Seeing Beyond Poor Vision

So, your eye sight is fading a little? I know those times when the words start to look a little fluffy and holding the words a little further way brings them into focus.

This is an area we never seem to question. Our society seems to have accepted its fate. It has accepted that fading eye sight is a sign of aging. I have 8 siblings and am the only one who does not use glasses. Some of my siblings were wearing glasses in their 20’s.

But I could never accept that loss of eye sight was a natural part of aging and have been a student in this area for a long time. Personally, I did not notice anyone drop off in my eye sight till I hit myself early 50’s. Instead of reacting, I just got interested.

I knew that if I dropped off exercise for some reason for any part of myself physical body, over time I would lose tone in the muscles of that area. Muscles need to be stimulated to grow and maintain strength and tone.

Whilst the retina in the eyes is different to a muscle, I felt there had to be a relationship. So I got interested in eye health and as I explored I realised that over the past couple of hundred years, something significant has change, and perhaps our genetics have not yet caught up with that change.

Living in wilder times, as people were out in the world, they needed to have much greater awareness of what was going on around them. They needed to work their eye s more, searching for things in the distance, constantly looking around for signs of danger, or for food. The eyes were forced to work hard within their sockets.

Consider what it might have been like, walking through a forest looking for food, looking right and left, up and down, close and far. The eyes would have been highly trained. There are great stories of indigenous Australian’s who have profound eye sight, even in old age, able to see things far off in the distance that others cannot see at all.

I then came across some teachings out of Hatha Yoga that talk of the importance of exercising the eyes. A friend spoke to an Optometrist about this and was told that loss of eye sight has nothing to do with the muscles of the eye socket and so exercising the eyes in the hope of improving eye sight is a waste of time.

What I feel the optometrist failed to realise is a more holistic perspective. When we exercise muscles, blood flows into the area around the muscles, bringing nutrition, oxygen and heat changes. There is a major influx of energy into the entire area around the muscle.

The same occurs in the eyes. When the muscles around the eyes are put to work, blood flow into the entire area increases and healing forces descend upon all of the surrounding tissues. The Yogis, over centuries have proven that this type of exercise, when done regularly and correctly, restores failing eyesight.

The exercises are quite simple. Once per day, sit quietly and keep your head still. Looking directly forward, look up as far as you can push your eyes and then look down to the same extreme. Repeat ten times and You will begin to feel some fatigue in the muscles around the eyes. When finished, close your eyes and allow them to rest for a moment.

Next, open your eyes and look as far to the left as you can and then as far as you can to the right. Repeat ten times. Again, close your eyes and allow them to rest.

Now open your eyes and look up and slowly move your eyes around in a circle, scanning the extremes of your periphery, all the while working to push your eyes to the limit. You might find your face doing all sorts of contortions as you go. Try to still your face and place your efforts on making sure your eyes do the full 360 degrees around the peripheral limits of your visual field. Do ten times, going clockwise.

Again, close your eyes and rest a moment. Finally, repeat the above in an anti-clockwise direction. And again, close your eyes and rest.

Finally, rub your hands together fast and hard, using friction to generate heat. When your hands are hot, place them over your eyes and allow the eyes to bathe in the warmth. As the heat subsides, give your eyes a good deep massage.

The other area that should be addressed is the low grade inflammation that may also affecting the eyes. Many people, due to poor dietary habits and a high stress lifestyle have a constant low level of inflammation in their systems. Free radical damage is often the initiator of the inflammation and its intensity is exacerbated by the imbalance in prostaglandin activity in the system. This can often be rectified with the consumption of Omega 3 rich oils.

I have never been a fan of harvesting the ocean four fish for the purposes of oil extraction when we can just as easily use oils like Chia Seed and Walnut.

Liaison with a Naturopath is a good move, however, it is easy to purchase chia seed oil and consume a couple of dessert spoons each day. Once you notice a marked improvement in your vision, you can cut down the oil and add chia seeds to your diet each day.

Of course, any effort you make to eat more nutritiously and to reduce the negative stress and unwanted struggle from your life, will lead to better general health and a reduction in the factors that might have a negative impact on the health of your eyes.

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