Welcome to Where Science Meets Self -Care with
Ida Fanelli. With over 30 years in beauty and
wellness and a background in medical science,
Ida blends clinical knowledge with holistic care.
Each week, she and her guests share insights
to help you achieve healthier skin, balanced
energy, and empowered self -care. Now, here's
your host, Ida Finelli. Hello, everyone. I'm
excited to say that I have Kimberly Linnert here
today. She is a pioneer in behavioral optometry.
While she began her education as a traditional
optometrist, her journey soon led her beyond
just glasses and eye charts into the deeper layers
of vision where the eyes, brain, and body work
together in profound and often surprising ways.
Her education spans a broad spectrum from traditional
optometry and brain rehabilitation to microcurrent
therapy, neurolinguistic programming, Reiki,
emotional healing, and neuroplasty -based intelligence
training. From all this knowledge, she formed
the Optic Brain Fit Foundation. This world -class
therapy combines traditional vision therapy with
brain and movement integration for life -changing
results. She's also the author of Visualizing
Happiness in Every Area of Your Life, a beautifully
accessible guide that merges sensory awareness
with practical goal setting, offering readers
an experimental path towards greater clarity,
joy, and purpose. On a personal note, Kimberly
raised three children as a single mother and
is now a proud grandmother. She finds joy in
connecting with people, doing CrossFit and yoga,
creating art and being near water, the beach,
a lake, a pool, or anywhere nature calls. Welcome,
Kimberly. Let's start with your journey. How
did you first get into optometry and what led
you to the behavioral aspect of this work? All
right. Well, thank you, first of all, for having
me on your show. I love it. Thank you for being
here. You have. So, yeah, when you're growing
up and people say, what is it you want to do
when you grow, you know, when you get older?
And I thought, well, I had an aunt who was a
doctor and I said, I want to be a doctor like
her because I admired her. And then I realized
when I got to high school and I had to do biology.
you know, using pigs and dissecting and everything,
I decided that blood was not for me. And so I
looked to see what thing I could do to help people
that didn't involve a lot of blood. And about
that same time, I was trying contact lenses for
the first time. And I'm like, oh, this doctor
helps people. And he doesn't have to deal with
blood. So I'm like, that would be a good profession.
So that's how I chose optometry itself. And optometry
is a very left brained type of calling as far
as just doing the science of everything. And
I'm very right brained in that I'm very artistic.
I see that. And I also love. working with people
so when I got into optometry school I did a rotation
in the vision therapy clinic where I worked with
a young boy I'll just call him Darren and he
was a nine -year -old when he came in he was
very shy looking down but very friendly you know
sweet kid but very shy and you could tell he
kind of lacked confidence and so I started working
with him doing these vision eye exercises and
after about four or five weeks he'd come in and
his Head was up. He was happy. He was like smiling.
Hey, how are you? And I'm like, Darren, because
I'm new, so I'm just doing what I was taught,
right? So I said, Darren, has anything changed
since I've been working with you these last few
weeks? He's like, yes. I said, well, what is
it? He said, well, I don't feel stupid anymore.
I said, what? You don't feel stupid anymore.
I said, what do you mean by that? He said, well,
in the past. I couldn't read. And so when I was
asked to read aloud in class, everyone would
laugh at me. But now I can read and nobody laughs
at me. And I'm just like, oh, that just hit my
heart. And I'm like, oh, if I could just do this
over and over, help people have the skills they
need to have that confidence, have that self
-love, the feeling like they can do things again.
I'm like, that would be fulfilling enough for
me for a whole life. That's what I did. I went
into what's called behavioral optometry. And
that's where we have therapy centers and we kind
of train the eyes and the brain to work together
as a team. And then as I was doing more and more
work there, I realized I was doing more brain
work than vision. So it flipped from... 80 %
vision, 20 % brain to 80 % brain work, 20 % vision.
And then I realized as I added movement to it,
that would give me sustainable results where
they would really stick because the body has
memory from movement. We also create new brain
pathways when we move. And so that's where the
optic brain fit came in. As the years went on,
I was just developing this new technology. Wow.
