Gymnastics for the eyes have been used for a long time. There are tons of different exercises on the internet these days. It is promised that if you do these exercises, you will fully restore your nearsighted vision. This is both right and wrong. Why? Vision loss sometimes occurs, but this is not nearsightedness. It's just muscle cramps or weakness. In this case, active and regular eye exercises can really restore vision.
When is eye gymnastics useful?
In true myopia, the eye is zoomed out and the image is focused a distance in front of the retina instead of on it. Therefore, everything in the distance is blurred, but the near eye can see clearly. It's short-sightedness, or myopia - which affects every third student in Year 11. To prevent vision problems, exercise alone may not be enough. All children need to go to the eye care room once a year.
Eye gymnastics will improve cellular nutrition, strengthen eye muscles and subjectively improve your vision. But, of course, exercise won't make elongated eyes round. By exercising the muscles, they bring your images closer to the retina, the nerve cells.
In my opinion, eye exercises are very necessary for modern people. It should become a useful habit throughout our children's lives. In fact, today we clearly understand that neither phones, gadgets nor computers will disappear from our world. They will only enter our lives more and more.
If your child is facing visual impairment, or if you suspect your child has decreased vision—Do not self-medicate, wasting time can lead to irreparable consequences. In this case, please contact thePediatric ophthalmologist.
Where do eye exercises start?
I recommend starting eye exercises with morning exercises to prepare our eyes for the day's work. It is never recommended to get up quickly when the alarm clock goes off.
Why? Because when we sleep, we are relaxed. And the new model of the body needs to be slowly entered.
What should be done?
- 1. Open and close your eyes several times to allow the muscles around the eyes to function.
- 2. Raise your eyebrows vigorously, as if in surprise.
- 3. We blink a lot.
These exercises take 5-10 seconds. Afterwards, our eyes are ready for the day ahead. You can also smile - it will be wonderful!
eye muscle training
What is it for?
Any muscle training improves the nutrition and blood supply to the cells, any cell. When a cell is properly nourished, its function naturally improves. We train all the muscle groups around the eyeball.
In fact, in everyday life, when we need to look somewhere (e. g. upstairs), we just look up. If we need to look to the left, we turn our heads, but don't squint.
As a result, our muscles weaken over time. It doesn't work, it doesn't work!
How to exercise eye muscles?
We do 6-8 reps of each exercise.
- 1. Keep your head straight and move your eyeballs up and down with the largest range and a little tension. At the same time, it is imperative to maintain a smile, posture and good mood. We blink a lot.
- 2. Let's try to look at the left and right ears. The rest is the same - we do this for slight muscle tension, mind the pose. We often blink at the end.
- 3. Draw a butterfly in order: top to bottom, diagonal, top to bottom, diagonal. Then we change the direction: bottom to top, diagonal etc. This is how our oblique eye muscles are trained. They blinked.
- 4. Draw a large vertical figure eight and change direction. Then we "side" the 8 and we get the infinity symbol. We also draw it in both directions. Blinked. We blink a lot.
- 5. Draw a big circle for the eyes. This exercise can be done at any time. It is not advisable to do this only when your eyes are tired. No extra eye strain required! We blink a lot.
In practice, we definitely connect with psychoemotional states - we try to feel that there is love in us, care in our eyes. We must still be in a very good mood in our hearts, so that the effect of our training will continue unabated.
Practice "convergence"
This exercise is also useful - here we train the muscles inside the eyes. They are very important to ensure visual function.
How should we do it?
very simple. We look at the tip of our nose and look forward. Everything in front of you will be doubled, and that's ok. We also noticed that, in the front, the visual acuity improved and the clarity increased during diplopia. Blinked.
An analog for this exercise could be a home simulator like this: Take a piece of cardboard (about 20 cm) and draw circles of different colors on it at a distance of 1. 5 cm. Connect them to each other.
How to use such an emulator?
If you or your child wears glasses, this exercise can be done without glasses, as people who are nearsighted can see well up close. You put it on your nose, look at the distant circle, count to three, look at the closer circle, and so on until the last circle and then return. You do this several times.
