Maybe you’ve heard the old saying “The eyes are the window to the soul.” Dr. Stel Nikolakakis is proving the eyes are actually the window to your brain.
Dr. Nik, as his patients call him, knew he wanted to be an optometrist as a teenager, but it wasn’t until he was married and had a son with special needs that he found his true calling.
Dr. Nik is a Neuro-Visual Optometrist. It’s a field that studies the connection between the eyes and the brain to diagnose and treat a range of disorders like learning disabilities, post-traumatic stress, concussion, and others.
In a wide-ranging interview, Dr. Nik explains to host Mark Wright how vision therapy examinations and treatments work. A dramatic turning point in his practice came during the examination of a 12-year-old girl. By evaluating her eyes, Dr. Nik could tell something was deeply troubling her. It turns out she had planned to end her life the night before.
Dr. Nik found his calling through his son Gabriel who has cerebral palsy. Through vision therapy, Gabriel has made remarkable gains in his abilities and quality of life. Instead of seeing Gabriel’s challenges as a setback, Dr. Nik sees them as the “setup” for a career dedicated to helping others.
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Resources from the episode:
- Learn more about Dr. Nik and the work he does here.
- Read more about vision therapy and Neuro-Visual Optometry here.
- Find a list of Vision Therapy professionals near you by searching on the College of Optometrists in Vision Development website.
- Connect with Dr. Nik on LinkedIn.
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Transcript
The following transcript is not certified. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. The information contained within this document is for general information purposes only.
Speakers: Dr Stelios Nikolakakis and Mark Wright
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 00:00
Everything changed when I did the screening on a 12-year-old girl. And all the testing and the screening was showing positive, positive, positive, po positive. And so, I said to her, did you sleep well last night? She goes, yeah, I slept well. And I said, what are your stress levels on a scale one to 10? And she didn’t respond. She just put her head down. And then the mom was sitting behind me, and she started crying. The mom. And, and I said, are you okay? And she goes, how did you know to ask those questions? And I explained to her, you implemented the screening strategy, and then she turned to her daughter and said, do you mind if I tell him what happened? You might be able to help us. So, the mom proceeded to tell me that she found the note that the daughter was gonna leave after she ended.
MARK WRIGHT 00:46
This is the BEATS WORKING Show. We are on a mission to redeem work: the word, the place, and the way. I’m your host, Mark Wright. Join us at winning the game of work. Welcome to BEATS WORKING on the show today. Turning personal challenges into your calling. Maybe you’ve heard the old saying, the eyes are the window to the soul. Well, today’s guest, Dr. Stel Nikolakakis, is proving the eyes are actually the window to your brain. That’s what he was talking about in the clip you just heard when he examined the eyes of a 12-year-old girl who the night before considered taking her own life, he could tell something was wrong just by examining her eyes. Dr. Nik, as his patients call him, knew he wanted to be an optometrist as a teenager, but it wasn’t until he was married and had a son with special needs that he found his true calling. Dr. Nik is a NeuroVisual optometrist. It’s a field that studies the connection between the eyes and the brain to diagnose and treat a range of disorders like learning disabilities, post-traumatic stress concussion, and others. Dr. Nik’s son, Gabriel, has cerebral palsy and through vision therapy has made remarkable gains in his abilities and quality of life. Instead of seeing Gabriel’s challenges as a setback, Dr. Nik sees them as the setup to a career dedicated to helping others. Well, Dr. Nik, it’s great to have you on the BEATS WORKING podcast. As I’ve been doing some research to get ready for this, I’ve just been so intrigued, not only by your life story, but but by your life’s work now, and, uh, so let’s start at the beginning. I think it’s absolutely amazing that as a kid you wanted to become an optometrist. Um, what was it that drew you to that profession? What was it as a kid that you saw that made you think, well, man, this is pretty cool.
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 02:42
Um, yeah, first of all, thanks for, for having me on on the podcast and, um, it’s an interesting question. I mean, I’ve always wanted to help people. Like, that was just innate in me since I was a kid. And, uh, I thought it was gonna be some type of sports therapy or, or sports medicine. Um, you know, so chiropractic was sort of the first thing I was looking at, but then I was the only one in my family that wore glasses. So, you know, going to the optometrist year after year, he always kept me interested, and would show me cool, cool things every time I went in. Um, and then it was about grade 10, I thought to myself, wow, this guy, you know, speaks to people all day long, helps people all day long, sits in a dark room and, and, uh, and I thought, this seems like a cool profession. I asked him what he thought of it, and obviously he said, it’s the best profession in the world, and I made the decision stuck to it. And, um, and here we are.
MARK WRIGHT 03:36
Yeah. Uh, what’s interesting though is that as a kid, you know, regular optometry, you’re diagnosing, you know, people’s, you know, eyes, right? And you’re helping them see better, but what you got into through your life story goes so much deeper than that, and I think it’s just a fascinating, uh, thing to talk about. Let’s, let’s talk about your superpower now. When people ask you what you do, you say, I changed lives through vision and specifically through a process, one of them called NeuroVisual optometry. So, let’s start there. I’m, I’m just kind of blown away that at the heart of this, this discipline, there’s, there’s a connection between our brain and our eyes that allows you to diagnose issues with the brain by examining the eyes and then treat those disorders by treating the eyes, and I just, this is so just amazing, such something that I had no idea even existed for the average person, Dr. Nik explain exactly what NeuroVisual optometry is.
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 04:34
Well, it’s, again, it’s uh, I didn’t even know it existed cuz uh, we didn’t even have it as part of our curriculum in, in, at, uh, the University of Waterloo School of Optometry. We had a, a portion called Binocular Vision. In other words, how the eyes work together, move how we focus basically the, the, the hardware of the visual system. Um, and then it wasn’t until a colleague came to my house and saw, cuz my youngest son has cerebral palsy, and he saw the way that his body was positioned, and he mentioned that he, we can help him with vision therapy, and I’m thinking, what does the body have to do with the eyes and the brain? Same question that you just asked me. And he tried to explain to me, and I didn’t really understand. So, I did my own research cuz I have a vested interest now in anything that could support my child, why not? Um, and then I ended up going to the US to learn, uh, to learn, uh, more about it. Um, you know, and just to keep it simple for now. Yeah. Um, we don’t see with our eyes. Okay. We see with our brains through our eyes, and the same thing we don’t hear with our ears. Okay. So, we, it’s, it’s, it’s how the information is coming into our brain, how our brain processes it, and then how that then manufactures what we call movement. So, you know, if we think about the eyeballs as an extension of the brain, which it is cuz the retina is brain tissue. Um, and then we think of how does that information get into the brain for the brain to process the information. That’s actually what vision therapy is. So, you know, one of the things I hear all the time is that, you know, do you help kids with learning, uh, disabilities and you help them read, it’s no, we don’t help them with the dyslexia. What we help them with is with any inefficiency in the visual skills that may be inefficient for them to read, right? And, and the percentage of that happening is high. I think it’s 25, 30%. I think it’s a low stat. Um, but there’s, you know, 25% of every classroom has, you know, difficulty reading or dyslexia. That can be vision-related. Um, you know, so that’s basically like vision therapy is basically how do, how does the visual process work? Uh, neurologically.
MARK WRIGHT 06:42
So, most of what’s in our brains comes through our eyes, right?
