Eyes, Drishti, Vision, and Clear Seeing
Over the years working our way through primary series we learned about our lymph system, liver, spleen, kidneys and ureters, our colon, pancreas and every other organ in the body including our glands —and their emotional connections. Now its time to learn about our eyes. Those amazing little balls that are such a big part of our lives.
As many of you know I have been participating in a couple different natural vision courses —and I’ve learned a lot —and I’ve continued to research. I intermingled this knowledge with what I’ve learned through my yoga practices about drishti and eye exercises. And of course we will learn about the emotional connections to vision.
When we think about vision, we most often think about eyesight and our ability to see what is in front of us, however, this is not the main job for our eyes. The retina, which is the light-sensitive layer at the back of the eye, develops from brain tissue and is part of the central nervous system which makes them part of our brain. They are a part of our brain that sits outside our skull like the cilia in our nasal passages.
Our eyes have extra-ocular light perception. This is the ability for light information to get to the cells of our body through our eyes. While light on our skin is warming and penetrating it is through our eyes that light reaches the cellular level —in the form of information.
The main job of the eyes is to collect light information about where the sun is in the sky and send it to the brain. From there the brain can tell the cells what time of day or night it is and what they should be doing. Every cell in the body needs to know if it is day or night.
The light information sent to your cells regulate when you’ll get sleepy, when you’ll feel awake, how fast your metabolism is, your blood sugar levels, your dopamine levels, and your pain threshold. This means your eyes regulate your mood, your energy level, sleep, and your appetite.
Each organ in our body has its own circadian rhythm and will do the job it needs to do each part of a 24 hour cycle. For example from 10a-2pm the liver is good digester, but from 10p-2a the liver switches over to detoxification. The retina has its own circadian rhythm too!
An important aspect of our biology —and our psychology as well, is to anchor ourselves in time, to know when we exist.
We know time at a biological level based on where the sun is. You want to get sunlight in your eyes early in the day — when you wake up —absolutely essential for anywhere from 2-10 minutes. The cells in your eyes are there to inform your body and brain about the time of day, and when you start your day in sync with the sun your physiology will operate better.
No light gets in past our neural retinas, the neural retinas convert light into electrical signals sending it through the optic nerve to our brain. We have specific cells in the eye called photoreceptors. They come in two different types, rods and cones.
Cones are mainly responsible for daytime vision and the rods are mainly responsible for vision at night or under low light conditions. These photoreceptors, the rods and cones, have chemical reactions inside them that involve vitamin A and that chemical reaction converts the light into electricity. Within the retina of the eye, there are then a series of stages of processing and that electric information eventually gets sent into the brain.
What this means is; everything you see around you, you’re not actually seeing those objects directly. What you’re doing is you’re making your best guess about what’s there based on the pattern of electricity that arrives in your brain. Your brain makes educated guesses about what it is seeing! Thank goodness its pretty good at doing this —but sometimes there are glitches.
For example: Candace Pert (the famous “issues are in the tissues” researcher and author) relays a version of the myth where Native Americans were unable to see Columbus’s ships because they were outside the natives’ experience.
The story goes on to add a shaman to the narrative, who began to see ripples in the water alerting him that something was there —and eventually he could see the ship. Once the shaman started to tell people about the ships arriving, others began to be able to see the ships as well. Because their brains had never seen a big ship they were unable to “see” the ships until their brains could make sense of what it was deciphering through the eyes. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_ships
Your eyes only perceive color as well.
You have cones in your eye that respond best to the wavelength of light that is reflected off a color. Take for example magenta dragon fruit.
But you don’t actually see the dragon fruit. What you see is the light bouncing off it which goes into your eye and your brain perceives it as round and a beautiful magenta. No magenta light arrives in your brain.
Your brain compares the amount of red reflection coming off the fruit to the amount of red and blue around it.
What the brain is receiving is a series of electrical signals, and it’s comparing electrical signals in order to come up with what we think we see. Vision is all about the way the eyes communicate with the brain. The brain itself is making these guesses —thank goodness they seem to be mostly right. Otherwise when we reach out for something we’d be grabbing at thin air.
Most of the time when you make judgments about the world around you based on your visual impression of them, it allows you to move functionally through the world.
Its pretty incredible how the brain sees —what arrives from the retina is a two-dimensional flat image —the brain creates depth, a 3D image from a 2D flat image.
