In the late 1930’s Robert St. John was practicing the Bates System of Eyesight Training. There are primarily only two conditions to be considered in this work, Hypermetropia and Myopia, or long sight and short sight. Hypermetropia is the inability to focus at the near point and Myopia is the inability to focus at the far point.
Within a relatively short time he had realised that these two conditions were created in the mind of the subject and the physical condition was a manifestation of the mental attitude affecting the function of the muscles of the eyes. The way in which we use our mind becomes the way in which we use our body. In other words, through the use of the eyes we create the stress in them. He realized that the attitude of mind that creates Hypermetropia is one of a compulsive withdrawing or retreating and a pulling away from the action of seeing. Myopia is one of a compulsive outgoing and is a forcing forward.
It became obvious to him that to change these conditions it would be necessary to alter the attitudes of mind, which would cause the condition of the eyes to change spontaneously. At that time Robert St. John did not know what to do about this. He saw that it was necessary to effect this change and he realised that it had to be done at an absolutely fundamental level so he resolved to find an approach, which would function in this very primary way. The change had to come from within the subject and not through the acceptance of the will of another.
Many years later he realised the answer to this.
Robert St. John’s pursuit of the means of effecting changes in these primary attitudes of mind continued through a whole variety of methods of healing techniques. It was not until he began to be interested in what was then known as Reflex Therapy, and now Reflexology, that Robert St. John realized he was getting nearer to understanding a means of erasing or changing these primary attitudes of mind.
This was somewhere in the middle of the 1950’s.
There were quite a few “schools” of this technique and, mostly, different from each other. This being the case he decided to pursue the matter for himself without reference to other methods. This was easy because there were abundant feet available amongst his clients and friends.
In addition to the discovery of the reflex points for the various organs and parts of the body he found several “reflexes” which seemed to have no correspondence with the physical functions of the body.
In addition to this there was a different “feel” about these points. He thought of the chakras, and there was certainly a relationship, but there was also another function here that was not related to the chakras. This puzzled Robert St. John and he thought about it for a long time and then, one morning it suddenly came to him what the reflexes were. He had found the moment of the conception of the subject, which put the seven other unaccountable reflex points into focus. The spinal reflex was also the reflex for the gestation period that revealed the formative patterns or attitudes of mind during the gestation period of the subject.
This opened up an entirely new concept and a new approach to healing methods and its application revealed a process whereby the subject became their own healer, not the practitioner, who was only a catalyst in the matter. Robert St. John called this Prenatal Therapy.
This evolved into what we know today as Metamorphosis.