Eye Yoga For Tired Eyes That Stare At Screens All Day Long

Eye yoga is the latest wellness trend to hit the headlines, but it’s actually as old as yoga philosophy itself, with its asanas (yoga poses), pranayama (breathing exercises) and meditation. Like many other ancient practices that were built upon practical experiences and intuition, modern scientists have only recently started to explore the benefits of eye exercises, which span better eye focus and a heightened sense of calm.

Yogic eye exercises, also called eye yoga, are movements that claim to strengthen and condition the muscles in your eye structure. People who practice eye yoga are often hoping to improve their vision, treat symptoms of dry eye, and decrease eye strain.

Eye strain is related to stress, so practicing eye yoga may work in two ways: by actually stimulating the muscles that move your eye and strengthening them, and by bringing down stress levels and helping the students to remain centered and focused.

In Ashtanga yoga, taught by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, eye rolling is just one of nine specific points of a gazing technique in the method called ‘drishti’, which is used for attention control and spine alignment during the physical practice of yoga postures. The control of attention through gazing is an incredibly powerful technique that teaches us how to be calm and focused, which can improve our resilience in highly stressful environments.

If you are not ready to combine eye movements with yoga postures just yet, you can begin this highly beneficial practice without moving from your sofa and also combine it with neck movements.

Eye and neck yoga is especially important if you spend a lot of time at your desk or staring at your phone or laptop, just like you’re doing right now. By regularly training your eyes, you can activate the upper cervical spine muscles and eliminate not only work-from-home eye strain (asthenopia) symptoms, but also all those head and neck aches that come from sitting at your desk for prolonged periods. After all, your eyes are literally connected to your neck.

Try this for a weird experience!

Suboccipital muscles are located at the back of the neck, just beneath the skull, and contain a huge number of proprioceptors that evaluate the tension in the muscles, to inform the brain about the position of the head and neck. Then, the muscles in the entire body can be coordinated so that we don’t fall. These muscles respond to eye movement, and you can feel this response yourself by placing your hands on either side of your head, with your thumbs placed just under the edge of the skull at the back of your neck. Feel the deeper layers of muscles without overstraining your neck, and close your eyes - then, move your eyes horizontally and vertically - you may feel small pulsating sensations underneath your thumbs. These sensations are your suboccipital muscles receiving information from your eyes.

When you’re sitting at a desk or staring at a screen for a long time, the range of your eye movement is limited, which limits the information your muscles receive. As a result, the limited range leads to muscular strain in your neck and vice versa, eventually contributing to poor balance.

Ready to give eye yoga a try?

All of the below exercises can be practised together or separately, but it’s important to note that you may feel slightly dizzy at first, as your coordination may be somewhat challenged – you may be surprised by how tired your eyes feel after the first few eye yoga sessions. For this reason, ease into it slowly as you would with any other kind of exercise – don’t push yourself too hard too quickly.

With time, any dizziness will fade, you’ll become more adept at the eye-yoga exercises and the greater range of eye movement will reduce eye fatigue and improve your posture, attention, balance and overall health.

Here are six exercises you can start doing anywhere, at any time. You may want to try them on days when you have been looking at a screen for several hours to see if they help relieve discomfort. If you wear contact lenses or glasses, you’ll want to remove them before trying these exercises:

1. Upward gazing (eye rolls)

Eye rolling or upward gazing rapidly decreases with age compared to any other angles. Scientists do not know whether the decrease occurs because nothing surprises us anymore once we get older, but if eye rolling is something that doesn’t naturally occur in your life, make it an exercise.

Sit upright and, while keeping your spine long and your head still, move your eyes horizontally to the left and focus on the objects in your periphery. Then, slowly move your gaze three times in a clockwise circular motion. Repeat the same motion counter clockwise, and then close your eyes to relax for a few moments.

2. Focusing

Hold one arm straight in front of you with the thumb up, focus on the thumb, and slowly move it towards your nose until the focus is lost. Return the arm to the starting position and repeat the same focus-movement exercise 10 times.

3. Near and distant viewing

Find two points of focus – one at a distance (preferably somewhere outside your window if you’re at home), and another one much closer to you. Focus on the distant object for a couple of long breathing cycles, and then move your gaze to the object closer to you.

Wait until your eyes focus on the closer object, then inhale to the top and exhale fully before moving your focus back to the distant object. Repeat this exercise 10 times, or as many times as you can before your neighbours start to think you’re spying on them.

4. Blinking

Open your eyes wide, and then blink rapidly 10 times. Close your eyes and take five deep inhales and five long exhales. Repeat this exercise five times, preferably away from the window, because by this point, your neighbours might start thinking you are actually in trouble and trying to communicate something in morse code. Wave, smile and move on to the next exercise.

5. Palming

Palming was invented by Tibetan yogis and involves cupping your hands gently over the eyes. You need to sit with your eyes closed and concentrate on the darkness. Soon, you may notice all sorts of flickering lights, which come from the optic nerve irritation and overload.

Our eyes need darkness to recover from the light. Once those lights start to vanish, slowly remove your palms and gradually open your eyes. They may feel a bit sensitive, so don’t stare at anything too bright straight away, let your optic nerve adjust.

6. Nose-tip gazing

This exercise is often used in combination with meditation and pranayama (breathing), and is called Nasikagra Drishti, which literally translates as ‘nose-tip gazing’. To nose-tip gaze, you simply need to remain on your sofa in a comfortable seated position with your back upright. Relax your shoulders and place your palms on the knees for a better spine alignment and concentration.

Now, slowly shift your gaze to the tip of your nose, without straining your eyes. Release the eyes once you feel any sort of discomfort. Repeat five or more times as long as your eyes feel relaxed.

In conclusion:

Tending to small, purposeful movements – eye yoga, neck rolls, stretching - throughout the day has the potential to calm your body down, especially when combining the movements with a slow and steady breath that you take all the way down into your belly. Bringing ease to your body through healthy stress coping mechanisms helps treat hypertension, which is linked to glaucoma, headache, and anxiety, all of which can aggravate eye strain and other optical conditions.

Interestingly, practicing focus may help improve your brain’s response to the way it interprets what you see, even if your eyes tend to send what’s called “refraction errors” that make images difficult to make out. You might not actually be seeing better, but you might be becoming more attentive to what you see.

Eye exercises, including eye yoga, may work to help with eye strain as well as a decrease in stress. Feeling less stress can help you focus better, so while you may not be “healing” or fixing your eyesight, you may be better able to see and recognize what’s going on around you.

If you want to give eye yoga a try, there’s very little risk, no minimum fitness level, and at the worst, you’ll lose a minute or two of your time. I’d love to hear your thoughts if you try it out!

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