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 06:49
Yes and no. Uh, so we, we say that the brain is 80% visual, okay? Now, you know, when I say visual, most people think it means what they see. It’s not necessarily what we see. It’s how the visual processing happens neurologically. So, what do I mean by that? When we experience something, okay, so we experience something, yes, we see it, okay? And we hear it, and sometimes we can feel it. So, all this information comes into the brain, and then the brain pieces, all that information, and then that’s where the processing actually occurs to make or to understand what it means. What is it? What is it that it’s taking in? How do we put meaning to it? Okay, so how do we derive that meaning? And then the brain then manufactures an action based on how it’s deriving this meaning that’s happening, which is what we call the visual processing. So, you know, I could say to you, think of a bell and the first thing that may come to you is, I can hear it, right? Because you’re an auditory processor. It’s still visual processing in the way that you’re taking in the information about thinking about how that bell works neurologically in the brain, if that makes sense, right? So yeah, I mean it and understanding that there’s that much of the neurology that is visual and how we can tap into the visual system and basically tap into the brain, look for any inefficiencies, and then improve those efficiencies so somebody can experience life differently. Hopefully better, but differently.
MARK WRIGHT 08:20
So, let’s talk more about your son Gabriel, who has cerebral palsy. What was it like, um, when you first started to understand it? Wow, maybe I can help Gabriel with this new therapy. Take me, take me through that process of where it started and, and just how he benefited from your understanding of this, this science.
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 08:40
Yeah. So, um, just a little history on him. So we were, we were pregnant with, uh, our second and third child. So, there were twins, and then at the 20 week, uh, ultrasound is when we found that, that Michael, um, wasn’t gonna make it to birth cuz he had a, a, a heart condition. Um, and then, uh, 26, about 25 weeks, um, into the pregnancy is where, um, you know, we thought, okay, they’re coming. And we had, um, one scare, actually it was a couple of them, and then finally we’re, we’re giving birth. Uh, Fabi was giving birth to, uh, both of them five days before Gabriel was born. Uh, Michael passed away and then, um, and then Gabriel was born at 26 weeks and, and one day. So, we called the, uh, Neo Native Intensive Care unit at the hospital home for the next 146 days and that’s where the, you know, the journey began with him. Um, you know, all auditory testing showed that he was, uh, severely and profoundly, uh, impacted in, in, in hearing. So, at that point, they told us he’s not gonna hear, he’s not gonna see, he’s not gonna walk, he’s not gonna talk. He’s gonna be in diapers his whole life. I mean, every possible prognosis, poor prognosis was there. Um, you know, I’m not the type to listen to prognosis like that. I, you know, covered my wife’s ears, and said, don’t listen to anything they’re saying right now. Just be present and then allow everything to unfold the way that it, it it was going to two years. Um, you know, when he was two years old, um, is when he, it was confirmed the diagnosis of cerebral palsy. So, there was a lot of, you know, tests that happened at the time, and one of the doctors said to me, you know, one day you’ll understand why you had to go through this. And I mean, I wanted to kill him at that point thinking nobody should have to go through this. But looking back to where I am now, cause you mentioned, you know, all of a sudden my purpose is starting to show up. I get it because what is, or what was one of the most difficult times in my life and in my story, um, ended up leading me in a direction of, of possibilities. So, um, and the other amazing things, the people that are showing up in my life and in our lives and the family’s lives have been just incredible. Um, one of them is a woman named Anat Baniel. Um, and Judy Dack is a therapist of the Anat Baniel therapy in Toronto, and I’m pretty sure that’s the therapy that supported him with his auditory processing because, uh, you know, Gabriel can hear perfectly well and he could back back then. Um, and the docs don’t understand why. So how is it that his auditory system is hearing now? And he had, you know, still profound and, and severe hearing loss. And the, uh, Anat Baniel therapy is basically slow movements in order to then create neuroplasticity in the brain. So slow movements in the body. Um, and then, you know, I started learning about all these alternative therapies that led me to understand our alternative therapy called vision therapy. Um, because Gabriel had probably the second highest prescription I’ve seen in my career. Uh, and I turned right, uh, and I turned and a lazy eye. So, his, his one eye, um, wasn’t seeing clearly at all at uh, at all. Um, you know, now his eyes are, you know, he hears well, perfectly straight, no prescription, and he has 2020 vision in each eye. So, you know, to, to, to prove why it happens, I don’t really understand, but something obviously neurologically shifted. Um, you know, you’ll hear the term neuroplasticity a lot these days. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a, a word that uh, pops up a lot. It’s real. Um, and you know, we, we know that the brain is plastic, and it can get trained in ways to support the potential of, in this case, his visual system. But I mean, ultimately the potential of, of the individual, right? So, when I look at Gabriel, I don’t see the disability. I see what the possibility is, and the gift that he gave me is everybody that I meet, I see the possibility, I don’t see the disability. Uh, and it’s just, it’s, it’s a continuum, right? So, everything’s with respect to where that person has in terms of their ultimate potential. Um, which again, we’ll probably talk about it later, but it led to my purpose and what I do now, and, you know, I love the name of the podcast, BEATS WORKING because I don’t work anymore. I, this isn’t work to me, right? It’s a passion. It’s, it’s, uh, you know, impact making a difference in the world. And now I’m grateful that I get opportunities like this to share it, um, because a lot of people really don’t know what it is. And, uh, you know, vision therapy, a lot of the work that I do, even on the, um, on the, um, emotional intelligence side of, of coaching that I do as well. So, I hope I answered the question.
MARK WRIGHT 13:14
Yeah, you did. So, I’m guessing you’re not one of those doctors that says what you won’t be able to do in the next, uh, x number of months or years of your life. You’re one of those docs that says, okay, let’s take a look at what we can do and what we can develop, right?
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 13:28
Yeah. Always. It’s, um, yeah, I, I, again, you know, even you said it like, I’m sorry and thank you. Um, but I always tell people it’s the best thing that happened to me. I shouldn’t say that. It’s the best thing that happened for me, right? And if I were to do anything all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. Okay, and in terms of, you know, yes, I’m trained medically as an optometrist, so we’re trained to look for problems. I mean, that’s our number one thing is, is there an issue, um, uh, whether it’s neurological or visual or, you know, in terms of the, the eyeball that we need to look at, first and foremost. Um, but everything changed for me in terms of looking at what is it that we can work on, because there’s, okay, so three main patients that we see, number one, are kids with learning issues, two concussion patients, and three high level athletes, right? And to me, there’s no real difference because if we look at it from a continuum of potential, then the high-level athlete is going from, you know, being amazing at his craft or her being amazing at a craft to next level, right? If we have a child with a learning disability, instead of focusing on the learning disability, what is it that we can focus on that makes them a unique and then work on the uniqueness to support them and give them visual access that then allowed them to improve, um, in terms of what they want, whether it’s in life or whether it’s, um, you know, in school, most of the time I’ll ask parents, what’s the goal that you want to get at a vision training? The number one answer is, I want them to get better marks, right? If I ask the child what they want, you know, what do they wanna improve on in vision training? It’s like, I want to be a better hockey player, right? And, and we do both, hopefully, right?
MARK WRIGHT 15:13
I love it. I love it. So, let’s talk a little bit more about exactly how you diagnose and then treat through vision therapy. Um, and I know that I’ve, I’ve listened to some of your work with other podcasters who happen to be doctors. That was a pretty high-level discussion and really interesting. But for everyday people, like, like me, uh, who really don’t have a medical background, like give us an idea of, of like, let’s take a learning disorder or something like that, and how you diagnose it by examining the eyes and then, and then how you treat that.
