Healthy Vision Exercises

In addition to relaxing your eyes through meditation and eye-palming exercise, it is recommended that you do the following healthy vision exercises to improve your vision as you continue to age:

The Qi Gong elephant swing

Practice the basic Qi Gong exercise to enhance circulation in the eyes.

Stand with your feet parallel, about 10 inches apart.

Gently close your eyes.

Shake your arms and legs, and roll your neck sideways, back and forth until they become soft and relaxed.

Still your mind, and breathe naturally.

Now, open your eyes.

Slowly swing your body to the right and then to the left by shifting your weight from one foot to the other and lifting the heel of each foot as you turn in a swaying motion. Let your arms hang loosely, and let your head move with your body, not by itself.

The surrounding seems to “move” in the opposite direction. Let your eyes shift naturally without fixing on anything.

Practice this exercise before going to bed and upon arising (at least 60 swinging movements per session) to relax eye muscles, and, more importantly, to correct bad fixed-eye staring habit.

The Chinese “yang” eye candle gazing technique

Practice this ancient Chinese eyesight-improvement technique to clear the whites of your eyes to sharpen vision, and to prevent eye problems.

Sit comfortably. Light a candle and place it at arm’s length and at eye level.

Gaze at the flame without blinking your eyes.

Allow tears to flow out from your eyes (they remove toxins from your body).

If need be, close your eyes for 10 seconds every now and then.

Practice it for at least 5 minutes. End your gazing session by closing your eyes and do the palming exercise for a few minutes to cool down your eyes. 

The yoga accommodative eye exercise 

Your accommodative eye muscles weaken and deteriorate with age due to lack of use. Follow the Hindu yogis eyesight-improving technique to strengthen your accommodative eye muscles so that you can see in the distance and also at close point. More importantly, they enable your eyes to easily change focus through improving the eye muscles’ flexibility

Write a few big black letters on a 2” x 3” card. Hold it at eye level and at arm’s length away. Make sure you can see the letters clearly.

Then, look at a distant object and see it clearly.

Begin, one eye at a time, looking at the black letters at close distance and then looking at a distant object, and then with both eyes.

Alternately looking at close point object and distant vision object.

As your vision improves, move the card closer to you. 

The Tibetan peripheral-vision-improvement technique 

To avoid tunnel vision, increase and improve your peripheral vision, which deteriorates with over-focusing a fixed hard gaze straight in front of you.

Hold 2 pencils, one in each hand, about 12 inches in front of your eyes.

Look straight ahead beyond the pencils, only aware of the pencils, but without looking directly at them.

Move each pencil in different directions: front to side; upward and downward; diagonally upward and downward; circling clockwise and counterclockwise. Throughout the exercise, continue to look into the distance, while noticing the pencils peripherally. 

The Egyptian black dot technique

Practice the ancient Egyptian black dot technique to reshape your distorted eyeball by making the eye muscles focus in positions in which they do not normally focus.

Draw a black dot (approximately ½ inch in diameter) on a white card (2” x 3”).

Hold the card at arm’s length in front of you.

Slowly move the card to the tip of your nose. Do not move your head. You should see only one dot; if you see two circles instead of one, move the card away from your nose until you can see the dot distinctly.

Gaze at the black dot for 30 seconds. Then, close your eyes and rest for a few seconds.

Next, raise the card between your eyebrows, move it as close as you can (make sure the dot , and gaze at the dot for another 30 seconds.

Practice this consistently, and as often as you can.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau