Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Exercises for Glaucoma

 Sunning is one of the best eye exercises you can do for glaucoma because it temporarily reduces your pressure. it also contracts the pupils and creates better fluid flow within your eyes. So, for the time that you do it, your pressure is being reduced. And the reduction of pressure will last if you could also release the tension in your neck. This exercise will help you do that. 

  If you are a typical glaucoma patient, if such a thing exists, most likely you have a very tight neck. Tension of the neck, to a great extent, is a result of mental stress as well as physical stress, but not in all cases. Nevertheless, I have found that many people who have a tendency for glaucoma exacerbate that tendency with either injury or tension in the neck.

  It's important for you to know that you need to work on your neck, first spiritually, then mentally. It is good to write about your thoughts and feelings in a journal. Then meet with a good friend or maybe with a psychotherapist who can help you. Hopefully, with holistic inclinations, you will see your whole life and all phenomena as one one unified experience.
  
  Sometimes, it is important for you to take a good  vacation or to do things that can improve your life. For example, let yourself be drawn into having a relationship if you do not have one now, or into finding a way to get out of your shell of loneliness if you are lonely. And, if you have a relationship, allow yourself to examine it and to find out if you really spend enough time with your partner; allow yourself to develop good communication skills with your partner in order to bring smoothness into your life. It is important to do the work that will help you to feel that you are doing well emotionally and that you are advancing yourself spiritually. Then, you just may find yourself in a whole new place of physical self-improvement with these exercises. Often, the exercises will bring back emotional phenomena, which you'll want to deal with whenever they come, in order to reach a place of neutrality and tranquility.

  These days, many people do not understand the value of neutrality. Somebody wrote me a postcard that said,"Meir, never tell me to relax. My tension is the only thing that holds me together." That is why many people function with tremendous amounts of tension and think it is good: because they always have it. Life is much happier with less tension. In a place of relaxation, you feel security and love in the universe. 

  Now, while facing the sun with your eyes closed, hold your head steady and stroke your cheekbones, massaging around your eyes and nose.  Massaging the areas around your eyes is very helpful for relaxation. Quite often, the tension of the eyes leads to squinting, as I've mentioned throughout this book. That is a tension that you want to undo. When you take away squinting, you take away pressure, and when you take away pressure, the eye becomes healthy.

   Move your head from side to side. Then move your head up and down while moving from side to side. Your chin points up toward the sky and down toward your chest. You should move your head up and down four times, from the edge of your shoulder to the middle, and four times from the middle of your shoulder to the  edge. This really helps to loosen up your neck and to create more space between the first vertebrae and the crown. After doing  this forty times, palm for thirty seconds. Then you should do it another forty times, if you can relax while performing the exercise. Do no  massage around the eyes here, because it's not safe to do this when you move the head up and down. Just move your head up and down as you're facing the sun with your eyes closed. Then palm again. Do this exercise a third time and then palm yet again for thirty seconds to a minute. Next, move your head from side to side and manage your eyebrows and cheekbones. 

  Now bend your knees and straighten them again. Try to bring your knees to the level of your abdomen or chest (this depends on how flexible your hips are) while moving your head from side to side. If balance is an issue, hold onto a wall or a chair as you do this exercise. Make sure that you don't fall while doing it.

  Now march  in place and move your head from side to side while 
 moving your legs from side to side in order to pump more blood into the head and loosen the neck. If you have good balance, as you move your legs up and down and move your head from side to side, massage your hands. Especially massage the place in the palm that   is between the thumb and the second finger. If it's hard for you to do three things at once (moving your head from side to side all the way gently and steadily, moving your legs up and down, and massaging your palm, all at the same time), then you can do two things. Massage your hand and move your head from side to side, or move your head from side to side and just move your legs up and down. Those are  things that can help you to bring more blood flow and to calm your nervous system; don't strain to do them. 

  After massaging your palm, and while moving your legs up and down, just simply move your head from side to side twenty or thirty times; then go indoors and palm for eight minutes. When you relax from the palming, you will have time to loosen up your neck. 

  Before doing neck exercises, determine how well your neck moves from side to side. Once you have an idea of the range of motion available to you, begin these exercises so that, at first, you stay within your comfortable range of motion. Gradually, this range of motion should increase over time. Also, with all these neck exercises, you should strive for fifteen to twenty repetitions on each side for each exercise. 

   Now lie on your back, bend your knees, stretch your arms, and look at one hand; let's say the right hand. Take the left hand and bring it all the way to the right and, in fact, surpass it. Stay there for one deep breath. Keep your head looking at the right while bringing the left hand all the way to the left. The shoulder will then stretch in two ways. For one, it will stretch in the back muscles, the trapezius and the rhomboids, in order to bring the arm forward. The second time, when you bring your arm back to where it was, the pectoral muscles of the chest will stretch, and the chest muscles as well as the back muscles are directly connected to neck muscles. 

  Then move your head to the opposite side and do exactly the same exercise with your right hand reaching to the left. You can let your legs move after your arm if that's what your body needs to do to complete .... (click here and scroll to page 168-171, to continue learning)

  Another thing that my clients like very much is the steam machine that my sister, who owns health spas, has donated to our school. Steam in a dark room can be very relaxing when you have your eyes closed.
  These exercises are essential for reduction of tension. After doing these every day for a period of time of around three months, measure your pressure and see if it has gone down. If so, you may be able to prevent the need to use eye drops, as long as your ophthalmologist does not oppose the idea; at the very least you may be able to reduce them gradually with supervision. Find a friendly ophthalmologist or optometrist who is willing to measure your pressure frequently, ideally twice a week, so you will know that you are on the right path. 



(For photos references click here


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