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 15:43
Okay. So, I’ll, I’ll give examples as I go along, and then feel free to ask questions, uh, you know, if, if, if we need to put more detail on, on the conversation. So, when you get a regular eye exam. Okay, so, you go in, you know what it’s like, you know, you see the optometrist or ophthalmologist. Then, you know, we take a look and we, we check is there a prescription and how well can you see whether it’s glasses for distance or prescription for a close or both? The second thing that we look at is to make sure that the eyes are moving and they’re, they’re, they’re functioning in a way that’s supporting to have single clear vision, right? That’s the ideal. And then the last thing that we look at is the health, okay. So, we look and make sure that everything’s nice and healthy back there. There’s no glaucoma, there’s no macular degeneration, there’s no act, act active disease. Um, when we do a NeuroVisual evaluation, what we do is, is look at almost like a 21-point checklist, and it’s like taking your car to the mechanic, okay. So, we look at those points and say, okay, do they fall within ranges in terms of what the brain needs in order to utilize visual information and then process it? So, this is how I explain it to parents to make it simple. We have a hardware of the visual system, and then we have a software of the visual system. What’s the hardware? When we look at print, our eyes need to point roughly where the print is. It needs to focus on where the print is, right? They need to focus on the print and the eyes need to move together as it’s moving through the print, okay. So, the hardware system, if it functions effectively, we have the capacity now to try to understand what it is that we’re reading, okay. If one or more of those systems is offer inefficient, then the brain is busy trying to keep it lined up or trying to stay focused or trying to move through space in those words, because it’s so busy doing that. One of the main, main things that happens with kids with learning issues is a decreasing comprehension.
MARK WRIGHT 17:58
Right. Cuz the brain’s doing something else, right?
R. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 18:00
It’s busy doing other things. So, if you ask that child to a question with regards to what they read, they have no clue. Okay. The other thing that, you know, in terms of behavior, so we’re looking at how is that child behaving when they’re reading? If the eyes have a difficult time moving from word to word to word, what’s the first thing that you’ll see? They track with their finger, right? So, they compensate in ways to then, um, compensate for the inefficiency. If the, if the eyes aren’t focusing properly, it’s like you take a camera, blurry, clear, blurry, clear. So, most of not, when you have a child that has 2020 vision, it’s not that they can’t see, they can see 2020, but there’s so many things that are inefficient that the brain just can’t take in the information the way that it needs to, and what you’ll hear is they reread the words, uh, the comprehension goes down. I see double, right? Because the, I see blurry, it comes in and outta focus, right? And then that’s what creates the reading difficulty. But actually what the issue is, is the hardware of the visual system is off, okay. So that’s part one. Part two. Now I mentioned there’s the hardware and there’s the software. So, the software part of the system is once the information does go into the brain, how does the brain process the information to make sense of it? Okay? So, there’s different types of what we call perceptual testing that we do, so that we, you know, one for example is can the brain visually remember what it saw? Okay? So, think of photographic memory, right? If somebody has photographic memory, it’s etched into the brain, and they can recall it and see it and spit it out at exams, they can do everything you want but what’s the opposite look like? If that information goes to the brain and there’s like no snapshot or it’s like seconds of snapshot and I’m trying to recall what it’s like, what did I see? So, if I can’t process the information, what do I do? Go back and read it again, right? And then again, slow reading speed, slow understanding, slow, and there’s seven levels of perceptual testing that we do to figure out in this 21-point checklist, where are the inefficiencies? Once we gather those inefficiencies, it deepens our history to the parents and the child. But then we ask specific questions that are targeted to what we see in terms of the inefficiency to confirm is this actually what’s happening? Guess what we hear 99.9% of the time. Wow. Somebody’s explaining what we’re noticing in behavior. Wow. Somebody’s listening to me. If you’re the one that’s, you mean, and this is a key one that we, like when I heard this the first time, it ugh. When a kid says, mom, do you mean I’m not stupid? Are you kidding me? When I heard that the first time, I thought, oh my God, there’s no way, and then I, again, I said to my team, I don’t want any child coming in here that doesn’t get a screening so that we can at least, you know, use a two minute cuz um, standardized screening, screening test to ask the questions to figure out do we have an inefficiencies in that system? But those are the, the two main, you know, they’re subsets of each one, but those are the two main descriptors that I give parents so that they can understand the hardware, the software, how does the brain process and where, where can we look for those inefficiencies?
MARK WRIGHT 21:27
Oh my gosh. And you just go a generation or, or two back and you know, like my dad, I’m sure had a severe learning disability, but he was just called stupid. Um, you know, and he was extremely successful in his life when he was alive, you know, brilliant salesman. Uh, but he couldn’t spell, he couldn’t, you know, he’d have somebody else write the letters for him, you know, in the office. And, but he was ca you know, he literally was, was was called slow and stupid, and it was, there’s nothing further from the truth. It’s just like, wow. It’s so eye-opening, all this stuff.
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 21:59
It’s, it’s, um, what I, it’s funny because there’s two directions that the child can go. One is to give up. Okay, or the opposite is to push through it, and then they learn strategies that the other kids don’t have, and they tend to be the smartest kids in the class, and they tend to be the entrepreneurs and the successful ones.
MARK WRIGHT 22:22
Richard Branson an example of that.
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 22:24
It’s, I mean, I can, we can label a lot of entrepreneurs and one of the key things that you hear all the time is, you know, a lot of the successful entrepreneurs that had reading or um, reading difficulties or dyslexia will say, I was diagnosed with ADD common one. Um, and, you know, again, another statistic I heard as I was going through my learning is that 80% of vision-related learning issues are exactly the same symptoms as ADD.
MARK WRIGHT 22:51
Wow. So instead of a prescription, they’re getting some sort of drug from a doctor and take this drug and there you go.
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 22:59
Yeah, and look, I’m, I’m an end guy. Okay, so if, if we need medications or we need allopathic, you know, we need that support, we get it, okay? But here’s now an opening where I can learn about how we can actually diagnose the vision-related components that may be attributing to their ADD diagnosis, and one of the things I’m, I’ve never been big on is labels. Um, and the reason is it doesn’t allow you to go deep. You know, they’re great for, they have a purpose, but you can’t go deep into the actual underlying root causes of what the problem might be, right? So, you know, uh, you know, just to give you a little bit of understanding in terms of, you know, leaders that I work with now, and it’s, it blows my mind how many of them have vision issues that we discuss. And here I am coming in as an optometrist or coach, but as an optometrist to try and explain what the visual system is. So, when you have an overly attentive individual, okay because a attention deficit is a bit of a misnomer. It’s, it’s over attention. Now what happens to the visual system when there’s what we call a sympathetic overdrive? So, there’s a, a fight or flight response that’s firing all the time. There’s three main characteristics. Well, there’s more, but the three characteristics that I’ll mention now is the brain is going into a fight or flight response, and the example I give people, it’s like a lion’s chasing you, okay? If there’s a lion chasing you, you’re not gonna read a book and your brain is gonna say, hey, eyeballs, go out there cuz we need to know where we’re going. Don’t focus on the book. Take the focus and throw that out there too, okay? And disregard the visual information and the peripheral awareness, okay? So that all you’re left with is an exit sign so that, you know, get the hell outta here,okay? If neurologically, that process is firing all the time, you have to attend to noise and movement. It’s a safety mechanism, it’s a survival mechanism. So, what happens now if I’m hyper attentive in one area and there’s any movement or loud noise at squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, okay? And then I’m over attentive on everything and I can’t, I can’t focus on anything in particular. The other thing is if my visual system is collapsed, okay, and I’m disregarding all, all information in my periphery. I don’t know where my body is in space. So, what do I need to do? Tap my body, move, walk around. So, you’ll hear a lot of kids need to move in classrooms to learn because they know where they are in space. So, you’ll hear that we’re clumsy. I tend to, you know, um, you know, walk over curbs that I didn’t see that was there before. But again, think of it now from a reading standpoint. So, I’ll go back to the learning disability. If I’m hyper-constricted, what does it sound like when I read, I can only see one word at, uh, and the at uh, time because I just skipped a line, okay? And then that’s why you’ll hear, um, you know, people saying, I’d rather listen to audio books or audible, right? I learn more if I, if I can hear it. Well, it tells me usually that there’s a visual inefficiency and they can’t take in the information through the ice. You see that?
