How to Do Eyeball Exercises

As we age, everything starts to disintegrate, including our vision. Our eyesight, along with other body parts that aren't as young as they once were, will respond to regular exercises. If you take 5 minutes a day to exercise your eyes, you could see an improvement in your vision and in your general eye health.

Things You'll Need

• Marsden ball

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Instructions

• 1

  Sit with your eyes wide open and your body relaxed. Look upward at the 12 o'clock position. Hold and look downward at the 6 o'clock position. Repeat this 10 times, according to Fernando Pages Ruiz in an article on Yogajournal.com. After the tenth repetition, rubs the palms of your hands together, generating heat, and cup them over your open eyes. Let your eyes relax in the darkness provided by your hand coverage. Ruiz notes that these are good exercises for people who do closeup work. The exercises will provide your overworked eyes with balance.

• 2

  Repeat the exercise, but this time do it horizontally (10 times), looking from the 9 o'clock position to the 3 o'clock position. Follow this pattern, making clockwise circles with your eyes and then counterclockwise circles.
  According to "The Eye Care Revolution" (Kensington Books, 1999), doing eye exercises and providing temporary darkness helps compensate for the over-development of our eye muscles, which happens when we look too much at near objects, such as a computer.

• 3

  Use a Marsden ball. Working with a Marsden ball will strengthen your long-term vision and give yourself the edge sports-wise, according to Dr Sherylle Calder of the University of Pretoria, South Africa, a specialist in eye performance in elite international sports. The ball is small and covered in letters and numbers. Suspend the ball from the ceiling, swing the ball around and yell out which letter you can see. Eventually your eye movements will become more efficient and direct. The exercise also helps improve your visual memory.

• 4

  Work out your cilary muscle, the organ in our body that adjusts the lens of the eyes, according to Peacefulmind.com. If you purposely shift focal points, this keeps the cilary organ from becoming stiff. This is practiced by yogis, but anyone can do it. Sitting in a chair, focus on an object in the distance. Lift and extend your arm and hand forward, and put your thumb right underneath the focal point. Repeatedly shift your focus from your thumb to the original focal point. When you are finished, cup your hands over your opened eyes and let them relax.

• 5

  Look up as if you are trying to see your eyebrows, suggests Larry Brooks, author of an article on eye exercises on Lifescript.com. Run your eyes slowly to the right and then to the left, as if you are viewing the length of your eyebrows. You will feel the blood rushing into your eye muscles, which is good.
  Brooks recommends another exercise: Hold your index finger about 10 inches from your face. Slowly bring your finger closer to your face. Stop moving your finger when the image doubles. Now move your finger to its original position. Repeat until you can bring your finger almost to your nose without your vision blurring.