Vision Therapy | Cowichan Eyecare

Strengthen Your Visual System, Support Your Life

Vision is more than seeing 20/20. It’s about how your eyes, brain, and body work together to make sense of the world around you. When that connection is disrupted, it can affect reading, learning, depth perception, coordination, and even your ability to recover from brain injuries.

At Cowichan Eyecare, we offer personalized vision therapy programs to help retrain the visual system. Using guided activities, exercises, and in-office tools, we work with children, teens, and adults to strengthen essential visual skills and improve how the brain and eyes function together.

If you or your child struggles with visual fatigue, reading issues, eye-tracking problems, or recovery from a concussion or brain injury, vision therapy may be an important part of the solution. Contact us to schedule your vision therapy consultation today.

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What Is Vision Therapy?

Vision therapy is a structured treatment program that targets visual efficiency and processing. It’s designed to help your visual system work more effectively by improving how your brain interprets and responds to visual input.

Unlike eyeglasses or contact lenses that correct how light enters the eye, vision therapy trains the skills behind your sight, such as focus, eye coordination, and visual memory. It can be effective for both developmental issues and acquired injuries.

What Can Vision Therapy Help with?

Vision therapy is often recommended for:

Eye tracking problems (oculomotor dysfunction)
Convergence insufficiency or difficulty focusing up close
Amblyopia (lazy eye) or strabismus (eye turn)
Visual processing delays
Symptoms after concussion or traumatic brain injury
Learning-related visual issues
Performance enhancement for athletes

Our goal is to improve comfort, visual stamina, and everyday function by addressing the root of the problem, how your brain and eyes work together.

What to Expect from a Vision Therapy Program

Your vision therapy journey starts with a comprehensive visual skills assessment. This evaluation looks beyond basic vision to assess areas like:

Eye tracking and coordination
Depth perception and 3D vision
Eye focusing and teaming
Visual-motor integration
Spatial awareness and balance

If therapy is recommended, we will create a customized plan tailored to your specific needs. Most programs include weekly in-office sessions, supported by simple exercises to complete at home.

Sessions are fun, interactive, and designed to challenge and strengthen the visual system over time. For children, games, activities, and hands-on tools are used to build engagement and confidence.

What Vision Therapy Can Treat

Whether you are dealing with developmental delays, reading struggles, or visual symptoms after a brain injury, therapy is tailored to help you or your child overcome specific challenges. By retraining the brain and eyes to work together more efficiently, vision therapy supports real progress in daily comfort, performance, and confidence.

We address a variety of different conditions with our vision therapy programs.

Strabismus occurs when both eyes cannot look at the same object at the same time. Sometimes this results in a “cross-eyed” appearance. This issue typically occurs because of reduced binocular integration skills and an underlying visual processing deficit. It can also happen due to traumatic muscle injury, though this is far less common.

Amblyopia, often referred to as a “lazy eye,” is reduced vision in one or both eyes which cannot be corrected with glasses alone.

Suppression happens when the brain ignores the visual input from one eye. It can occur either in conjunction with amblyopia or strabismus or on its own. Amblyopia and suppression have several causes, including reduced binocular integration skills and visual processing deficits.

Eye-tracking deficits, or oculomotor dysfunction, occur when people have trouble controlling their eye movements. People with eye-tracking deficits have trouble following moving targets, moving from one target to another, and staying fixated on one target.

Eye-tracking deficits can occur at any age and can impact a patient’s ability to read. It can also affect a person’s ability to play sports, accurately perceive depth perception, and stay balanced.

Think of visual perception as gathering information, and visual processing as the rate at which we can process what our eyes are telling us.

If a person is having trouble with one or both of these skills, they may have trouble with tasks like using visual learning material, participating in sports, and driving. Having deficits in visual perception and processing skills would require one to slow down, taking longer to both intake and use information presented visually.

There are many aspects of visual processing that can be damaged during brain injuries, from the ability to track moving objects to efficiently and comfortably processing peripheral vision.

Some common symptoms of visual processing deficits following brain injuries include light sensitivity, general fatigue, difficulty reading or concentrating, discomfort with computer and screen use, headaches, nausea, and dizziness.

Let’s Build a Stronger Visual Future, Together

Our experienced team is passionate about helping people of all ages see, learn, and function more comfortably. We use modern diagnostic tools and evidence-based techniques to guide your care every step of the way.

When vision problems go beyond glasses, vision therapy can be a powerful step toward better performance, comfort, and quality of life. Let us help you uncover the full potential of your visual system.

Contact Cowichan Eyecare today to book a vision therapy assessment and learn more about your options.

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