MARK WRIGHT 26:13
Yeah. That’s crazy. So, let’s, let’s talk just briefly about like how that’s actually treated. So, are they, are there lenses are what, like what, what do you prescribe to, to these people with learning disabilities, let’s say, to, to help correct it.
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 26:29
Yeah. So again, it’s very customized. So, I’ll try and generally give the concept, concept around, uh, what we would do in the case of, say, for example, the, the, the child that has this constricted, periphery and over attentiveness. So, a lot of our therapy is actually with lenses, okay? And what we do is we will determine what their near prescriptions needed. Not just from a clarity standpoint, cuz most of them see 2020 from a spatial standpoint. So, we can manipulate a little bit of the awareness neurologically to open up that space, okay? And, you know, safety’s gonna be a key piece here because if the brain’s not ready to open it up, it’s not gonna happen. It actually gets, you get the reverse reverse effect. But when you open up the periphery, then all of a sudden, they have a choice in putting their awareness in that periphery that’s opening up neurologically through the lenses or centrally or both. And then we can use vision therapy or training techniques to then neuroplastically teach the brain to do what we call central peripheral integration at the same time, right? So, I mean, I don’t know if this is gonna be, um, viewed or, or if it’s gonna be an audio, uh, podcast, but if, say for, say for example, there’s, um, when we meditate, right? Or, um, you know, when, when, when you’re in a meditative state, it, your periphery is basically endless, okay? So, what happens, as long as you can get out of your head, you go into this relaxed state because you have all the space around you, okay? If you see a child that has, again, ADD type tendencies or this collapsed periphery, when you open up that space or when they get it, it’s like their whole physiologist goes, okay? And it goes calm now, because they don’t have to stay in the sympathetic overdrive. They can choose to look off to the side, or they can choose to look at you or both, right? So basically what you’re doing is creating a, a, what we call a parasympathetic response. A relaxed response so that everything including their body and the physiology also shift. There’s a reason why we call behavioral optometry. So, because the brain tells the body what to do, depending on what it’s perceiving the income, uh, the incoming messages to be, okay? So, if, if the information coming in is triggering a sympathetic response, my automatic output’s gonna be, I’m gonna speak with you really fast. I’m gonna move really fast, I wanna do it, da da da. If all of a sudden, the input gets reorganized in such a way that it slows down and I can now pay attention to more things, my voice changes, my body posture relaxes, and wow, and the big thing that we hear from parents is the confidence goes up.
MARK WRIGHT 29:22
Yeah. And, and do you see actually a physical relaxation in the patient?
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 29:29
Yeah. Yeah. There’s a lot of, um, there’s a lot of procedures that we do. Um, well, no, where you see it like really, like quickly is with concussion patients, right? Because again, when you, when you speak to anybody that’s had a concussion that’s impacted their memory, it’s impacted, um, you know, the way that they’re seeing they get headaches daily, um, their whole body is tight because they don’t even, they, they, they always say, I feel like I, I’ve, I’ve lost myself. I feel like I’m in a fog. I can’t remember anything. I can’t think like I did before. Um, and then we can determine, you know, there’s, there’s this thing called a midline shift that tends to happen with, uh, with concussion, okay? And what happens? The brain perceives the center of their body here or here, and their eyes see it here. So, there’s this delta of a disconnect. So, you know, they, they feel like they’re gonna be falling over. So, what they do is they tense up in order to make sure that they stay in one place when we determine what that amount is, and then bring their visual reality and neurological reality together, okay? All of a sudden, it’s like everything opens up and usually the first thing that happens, they start crying cause they feel like they’re back again. Um, and, and you could see it in their movements, right? They, they’re, they, they’re walking very, you know, very, very tensely, and then you put the proper lens on boom, and everything just softens up and boom, and then the emotions start to flow. Um, but yeah, we, we definitely see a change in the, in the, in the physiology and the behavior.
MARK WRIGHT 31:03
How many different disorders can be diagnosed and treated through this vision therapy? So, we talked about learning disabilities, concussion, like post-traumatic stress, uh, things like that.
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 31:16
Yes. Well, so one of the, when we have inefficiencies in the visual system, we may not necessarily know why. Right now, when we ask the history, then you know, it, it, it will make more sense. Um, but because of my training, so I, I have training in neurolinguistic programming and hypnotherapy and what we call timeline therapy, and the neurological response with trauma that’s emotional looks identical to the physical trauma that happens with concussion, right? So again, instead of labeling where it came from and what it is, you just say, okay, what’s happening with the system and how do we now shift the neurology in order for there to be efficiency, either back in the system or to then if it’s, if it’s a developmental issue, which a lot of the times it is with kids with learning issues, how do we reengage the neurology so that we have proper development that didn’t necessarily happen? Um, you know, in terms of what types of disorders, um, you know, anything that’s gonna impact the, the, the, the visual system, right? And, you know, again, I got a little creative in a lot of ways, um, because in my first five years of practice, I worked in a low vision clinic. You know, so we saw patients that were legally blind, basically primarily for macular degeneration back then because we didn’t have the technology and the injections that we do now, um, you know, once the bleeding starts, they scars down and then you lose central vision. But another one that we saw, I wouldn’t say a lot, but quite a bit, was retinitis pigmentosa, okay? And one, so with macular degeneration, you lose central vision, with retinitis pigmentosa, you start losing peripheral vision and you know, unless you’ve experienced it, you don’t understand what it’s like, and unless you’re looking through that patient’s eye. So, to me, I thought they were both gonna be massively detrimental. They’re not. If I were to pick one of the two, I’d rather have the macular degeneration than the retinitis pigmentosa. Cuz I didn’t realize how important peripheral space was. And when, you know, you have pretty profound, uh, retinitis pigmentosa, maybe you have five degrees of, of central field, right? But I was sitting in class, um, with, when I was learning about vision therapy and you know, I’m thinking to myself, hold on a second here. How much is actually not accessed? Is it because of the changes that are happening in the retina, or do we have an anxious response that I’m walking around on edge because I don’t know if I’m gonna fall? You know, so, I put my hand up and asked the question and I said, so technically if there’s a sympathetic or a fight or flight response here, could we not do vision training to open up that area? And then, you know, at a hundred feet it’s pretty significant, just changing at two, three degrees. So, I came back, patient had retinitis pigmentosa. I posed the, the question, he’s like, yeah, of course, let’s do it. We increased his field of view by five degrees, just by calming that system down, it changed his life, right? And again, you say, what was the visualization. If he can’t see with his eyes in that space, okay? But what we taught him is to use his kinesthetic feeling of his hand to know where that space is to tap into the visual space. He was using different methods to then create different ways of tapping into the visual system. And it was profound, right? Cause you think five degrees for us, who cares? For him, it was literally life-changing. So, you know, in, in a lot of ways there’s so many things that can help, you know, and I always say to people, everybody can benefit from vision therapy, right? But the problem is a problem only if it’s a problem. But if we’re not aware that we have a problem, that we don’t know how to necessarily address it. So, when we talk about, or if I’m on podcasts like this, I always refer to the, the, the, the disorders or the, the difficulties that people have that most people can understand.
