Eye exercises to improve your vision

So, what about eye exercises?
Can flexing your eye muscles really improve your eye health?

Yes, your eyes deserve your attention!

Eye exercise should not be overlooked. Maintaining and resting your eyes appropriately can enhance concentration and boost your mood.

Here are some exercises and helpful tips from the Australasian College of Behavioural Optometrists (ACBO) on maintaining eye health:

Tips for your children

Development can vary immensely from child to child; it is perhaps not as well known that vision develops.

For example, when reading, a child must keep their place along a line of text (tracking skills) as well as keep the page in focus (focussing skills). A child with tracking or focussing difficulties is therefore more likely to have difficulty with reading.

These vision skills are learnt and this means your eyes can be trained or enhanced through appropriately structured vision therapy.

1. Draw numbers at random on a blackboard and have your child draw a continuous line to connect them, trying to avoid head movements. This helps with developing sequencing skills.
2. Have your child look up, down, left and right with the eyes only (no head movement) in time to a beat. This activity it thought to stimulate simple tracking skills.
3. Read the first and last letters on every line down a page of text. Have your child do this without using their fingers to keep place. This exercise helps develop more accurate eye teaming skills.

Please note: if you or your child are regularly suffering from:

• headaches,
• clumsiness, and/or
• periods of blurry vision, you may benefit from vision therapy.

This type of therapy helps correct certain visual problems and/or improve visual skills. It is designed to help the brain focus better with corrected vision.

So what’s the next step if you think you need vision therapy?

We recommend you start by booking a comprehensive eye exam.

By doing this, we can check all aspects of your eye health. From there, we can advise you on the next course of action to take.

If you would like to book a comprehensive eye exam, or if you would like more information on vision therapy, please email Jenny at jenny@gp-optom.co.nz