I thought I would do a couple of blogs on how to improve your eyesight, I have never had great vision but it has improved over time. I will never have 20:20 vision but considering my mother told me of a time when she chased a lady from social services away for suggesting I be taken away to a school for the blind I have come a long way.
Below are some exercises I have used to relax my eyes and help relieve eye strain, and headaches that result from that strain. In subsequent posts I will give you exercises that improve your peripheral vision as well as focus.
These exercises have come from a variety of martial arts as well as Yoga and Qigong. These exercises have been around for hundreds of years and in todays world I have seen them packaged up and sold for thousands of pounds (The Bates method is a great example), still try them out and enjoy the benefits, feel free to comment on how you find them and if they
help you, or feel free to add any exercises you may know or have come across that work.
Bathing the eyes
- Drink water first thing in the morning
- Splash water into your eyes, do this each time you go to the bathroom
- First thing in the morning and last thing at night bathe eyes in cold water and blink in the water
- To relax the eyes dip a hand towel in cold water and place it over the eyes, then dip another hand towel in warm water and place over the eyes. You can repeat this a few times to relax the eyes fully
This next one is a bit more for the athletic of you 🙂
Improving blood flow to the eyes
- Stand in a shoulder stand with your feet straight up over your head to get the blood flowing to the head, you can also do this against a wall, the key idea here is to improve blood flow to your head using gravity to assist
- Now sit on the floor with legs crossed to normalises the blood pressure in the eyes
Relaxing the eyes
Below are three ways to relax your eyes.
- Palming – Clap the palms of your hands together and then vigorously rub hands to produce heat and then place palms over eyes to relax the eye
- Warm towel – To relax the eyes dip a hand towel in warm water and place over the eyes. You can repeat this a few times to relax the eyes fully
- Solarisation – Close eyes and look up at the sun so the sun heats and warms the eyes, do not do this when it is very hot
Please try these and let me know how you get on.
Ruth Patterson
Good ideas there. I’ve always done the clock face exercise. Keeping your head still, look up at No.12 & imagine you’re going round the clock clockwise looking as far as you can at the numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 etc back up to 12 then in the reverse,12,11,10,9 anti-clockwise. Afterwards close your eyes and cup your rubbed hands over your eyes to relax them. I did it the other day whilst I was bored having my MRI scan. ????
Richard Gillies
It is a good exercise and there are variations on the theme, the idea is to exercise and stretch the muscles behind the eye thus building up your peripheral vision.