Yoga and the eyes

 YOGA AND THE EYES

By Rachel Medi Certified Yoga Teacher

GODDESS YOGA

As an ancient art yoga managed to create a system that not only benefited the body, mind and soul but somehow everything in between.

There is not an organ, gland or other part for that matter forgotten in the system of yoga.

The diet, the cleansing exercises and the asanas alongside meditation make yoga a complete lifestyle and system.

Amongst the many benefits one may take from yoga often unrealized by the lay person or new practitioner are those to the eyes.
The eyes use over 40 percent of the body’s energy at any one point in time.
Twelve of our cranial nerves are dedicated exclusively to vision, while two other nerves are vision-related. Compare this with both the cardiac and digestive functions, which require only one cranial nerve to control both.

From the moment we are born into this world are eyes are used and under constant strain.
The muscles in the eyes are even working while we sleep during the period of REM.

As we age increased usage of the muscles around the eye takes it toll. We loose elasticity and the muscles become rigid. Our power to focus is reduced and we often use increased strain when trying to focus on point at different distances thus having an adverse effect on our vision.
Tension in this area sends a message of anxiety to the brain and anxiety and stress has a direct result on vision.
When we relax the muscle that control the eye in turn vision is improved.

Yoga helps the eyes to relax not only during those exercises primarily using the eye but also in the asanas we practice and the relaxation and meditation techniques.

Relaxing may be all well and good yes and maybe this has some effect on the eyes but what about those people out there with terrible eye disorders, prescription glasses and impaired vision, degenerative eye sight. Well you may scoff at the idea that yoga could help you and rush down to your nearest opticians. This may be your first and very damaging mistake.

Legendary ophthalmologist and author of Better sight without glasses
William Horatio Bates (1860–1931) claimed that nearly all eye disorders were due to strain [tension in the muscles around the eye] and that glasses were actually detrimental to vision and NEVER helped the eye to repair its self or correct its vision.

One of Bates techniques for vision repair was sunlight exposure. The act of gazing at the sun or exposing the eyes to the sun especially at dawn and dusk, known as
Chandramananda so called in yoga and known in the west as moon gazing. A form of tratak as explained but it is also believed that the light we see being projected from the moon during the evening helps to repair the eyes and is less harsh that looking at the light directly projected from the sun during the day.

In yoga we practice the technique Bates described in 1920 as palming. Palming allows the eyes to rest completely and giving them a break from light. Covering the eye with a palmed hand excluding all light. The darkness and relaxation provided by the act causes a complete cure of all errors of refraction (nearsight, farsight, astigmatism and even old sight) even a cure or relief from other abnormal eye conditions.

Palming gives the eye a rest from light and allows the eye to relax it sends a message to the mind to relax and has an effect on the neuro system. Palming allows the brain, eyes, neck, shoulder and rest of the body to rest and then has a result on our brains reaction to sunlight afterwards. Often more than a marked improvement in vision is reported.

The best known and most commonly eye exercise practised in yoga is Tratak, considered to be one of the six purificatory acts of yoga, involving staring at a point or object without blinking, often the flame of a candle is used. The act of tratak is known to develop concentration and focus. It has been noted to improving eye sight and stimulating the nerve centres. Tratak must be partaken with a straight spine and when eyes begin to water one is to bathe in cool water with eyes open using the clock face exercise, where one looks from twelve to six, one to seven, two to eight and so on. It was often said in ancient times that the act could induce powers of clairvoyance. It must therefore be recognized as having an effect on the third eye also.
Tratak is usually followed by palming.