Both eyes communicate to the brain —they are slightly offset from one another
so the brain has to do the math between what it is interpreting from both eyes. Your brain basically does the equivalent of geometry and trigonometry and figures out how far away the object the light is bouncing off of is. The brain does all this very, very fast. The brain uses about 40 to 50% of its total real estate for vision. That’s how important vision is.
Vision is what your brain decides you see, it is a perception. It’s good to keep this in mind as we navigate each others perceptions of our reality. We just don’t see things the same way. Everyone has their own interpretations.
Gestalt principals of perception
Our eyes perception is made evident in Gestalt therapies — where they use Gestalt images to show how the same picture can be depicted in different ways depending on how you look at it. Interesting is you can look at it both ways and see the different images —but never can you see both images simultaneously. Each time your brain flips from one interpretation to another you are witnessing how your visual system constructs reality.
Can you see a young lady and an old woman?
Do you see a rabbit or a duck? Can you see both?
Even knowing that two valid interpretations exist our brains can only commit to processing one version. This is called perceptual instability (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3309967/). The images balance visual cues that normally aid us in determining the background from the figure — termed figure-ground images. These images force your brain and visual system into a tug-of-war between equally valid interpretations.
These brain toggles show how our minds have to work —or even struggle to organize and interpret our visual information. This demonstrates how what we see is as much a product of our brain’s interpretation as it is the image that light is reflecting off of. With the above image on the left, the white figure is the vase and the ground or background is the black. Vice versa for the image on the right.
Our brain also uses proximity and similarity to come to conclusions. For example this image may speak a word to you:
The eyes through the yoga lens
The organs of perception are in the subtle body. The physical body’s eyes “see,” but the organ of turning the images from the retina into form happen in the subtle body. When you “see” a thing, you immediately start a mental process, which is thinking about that thing which will influence what your mind turns the visual image into. What interprets what your eyes are seeing? Not a physical part of us. Two people seeing the same images with their physical eyes may interpret those images completely different.
The five sense organs are constantly gathering information in the subtle body or sukshma sharira. The manas (thinking mind) and chitta (remembering) work in conjunction with the information being fed into the mind from the eyes.
The mind and the brain is constantly translating or deciphering what the senses are sending in.
When you see an image, your mind, the manas, immediately begins to think and evaluate. Your chitta is the previous experience—or image you remembered. So the manas and chitta give you your present experience of what you are seeing or sensing in general.
Much of our sight relies on our chitta — what we remember we saw in the past. Your brain may mistaken something that looks similar to a commonly seen item. When we realize our eyes are “twisting” on us, we shake our head or blink and look again. Then we start to see the actual image.
Or sometimes when you are looking for something you can’t see it even when it is there. This is your chitta remembering what the scene looked like before the item ended up there. Eventually if you keep looking around long enough you will come back to the same place and then see the item you didn’t see before. This is where we need to use our buddhi —our intellect.
It is the intellect – the buddhi that helps filter the mind including our sight.The intellect is what we use to monitor the mind and make the decisions as to what we are seeing.
Intellect is the mental capacity to solve problems, to understand concepts; it is not part of the thinking mind, which is why it can be used to filter the thinking mind. Intellect is what we use to be aware. It’s a deeper mental space that we want to spend more time in. When we practice awareness we are more likely to see better.
This brings us to drishti
Drishti is the yogic practice of softly gazing at a spot with out of focus eyes. It is mostly used in meditation to help focus the mind; where the eyes look the mind follows. By steadying the gaze, it makes it a little easier to steady the mind (never easy!).
In the ashtanga practice drishti is used to focus the mind by looking at certain points on the body and to direct energy to those points.
It is often incorrectly cued to stare at a point on your body. Staring is not good for your eyes. A correct drishti will be soft and out of focus, and it is important to blink as I explained previously. I often cue to blink in my yoga classes as I point out our or drishti. Drishti is meant to relax the eyes and the muscles around the eyes. On the drishti points in ashtanga, I’m not so sure they are what’s best for our eyes these days. Increased screen time means we are spending too much time looking at something close to us. When in a pose, most of the drishti points are pretty close to your eyes. I now think its better to look in the direction of the drishti point, and beyond it. Let your gaze be soft, out of focus, and gazing beyond —while you are in the pose —and blink!
