Setting the Scene
Peter Mansfield
Friday 24th October 2008
Let's start with a question: "If this natural vision thing has been going for 90 years or so and if it's any good, why hasn't everybody heard about it already and why isn't everybody doing it?"

The answer is not, as many might suppose, that it is without merit or scientific foundation. Thousands if not millions of individual experiences testify to its value and new discoveries about the science of vision tend to question current orthodoxies while supporting natural vision insights.

No: the real reason is that natural vision presents an essential challenge, not only to existing health care models and the values they are based on, but even to many fundamental aspects of the way modern human society works.

In setting the scene for this landmark conference I want to take a broad overview of the way that natural vision works, and how it interfaces through many circles with the world at large: within the sphere of 'CAM'; within the wider world of health and social care amid the nexus of pressures for 'evidence based medicine', ' child protection', 'consumer protection' and the rest; and how the healthcare world fits within a political orbit which is currently dominated by the mutation of liberal democracy into its dark shadow.

In between the 'war on terror' and the 'credit crunch', the crucial questions that face us are:

  • "What is the way forward for free enquiry and independent practitioners in any field?", and;
  • "What role may natural vision work play in helping to maintain and restore balance and sanity in an increasingly disturbed world".
Peter Mansfield founded the School of Vision Education and has trained many vision teachers now practising in the UK and Europe. He wrote the book "The Bates Method" and he has developed a number of novel insights into the application of Dr Bates's own techniques, particularly in relation to binocular vision. For more information see Peter’s website.