It's so nice when you get feedback from people
and then it inspires you to go on. You've been
called a mind -body -soul whisperer. That's such
a powerful phrase. How did your work evolve to
blend holistic and scientific approaches? Yeah,
so about the same time I was learning vision
therapy and I was being mentored by Dr. David
Cook, who is... one of the most famous vision
therapy doctors in the world at this point. In
fact, he just got a very prestigious award a
couple months ago, like the highest award you
can get in behavioral optometry. As I was learning
from him, my children were very small, and my
middle child had a nose that kept running and
running, and no matter what we did, she walked
around and it was horrible. She had this runny
nose and I didn't know what to do. And the regular
doctors weren't helping us. And so somebody said,
well, take her to this doctor who does naturopathy.
He's a naturopathic doctor. I'm like, okay. So
I took her there. He said, well, first of all,
she needs to stop eating cheese because she's
allergic to dairy. And then he gave us some homeopathics
and she got better. I'm like, oh, there's something
to this. So then as I evolved, I integrated more
and more natural medicine into it, learning energetic
medicine, homeopathy, herbs, different supplements.
So because when I work with people, I need to
look at their nutrition as well as their mental
health, as well as their emotional health, as
well as just even their family structure and
what's happening at home. Because if you're working
with someone in a therapy center, but things
at home are not positive for that person and
they're going home and they're being put down
or things aren't happening well, then your gains
are going to keep falling apart. You're going
to say, well, this person gets better and then
gets worse and then gets better and then gets
worse. So you have to look at everything when
it comes to the person to create a customized
program to help them get to the goal they want.
Yeah, so for those... who are new to this space
can you explain to them what exactly optic brain
fit is and how does it differ from traditional
vision therapy traditional vision therapy we're
using a lot of lenses and prisms and doing a
lot of focusing and making just the eyes work
a lot and getting the eyes to coordinate together
as a team eye movements things like that but
the optic brain fit a large portion of it You
are moving your eyes and doing certain tasks
with your eyes, but it's more of the body integrated
for most of the work. It puts in a lot more movement.
The eyes are deeply connected to the brain, and
some holistic practices even explore how eye
patterns reflect systemic health. Regardless
of the modality, there's no denying vision's
influence on emotion, hormone balance, and motor
coordination. Why do you think vision is a powerful
yet often overlooked part of brain and body performance?
I think part of the reasons anything is overlooked
is that most traditional, I guess, Western medicine
doctors are just treating parts. They're treating
parts. You go to the ear, nose, and throat doctor,
he's treating your ears. He's not looking at
all of you. oh, why does this person have an
earache? Well, if you're just treating the ear
locally, what if they have an infection in their
whole body, but you don't know it because you're
not checking everything? So I think that's one
of the reasons. And behavioral optometrists in
general are going to look at the whole body.
We're going to look how everything works. Many
unconsciously move their neck instead of using
their eyes to track movement, weakening the muscles
over time. Does over -relying on head or neck
movement rather than accurate eye tracking impair
visual performance or disrupt brain integration?
And how might this habit impact posture coordination
or emotional regulation? That's a really good
question. So it's really important that your
eyes and your head move independently. Now, if
you're going to go walk in a direction to the
right, you definitely want to turn your body,
turn your head and turn your eyes going in that
direction. But you also want to have the ability
to turn your head to the right and turn your
eyes to the left because when they work together,
it's very inefficient. Even a small eight or
nine -year -old, if they're reading and they're,
looking like a chicken pecking when they're reading,
that's very inefficient. And their reading comprehension
and reading speed will go down significantly.
And they'll just be considered a slow reader
or have difficulty with reading. Yeah. My husband
had an accident that caused damage to his peripheral
vision. How might that affect his navigation,
perception, or emotional life experience? And
what... One surprising thing about the vision
system you wish more people knew? That's a two
-part question. Okay. The first part is, you
know, we have central and peripheral vision.
Our central vision is for identifying, clarifying
things, focusing. Our peripheral vision is for
balance and for navigating. So if he had something
that was affecting his peripheral vision, first
of all, It's not as safe for him in the environment
because he's not noticing what's around him.
So he could easily either fall over because of
balance or run into things. People who have had
injuries and say, like, I keep running into the
side of the door. Especially those doors where
it's all glass. And they really are looking at
the door and they think they see where the door
is, but because they have what we call neglect
on that side. they don't see it and they run
right into it. So it's really important that
you use your central and your peripheral vision
together. And for lots of reasons, one for navigating,
two, it just increases your ability to think,
to make decisions, to have certainty in life,
to have confidence in life. There's so many things
attached to that. Most of us go around using
just our central vision. Why? Because we're in
front of screens all the time. But it's very
important that you open up and use everything.
