyvagal Theory. Have you ever heard of it?

Sam Berne (04:42.862)

You could certainly Google it. Dr. Porges now lives in Florida. He went he's from Chicago. Actually, that's where he taught and he has a a whole theory on trauma and the evolution of trauma and the idea that we start off in the reptilian phase.

But we're mammals. we're meant to be empathic. We're meant to have eye contact. But the vagus nerve, which connects that, you know, the head area with the, you know, the body that there's a interference in our evolution moving from reptilian to mammalian and it has to do with trauma and he calls it the fight-flight-freeze response and vision.

Because we've got so many nerves in our eyes and around our eyes, cranial nerve three, four, and six from the craniosacral, Melinda is a craniosacral therapist too, that that impacts our visual system. And what happens is that we start blurring things out into the distance as a way to pull our world in and protect us. That's what myopia is. But what we do is we create this hard shell and

We go to the doctor because we can't see in the distance. He or she is reinforcing the trauma when we get a pair of nearsighted glasses. That's kind of the kind of the setup.