Health Club

Physical Exercise is an important routine in our lives. But imparting exercise to our eyes is not a well known practice. By exercising eyes you may not be able to improve your vision, but definitely it will keep the eyes healthy and reduce eye strain.

PROCEDURE

• Sit comfortably on a chair. Rub your palms until it is warm. Close your eyes and cover the closed eyes with your cupped palms. Make sure that the cupped palms are tight and no light rays enter the eyes. You may see lingering traces of colours. Imagine focus on the darkness. Breathe deeply and evenly. Think of some happy incident or visualise a distant scene. Remain in that position for 3 to 5 seconds and open the eyes for 3 to 5 seconds. Repeat palming for 3 times or more.

• Close your eyes tightly for 3 to 5 seconds and keep them opened for 3 to 5 seconds. Repeat this exercise for 7 to 8 times.

• Close your eyes and massage them with fingers in circular movements for 1 to 2 minutes. Make sure that you apply no pressure to avoid hurting the eyes.

• Press 3 fingers of each hand against your upper eyelids and fold them for 1 to 2 seconds and release. Repeat 5 times.

• Sit and relax. Role your eyes clockwise and then anti clockwise. Repeat 5 times. Blink in between.

• Sit about 6 inches from the window. Make a mark on the glass at your eye level. Look through this mark and focus on something far away for 10 to 15 seconds. Then focus on the mark again.

• Hold a pencil in front of you at arms length. Move your arm slowly to your nose and follow the pencil with your eyes until you cannot keep it in focus. Repeat 10 times.

• Look in front of you at the opposite wall imagining that you are righting with your eyes, without moving your head. Even though it will be difficult initially, with practice it will become easy. The bigger the letters, the better the effect.

• Imagine that you are standing in front of a really big clock. Look at the middle of the clock. Then look at any hour mark without moving your head. Look again at the centre, and then look at another hour mark. Repeat for at least 12 times. You can do this exercise with closed eyes also.

• Focus on a distant object about 150 feet away for a few seconds and slowly refocus your eyes on a nearby object less than 30 feet in the same direction. Focus for a few seconds and repeat the same for 5 times.

• Focus on an object (as far as possible) with low contrasting background. Do this for a few minutes in every half hour.

It is important that the exercise should be a regular routine. Even for 30 to 60 seconds every hour will be helpful. Even while working on the computer, you can exercise your eyes during the short breaks. Rotating you eyes and staring out to a distance will relieve the strain of your eyes while working in a computer.

WARNING:

• Consult your eye doctor before doing any of these exercises. Make sure that you have no inherent eye problems.

• Those who wear contact lenses should take precautions to prevent damage to the eye balls.

WASHING THE EYES:

SOME TIPS:

Eye washing kit that contains eye cup and sterile washing solution are available in good drug stores.

You can get relief from eye strains, caused by light by dripping a few drops of potatoes juice squeezed through a cheese cloth. If it hurts your eyes, rinse it out with lots of water.