The benefits yoga brings to our body are well known, but did you know that yoga could also be applied to your eyes? Today we present eye yoga!
What is eye yoga?
Eye yoga is a gentle medicine that can be likened to eye gymnastics. It consists of regular exercises that help improve the health of our eyes by naturally improving their functioning.
Indeed, with the growing use of screens in particular, our eyes are suffering increasingly on a daily basis and exercises are needed to protect them. (For more information on screens and our eyes, click here).
What are the benefits of eye yoga?
First of all, eye yoga helps strengthen and make the muscles of the eyeball more supple and therefore more efficient.
Eye yoga also improves mobility, therefore allowing us to use 100% of our eye capacity. In other words, it allows us to have better accommodation, i.e. to see clearly at different distances and also improves our peripheral vision.
Lastly, eye yoga is recommended to combat visual fatigue, which is also one of the symptoms of dry eye.
What is the difference between eye yoga and orthoptics?
Orthoptics is a paramedical practice carried out by healthcare professionals. This practice is used to screen, analyse and treat various visual disturbances. These disorders are usually motor or functional.
The orthoptist works with patients of any age for various problems such as squinting, double vision, and differences in vision between the two eyes. They are therefore a little like an eye physiotherapist.
A prescription from an ophthalmologist is needed to consult an orthoptist whereas eye yoga can be recommended by any type of person, and there is no need for a prescription to practice it.
Some eye yoga exercises
To be truly effective, eye yoga needs to be done regularly or even daily. We recommend you set 10 to 15 minutes of your day aside to do the exercises.
1. Accommodation
Stare at a distant target for 5 seconds and then a close target for 5 seconds as well. Repeat the process several times, until you reach one minute. This exercise helps the eye adapt to distances, to have constant clear vision.
2. The clock
Make big circles with your eyes in a clockwise direction, then change direction. This exercise stimulates the muscles to have better peripheral vision.
3. Oscillations
Without moving your head, raise your eyes up and down for 20 seconds. Then, do the same from left to right. Lastly, you can also do the exercise diagonally. This strengthens and stretches the muscles.
4. Blinking
This is no longer taught to you, but blinking is essential to combat visual fatigue and improve dry eye. Blinking spreads out the tear film which hydrates the eyes. Normally you are advised to blink every 4 seconds, which corresponds to 15 blinks per minute. You can do blinking exercises to retrain your eyes which are not used to blinking regularly.
Here is an example of a blinking exercise:
- Close your eyes and count to three.
- Squeeze your eyelids tightly shut and count to three.
- Open your eyes and count to three
- Repeat the sequence 5 times in a row.
IF YOU ARE SUFFERING FROM DRY-EYE ISSUES, DO NOT HESITATE TO SEE AN OPHTHALMOLOGIST.