And then the second part of the question, there's
lots of things that I wish people knew about
the vision, but just looking at just the physical
health of the eyes. The eyes are the endpoint
for everything. So if your body is sick, these
are the endpoints. If you have diabetes, you
could get bleeding in your eye. If you have thyroid
issues, you can have problems with your eye.
If you have high blood pressure problems, you're
going to have problems with your eyes. So it's
really important to keep care of this part of
your body, the whole body. And what's important
is one, breathing, which sounds funny, but we
need to breathe and get good oxygen and breathe
well. We need to move to keep everything circulating
the way it should. And then when it comes to
foods, the most important thing for eyes, is
green i tell people green is good so you want
to eat green spinach and collard greens and turnip
greens and broccoli the darker green the better
other things that are good of course carrots
are famous for that there's a good for night
vision some other things and then even your tomatoes
and your yellow peppers your yellow and orange
vegetables are very very important for eyes what
is damaging to eyes in the physical realm is
anything with chemicals so aspartame and eat
things out of the frozen section and or in the
canned section And it has those chemicals that
are very damaging to the retina. Wow. I never
thought about it that way. We take astaxanthin
every day. We heard it was good for the eyes
too. So I'm sure you're big on that as well.
Okay. I'm curious. Can trauma or chronic stress
manifest in the visual system and how might visual
therapy support emotional or even spiritual healing?
Yes. So first of all, just looking at the emotions.
Regardless of how your vision is, whether you
wear glasses or contacts or not, how well you
see or not, when we're tired, sick, or upset,
our vision doesn't work as well. It gets blurrier.
We don't notice as much things. Sometimes we
get tunnel vision, or we just don't feel good,
or even things get kind of fuzzy in our world,
and that's from the stress. Even after doing
vision therapy, during those situations, tired,
sick, or upset, Like, for example, if there's
a person that we worked with and their eye was
one eye pointing over here and one eye pointing
straight, and we got them so that their eyes
look straight all the time, it's called strabismus.
When they're tired, sick, or upset, sometimes
their eye will still go out because they don't
have any resources left, if you will. But most
of the time, they're going to control the eyes
and look straight. But any person under stress,
your vision is not going to be as good. Definitely.
You also lead retreats. Can you share more about
what those experiences offer and how they differ
from your one -on -one work? Yes, I prefer very
small groups, 8 to 12 at the most, because I
like to go very deep with people because retreats
are when you take someone out of their regular
environment and you put them in this little safe
place away from their regular life. And that's
when you can really do deep work. So I'll work
with them in a group, but then I'll also work
with them one -on -one. And usually people are
coming because they're in a transition period
or they're making decisions that are not beneficial
for themselves. And so we need to kind of clear
some of those blind spots, some of those things,
filters that are causing them to make decisions
that aren't good or keeping them from making
decisions that are beneficial for them. Do you
see some exciting results from doing that? I
love doing it. A lot of people, they've had emotional
things or trauma in their life, and they might
have been going, and this is not to put down
any other profession, but they've been going
to a counselor or a psychologist or psychiatrist
for years for the same traumatic event and talking
about the same traumatic event over and over
for years. And guess what? They still are feeling
the trauma. And it was like, okay, something's
wrong. The way I work with people, we don't make
them go back into the trauma and live it again
or talk about it or anything. We just look from
kind of a distant place, almost like a third
person place, if you will. I use the example
of... You're in a church in the balcony and you
can see the front and you can see the people
in the bottom and you're up here and the events
happening down on the stage, but you're up here.
So you're like looking down at it. So it's a
way they can distance themselves from it. They
can emotionally distance themselves from it and
then just wipe it out. And it's like, okay, let's
take this away as if it had never happened. At
least it's not going to have any more charge
over me. Oh, great. You blend science, healing,
emotional wellness, and spiritual insight into
your client's work. Do you follow a structure
or process when guiding someone through a transformation?
