Improve your eyesight naturally (and easily)

Want to know how to improve your eyesight? Would you like to improve your eyesight naturally? Did you know that for a lot of people, incorporating some simple exercises can help improve your eyesight? How? Let’s talk.

Raise your hand if you find yourself spending quite a bit of time in front of a computer (or any sort of screen for that matter). Come on, raise them. Now, raise your hand if your eyes ever feel tired or strained from all that technology gazing.

A mini anatomy lesson: The Eyes

Reduced to their most basic terms, eyes are organs that detect light and send electrical impulses along the optic nerve to the visual and other areas of the brain. The eyes are controlled by a group of six muscles of orbit. Four of the muscles control the movement of the eye in the four cardinal directions: up, down, left and right. The remaining two muscles control the adjustments involved in counteracting head movement.

How to improve your eyesight: Through movement!

I have enjoyed perfect vision for most of my life. In fact, I’m the only one of my immediate family who doesn’t wear some sort of corrective eye wear. Most of my family didn’t need glasses until their twenties. Maybe I’m just lucky. But I really think that for many people (certainly not all, as there are some serious degenerative issues for some people), the key to good vision is a matter of proper function.

I started noticing a decline in my eyesight during graduate school… specifically during the month that I spent almost all day at a computer working on my thesis. I worried that my time for glasses was coming.

As I graduated and moved into the “real world” I found myself spending more hours in an office with no window and a computer against a wall that allowed no interaction with a distant horizon. My eyes and vision began to suffer even more.

Since my eyesight was still good enough to avoid glasses for the time being, I decided to experiment. After some solid research and thorough observations of my movement patterns regarding vision, I began my own “eye therapy.”

A simple rule to improve your eyesight: Use it or lose it.

I owned up to the fact that I was not utilizing all the muscles around my eyes. As a very focused person, my tendency is to hone in on whatever is just in front of me. Realizing I was neglecting the full movement potential of my orbital muscles, I dedicated five – ten minutes a day working on relaxing and mobilizing those muscles.

So what happened? Before my experiment, I had a hard time reading the small digital clock in my kitchen from the adjacent room.  After three months of my self prescribed eye therapy, I was able to read it again!  And if that is not enough, the following exercises have helped me feel more relaxed, less tired throughout my day, and has improved my posture while working.

Want to give it a try? I offer you a challenge to help you improve your eyesight. Spent at least five minutes a day doing these exercises. Give it at least a month or two. See what happens. What do you have to lose? (Better yet, what do you have to gain?)

Only 5 minutes a day to improve your eyesight with these simple exercises:

Palming

This is a great way to improve your eyesight and relax the eyes and muscles around them.

1. Sit comfortable on a chair. Rub your hands together until they feel warm.
2. Close the eyes and cover them lightly with your cupped palms. Avoid applying pressure on your eye balls. Place the palm so that the nose remains uncovered, and the eyes remain behind the slight hollow of the palms.
3. Make sure that no light rays enter the eyes, and leave no gaps between fingers or between the edge of the palms and the nose.
4. You may still see other lingering traces of colors. Imagine deep blackness and focus on the blackness.
5. Take deep breaths slowly and evenly, think of some happy incident; or visualize a distant scene.
6. Do the exercise for at least three minutes.

Range of Motion

The following eye patterns are designed to strengthen the muscles of the eyes in a mobilizing way which will ultimately improve your eye sight naturally. As you do each one, remember to keep breathing. Also, relax the face—no need for extra tension. Do each one 8 – 10 times.

1. Up and Down: Similar to the side to side motion—remember to keep the face relaxed and allow the environment to come to your eyes rather than reaching your eyes out to the environment.
2. Diagonals: Work the eyes from right/high to left/low and then left/high to right/low.
3. Circles: Working the eyes in circular pathways helps integrate all the muscles together so they function synergistically. Don’t rush, and notice any places in the circle where you tend to “skip.”
4. Figure 8’s: Similar to the circular action—try to make the pathways as smooth and relaxed as possible.
5. Near and Far:  I enjoy doing this one by a window or outside. Play back and forth…focusing on objects near and then seeing how far out in the distance you can see.  This is especially useful for people who are in front of a computer all day long.  If you don’t have a window near your computer, make sure you take breaks every now and then so your eyes can focus on more distant scenes—which allows your eyes to relax.