Qigong Eye Exercises & How They Work
Qigong eye exercises are effective against eye strain and tired eyes, astigmatism, double vision, even glaucoma and other serious conditions. Depending on the severity of your eye condition, qigong vision therapy can restore most, if not all of your eyesight.
Western medicine offers limited options for eye disorders: drugs, prescription lenses, or invasive surgery. Prescription drugs and surgery carry their own inherent risks and potential side effects.
As for prescription lenses, they are no more than a crutch: develop a reliance on them, and your eye muscles become weaker and your eyesight becomes worse. Ultimately, the only one who really benefits from your wearing prescription lenses is the multi-billion-dollar eyeglass industry.
How can you strengthen your eyes without eye exercises? Physical exercise must feature in any form of muscle strengthening program including vision therapy.
During the 1920’s Dr. William Bates put out a number of very controversial publications. He defied conventional practice and prescribed his own set of eye exercises for his patients.
Known as the Bates Method, his eye exercises were effective to a point. Bates’ theory revolved around the premise that poor eyesight and other eye disorders stemmed from tense, strained eye muscles. His solution? Relaxation exercises.
Qigong vision therapy goes a few steps further:
For thousands of years, qigong practitioners practiced natural eye care through diet, cleansing, exercises, meditation and other healthy lifestyle changes that not only developed whole mind, whole body health, but also promoted healing and prevention of myopia, hyperopia, strabismus, cataracts, macular degeneration, retinitis, and many other conditions.
How is qigong vision therapy different from Bates Method? Tai chi qigong is holistic in its perspective on health. Treatment is effective, because it roots out the cause of disease, inasmuch as it strives to heal the damage already done.
Qigong eye exercises and eye care are holistic, focusing on whole mind and body. They are based on four principles that may or may not occur at the same time:
- Cleansing & Detoxification
- Muscle Stretching, Retraining & Development
- Relaxation
- Internal Healing
While Bates focused only on preventing eye strain, qigong vision therapy is based on the premise that eye exercises must address all four principles for treatment to be effective.
Here’s how it works:
More often than not, poor health occurs due to diet and environment. Environmental factors such as work-related stress, inadequate rest, poor lighting, and improper exercise can stress out eye muscles.
Contaminants can infect and damage your eyes. Excess fat and cholesterol can clog blood vessels in the eye, and a poor diet can undernourish the eye. Conditions such as glaucoma, macular degeneration and cataracts are often linked to diet and conditions such as vitamin deficiencies, diabetes, high blood pressure or high cholesterol.
But even for other disorders such as myopia, astigmatism and conjunctivitis, these and other environmental factors can create toxins that attack the most vulnerable parts of the body, including the eyes themselves.
You may not think conditions such as tired eyes, double vision, lazy eye or retinitis have anything to do with toxin build-up, but toxins can create stress in the eye muscles, besides obstructing vision.
One reason tai chi qigong is so effective in the detoxification process is that it cultivates and circulates healing chi energy which not only promotes natural healing but also flushes out toxins at the same time.
Yes, the lymphatic system, urination and elimination can help remove toxins through perspiration and removal of unwanted waste products, but the eyes do not have access to these cleansing systems and are therefore more vulnerable than most of the other parts of the body.
Blood circulation and tear ducts are also limited in their function: when they too become clogged, toxin build-up in the eyes can result. Qigong eye exercises can flush out these toxins and facilitate healing, thereby preventing disorders such as tired eyes, myopia, cataracts, hyperopia and retinitis.
Air is essential to life. Tai chi qigong teaches correct breathing through various breathing techniques to promote healthy digestion, circulation of blood and healing chi, detoxification, and relaxation.
Whether you use qigong eye exercises to treat eye strain, glaucoma, macular degeneration, double vision, strabismus, astigmatism, or any other disorder, you will find yogic breathing to be an integral part of qigong vision therapy.
Not only does yogic breathing help flush out toxins, but it also promotes relaxation. Generally, eye muscles automatically tense more during shallow breathing. But during yogic breathing your eye muscles relax and you automatically see better. This works even for conditions such as lazy eye and strabismus.
Qigong meditation also plays an enormous role in vision therapy. If you suffer from double vision, lazy eye, astigmatism, or even simply from tired eyes, meditation can do wonders in helping to heal your eye condition.
Meditation employs both visualization and relaxation. That and yogic breathing make for a powerful combination to generate and promote circulation of healing chi energy where it is most needed.
And finally, qigong vision therapy incorporates muscle stretching eye exercises that will retrain and strengthen weakened eye muscles.
