YOGA & VISION
I recently had the honor to write an article for an online health newsletter called SmartNow (www.SmartNow.com). I was asked to write about the relationship between "Vision Therapy and Yoga".
"From a developmental viewpoint, a child must first learn to team the two halves of his body together before he can team his two eyes. Also, from a developmental standpoint, a child must first learn to control his large muscle groups before he can control the fine muscles of his eyes. Consequently, when we find a problem in bilaterality, we find a problem in binocularity and visual perception."
I have included some of the eye exercises from the article...
Stress-Relieving Eye Exercises
The following activities can help improve your vision, depending on your individual problem. For more information, see an optometrist who specializes in optometric vision therapy.
1. Abdominal Breathing. Remind yourself to not hold your breath throughout the day. Practice deep breathing. Let your diaphragm relax. Sometimes you need to put your hand on your waist and feel the expansion of your lower abdomen to help yourself know what deep breathing feels like.
2. Shoulder Rolls. Isolate your shoulders by pulling them up as high as they go and then releasing the tension. Breath in and out as you find the rhythm; repeat a half dozen times.
3. Palming. Warm your palms by rubbing them together. Then place your palms in a cupped fashion over the eyes, without putting any pressure on them. Keep your eyes closed and enjoy the darkness and warmth.
4. Acupressure. Gently touch the inside edges of your eyebrows with the tips of your index fingers. Let the pressure of your touch feel similar to the weight of a quarter resting on your arm. Begin to make a circular motion with your fingertips, remaining in that one spot. Maintain contact with your skin and continue to breathe diaphragmatically. Make sure that you do not lift your shoulders. Continue circling for 5 to 10 seconds.
Then slide your fingers along the edge of the bone that encircles your eyes, maintaining contact with your eyebrows or skin and stop at the following points. At each point, make small, gentle circles for 5 to 10 seconds, always circling outward:
* the center points above your eyes
* the end of your eyebrows
* the outside corners of your eyes
* the center points below your eyes (feel for a little notch in the bone)
* the point where the bone begins to curve up
5. Yoga Eye Stretches. You have six extra-ocular muscles in each eye. They tend to tighten from lack of flexibility. To stretch them, start in a comfortable sitting position, while keeping the eyes open. By using a clock chart as a guide, move the eyes gently from three to nine o’clock, two to eight, one to seven, eleven to five and ten to four o’clock. This exercise may initially feel like an effort. However, you will find that the eyes begin to feel more fluid in their movements. Practice once a day for three to five minutes.
6. Peripheral Awareness and Convergence. Your peripheral vision tends to shut down under stress (tunnel vision). One simple activity to counteract this is to hold a colored pen or your finger about 5 inches directly in front of your nose. As you look past the pen into the distance toward a light, you should notice a second pen in your peripheral vision. Next shift your attention to the pen, making it single again, while being aware of a second image in the distance.
Here is the full article: http://www.smartnow.com/page/9919
Enjoy,
Dr. Eliot Kaplan, Developmental Optometrist
