Five easy exercises to improve eye strain while working from home

Struggle to keep your eyes open? Find yourself squinting at excel? Keep complaining you have headaches? Staring at screens all day can have a bigger impact on your eyes than you might think, and unlike any other part of our body, our eyes are somewhat neglected when it comes to relaxing and de-stressing.

So how can we rectify this? When we feel stressed, some of us pick up the yoga mat and tune into YouTube to unwind and relax our bodies. Which poses the question: Why don’t we consider yoga for our eyes?

Lenstore has collaborated with holistic therapist, yoga, and meditation teacher Phoebe Greenacre to produce a video illustrating some eye yoga exercises that will help reduce eye fatigue and strain while working from home. In addition, the contact lens retailer has recreated these eye yoga exercises as gifs for anyone to follow if they need a break from their screens.

The initiative, commissioned by Lenstore, wants to offer eye care support to people spending a long time staring at screens, as well as provide those working from home with a few easy eye yoga exercises that will help to relieve eye fatigue.

Five easy eye yoga exercises to reduce eye strain

Here are the five exercises to try out in the meantime:

Palming
Rub your palms together to create heat and place your hands over your eyes for 10 seconds. This will allow any tension accumulated in the back of your eyes to slowly decrease.

Rapid Blinking
Blink very fast for 10-15 seconds and then allow your eyes to close, settle, and soften. This exercise is particularly helpful for releasing your eyes from dryness and overuse.

Eye-rolling
Roll your eyes repeatedly clockwise and anti-clockwise. This is particularly good as it may help with strengthening your eye muscles and enhance the shape of both eyes.

Zooming
This exercise is great for focusing on and strengthening eye muscles. First, focus on an object in the distance and stay there for a few seconds. Second, move your focus onto an object closer to you and again, gaze at it for a few seconds. Third, move your focus to something close to you like your thumb. Finally reverse the gaze, starting from the middle object moving to the faraway one, and repeating these movements for a couple of minutes.

Figure of Eight
Raise your hand in front of you at eye level, extend your thumb, and focus on it while drawing a figure of eight shape in the air. After 30 seconds, switch directions.

To watch a step-by-step of these exercises you can read Lenstore’s latest post.

Roshni Patel, BSc (Hons) MCOptom, Professional Services Manager at Lenstore comments:

“Based on my experience, I always recommend that people take regular breaks away from their screens whilst working from home. It is important to release the eyes not only from the blue light of digital devices but also from fatigue, which can be caused by the eye enduring high tension and strain from working with technology.

Another great way to prevent eye fatigue is to follow the 20-20-20 rule, highly recommended by Optometrists and Opticians. This rule consists of looking at something 20 feet away, for a duration of 20 seconds for every 20 minutes spent staring at screens. It has been proved to be effective in helping to prevent digital eye strain.”

About Lisa Baker, Editor, Wellbeing News 4212 Articles
Editor Lisa Baker is passionate about the benefits of a holistic approach to healing. Lisa is a qualified Vibrational Therapist and has qualifications in Auricular Therapy, Massage, Kinesiology, Crystal Healing, Seichem and is a Reiki Master.