If you're like most people, you ask a lot of your eyes in the course of a day. Especially in light of modern culture's constant flow of information, your livelihood and ability to stay up-to-date depend on your eyes working well. For the same reasons, it's easy to send your eyes into a state of distress. Eye exercises from ancient and modern natural healing practices can help refresh your eyes any time.
Types
Natural eye exercises come from different traditions. In the west, the Bates Method, created by opthamologist William Bates in the late 19th century, combines massage and eye movement techniques to help people improve their vision. Traditional forms, sourced in Chinese medicine and East Indian yoga training, often combine full body movement with eye exercises. The best time to do yogic eye exercises is following joint freeing poses, notes Mukunda Stiles, founder of the Yoga Therapy Center in Ojai, California, and author of "Ayurvedic Yoga Therapy." Because your body is already warm and your circulation flowing, eye exercises will have a greater impact.
Theory
Your eye health is a function of your overall health --- including your emotional wellbeing, according to Andy Rosenfarb, doctor of acupuncture practicing in Westfield, New Jersey, and Marc Grossman, holistic doctor of optometry in New Paltz, New York. In their book "Healing Your Eyes with Chinese Medicine," Rosenfarb and Grossman note that prolonged and violent negative emotion has a profound effect on the whole body and can negatively affect your vision. Any exercise that allows you to release strong emotions will help your eyes work more efficiently.
Considerations
Eyes can do much more than the fine detail perception involved in the act of reading, notes the website Seeing, online home of the Bates Association. One of the best things you can do for your eyes is to give them what the Bates Association website calls "pure visual experience." Simply allowing your eyes to take in a scene, noting light, color, form, movement and depth without straining can go a long way to easing tension and increasing your eyes' functionality over time.
Research
A 2010 study published in the journal "Current Biology" reports that eye exercises can significantly correct vision problems in those with sensory eye dominance, according to Healthfinder, the website of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. This condition occurs when one eye is much stronger than the other and overrides the brain's ability to interpret information from the weak eye. Researcher Teng Leng Ooi of the Pennsylvania College of Optometry reports that study participants, by covering the stronger eye and performing a series of exercises, were able to lessen the difference between their eyes and improve depth perception in just 10 days.
Try This
Shugan Mingmu Gong exercises are part of a traditional Chinese medical technique for improving eyesight, according to Grossman and Rosenfarb. Outside, or in front of a window with a good view, sit with your spine straight. Allow your breathing to become calm and even. Look at an object close to you. Look at objects further and further away until you're at the limit of your visual abilities. Stare at this point for moment, then look at closer and closer objects until you're back where you started. Repeat five times. Emphasize looking without straining when you practice eye exercises.