Yes, I have a framework, but it depends on the
person I'm working with. So I will go deeply
into the case history, if you will. Being a doctor,
I call it a case history. I'm going deeply into,
okay, where are you at right now? What's the
outcome you want? From that point, I choose which
tools to use because I told someone this once
and they thought it was kind of funny, but I
tell people, I have a shed full of tools in the
back. I have a lot of tools because I had to
learn so many different things because of what
I did. So I see what's there. I see where you
want to go. And then I pull out the... appropriate
tools oh great personalize it for them then yes
okay do you have daily practices to help with
your own vision yes yes and there's like I'm
just wondering you had trouble with your eyes
have your own eyes improved oh definitely so
this is a long time story so about 30 years ago
I actually went through a vision therapy treatment
myself and also did some things on my own as
far as treating my vision. Not everybody knows
what the numbers are, but I was nearsighted.
My numbers were minus 3 .00. So I tell people
that's in diopters. So diopters are in dollars
and quarters like money. So it was a minus 3
in the right and a minus 3 .00 in the left. That
doesn't sound good. No, I was very nearsighted.
I have trouble driving at night. I was very nearsighted.
Also, when I was tired, I would see two yellow
lines in the road. I would get some double vision
sometimes too. And glasses didn't help you with
that? No, no. It helped me clear my vision, the
glasses, but it didn't get rid of the double
vision. Okay. I did the vision therapy on myself.
And now... My prescription is a minus 1 .25,
so it was $3, but now it's $1 .25 and $1, 1 .00.
And you don't see the double lines now? I don't
see the double lines now, and it's been that
same prescription for 30 years. That's great,
you know, because usually when you get older,
your eyes get worse. Right, and I'm way over
40, and I need nothing for reading. which is
uncommon. I'm way past 40 and I need nothing
for reading. So like you're doing maintenance
on yourself still is what you're saying. I think
at this point I am not doing a daily like vision
therapy exercises, but there's practices that
I've implemented that I automatically do. So
for example, if I'm driving and I see it, look
at how did it assign and it looks a little bit
fuzzy. I know to blink and wink my eye a certain
way, like blink it open fast, and it's going
to clear it because I've practiced it so much
that it automatically becomes clear. Oh, great.
Well, that's so exciting to hear that. Same thing
as when I walk outside, you know, talking about
the central peripheral vision, so many people
walk around with their blinders on or the people
who have attention issues, it's because they're
using their peripheral and they're not focused
and they just. run after everything or whatever,
they can't stay focused. But I've already practiced
that when I go freshly into a bigger place, it's
easier to expand then, that I just automatically
use my central peripheral vision together. But
it's because when I was practicing it, I practiced
it till it was automatic. So now the things I'm
doing are automatic. And that's why my vision
is staying stable and good. That's wonderful
to hear that. It's inspiring. Do you ever use
any of your devices that you have to help it
or is it just exercises? Well, there's different
things you can use because when you say devices,
that just opens up a can of worms. There's so
many things. So one of the things that I didn't
use when I first started out doing the therapy
on myself, but I incorporated it later, was syntonic
light therapy. So using certain frequencies of
light can be very healing, not just for vision
itself, but for emotions, for the physical body.
So different colors. heal different things or
at least balance the body depending on what you
need. So that's one thing. And there's a microcurrent
you can use. The microcurrent you have, you know,
you're actually putting things on the body. This
one, you just hold these electrodes in your hand
and it circulates through the body. And so you
can self -do it. In other words, you don't have
to have another person do it. You can just hold
them, and then the microcurrent machine can be
programmed. So mine is really just programmed
for reducing stress. Like we talked about, if
you have high stress, you're not going to see
well. So I have mine programmed for just stress
relief, but that can be programmed for all the
different layers in the back of the eye and everything.
They're all separate frequencies. That's exciting
to hear. Yeah, I know I've watched a few YouTube
videos on those devices, but nobody up here does
it. Okay, so you also do keynote speaking. What
message do you most love sharing from the stage?
Well, let me put it this way. My mission in life,
what I think my purpose is, because I'm helping
other people find their purpose, right? So my
purpose is to help people feel loved, important,
and needed. I wrote this book, Visualizing Happiness,
and every... area of your life. And it's kind
of like a step by step guide to finding out who
you are, what you like, what's important, and
then putting it on your calendar and actually
making it happen. So this is one way I can help
people find their purpose or what they're supposed
to be doing right now. I do it through my podcast
by having all sorts of different people on there
doing different things to spark people's curiosity
and creativity about what they might like to
do by just having different people on there.
