The eyes are one of the most precious organs, requiring extra care to maintain optimal functionality and longevity. Whether you spend time on digital screens or experience any eye complexity, eye exercises can provide your eyes with needed stretch and relaxation. Several studies have witnessed that incorporating eye exercises into daily life keeps various eye complications at bay.
In this comprehensive blog post, we will explore various simple eye exercises to improve your vision, along with performing techniques. Incorporating these exercises into your daily life will relax your eyes and help them heal faster.
A] Why Do Eye Exercises Matter?
The fast-paced lifestyle and increased use of digital screens put an elevated amount of pressure on our eyes. Regular eye exercises are essential to maintaining optimal visual function and alleviating fatigue. They offer that needed pampering and stretching, eventually helping our eyes to relax and function intuitively for an extended time. Eye exercises can alleviate eye strain, delay the need for glasses, correct lazy eye (amblyopia), and even reduce the risk of developing cataracts by 40%. Whether you have normal or compromised vision, eye exercises can benefit everyone.
B] Who Needs To Perform Eye Exercises?
- Difficulty in Focus During Reading: If you struggle to focus or find words blurry while reading, eye focus exercises can help significantly improve your focusing abilities.
- Double Vision: Double vision or diplopia can be binocular or monocular. In this condition, images seem overlapped, tilted, or separated. People with double vision problems can incorporate specific eye exercises to reverse their symptoms.
- Lazy Eyes (Amblyopia): Individuals suffering from amblyopia can strengthen their eye muscles with particular eye exercises and alleviate their lazy eye symptoms.
- Crossed Eyes (Strabismus): Strabismus is an eye condition in which eye pupils don’t seem in the same place at the same time. Individuals with crossed eyes can incorporate eye exercises to improve eyesight and alleviate strabismus symptoms.
- Increased or Decreased Ability to Focus on an Object: Individuals suffering from refractive vision problems can significantly benefit from eye exercises and improve their ability to focus on near or far objects.
- Decreased Ability to Perceive Depth: Various reasons, including strabismus, amblyopia, nerve problems, or trauma, can trigger depth perception issues. Eye exercises can help achieve perceiving ability.
- After Surgery to Improve Muscle Control: Eye exercises are recommended to heal faster and improve the control over muscles after surgery.
C] Eight Eye Exercises For Better Vision
1. Palming
Palming is a traditional yogic exercise that provides a soothing effect to your eye muscles and relaxes them. To perform palming, rub your hands vigorously together until it gets warm. Now, close your eyes and place your handle gently on the cheekbone while ensuring they are touching your eyelids. Further, hold your hands over your eyelids and take a deep breath until warmth disappears. Palming can be done 3 to 10 times daily, depending on your eye’s conditions. It relaxes your eyes, alleviates eye strains, improves lubrication, and relieves tired and dry eyes.
2. Blinking
Continuous staring at digital screens slows down our eye’s blinking rate. A slow blinking rate fosters various eye complexities such as infection, dryness, corneal swelling, strain, fatigue, and discomfort. Blinking is an effective eye exercise that offsets the slow blinking rate and offers needed relief to your eyes. It encourages the secretion of eye lubricants and helps alleviate dry eye symptoms. To perform blinking eye exercises, close your eyes firmly and hold for 2 seconds. Now, open your eyes gently and repeat this process until you want.
3. Pencil Push Ups
Pencil push-ups are the best exercise for improving eyesight, convergence insufficiency (CI), and binocular vision conditions. To perform pencil push-ups, hold a pencil or similar object at arm’s length and fix your vision at the pencil tip. Slowly bring the pencil closer to your eyes until a double image of the pencil appears. Now, return the pencil to its initial position and repeat the process 20 times a day for better results.
4. Near and Far Focus
Near and far-focus eye exercises help improve vision flexibility and focus. It also helps alleviate the symptoms of presbyopia, myopia, hypermetropia, and power of accommodation. To perform near and far-focus eye exercises, hold your thumb 10 inches away from your eyes and focus on the tip of your thumb for 15 seconds. Now, move your focus to a 20-foot-away object and hold your focus there for 15 seconds. Again, return to your thumb and repeat the process as instructed. Also, near and far-focus is a suitable and efficient eye exercise for squints.
5. Figure 8
Figure 8 is a simple eye exercise that involves moving your eyes in an eight-like shape. It helps individuals suffering from eye-tracking problems. Also, figure eight eye exercise improves vision, strengthens eye muscles, and increases flexibility. To perform the figure eight exercise, draw an imaginary figure of eight 10 feet away from your eyesight. Now, move your eyes by tracking the fictitious figure of eight and continue this movement for 30 seconds. Now, switch the direction and repeat the process as instructed.
6. 20-20-20 Rule
The 20-20-20 rule is a popular and straightforward eye exercise that helps reverse the symptoms of dry, strained, tired, and itchy eyes. Also, it improves your focus and productivity by giving you a needed break from continuous screen gazing. To perform the 20-20-20 rule eye exercise, you only need to look at the 20-foot-away object for 20 seconds in the interval of 20 minutes. After completing the 20 seconds, you can return to your near task. Further, repeat this process after every segment of 20 minutes.
7. Brock String
Brock string is a vision therapy tool that contains 10 to 15 feet of string with several colors of beads. This exercise is widely used for treating lazy eyes, strabismus, and convergence insufficiency. Hold one end of the string at your nose and the other stretched out to perform Brock string vision therapy. Focus on the closest bead. Your convergence is good if the bead appears singular with an “X” of strings. If doubled, move the bead until it seems singular. Gradually move beads closer to your nose and shift focus between them. Repeat as instructed.
8. Barrel Card
The Barrel card is a vision therapy tool used to train the eyes’ convergence skills. It involves looking at a card with red and green targets and shifting focus between them. The Barrel Card uses red and green targets to help the eyes learn to work together better. This helps improve binocular vision and can even help with conditions like suppression (when one eye dominates and the other is ignored).
Conclusion
Eyes are precious tools that must be cared for with the best eye care practices. Individuals intending to prolong their eye health must incorporate these eye exercises into their daily lives. Consider the suggested eye exercises to improve vision fast and achieve optimal eye health. You can also set a reminder to perform these eye exercises for better vision and optimal eye health.
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FAQs
1. What are the benefits of doing eye exercises?
Eye exercises offer various benefits, including strengthening your eye muscles, easing eye strains, helping you focus, and improving your blood circulation.
2. What kind of vision problems can be improved with eye exercises?
Eye exercises can improve vision problems such as convergence insufficiency, strabismus, lazy eye, depth perception, and double vision. Eye exercise also reduces the chances of having cataracts by 40%. If you have cataracts, ensure they are treated with the highest priority and best treatment possible. To do so, you can visit Arohi Eye Hospital for the best cataract surgery in Mumbai.
3. Can eye exercises replace glasses or contact lenses?
There is no scientific evidence that shows eye exercise replaces glasses or contact lenses.
4. Do eye exercises prevent eye problems as we age?
No, they don’t help prevent age-related common eye problems such as nearsightedness, farsightedness, and glaucoma.