What is Eye Yoga

Yogic Eye Exercises also called Eye Yoga are movements that claim to strengthen and condition the muscles in your eye structure.

What are the benefits

Studies show that eye yoga can not only reduce intraocular pressure and relieve eye fatigue but improve clarity of vision. It can even help to reduce headaches and relieve facial tension!

Eye and neck yoga is especially important if you spend a lot of time at your desk or staring at your phone, 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 these exercises: 

Make sure you are sitting up right with a straight spine and are comfortable before you begin 

Stretch 

1. Relax your facial muscles, softening your jaw and eyebrows, then gently close your eyes.
2. Keeping your eyes closed, look all the way up and count to 4.
3. Keeping your eyes closed, look all the way down and count to 4.
4. Repeat 3 times.
5. Repeat one last time, looking left and right.
6. Finally, look top left to bottom right, then top right to bottom left. 

Strengthen 

1. Blink as fast as you can 10 times.
2. Sit with your eyes closed and count to 5. 
3. Repeat 5 times.
4. To finish, sit for a moment and pay attention to any sensations.

Focus

1. Sitting tall, stretch your right arm straight out in front of you.
2. Put your right hand in the ‘thumbs up’ position.
3. Bring your gaze and your focus to your right thumbnail and count to 4. 
4. Bring your right thumb towards your nose until your eyes can no longer focus and count to 4.
5. Slowly extend your right arm again, keeping your focus on your thumb. 
6. Repeat 5 times.