Note: This is not the same as straining eye muscles through staring and fixation. Staring and fixation overuse one set of eye muscles and underuse another set. It’s like holding a set of heavy weights with your arms outstretched for extended periods of time. Instead of building muscles, you strain and overtire them.
This is especially true with cases of double vision, strained and tired eyes, strabismus, astigmatism, hyperopia, myopia and even lazy eye. When you remove the strain, vision often improves.
Muscle stretching eye exercises work gently on retraining your muscles to strengthen them again so that they are able to function without straining. Combined with yogic breathing, they relax the eye muscles as you focus, thereby sharpening your visual acuity.
If that doesn’t make sense to you, think about when you have been reading or sitting in front of the computer too long. Without frequent “eye breaks” your eyes become strained and tired, and you find your vision begins to blur. Why? Because your eye muscles become overworked and tired, and your vision becomes worse!
This proves my point: the more you stare and fixate, the more strained your eyes become. The more you overwork those eye muscles, the poorer your eyesight! The opposite also holds true: the more relaxed your eyes are, the better you see!
Lazy eye, cataracts, double vision, astigmatism, myopia and most other eye conditions have one single feature in common: tense eye muscles. Qigong muscle stretching eye exercises are gentle on the muscles. Combined with yogic breathing, these eye exercises retrain eye muscles to relax and stretch at the same time.
So why do I prescribe different vision therapy exercises for different eye conditions? Because there are so many qigong exercises for the eyes, and there are different ones that ideally work better for different eye disorders. To practice all eye exercises would be impractical, not only in terms of time but also in terms of treatment.
Far better to customize the qigong therapy for each eye condition to promote faster and more effective results. Some ingredients are common to all, such as yogic breathing, meditation and visualization. Others, particularly the focusing and muscle stretching eye exercises are more individually tailored to suit the eye condition.
Lazy eye, strabismus and double vision, for example, require more exercises in fusing images of both eyes communicated to the brain via the optic nerves. Tired eyes, myopia, astigmatism and hyperopia would require other stretching exercises, as well as visualization exercises.
Not so different from the Bates Method, qigong vision therapy also advocates aerobic exercises that stress relaxation. While physical exercise in general is healthy for the body, any form of exercise will automatically tense eye muscles.
Therefore, weight lifting and body building are especially detrimental for disorders such as macular degeneration and glaucoma, because they cause excessive eye muscle tension and the over-formation of blood vessels resulting in pressure in the eye.
On the other hand, gentle aerobic exercise, such as swimming or walking, oxygenates the body, giving it energy, flushing out toxins and promoting circulation of both oxygen and healing chi. Tai chi qigong is especially helpful in this regard, because it is both aerobic and extremely gentle on the eyes.
For the same reasons described here, it is always best to conclude any physical exercise with eye relaxation exercises, especially for serious eye conditions, such as glaucoma, cataracts and macular degeneration. However, weak eyes, lazy eye, astigmatism, and double vision also benefit highly from relaxation exercises.
For samples of qigong vision therapy, you can try out the pressure points for eyes and the muscle-stretching and relaxation exercises that I have on this website.
While they are by no means complete in themselves and will not provide long-term benefits, they can nevertheless give you an idea of how effective these qigong eye exercises can be, even for immediate or short-term effects.
Another important note:
especially in severe cases of myopia, eye strain,
double vision, macular degeneration, glaucoma, even
in legal blindness — however, they are only temporary!
You must practice qigong vision therapy every day
as a complete set of exercises and in combination
with other qigong exercises to see more permanent
results, usually for a minimum of several months.
Also important: qigong vision therapy exercises should be practiced in combination with other qigong exercises. If you are already training in tai chi qigong, then the qigong vision therapy will work most effectively on healing your eyes and maintaining good eye health.
Tai chi qigong is holistic in its perspective on health and therefore looks at both root causes and healing of disease. Eye care, exercise and treatment are no different. For optimal results, qigong vision therapy incorporates both eye exercises and lifestyle habits.
To understand how to optimize on your eye care and health, you should read about the dos and don’ts of qigong eye exercises and eye care before registering for any of the vision therapy programs available on this website.
Glaucoma, lazy eye, astigmatism, double vision, myopia, retinitis, macular degeneration, strained or tired eyes, legal blindness, hyperopia, strabismus, cataracts, or generally weak eyes due to weak eye muscles and fatigue — it doesn’t matter what it is, qigong vision therapy is effective on almost any eye condition.
So why not give these eye exercises and eye care a try? Qigong vision therapy: noninvasive, gentle on the eyes, easy to learn, easy to incorporate into your work or leisure activities, a natural way of preventive eye care and eye health maintenance for all your vision needs.