MARK WRIGHT 35:19
Yeah, that’s wild. Um, you know, with most newer therapies, and I don’t know how new vision therapy is, but it seems like there, it seems like medicine has a really slow adoption, uh, rate when it comes to new ideas. Um, how well received is vision therapy? Is it, is it fairly well received by modern standard medicine now or is it still considered on the fringe?
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 35:45
So, an answer to your first question, it’s been around for over a hundred years. Um, you know, is it well received? Um, no, and I would, if you had have asked me this question 10 years ago, 15 years ago, I’d be on that side saying, okay, this stuff’s on the fringe. I don’t know what you’re talking about. And, you know, and the reason is I’m an end guy, right? So, you know, you know how much we have to learn going through school, okay? And the amount of knowledge is based on protecting the patients. Which means we need to diagnose disease first and foremost and that’s the part that takes most of our, our education in school, right? To, you know, flip lenses and pick a prescription for the sake of what we do. In terms of optometry, it doesn’t take very long. The rest of it takes a long time, right? And we, we’re cramming all this information in four years and then maybe doing a residency or maybe doing an externship program in order to apply those techniques. And that’s why we call it being in practice because it never stops, right? So, you know, for all intents and purposes, the way that it’s structured and the way the medical system is structured is research-based. It, it, it has to be like, we need to have proof that this works. Um, or what’s the problem in, right? The opposite side of that, and, you know, what we call alternative therapies is, um, a model that uses proof to prove why it works. That’s not how we’re trained. And now here’s something that’s case-based, that, and there’s also research on a lot of the things that we do now. So that’s why it’s becoming more, um, common knowledge in, in the medical community, you know, but to speak, you know, with an ophthalmologist on vision is difficult because we’re both not trained to talk about the neurology of vision to speak to neurologists about vision. We can have a much deeper conversation, but they’re not trained on what the, the, you know, the eyeball component is in terms of the, the visual processing. So, it gets a little tricky., right? And that’s why, um, I told you I’m an end guy. Like I love working with every specialty, and I have, I built relationships with, you know, any of the, of the, the specialties within, within optometry, ophthalmology, opticianry. But I also have you know, built relationships in terms of, of everything that I do. And then you look for like-minded people that think similarly to how I think, and there’s a lot more than you’d imagine, right? Um, and with regards to why I would do these types of podcasts and, you know, one of my sort of missions to get the word out there so that people at least ask questions. I always say, right, whenever I’m speaking even on this podcast, don’t believe a word I’m gonna say in the next hour. Don’t believe a word I’m gonna say, okay? I will say that I’m speaking from experience, and I will say that if you have questions, please look into it, right? But don’t take my word or anybody else’s word in terms of what they’re saying. Um, you know, one of the things, again, I always use a lot of stories because all I could do is explain the impact that it’s had on me, right? And if I hear someone saying, hey, my sounds like my dad. He had a learning issue, or I have a child, or right away, it becomes then about you and I’m gonna ask the questions to dig deeper so that you can be heard in ways that, unfortunately in conventional medicine, we don’t have time, right? A lot of us don’t have time to sit there going, okay, let’s delve a little bit deeper, right? We want to, if you ask 99% of anybody in, in medicine, if I gave you all the money in the world, would you still do medicine? Guess how many would say yes?
MARK WRIGHT 39:22
20%, 30%?
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 39:24
Well, now it’s probably a lot less. Um, but they, they may not necessarily say medicine. But then the next question is, what would you do? Okay, most of us would say something that makes an impact, okay? Or something that allows us to grow, right? We love being educated. We love helping people. So, what, where the disconnect occurs is that’s what we do. Like, that’s actually what we do. No matter what medical professional you’re in, that’s actually what we do. But the pressures and, you know, everything that’s showing up removes us. Sorry, it gives us the opportunity to forget why we got into the profession to begin with. When you remind any professional why they got in, and then they’re put in an environment to discover their purpose of how it can continue, uh, 110% of them are like, game on. Let’s do this, right? And I was just fortunate that I, it fell into my hands, um, the way that it did, and not necessarily in a, you know, uh, you know, and what didn’t seem like a positive way but now I look back and it’s like, man, thank God it did.
MARK WRIGHT 40:27
We talked about a month ago, I think Dr. Nik and I told you the story of my son who, uh, survived a mass shooting at, uh, the home of, of some friends of ours with some, these are kids that he all grew up with from the time he was a little soccer player and grade school. Um, so this is between his freshman and, and sophomore years in college. Literally had to, to run for his life and was, was so lucky that he wasn’t killed. Um, to deal with the, uh, post-traumatic stress. He went through a, a vision therapy called EMDR, and, uh, and he actually, he said that it actually helped a ton because after the shooting, you know, sometimes, many times a day, he would, his mind would go to that moment and it would cause that, what did you call it before? The sympathetic response?
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 41:15
Sympathetic, yeah. The fight or flight.
MARK WRIGHT 41:17
So, he just, just massive tightness, you know, you know, scared feeling. Um, and then after going through that therapy, it was, the thought was disconnected from the physical reaction, and I’m wondering, is there, is this related at all to, to the vision therapy that you’re talking about?