And then when I speak to people, I like to give
them First of all, the message that you are enough,
you're important, and give them tools to increase
their confidence, increase their feeling like,
hey, they can do everything. And then that therapy
part of me, especially if I'm working more with
people independently, if there's something they
want to master, everything has basic steps. And
I don't have to be a master of golf to work with
a golfer. I just teach them the basic steps of
mastering something to help them get to their
goal. So I like to speak about finding your purpose,
high performance, and just being the best version
of yourself. Well, that's important because sometimes
people can't see it for themselves. You know,
they need to be guided. Okay, so you talked about
your book, Visualizing Happiness in Every Area
of Your Life, and what inspired you to write
it, and why should someone pick it up? Thank
you for asking that. It's a while ago now. I
had a colleague who was a neurochiropractor that
sometimes when I had really hard cases, I would
enlist him and say, hey, I need help with this
person because they have so much going on. And
he was brilliant. I mean, when he was speaking
and he spoke fast, half the time I couldn't keep
up with him. And I was trained in brain stuff,
but he was like super trained in it and just
knew so much. And one day, one of our patients
that we shared came in. And they said, do you
know that he died a couple weeks ago? I was like,
what? And he was in his late 50s. And I thought
to myself. He died with all the brilliance inside
him. He hadn't written a book. He hadn't written
it down. And all his experience, all his information
that he found or that he researched or that he
learned was gone now. just gone because he wasn't
here anymore. And I'm like, I don't want that
to happen to me. I want to find a way to share
my experience, my knowledge that I've learned
over these, the time is 20 something years, and
share it with people. When I leave this earth,
I want to leave empty. I don't want to leave
with all my knowledge inside me. So I asked somebody,
well, what do you do to disseminate information
to a lot of people? And they said, well, You
write a book and you become a speaker. So that's
what I did. And I thought about what would I
want to write a book about? Because my background
is about really living the best life and mastering
and becoming your best self. I thought, what
better than finding happiness in every area of
your life? So that's why I wrote the book. The
reason someone might want to pick up this book
is. It's a step -by -step guide to creating a
life you love. So a lot of research on happiness,
like how to be happy. And then at the end of
every chapter, I have questions. So like at the
end of the chapter says, who am I? Then there's
questions you can answer. And you want to write
down these questions or type them, whatever your
preference is. But you want to write them down
as you go through the book. So it's kind of like
a book with information, but a workbook. And
as you write down the answers, you get to know
yourself a little bit better. And then at the
end of the book, you put it all together by actually
putting it on your calendar. What is it I like?
What's important to me? Who do I want to spend
time with? What are my values? And then we put
it all together actually on a calendar. And I
tell people, you should kind of assess yourself
about every quarter because things change and
what's important to you during that season might
be different. So that's one reason. Another reason
is there's stories from different people, just
like on my podcast, stories from different people
about how they found happiness. So that's also
in the book. The other thing is, you see, it's
a nice little book. I'm a big time reader, but
I like little books that are easy to read. So
it's very easy to read. See, there's a lot of
white space. And it's one that you can go through
and actually complete it. Because, you know,
what's the sense of a book if you read it and
don't remember it or you never complete it? So
it's easy. I tell people even a 9, 10, 11 -year
-old kid could read this and get something out
of it. You've designed it for all ages is what
you're saying. Yeah. Well, that's good to know.
It's not too complicated then. Right, right.
And that's the whole idea of it. It's not like
a school assignment. It's like, oh, I'm spending
this few minutes to read this one chapter and
then answer the questions to learn about me.
Because how do we know what we want if we don't
know ourselves? So it's to help you get to know
yourself. Yeah, well, that's great. And you're
also writing another book, right? Actually, I'm
doing the second edition of this one right now,
so I'm just adding to it because there's some
things after I had written this, and this one
took me a while because it was my first real
book, if you will. It took me a while and I kept
changing and morphing it. But there's more things
I want to add to the book. So I'm actually going
to re -release the second edition of it. So it'll
still be in that same format with the workbook
and everything. It's just there's some additional
things I want to add to it. So if somebody bought
the second book, does that mean they don't have
to have the first book is what you're saying?
