Work Your Eye Muscles!

I’ve posted before about the importance of our eyes and actual vision training, but given our recent increase in screen time, (and given how critical eye health is), I thought it merited another post!

Each eye has six muscles that create/control the movement of the eye in its socket. These muscles act like any other muscles in the body — they can get weak, strong, tight, or tense. We can also train them like any other muscles in our body, performing isometrics for our eyes (gaze stabilization), or using eye movement to engage the muscles. But today I want to focus more on the range of motion we have possible in our eyes.

Try this: hold a pen/pencil in front of you and focus on one specific part of it. Then, without moving your head, move the pen up as far as you can go while maintaining your focus. Then, try moving the pen down as far as you can go (this range is a little smaller because your nose gets in the way). Repeat in a variety of directions, seeing how far your eyes can actually move. There’s a good chance they’ll move more than you anticipated! There’s also a good chance that you might feel some “work” or sensation of some kind around the eyes — these are your muscles working, and it is okay to work them!

With our time in front of screens, with these screens often just a smartphone, the amount our eyes actually move throughout the day (and their range of motion) is diminishing, which means that these muscles are losing their mobility and strength. Consider how you might incorporate more eye movement, or less screen time, into your day, to keep your eyes healthy!

I always incorporate vision work into my movement classes — if you are interested, join me on Mondays at 2:00pm and Thursdays at 12:00pm (Arizona time, GMT-7). Visit Online Classes or email me for more information :)