Our eyes are the windows to our soul. Our eyes also happen to be the one part of our body that gets the least of our attention. And in today’s fast-paced world, where most of our work involves staring endlessly at a screen of some sort or the other, our eyes take a beating and end up with what’s known as eye fatigue. Here are a few simple yoga exercises to make sure your peepers are in top shape!
1. Stretching
Before we begin exercising our eyes, it is important that we warm them up with some stretching exercises. Remember to keep your head stationary throughout the exercises.
1. Begin by looking ahead and then move your eyeballs all the way up. Hold the position for a count of 2 seconds.
2. Look all the way down, and hold the position for a count of 2 again.
3. Now move your eyeballs to the extreme left and hold the position for a count of 2 seconds again.
4. Now move your eyes to the extreme right and hold the position for a count of 2 again.
5. Once you’re done with 4 directions, now move your eyeballs towards the 4 diagonal corners (the top-left, the bottom-right, the top-right and the bottom-left) and hold for a count of two seconds in each of the four positions.
6. Repeat the cycle for one whole minute, making sure your head is stationary throughout the exercise.
2. Flexing
This is a simple yoga exercise for the eyes that helps improve the flexibility of your eye muscles.
1. Relax your eyes.
2. Begin rotating your eyes slowly in the clockwise direction making sure you reach all corners.
3. Do this for one minute. What can also help is imagining a ball that moves around your face and keep looking at the ball.
4. Switch to moving your eyes in the anticlockwise direction.
3. Focus Switching
1. Hold a book with small lettering at a reading distance.
2. Cover one of your eyes with your palm.
3. Trace the shape of a small letter from the book that you’re holding for 2-3 seconds.
4. Now look away from the book at something 20 feet away and trace the shape for 2-3 seconds. Keep your eyes relaxed and don’t squint.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 for 5 minutes.
6. After five minutes, repeat the same exercise for the other eye.
You can change the props you use for this exercise. Instead of a book, for instance, you can use your thumb and a car in the distance. Or even your wristwatch and a wall clock.
4. Deep Blink
This exercise aims at improving your distance vision. It also happens to be a relaxation technique. Choose a blank wall and get yourself a comfortable chair. For this exercise, you will need large letters that you can cut out from newspaper headlines.
1. Stick the letters on to a wall and position the chair at a good amount of distance from the wall.
2. Position the chair in such a way that you’re facing the letters on the wall, but they seem blurred to you.
3. Now sit comfortably on the chair and breathe deeply and exhale slowly and relax yourself completely.
4. Now take a deep breath and hold it. Clench your fists and tighten the muscles in your whole body and hold them in the tightened position for a few seconds.
5. When 5 seconds are up, exhale quickly through your mouth and release all the tension from your body simultaneously and snap your eyes open and look at the letters which should appear clear now.
6. Breathe gently and keep looking at the letters as they get blurred again.
7. Repeat steps 4-6 for two minutes. As you repeat this every day, you will notice that you are able to take the chair farther and farther from the wall.
5. Palming
Palming is a relaxation exercise that we will now use to relax the eye muscles that we have worked on till now. Palming can be done many times throughout the day to give your eyes frequent rest amidst all the stress it takes.
Find a chair and a table to sit and rest your arms on.
1. Rub your hands together to create warmth in your palms.
2. Close your eyes and cover your eyes with your palms and imagine
yourself looking into the dark. You may see some flashes of light
that’ll disappear soon.
3. Count a minute or longer in the same position.
Barring a few illnesses like cataract and glaucoma which are caused by bacterial infections in the eye, a lot of ailments of the eye occur due to defects in the ocular muscles, many a times resulting from chronic eye fatigue. Practicing these yoga exercises of the eyes, can go a long way in promoting the normal and healthy functioning of
the eyes. Remember to do these exercises without your glasses or contact lenses on.