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's just, yeah, we all learn
and think, oh, I should have put this in. I should
have put that in. So your podcast, The Incredible
Life, must be very inspiring for you to meet
all these different people. And what highlights
do you have from doing that show? Do you have
any? Yes. So first of all, deeply in my heart,
I feel like. Every single person on the planet
is here for a reason, for a purpose. And some
people are going to do things that everyone sees,
but everybody has a purpose. Even the grandmother
who is now 88 in a wheelchair, she still has
a purpose. Her purpose might be to hug her grandkids.
So we all have a reason for being here. As long
as we're breathing, we're here, we have a reason
to be here. And sometimes... Our purpose at one
season is different than a purpose at another
season. And so I love having people from all
different walks of life on the podcast. One,
because I think everyone's story is valuable.
You don't have to be a famous person or be in
the spotlight all the time. I think of a mom
of five came on and said, you know, this is how
I be a good mom. That's valuable. So I think
everyone has something to share. And it's really
important that you not only find your purpose
and do it and master it and be the best you can
at what you're supposed to be doing here, but
also that you share your gifts with people. Because
what's the point? If you don't share your gifts,
there's a hole. We all lose. The rest of society
loses when someone doesn't share their gift.
Oh, definitely. learns from their life experiences
you don't share what you've learned it's just
like someone when they start out they're starting
from zero with nobody to learn from yeah so that's
great how can people connect with you you can
connect with me on Facebook or on LinkedIn I
also have a link tree which has all my links
on it I don't have a I'll put it at the end your
link tree yeah But the first one, if you actually
wanted to connect with me, the first one is a
15 -minute connection call. So you can always
sign up for that and we'll have a conversation.
Other than that, my links are just all on my
link tree. Anything you want to see that I'm
doing, I'm a very eclectic person. Just like
my book, Visualizing Happiness in Every Area
of Your Life, on my link tree I have things from
financial stuff to brain stuff to supplements.
to, you know, vision therapy stuff. So whatever
it is you're interested in. Yeah. Yeah. Well,
that's good. Yeah, because I did look at your
link tree. I thought, wow, that's a good idea,
I thought. And on your podcast, you also incorporate,
you don't just talk to other people. You have
information about optometry things, right? I
mostly am interviewing other people right now.
I have thought about doing that. a lot recently.
I did see one. You have a YouTube video on the
meibomian gland dysfunction and dry eye relief.
I thought that was a good one. I did that for
my patients, actually. And one of the reasons
I did that is when I have someone in the chair
and they have dry eyes, and this was for a particular
thing called meibomian gland dysfunction, which
is a certain kind of dry eye, but there's a procedure
that I have them go through. And there's so many
people where I live in Georgia and United States
that have dry eye because of allergies or being
on computers and things like that, that I tell
people this procedure all day long when I'm seeing
patients. And a lot of times they forget or whatever.
So what I do is I go through it briefly with
them in the room, but then I give them the video.
That saves me chair time. That gives them a video
that they can watch it again and again if they
need to. Yeah. So that's the reason for that.
It's not part of the podcast. I just put it up
to help my patients or anybody who has dry eyes.
I thought it was quite informative. Is there
anything else you want to say? Like you want
to share and you can just be open with what you
want to say. Yeah. Well, first of all, thank
you for letting me be on the podcast today. And
we met because you are a very famous Brains Magazine
contributor. Amazing articles that you write.
And I just started as a Brains Magazine contributor.
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no, no. Yeah, I've read some
of yours too. And that's how I even contacted
you. I'm like, I have to have her on my podcast.
Well, thank you. I enjoy, like you, that's my
way of leaving my legacy is giving this information.
Thank you for being so kind. I really enjoyed
talking to Kimberly and it was nice that we could
share this time together. And hopefully we'll
get to talk another day. That would be great.
Thank you so much, Ida. Thank you for tuning
in to Where Science Meets Self -Care with Ida
Fennelly. Ida bridges clinical science with holistic
wisdom, guiding you toward radiant skin, balanced
energy, and lasting well-being. Don't forget
to subscribe, share the show, and join us next
time for more inspiration and practical tools
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To connect with Ida, visit linktr.ee/idafanelli. Until
then, take good care of yourself. And remember,
self-care is where science and soul meet.