Eye Yoga at the Office: Relieve Eye Strain Caused by Blue Light from Screens

The amount of time you spend in front of screens each day keeps increasing. Do you work on your computer, send emails and text messages from your smartphone, watch TV shows on your tablet, and catch the evening movie on TV? The result: watery, stinging, itchy, blurry eyes, dry eyelids, headaches… Hypnotized by the light from screens, you forget to blink, you squint, and you end the day with eyes like a rabbit suffering from myxomatosis.

The solution? Eye yoga! Each eye has six muscles that, just like the muscles in the rest of our body, need to be regularly strengthened and stretched to stay healthy. An American ophthalmologist, William Bates, developed a comprehensive eye yoga method to combat eye strain.

These exercises will also help moisturize your cornea and protect it from any dust that might settle there. What’s more, researchers have discovered that blinking acts as an “instant brain reset.” This movement of the eyelids allows the neurons responsible for attention to deactivate and rest for a microsecond. A necessary action that will help you focus better in the long run.

So, if you wear glasses and don’t have time to see an orthoptist, or if your eyes feel tired or sore at the end of the day, take five minutes a day to strengthen and rest them.

By regularly shifting your focus, you train your eyes to adjust for close-up vision and relax for distance vision. This is especially helpful if you spend all day working at a screen and your vision tends to get blurry easily!

Extend your right arm straight out in front of you and raise your right thumb in front of your face. Choose a stationary object in the distance—a door, for example, or a tree branch if you’re looking out the window. Take a deep breath, look at your thumb for one second, then shift your gaze to the distant object for one second.

Shift your focus in this way 20 times, breathing deeply. To make the exercise more challenging, you can bring your thumb closer to your face. Once you’ve finished the exercise, close your eyes and place your palms over your eyelids to let your eyes relax.

Are you glued to your smartphone and its blue screen light? Learn to blink again… to improve your focus! Blink very quickly 20 times to rehydrate your eyelids and cornea.

Imagine you’re Betty Boop and you’re asking someone for a favor. Close your eyes tightly for about ten seconds, breathing deeply. Blink again, very slowly this time, making sure to really feel each movement of your eyelids, 20 times.

Once the exercise is finished, keep your eyes closed for a few moments, letting your eyelids relax, and breathe deeply. Once your eyes feel relaxed, gradually open them, blinking several times to let them adjust to the light.

Japanese researchers have discovered that this blinking motion temporarily deactivates the neurons responsible for attention for a microsecond, allowing them to rest. It is, therefore, a necessary action for improving your ability to concentrate over the long term.

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