I read test cases with much interest including two in particular. There was a man who had absolute glaucoma in his right eye, he had suffered agonizing pain for six months and was unable to perceive light. After half an hour of practicing palming and remembering the color black [this imagination of the color black in its perfect form is an important part of the act] the pain ceased, the eye was able to perceive light and when consulted again three years later, there has been NO return of the glaucoma.
In the second case I read of the remarkable case of a man, seventy three years of age who suffered with compound hypermetropic astigmatism and presbyopia, complicated by incipient cataract. For a period of over forty years he had worn glasses to help him with long distance vision, and for twenty years he had worn glasses for reading and works that required near vision. Because of the cloudiness of the lens, he had now become unable to see well enough to do his work, even with eye glasses and physicians whom he had consulted had told him there was no hope of relief excluding an operation when the cataract was ripened. When he found palming helped him during the consultation, he had originally asked if he could overdo the exercise. At this point he was informed that you could not over do palming so to speak because all palming is, is relaxation for the eyes.
A few days later he had returned to the ophthalmologist and was quoted as saying "Doctor, it was tedious, very tedious; but I did it." To which the doctor had replied "What was tedious?"
"Palming," he replied. "I did it continuously for twenty hours."
"But you couldn't have kept it up for twenty hours continuously’’, the doctor exclaimed incredulously. "You must have stopped to eat."

At which point he relayed that from four o'clock in the morning until the next night/morning he had eaten nothing and had only drank water, while devoting practically all of the time to palming. It surely must have been tedious, as he said, but it was also a worth while feat. When he was examined using a vision test card, without glasses, he read the bottom line without fault at a distance of twenty feet. He also read fine print at six inches and twenty. The cloudiness of the eye lens was markedly reduced, and in the center had disappeared entirely. Under examination two years later there had been no relapse.
*The Long Swing: No matter how great the mental or other strain may be, one can, by moving the eyes a long distance from side to side with the movement of the head and body in the same direction, imagine things moving opposite over a wide area. The eyes or mind are benefited.
Bates also used exercises such as that described above that involved moving the body with vision, for example the body stands, legs slightly apart lifting the right arm and swinging it over to the other side taking the back foot with you and then you reposition yourself back again in the original pose, all the time following the hand. This was known as the long swing The exercise takes the vision with movement sending such a signal to the brain to do so. In a yoga class you will often be instructed to follow the move with your gaze, taking vision up when you reach up and down towards the knees as you bend down in a forward bend to give just one example. Bates obviously recognized the benefits of this as yoga did we are using the eyes as we move. Engaging the eyes and the brain, BOTH are required for perfect sight.
The imagination alone is known to benefit sight, when one imagines something, for example an apple it is imagined in its perfect form. Objects that are familiar are often notably easier to see for those with impaired vision straight away than those that are unfamiliar. Therefore imagination was listed by Bates as being crucial in achieving perfect sight. For example when being tested patients with poor vision and inability to read letters on a test card were often asked to close their eye and imagine the letters that were on the card, when the patient looked back at the card it was often easier to see those letters that at first look had appeared blurred.
The mind certainly can have a lot of power over all the body, we have all read stories of patients who have pictured healthy cells eating up malignant tumors and have cured themselves using the power of visualization and meditation alone. Imagination, far from being a folly of children is an important tool in day to day life.
I once read that imagination always precedes transformation and this as you know is fact. No important change was ever made in your life without an act of visualization on your part, this is imagination. If one can imagine a change in ones circumstances one can undertake that change. If one can imagine a change in ones self one can manifest this change in the physical plane. Yoga realizes this act. If one imagines what one can do one can act upon it. Visualization is used in yoga before we perform an asana. In yoga we can see what we will do and we do it. In yoga we can imagine the body healing and being freed from pain and illness.
The author Joseph Chilton Pearce wrote in the biology of transcendence that Physiologically superior to ordinary 'eye-seeing,' imagination comes in from higher up the 'evolutionary stream' of vision, and even employs a higher, purer form of light...Rather than the senses impacting the mind with imagery, as in ordinary seeing, through imagination the mind impacts the senses with imagery."
 
Can visualization of perfect vision help your eyesight it seems according to Bates it can.
Finally we have discussed the benefits of relaxation on the muscles surrounding the eye and the direct relation to improved/perfect vision. The benefits of taking the vision with motion and the noted effects of imagination on vision. Yoga incorporates all these practices and philosophies and it seems may benefit the eyes far more than the lay person ever realized. And unlike other methods for improving sight such as surgeries and eye glasses yoga may be far superior and without risk and the danger of further problems in future due to outside intervention. As above so below or so the hermetic philosophy went. In sanskirt, Tat tvam asi. We hold all the power within ourselves; it is only doubt that prevents us from progression.