Eye Yoga: Most Effective Exercises For Tired Eyes

Chatty Dobson shows how you can use eye yoga to strengthen the muscles around the eye area for a lifted and alert look (with exercises for at home).

Eye yoga: How to stretch and strengthen the eye muscles?

If the eyes are really the window to the soul, it makes sense to treat them with the same respect as our body. This is where the new wellness trend Eye Yoga comes into play, which promises a more radiant and rested look in less than five minutes. While those more familiar with the downward-facing dog and crow may be a little confused, yoga for the eyes is all about stretching and strengthening the muscles around the eyes.

"Similar to normal yoga, every time you practice eye yoga, the muscles involved get stronger and find more length," explains Chatty Dobson, yoga teacher and founder of FLEX Chelsea. The idea is that by strengthening the muscles around the eyes, the area looks more lifted, more alert, and improves eye health. It's not just an aesthetic thing: with so many of us straining our eyes every day from staring at screens for hours, caring for the muscles in this area is also more important than ever to our health.

Eye yoga also helps with tension headaches

"Strengthening the eye muscles also reduces the deterioration in eye sharpness that we see as we age, and the stretch we get from eye yoga is very beneficial for relieving tension headaches and relaxing the facial muscles in general," says Dobson who thinks it is very important that it will be part of FLEX's on-demand digital fitness platform when it launches later this month.

So how can you practice eye yoga? Here, Dobson shares three of her best eye yoga moves that you can do at home - and that shouldn't take more than five minutes.

How to stretch your eyes with eye yoga?

Relax the muscles of the face. Wiggle the jaw and eyebrows to make them softer. Gently close your eyes.
Keeping it closed, look all the way up (eyes still closed) and count to four, slowly look all the way down, count to four. Repeat this three times.
Repeat, but this time look left and right. When you've done that, look top left to bottom right, then top right to bottom left.

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This eye yoga exercise strengthens the eye muscles

Blink as fast as you can 10 times, then sit with your eyes closed and slowly count to five. Repeat this 5 times.
In the end, stay seated for a while longer to be aware of all the sensations that arise.

This yoga exercise practices focusing the eyes

Sit up straight with your arms straight out in front of you, hand in a "thumbs up" position.
Bring your gaze and focus to your thumbnail. Count to four, then slowly bring your thumb to your nose until your eyes can no longer focus. Hold for another four seconds, then slowly extend your arm again, keeping your focus on your thumb the entire time. Repeat the exercise 5 times.