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 41:34
So, the vision therapy that I’m talking about, um, indirectly, yes. Directly, no. Um, again, you’re talking So think, think of the brain as the gatekeeper for everything, okay? And one of the things that we always say at the end of our reports is a multi-collaborative approach is best. Okay, so as a vision therapy doc, or as a NeuroVisual optometrist, we’re tapping into the neurology through the visual system, okay? An auditory specialist is tapping in through the auditory system. Speech therapist through speech, right? Physio through the body. Um, occupational therapy through fine motor. And any psychology or um, psychiatrist, they tap in through the emotional, Okay, to the neurology. So, you know, when there’s a massive trauma, um, especially with something that he saw or experienced the experience gets embedded in the neurology, okay now I’m gonna speak in terms of, of my training with, with timeline therapy a little bit here, just so that I can, um, you know, uh, explain or, or illustrate how this works. If fear, for example, is the emotion that gets tagged down. Okay, so here’s an experience that I can’t erase out of my, my head that I, I saw, or I experienced. And, you know, if I, I thought I was gonna die. I mean, it was like, okay, am I gonna survive this thing? Here’s this, this image and an emotion that stay embedded, okay? And then that stays with the individual. So, any anxiousness or any fear that occurs after that, we call it gestalts, but it gets linked in from that event, okay? And if there’s a way to then separate what happens physiologically to the body that the emotion created. Now you can look at it from a different perspective, okay? And there’s different ways and different, um, you know, modalities that, that can do that. Uh, with, with my training and timeline therapy, um, basically what we do is, and we call them emotional legacies. Like I’m always looking at, okay, how do we spin this thing so that there’s a positive thing to this, right? Because most people are, oh my God, I feel so bad. I can’t imagine it’s such a negative thing and anxious. No, no, it’s an emotional legacy. It was there, it was placed there, and there’s a purpose around it. We just dunno what it is, especially when we’re in it. If you can dissociate away from the event and look at it from an impartial perspective to say, hey, what did I learn from this? Like, there has to be a deeper meaning in understanding what I learned from this thing, and if it’s guided in such a way that the person sees what the learning is, it gives them a deeper understanding of wow, I would’ve never gained that knowledge if it didn’t happen that way. Okay, now having said that, and you know, with PTSD, it’s a little bit of a different animal because when there’s trauma that needs to be done with somebody that’s trained to support what that trauma is, period, end of story, okay? And, um, you know, again, when, when you’re in this world of alternative therapies, we all have other people in the professions, right? Psychologists, child psychologists, we refer to each other so that they do what they do best and help to then create the, the freedom neurologically for the individual and that child, okay? So now with regards to, and I said safety before in terms of the lenses, right? You know, let’s say I’m working with your son, and we see this peripheral collapse, but there’s a program that’s running in. They’re going, I, I feel safe like this. Don’t touch me. If we open up that space too much and the brain’s like, whoa, way too much space, man, I’m still running that program. Uh, that ain’t, that’s not gonna happen. You have to respect what that shows up as cuz if the results aren’t moving in the direction that we expect them to, there’s something underlying that needs to get referred, and in his case, it might be the psychologist that would help him, or EMDR therapy. Um, I don’t wanna get too much into EMDR because I don’t know it that, that well. But they have a way of tapping into the memory and where the eyes are positioned to then see how that neurology stores that image. Well, if they dissociate the image away from the emotion, then he’s gonna feel much better because he is not gonna feel like he’s stuck, right? And same thing, like it’s, it’s, it’s, um, I always tell people like, if, if it’s something, even if they hear anything in here and whether it’s me or someone else that can help. If anybody asks questions, I can guide them to say, try it, right? Uh, you know, I hear lots of people say, well, I, there’s hokey pokey. It might be, but it might not. So, go get an evaluation, and, you know, the advantage that we have in the vision therapy side, um, is it’s science, right? So, we have what those numbers look like so that it, it can open up the conversation so that we can help people. And then the believability index goes up. Cuz the other thing is we have the DR and the accreditation in front of our names too, for a reason, and the patients are protected. So, it just, it makes it easier to, to open the floodgates and understanding what they may be going through.
MARK WRIGHT 46:50
Yeah. Do you think that kids these days are having to deal with a lot more anxiety than we did as kids? Do you see that? Yeah. How come?
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 47:01
Oh man. Um, where do I start? One would be the amount of information that’s available, okay? It’s just, it’s, it’s so much information that needs to get processed, um, that they have access to, right? Um, the way that the information is being brought into their brains is usually technology, okay? So, you know, I’m gonna date ourselves here, but what do we do as kids? Right? Go outside your nature in space, right? You’re in nature, but you’re, you’re in space. Like there’s lots and lots of space around you, right? So, if my brain feels that my body is in this position all the time, it can’t differentiate between is he reading something or is in a depressed state, okay? And then I don’t wanna get into the content, but what is being hit neurologically and mainly unconsciously in the brain may or may not be supportive to them, okay? And then in, is that information real? Is it not real? What, you know, what are we actually learning? There’s so many, many things that are happening from that perspective now. Um, you know, in terms of Covid was, I tell people was the best thing that happened to me professionally and personally, okay? Because it, it almost forced us to go back a few years, right? Personally, I mean, I was with family all the time. We were out playing soccer, I was biking with the kids. I mean, it was, it was a lot of fun. Um, and, uh, professionally it allowed me to think differently in order to use technology to support the patients that we had cuz a lot of the vision therapy patients, I didn’t want them regressing. So, in a matter of two weeks, um, we took everything online and we’re one of three clinics that I know of in the world that did it that quickly, right? So, you know, we just pivoted a little bit. Um, you know, so there, there’s always, there’s this massively positive thing with technology and it’s how do you utilize it, okay? The other thing in terms of, of the changes that happened is I saw, and I learned a lot, right? Because, you know, we had to go back to work in the first two months. I, when I started seeing the news and what was happening in Italy at the beginning, I thought, oh my god, masters going on, double applied. I mean, it was, it was intense. Um, you know, and we had safety protocols. I mean, everything was great. As long as my team was safe, I was happy but then about a year and a half in, I started seeing the emotional impact of everybody being inside, and right? And, um, I implemented a five-step screening process to see if there was a, a neural visual sympathetic response in all the patients. Cuz I thought why should only kids with issues have be assessed? And the results that were coming back were like nuts. I mean, 80% of the time it was a positive response and then it allowed the patient to explain why they didn’t sleep well, what are the stresses? And it was mind-blowing for me, and nothing was getting discussed at the level that it should have in terms of the emotional health. And then I started seeing the emotional health of children and, you know, young kids. I mean, my, my passion, you know, is, is, is more towards the, you know, the, the pediatric population or the ones that can’t necessarily express themselves. And everything changed when I did the screening on a 12-year-old girl and all the testing and the screening was showing positive, positive, positive, PO positive. And so, I said to her, did you sleep well last night? She goes, yeah, I slept well. And I said, what are your stress levels on a scale of one to 10? And she didn’t respond. She just put her head down. And then the mom was sitting behind me, and she started crying, and the mom. And I said, are you okay? She goes, how did you know to ask those questions? And I explained to her, we implemented the screening strategy and then she turned to her daughter and said, do you mind if I tell him what happened? He might be able to help us. So, the mom proceeded to tell me that she found the note that the daughter was gonna leave after she ended it. After that, I was like, enough, I went home. I said to my wife, okay, we gotta think dif differently than, you know, we gotta get back to old school habits and you know, get the kids, we traveled, we, everything just shifted at that point. And perspective kicks in, right? Because you don’t wanna wait till it’s too late. Um,
MARK WRIGHT 51:43
But you knew that by just looking, by examining her eyes and how her eyes were working, you knew something was deeply troubling her.
