Wellness
Give your peepers a break.
You may have tried your hand at yoga before, but how about eye yoga?
A typicalmorning starts with checking your phone(be honest).
Then you go to work and spend eight hours staring at a computer.
And then you watch Netflix orscroll social media before bed.
And when youdoblink, you rarely blink fully.
Then theres the issue ofeye strain.
Norman Shedlo, OD.
Its all the more reason to do eye yoga exercises throughout the day to help keep your peepers healthy.
And according to eye docs, these moves really do help.
Palming
The first eye yoga trick is called palming.
Look into the darkness and take a few deep breaths.
The warmth and darkness will helprelax your eye muscles.
Rapid Blinking
Next, try a round of rapid blinking, which Shedlo recommends as well.
Repeat the process every hour to ensure your eyes stay nice and moist.
Zooming
If you notice eye pain or a headache coming on, take that as your cue to zoom.
Reverse the process and repeat for two minutes.
It relaxes the focusing muscles in the eye and helps reduce eye strain, Shedlo says.
A similar trick is the 20/20/20.
Like the zoom exercise, it will give your eyes a chance to refocus.
Figure Eight
To stretch your eye muscles, try moving your eyes in a figure-eight pattern.
Greenacre says to raise your hand at eye level, extend your thumb, and focus on it.
Slowly start to move your arm in figure-eight shape as your eyes follow along.
Keep tracing a figure eight for 30 seconds, then switch directions.
Eye Rolling
Eye rolling can also help relax andstrengthen your eye muscles, Greenacre says.
To give it a try, sit or stand straight, relax your shoulders, and gaze forward.
Go in both directions and just like that, youll have performed a nice round of eye yoga.
The Relationship Between Dry Eye Disease and Digital Screen Use.Clinical ophthalmology (Auckland, N.Z.
),15, 38113820.https://doi.org/10.2147/OPTH.S321591.
Colesbrennan, C., Sulley, A., & Young, G. (2019).
Management of digital eye strain.Clinical and Experimental Optometry,102(1), 1829.https://doi.org/10.1111/cxo.12798.
Gupta, S. K., & Aparna, S. (2020).
Effect of Yoga Ocular Exercises on Eye Fatigue.International journal of yoga,13(1), 7679.https://doi.org/10.4103/ijoy.IJOY_26_19.
Kim S. D. (2016).
Sheppard, A. L., & Wolffsohn, J. S. (2018).
Digital eye strain: prevalence, measurement and amelioration.BMJ open ophthalmology,3(1), e000146.https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjophth-2018-000146.