I draw your attention to the fact that there will be a little double in your eyes. We do relieve tension. We often blink at the end.
Practice "palms"
Another very important exercise is the palms. You'll find it in many Eastern-oriented Chinese medicines. It's a little meditative. This is a relaxation exercise. It needs to be done more often.
You sit down at the table, rub your hands to keep warm, and cross your hands. Form a triangle between them. Shape your palms into boats, over your eyes, and rest your elbows on the table. We don't bend our cervical spine, we cover our eyes with our palms. Light cannot pass through the hand.
Bring your attention to the center of your palm and imagine some color.
What color best represents? The most perfect is black. You seem to have painted your entire field with black paint.
Why? Because at this point you can see gray, some glitter, etc. You can also imagine blue and green. These are relaxing colors. You can represent the sea or the forest. Most importantly, your mind should be empty at this moment. It's hard to do. To do this, focus on your breath: inhale - cool, exhale - warm.
How often do you do "palms"?
Ideally this is done every half hour for two minutes, with any visual load nearby. I'm not talking about TV. That said, you should do it often. Don't overstretch your muscles. If you do it right, you'll immediately notice that your eyes are rested and the world around you is brighter.
good visual habits
What good habits should be developed and must be instilled in children?
Under no circumstances should you bend over while reading and writing!
The distance from the eyes to the writing surface varies from person to person. This is the "jamon distance" - from the elbow to the fingertip touching the temporal region. This is the ideal distance for the eyes. Once you start bending over, your muscles are overloaded. In addition, the rate at which this muscle is loaded increases exponentially.
When I teach Mingli Academy, I always give the children this example: When you sit correctly, it's as if you're just walking down the street. But being a little thinner is like carrying 50 kilograms on your shoulders, which is a bag of potatoes. This is the load on our ciliary muscles.
Therefore, under no circumstances should you bend over while reading or writing. This is basic visual habit!
If you're sitting in front of your computer, phone, tablet, or any gadget, hang some pictures somewhere far away. It should be small enough, but you should be able to see it clearly.
For example, it could be a calendar with numbers you should see, or any emotional pictures you want to see. Every 15-20 minutes of close work, you look at this photo for 5-10 seconds.
So if you study, read, write, sit in front of a computer for an hour, you should be looking into the distance four times and palming twice. These are the real visual habits.
When I ask, "When do you do eye exercises, " most people say it's when they're sick and tired.
That's not quite right! You have to be one step ahead, just don't tire them out.
How to Track the Results of Eye Gymnastics
I have a typical case in practice. i asked a boy
-Have you done eye exercises?
-yes i did but i gave up
-Why?
-i don't see the result.
This is important - watch the results!
Why? Because people who are short-sighted, because they can't see very well, they continue to see not very well. But if your eyesight doesn't deteriorate, if it doesn't decline, isn't that the result? I think it's a very good result.
How to understand—with results, or without results? There is a very simple way to do this. This is called "determining clear vision further away". Test once a month, not once a week. It is determined individually for each eye without correction, i. e. without glasses under the same conditions. The result has to be recorded somewhere.
You take small text. For example, it could be a note for a drug, or any other fancy text. And the text you use is always the same. Close one eye with the palm of your hand and move the text into the distance when you can't see it. Then you start slowly approaching.
When you've brought the paper just enough to see it, you'll want to fix the distance from the lower orbital bone (under the eye) to the text - this will be the further point at which you have clear vision.
If your clear vision stays in place each month, your vision will not deteriorate. If it increases by 1 or 2 centimeters, your eyesight improves subjectively. However, if your closest point of vision starts to approach rapidly, you are doing something wrong and you should definitely contact an ophthalmologist! This will be your signal to do so.
What does the result depend on?
If you have mastered this gymnastics, what else does the result depend on?
The first is your mood, how you do this gymnastics. Be sure to be in a good mood. Because right now, we release endorphins, or pleasure hormones, that help keep everything in your body in order.
The second, of course, is regularity. If you don't do it every day, then it will never become a habit. Finally, at some stage you just give up.
What else does our success depend on? From desire and knowledge. If you have the desire and you know how to do it, then you are destined for the outcome!
healthy.