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 51:51
Yeah. There, there was, again, there was a sympathetic response caused by something. I didn’t know what it was, right? But yeah, and I mean, to this day we still have that screening in, in place and it’s not as bad. Uh, you know, but then again, you look through a child’s eyes to see what’s happening in the world right now. And I do wanna share one story in terms of the youth, cuz it, it’s working with young people is a massive passion of mine and young leaders especially. And um, I was working with this one 22-year-old and this was 2011. And, uh, I said, can, can I take you out for dinner? And so, he agreed, and you know, you figure you have what, half an hour max attention time. He was a three-hour dinner, and I just asked him questions and I said, look, can you just give me some insights? I’m trying to understand your demographic and I want you to speak as a leader. I don’t want you to speak as an individual. And so, I asked him what he thought the main blocks were in, in the demographic. And one of the big things he kept saying is stuck energy. He kept using energy as a word, okay? Stuck energy. Stuck energy. Stuck energy. And then I said, what if I magically disappeared? All the blocks done. Okay, what would you say is the biggest opportunities for your demographic? And he goes, you mean the energy wouldn’t be stuck? I go, anything’s possible. He’s like, wow, I can’t even imagine what that would be like. And I said, well, if you could imagine, what would you say? He couldn’t even answer me, but I understood why he couldn’t answer me, because then I said, let’s go over the strengths of your demographic, okay? And he said, nobody’s ever asked me this question before. I go, I know. Let’s go through this. So, I go through a whole list of them and then we hierarchy the top three, okay? And I would’ve thought that technology and social networking would be up there. Okay? It was third, the second one was energy. And a lot of it, he goes, it’s, it’s, it’s actually a ma, a massive strength of ours. And I said, what’s number one? So, he told me what number one is, and to this day, if you ask anybody under 30, they’ll agree with you, okay? And again, BEATS WORKING. So, it fits well with the podcast to be a part of a movement against the status quo to make an impact in the world. Okay. Now the thing is, we don’t know what that is yet, right? So, when people say to me, all these industries are collapsing, everything’s changing, I say, good yes, okay? Because it’s not that it’s collapsing, it’s just changing, and if we can somehow get the youth okay, and their amazing amount of energy to see things with purpose. Their purpose based on what they’re unique in. Man, the world’s oyster, and the way now that, that they’re, again, I’m gonna switch it, right, because we can talk about how bad technology is and you know, TikTok and all these other things, but I’m like, hold on a second here. Let’s not label it. If they have all this experience now and we move them in the direction of what’s possible, okay? Maybe that knowledge needed to happen the way that it did and they, they had to go through the depressed dates, and they had to go through everything, right? Because now that’s their story. We don’t know that, right? But time and time again, when I work with young people, when we unlock them to see what their potential is, it’s amazing what they can create. So, again, I hope I’m answering the question cuz I’m listen to well,
MARK WRIGHT 55:15
You, you think global warming, you think, I mean, there’s an issue that the current leaders don’t appear to be too concerned about solving at this point. I mean, it, it’s, but I look at that generation and my kids are, you know, 19 and 26 years old and I absolutely believe that their generation will be able to do things that, that our generation hasn’t.
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 55:36
Yeah. It, look, let me, okay. It’s, it’s a good way for me to illustrate central peripheral integration on in real life, okay? If we, let’s say we’re gonna have a conversation, a podcast on global warming right now. Okay, and we could talk about the details of what may be happening and what’s not happening, and who’s looking at it, who’s not looking at the carbon emissions, and so on and so on, and so on and so on. We’re looking here, okay? It’s a central view of it. If we take a step back and go, hold on, let’s look at a much wider view of where global warming sit, okay? And we say, alright, transportation is collapsing as, as an industry, okay? Electric cars are coming in now, right? Which means emissions are decreasing. So, all of a sudden now here’s this new segment of, of travel, there’s a new segment of medicine, there’s a new segment of, you know, transportation’s here. Education is another one. If we start looking at what are the possibilities now, and there’s um, um, I don’t know if, if you’re aware of Peter Diamandis, but he has this, um, company called Abundance 360, okay? And its global leaders that are making like game-changing, game-changing ideas and putting what he calls these moonshots into play, right? So, imagine that you have enough entrepreneurs or leaders or youth that come up with these moonshots, it’s crazy ideas, and they say, you know what? I’m gonna dream a little bit, right? So for me, my dream and still is my, my child’s gonna walk. He’s gonna see, he’s gonna hear, he’s gonna talk, he’s gonna walk. It was a dream. How did I know it was possible? I had no clue, right? That I know the medical team that I know now do I know the no clue, but it was my moonshot still is, and it’s in my awareness, it’s in my space, it’s in my brain. So, when the opportunity show up, they’re there for me to grab them, okay? If now we go peripherally and we get enough people to think moonshot ideas and, and forget about the youth because if I just say that demographic again, I’m, I’m looking too constricted. How about we think about the inner child in all of us too and put that into the mix so that we’re all, you know, not working, but running with passion and moonshot ideas. This environment is perfect for it right now because you have a choice. It’s not like we can go back to conventional jobs and say, okay, I’ll dump this one and go here, right? Right? It’s not like food prices aren’t going up, you know, everybody’s, oh my God, how are kids gonna afford the housing? Don’t worry about that. I think they’re gonna be able to afford buildings, forget about houses if they tap into what their moonshots are or what they were, um, given, given as a gift in terms of what their purpose is. Am I making sense? So, if we go peripheral, it may not necessarily be something we can grasp now, but at least we can have a vision of what we all deem is a vision of the future possibility, okay? And yeah, I’m a crazy nut bag that thinks positively, but why not? It’s like if we can look at the possibilities and yes, I have a story to prove it. If there’s enough people that are creating these moonshots, being led by other leaders in their way, look what’s possible, right? And now all of a sudden, is global warming a thing? I don’t know. Is there a solution to support the global masses? Because now everybody’s discovered something that’s totally different. A hundred percent, right? Um, oh my God, I can go on and on on this one, but you know, there’s, there’s a, um, a guy I know that’s just incredible that, you know, his moonshot is to, is to provide energy, clean energy to the world. Like, that’s his moonshot and he’ll do it. I know he’ll the guy’s unbelievable. But you know, you, you talk to people like that and it’s inspiring, and when they’re actually doing it, it’s like, wow, if he can do it, and he came up with a moonshot, what can I do? If I can do it, how can I help someone else do it? Right? That’s what’s gonna create the change. I mean, it’s happening already, but it, that’s, that’s what’s gonna create the change. And then we’re not stuck in the central, you know, what about this problem? What about this problem? What about this problem? Oh, there’s a little opportunity, but there’s too many other problems. You know, one more thing that I need to add and see if this resonates. Our brains are trained to, to focus on fear, trained. Okay. It’s, it’s, it’s a safety, again, it’s a survival mechanism, and anything that is positive, if there’s fear attached to it, will automatically go towards the fear train that way, right? So, if we’re in a world of fear, okay, then what’s the option now to switch it to the other side? Less fear initially, okay? And again, you, you, you don’t let the fear drive you, right? Or sorry, it doesn’t run your life. You let it drive you so that you can start seeing things from a different perspective.
MARK WRIGHT 01:00:42
Yeah. Yeah. So true. I mean, I spent 35 years in TV news and, you know, you turn on the news and, you know, I, I fought these battles, you know, trying to, to, to get irrelevant crime stories out of the newscast, and it was always a, a losing battle, and, uh, you know, I can’t watch the news now because it’s just too much Irrelevant, ill, irrelevant crime news, you know, it’s driven by fear, the old, the old model. But, um, as we start to wrap things up, Dr. Nik, I’d love to come back to, I’m sure there’s a parent or a person listening who may have a child or a family member with a learning disability or, or, uh, another one of these challenges, um, you know, give, give them some advice on what steps they should try to take to start to, to go down this path, and I’m, I’m even thinking of myself. I, I, I have never been able to read very well. I mean, I, I’m, I’m always listening to radio and books on tape and, and all that kinda stuff. But as for, for my whole life, reading has been an enormous struggle, and it just makes me wonder, um, you know, if, if I might be able to benefit from, from vision therapy.
