New Inspirations For 2025 on Vision and Health–Part 1

The Berne Podcast with Dr. Sam Berne

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Show Notes:

Keywords

vision therapy, mentorship, eye health, functional vision, holistic health, Sam Berne, optometry, brain health, emotional health, spiritual health
Summary

In this conversation, Sam Berne discusses his journey in the field of optometry, focusing on the development of his Functional Vision Integrative Body program. He reflects on the importance of mentorship in his career, highlighting key figures who influenced his approach to vision therapy and holistic health. Berne emphasizes the integration of various therapeutic modalities and the impact of vision therapy on cognitive and emotional well-being.

Takeaways

Sam Berne has developed a program called Functional Vision Integrative Body.
The program integrates various therapeutic modalities for holistic health.
Mentorship played a crucial role in Berne’s professional development.
Dr. Bob Sanit was a significant mentor in vision therapy.
Vision therapy can lead to neuroplasticity and cognitive improvements.
Berne emphasizes the importance of emotional and spiritual health.
He offers professional coaching for health practitioners and entrepreneurs.
The membership program provides exclusive content on health and spirituality.
Berne’s experiences in San Diego shaped his approach to optometry.
He values the relationships built with mentors throughout his career.
Sound Bites

“I highly recommend it.”
“I know you East Coast people.”
Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Functional Vision Integrative Body
03:05 The Impact of Mentorship in Optometry
10:05 Reflections on Influential Figures in Vision Therapy

Sam Berne (00:00)
Hey everyone, welcome to the program. Before we start. I have a few announcements. First of all, many of you know that I’ve started a practitioners training and it’s called functional vision integrative body.

And this has come after 40 years of distilling a lot of information, not only about improving your eyes and vision, but things like brain health, body health, working on a physical, emotional and spiritual level, using things like color therapy, iridology, craniosacral, somatic movement and many other things.

So I’ve written up this course for non eye doctor. So it’s a coaching program and it works for any practitioner. let’s say you’re a chiropractor and somebody comes in and they’re complaining about their eyes while they’re exercises and strategies and educational things that you can teach your clients or patients to get better.

I’ve been working with a few body workers like massage therapists, craniosecral therapists, somatic experiencing therapists, and they’re just loving the program. So if you’re interested, contact me appointments at drsamburn.com and we can have a conversation. See if it’s a good fit for you. The other thing I want to mention is my membership program. We’re going on

year number three and what I’ve done is I’ve taken a lot of my creative energies that I used to put towards social media and I’ve created content that is exclusively for the membership.

about 20 bucks a month. It’s really worth it. If you’re interested in some of the deeper issues that might be going on not only about your eyes, but about health, spirituality, meditation, energy, medicine, things like that.

So if you’re interested in the membership, I highly recommend it. You can go to my website, drsamburn.com and right below the word vision, you’ll see membership and you can click on that and there’s a free day of free seven day period where you can join and you can peruse the content.

What I’ve started to do over the last few weeks is post my written blogs. I’ve written a lot of written blogs over the years and I’m starting to post those in the membership. know some people like like to read and so we’re going to offer you things whether you listen watch or read.

reduce the resistance in your quest of the information. The last thing I’m going to be offering which I’ve actually started is some professional coaching in the area of marketing, social media, brand building.

I’ve been very successful at doing those things. In fact, I was recognized by a nonprofit organization here in Santa Fe to offer seminars and do some private coaching. And of course, this is all volunteer, but I want to widen the net. So if you’re a health practitioner, if you’re a young entrepreneur,

Contact me, you can go to my business website, eyeclaritybusinesssolutions.com and you can read some of my blogs and some of my offerings. And if you want some help in the area of growing your business, I love working with young entrepreneurs, that’s what I’ve done with this nonprofit, contact me and we can see if we’re a good fit.

