Thursday, January 4, 2018

5 Free Eye Exercises

 Every year, more and more people are told they have to wear glasses because they have lost flexibility of their distance vision (nearsightedness) or their close-up vision (farsightedness and aging vision).

The culprit is partly aging and partly modern living – such as watching TV, working on computers, air conditioning, fluorescent lighting, and lack of exercise. All of these factors put extra strain on your eyesight causing blurry vision.

And once you start wearing glasses or contact lenses, guess what happens? You continue your poor vision habits and the lenses increase strain on the eyes, allowing them to slack off and become even lazier over time…

How to Cure Your Blurry Vision
While there’s no denying some people do need to wear glasses due to congenital disorders and serious eye conditions, I believe that most people who wear glasses can improve their vision naturally. Take me for example, since the age of 10 I was diagnosed with nearsightedness and astigmatism and wore glasses up to the age of 25. Every year my vision got worse since I wasn’t aware of any options to prevent this.

The following free eye exercises should help you understand how important it is to treat your eyesight with respect and start getting into better vision habits. Once you do, you will be open to experiencing dramatic vision improvement.

5 Free Eye Exercises to Improve Your Vision
Eye exercises are not exactly like working out at the gym. You aren’t going to be left out of breath and you certainly aren’t going to have beefed up eyeballs!

The term exercising the eyes just means you’re using your eyes to their full extent, in a range of movements and focusing skills which aren’t promoted by modern living (such as staring at a computer screen all day). You’ll also get into the habit of keeping your eyes moist and preventing eye strain, perhaps the biggest cause of deteriorating blurry vision.

With a quality eye exercise program, you may be surprised how quickly your eyesight improves – and how you don’t really need your glasses after all!

The following exercises will give you a feel for the kind of practice needed to improve your vision. Give them a go now (without wearing your glasses).

Eye Exercise #1. Flexing
This is a simple warm-up exercise which stretches your extra ocular muscles. It gets you out of the habit of just staring 1-2 feet in front of your face which is what most people end up doing at their computer all day long.

Face straight ahead, then look up as far as you can without moving your head. Then look down. Up, down, up, down. Then look at your top right – go as far to the edge of your vision as you can. Then bottom left, and alternate the two again. Finally look top left and alternate with bottom right a few times. Feel the stretch?

Eye Exercise #2 – Palming
This is an eye relaxation exercise for when your eyes are feeling worn and tired from being at the computer (or any other near-point task). Cup your hands over your eyes and create a gentle pressure around your orbital bone – or the bone around the eye socket.

With your eyes closed, stare into the blackness as if you are staring into space. See how far you can focus into the distance. Allow all the residual colors to fade to black – this helps “reset” your vision, allowing your eyes to relax fully and lubricate again. Do this for as long as you like, usually at least 30 seconds is needed. Your eyes will feel rejuvenated when you take your hands away!

Eye Exercise #3 – Blinking
Dry eyes can lead to blurry vision, headaches and eye strain and often stem from continued TV or computer use. That’s because the average blink rate drops from 16-20 blinks per minute to 6-8 bpm while absorbed in the screen.

The simple way to combat this is to blink more, and become conscious of the fact when you’ve stopped blinking, especially when working at the computer. If you start to feel eye strain coming on – blink! This lubricates the eye and refreshes your brain ready to receive new visual data.

Eye Exercise #4 – Focusing
People who wear glasses can get really lazy at focusing – and that’s one reason they fail to maintain healthy vision.

Take your glasses off right now and focus on your thumb held close up, then your other thumb at arm’s length, then at something across the room, then at something really far away out the window. Ideally all four points are along the same line of sight so it’s just a subtle change in focus.

Spend about 1-2 seconds on each item. Then flick back to your close-up thumb again. Try to obtain a clear image every time. This is a great exercise to improve your vision so do it for several minutes.

Eye Exercise #5 – Zooming
This is similar to focusing but is designed for people who suffer farsightedness or aging vision. Hold your thumb out at arm’s length and focus on it. Now draw it in until it’s three inches in front of your eyes, maintaining focus all the while. Then move your thumb out again. Do this for a few minutes and you will strengthen your focusing skills (also known as accommodation). This is really important if you have been relying on glasses to do all the artificial focusing for you.

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