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 1:01:55
Yeah. It’s, it’s, um, like I said, I think I, everybody can benefit from at least the evaluation in terms of understanding self, right? Uh, in the US um, it’s, um, so the College of Vision Development, they just changed the name cuz we had our, our yearly meeting, uh, last week. And I, I don’t know what it is, but the, the, the website is cvd.org, okay? And then there’s a list of docs, like NeuroVisual docs all across the us and then take a look and see who’s close by. Um, and then take your child or you go get a NeuroVisual or a vision therapy evaluation. Um, and that’ll at least start the process to see how much of an impact is the visual system on, on the reading issues or concussions, okay? That’s a big one. Okay, if you have concussion symptoms, headaches, um, uh, especially with up close reading, um, you know, imbalance, uh, feel like you’re in a fog, uh, poor memory, um, startle reflex, you know, anxious all the time. Um, definitely, definitely book an appointment in Canada’s vision therapy canada.com. Um, is is our big organization here, and again, does both sites have a list of, of docs. Um, I, I don’t know if you’re gonna put my information on the podcast. You’d be, you’d more than happy to. If anybody has any questions, they can email. Uh, or call and then we can guide them specifically with where they need to go. Um, if it’s any other questions that are anything pertaining to the, you know, little bits that I, that we said on the podcast, I’d be happy to answer them too. Um, yeah, but it’s been life-changing for me. Uh, and, and on that note, like I, not that I didn’t believe it, it’s just, you know, I’m the type going, eh, does this really work? Uh, I did it personally. I had a vision therapy evaluation and then maybe we’ll close with this cause it opened up with the story, right? I was the only person in my family that had a nearsighted prescription. And again, I’m reading a lot, looking up close all the time in terms of, of, of confidence. Everything was very, very tight. So, I had a minus three, minus three and a half prescription but I didn’t understand that I wasn’t accessing my periphery. So, in sports, I played really, really, really well, and I could hit really, really, really hard in football and rugby because all I could see was your chest. When my periphery opened up in vision therapy, I was like, is this how I’m supposed to be seeing? So that’s what the, the coach meant by, look at the quarterback’s eyes with your peripheral, why are you looking at the defensive back? I mean, at the receiver. I mean, it was just, it was a whole new world for me. And, you know, all these things started pouring in in terms of, wow, this is what it looks like to have enhanced athletics and having a visual system that, that, that supports, right? So having gone through vision therapy myself and opening up my periphery was life-changing. My son continues to go through vision therapy and it’s life-changing for him and indirectly for the whole family watching, um, the successes that he’s going through and watching how much he’s, uh, he’s excelling, you know, in school and life and everything that he does. You know, it is a bit of a miracle. So hopefully that helps, and then, um, like I said, I’m happy to answer any questions anybody might have.
MARK WRIGHT 01:05:07
I want to, I wanna finish on one other thing. I think the more that I’ve learned about you and your story, and the older that I get, the more I realize that the goal of life is not to avoid, uh, anything tragedy, challenges. Uh, I, I think we have this idea that to, to live a good life is to not ever have to face bad stuff. And what I’ve, what I’ve seen through your story is that you see the bad stuff as, as the most important things that have shaped you into who you are, right? I mean, the quote, quote unquote bad stuff, I’m not gonna call it bad stuff, but challenges, right?
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 01:05:46
I’m, I’m sure you’ve heard of the Hero’s Journey, right? So, you know, we all are going through the Hero’s Journey, okay? We’re all gonna get tested. It’s part of being a human being. If somebody says they haven’t been tested, either it hasn’t happened yet, or they’re lying. So, it’s, it’s inevitable, okay? And what happens to the Hero’s Journey is if we embrace what it is that we’re going through, right? Know that there’s gonna be a villain involved, it’s all part of the process but understand that we’re going to, if you choose to go through it, you come out different than you went in, which is where the gift is, okay? And what what comes to me is, uh, I have a lot of Orthodox Jewish friends and it’s amazing speaking to some of the rabbis cuz they speak in metaphor, right? They speak in in story format, and he used a metaphor one time to explain exactly this, okay? And it was around chiseling or getting chiseled. And what he said is, you know, there, there’s there the way to get through to the learning, you have to imagine that you’re in a rock, a crack of a rock that’s so tight and so dark, okay? That you start chiseling your way through this rock, you’re alone, it’s dark, scary, and you keep chiseling and you keep chiseling and you keep chiseling in hopes that you’re gonna get to the other side. You’re just not sure and you wonder, oh my God, how much of this can I handle? It’s just that the moment that you’re about to give up, that you throw that last chisel in and boom, there’s the light, and on the other side is where the gift is, right? So, he said, embrace the chiseling and embrace the opportunity of what’s on the other side as you’re going through the process. And again, this is another version of him explaining the hero’s journey, okay? And it helps a lot when you’re with the other people that, other people that can, um, not necessarily support it, but understand what it is that you’re going through.
MARK WRIGHT 01:07:49
Okay. One final question I have to ask. What’s the most important thing you’ve learned as a doctor and as a dad and husband?
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 01:07:57
What’s the most important thing I’ve learned? Um hmm. Okay. As a doctor, um, to be able to, um, well, for me to grow personally, but then to be able to see other people’s from like an understanding from their point of view, you know, as a dad and a husband, and, yeah. I, I’ll, I’ll, what comes to mind is I, I spent some time in Greece, in, in a monastery and, um, three days, okay? It was me, my father-in-law, a friend of mine, his father-in-law and another friend and three of us spoke Greek. My father-in-law’s Brazilian and my, and my friend’s father-in-law’s Mexican, so they weren’t speaking the language. At one point, one of the monks said, if you wanna learn about the monastery, so it’s only men, and you do nothing but just be for three days. And he said, if you wanna learn more about the monastery, just step off to the side. I said, okay, we’re not doing anything. So, the history of the monastery, and, and you know, amazingly when it, how it got built, when, you know, it got looted, the pirates 45 minutes and he stops at one point, just stopped and he looked around to all of us and he said, never worship your wife, and I’m in shock, right? And you know, he said it about five times, and I’m think, okay, a monk’s gonna gimme marriage advice. Like really? And he even said, he goes, something says, we need to talk about the mystery of marriage. And so, after the fifth time he said, never worship your children. Five times again, I’m thinking, I’m like, okay, marriage advice and now children advice from a monk that’s never been married, doesn’t have kids. So then finally said, the only thing you’re gonna worship is God. And in my mind, I thought, oh boy, here we go. Here’s a religious dissertation. And then he said, let me put it differently. You have a God-given purpose that’s been given to you. Should you not express that purpose? No woman, no wife, no child will ever follow you. So, the biggest learning for me was to continue to follow in the path of what my purpose is in this zero’s journey of where it came from, which was to be tested. And now, like I said, I don’t feel like I’m working anymore because it’s purposeful, it’s meaningful, it’s something that was ingrained inside of me that I think was hardwired that’s starting to get expressed now. So,
MARK WRIGHT 01:10:29
Okay. That’s, that’s, that’s a mic drop moment there.
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 01:10:33
And we’re done.
MARK WRIGHT 01:10:36
Oh man. Dr. Nik, this has been so fun and informative and, and I know that, that parents and, and others who are listening to this are gonna be so inspired that, that there are other ways of seeing some of these disorders and there are treatments that none of us have, have heard of before. Um, so I just wanna say thank you for following your, your passion and your life’s calling. Um, and we are all better for it.
DR. STEL NIKOLAKAKIS 01:11:01
Well, thank you so much. Thanks for the invite. Thanks for the opportunity, and I hope this find amazing energy gets transferred to the world. And then, uh, we can all do this together.
MARK WRIGHT 01:11:13
I’m Mark Wright. Thanks for listening to BEATS WORKING, part of the WORKP2P family New episodes drop every Monday. And if you’ve enjoyed the conversation, subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. Special thanks to show producer and web editor Tamar Medford. In the coming weeks, you’ll hear from our Contributors Corner and Sidekick Sessions. Join us next week for another episode of BEATS WORKING where we are winning the game of work.