Okay, let’s go on to the show today. The things that I think about a lot and my philosophies that I’ve developed is the relationship that I had with many older eye doctors and educators when I was just starting out and they were mentoring me.

And today I would like to talk about three mentors who had a huge influence on me. And every time I start a session with somebody or I’m giving a workshop, I take a few minutes before I start and I am so grateful for all of my mentors, teachers, people who have helped me develop my

philosophy and how I help people. And one of the first people that I met, I was actually still in optometry school and I went to the Pennsylvania College of Optometry in Philadelphia and that was a very medically oriented school. You know, it’s from the East Coast and very intellectual that school really focused on eye disease and pathology as it still does now and

I had the opportunity to go out West and do an internship in a doctor’s office who was practicing vision therapy and behavioral optometry and his name was dr. Bob Sanet. This point. Dr. Sanet is probably yeah in his mid 70s. I think he’s retired. I haven’t spoken to him in a long time.

But I’m so fond of him because I remember landing in San Diego. That’s where his practice was. And the first thing he said to me was well, I know you East Coast people. All you like to do is go to the beach when you come out to California. And I said no, Dr. Sanet actually I’m here to learn your method.

And what was amazing about his practice is that he would see like 60 patients a week who were just doing the physical vision therapy and he and his wife Linda. She was also, you know, one of my teachers and just amazing person and one of the vision therapist Margie Thompson Margie ended up because of her.

Well, what happened with her own kids and getting so much benefit in vision therapy and seeing so many kids flower and be able to go back and learn to read and read to learn and just, you know, just take off after vision therapy. She started an organization called Parents Active for Vision Education, PAVE.

And so the three of them really helped me and I just just going to the office every day and you know, I started to work with some of his patients after he trained me and really saw the transformation.

and the neuroplasticity that our visual system has as it relates to our brain learning, cognition, memory, and so many other things. And his vision therapy program,

was so successful that he had the largest vision therapy practice in San Diego. San Diego is there is kind of a cloud over San Diego in the sense of this big military. There’s also a big military. I’m sorry big medical model up in La Jolla.

with the Scripps Institute and ophthalmology and so on. So there was definitely a little bit of resistance, but Dr. Sanet, because he had so much success with both kids and adults, really developed a great practice. And he had this internship program where I’m sure hundreds of young optometrists came to him and he influenced them.

And I know in my time there, you know, I just learned so many things about how to evaluate, how to diagnose, how to treat, how to set up a treatment plan. And one of the most interesting treatment modalities that I still use today is something called parketry blocks. And these are special blocks. They come in a kit.

And it’s a way to develop visual perception, visual memory, form perception, figure ground. These are some of the kind of more cognitive executive function visual skills. And one of their influences was a optometrist from the Pittsburgh area is actually originally from Washington DC and moved to Pittsburgh and his name is Harry Wachs and Dr. Wachs worked a lot with Piaget.

So he had this whole method of helping kids develop better cognitive skills. He wrote a book called thinking goes to school. you ever want to look it up with Harry Wachs and Hans Furth. Anyways, Bob Sanet and Linda really

really took Dr. Wax’s stuff, especially in the parketry area and developed their own method of helping kids really problem solve learn. And it was, it was a great, adjunct to, you he worked with strabismus crossed eyes, lazy eye. He was just really, really adept at that. And I remember at the end of the training, he actually, there was an opening in his practice and he offered me a job. And I was so flattered by that.

by that offer and it was a really hard decision for me. But I knew it wasn’t the right thing for me to do even though my mantra is go West young man. I ended up moving to New Mexico about five years later. I needed to do some things back in the East Coast and I just wasn’t ready to move to Southern California and go into his practice. But we remained friends and I so appreciate him and think about him every day.

Both he and his wife. So that’s my number one mentor. I think I’m going to end it here. I want to thank you so much for tuning in today. Share this podcast. If you found it helpful again, you can go to my social media feeds and also my website: www.drsamberne.com and until next time everyone take good care.