Also I traditionally learned to turn the eyes downward in up dog and other backbends, since learning that we look down all day long and rarely look up I have started to look up more in upward dog and some backbends. This can be individualized though, backbends can be overstimulating to the nervous system for some people, in those cases a downward gaze would be better as gazing down calms the nervous system.
Of interest is some of the drishti points. In the Yoga Yajnavlkya (version translated by A.G. Mohan) on the verses about pranayama, Yajnavlkya explains that by focusing our mind on certain points in the body it gives us control over the energy movement in our body. He names three distinct places to put your attention — where your attention goes prana follows—or another way of saying it is where you are looking your attention goes therefore prana flows in that direction. These three points just happen to be three of our nine drishti points in the Ashtanga practice:
- Nose Tip = energy control
- Navel = detoxifies, removes diseases
- Big Toes = body attains lightness
See all 9 drishti points and More here on my full blog on Drishti
Drishti translates “to what we perceive through our sight”. In yoga we practice drishti to learn how to perceive more clearly. A soft gaze drishti style can help to improve concentration and heighten mental clarity. Drishti is a philosophical concept related to our point of view, intelligence, and wisdom.
Practicing drishti as being aware of our perception gives us conscious seeing, the ability to look past the screens of our beliefs to understand our true nature. Drishti helps us develop more awareness.
Drishti, ajna, and perceptions:
This little tidbit I learned from an Indian Sanskrit Scholar through Andrew Epplers “Mysore Yoga Traditions”:
The thalamus in the brain effects what we perceive, it sets between the cerebral cortex and the midbrain. The thalamus receives signals from our senses —including our eyes (all except our nose/smell) then sends these sensations to our cerebral cortex for interpretation. But it is the thalamus that is most responsible for our perception not the cerebral cortex. The thalamus acts as a gate filtering which information from various channels (eyes, ears, touch, taste) is allowed to be relayed to the cerebral cortex for processing.
So how do we keep our thalamus healthy and connected so we can see life clearly? Through brain coherence —and heart/brain coherence. Gamma brain waives modulate our perception and consciousness, gamma brain waves have close ties to our thalamus.
By encouraging gamma brain waves we get better communication between our thalamus and cortex. When we have better brain connections we see better and we have better integration of our life’s experiences because we perceived them as food for growth.
How do we encourage gamma brain waves — or better brain wave connections between our thalamus and cortex? I have learned of a few ways over the years.
- Perception! Your perception can effect your brain waves. Pay attention to what you are perceiving with your eyes, try to use drishti to see past the physical and into the emotional, or subtle bodies of those near you. Perceiving your life experiences as growth instead of something “bad” increases gamma wave activity.
- Loving Kindness Meditation – increases gamma-wave synchrony and strengthens compassion-related networks in the insula and anterior cingulate cortex. This brain/heart synchronization promote psychological resilience and emotional coherence.
- Bhastrika — the breathing exercise that is like a bellows will increase gamma brain waves.
- Heart wave coherence — We know our heart rhythm is effected by our mood — and our heart rhythm effects how smoothly our brain operates. Our heart and brain waves communicate to each other. Calm heart = sharper brain = sharper eyes. We want our heart and brain waves to be in coherence.
When under stress our heart rhythm (using heart monitors) is erratic and disordered — these erratic signals travel on the neurons from the heart to the brain limiting our ability to see, think clearly, remember, learn, reason, and make effective decisions.
In contrast the more ordered and stable patterns of the heart’s input to the brain has the opposite effect – it facilities higher cognitive functioning that benefits the entire body and also profoundly affects how we see, perceive, think, feel, and perform.
The best way to improve our heart and brain coherence? Slow breathing with relaxed eyes. As you breathe slowly with exhales slightly longer than inhales, imagine you are breathing through your heart center. Its as if you are bypassing your respiratory system and breathing directly in and out of your heart. Calm breathing also help us see better
Your eyes are an optical device.
We spend a lot of time caring for our body; exercising, brushing our teeth, caring for our skin, scrutinizing our diet … seldom do we think about our eyes.
Healthy aging is a major focus in wellness circles, often emphasizing brain function, strength, mobility, and diet. However, the eyes are an equally vital component of healthy aging. Vision loss as we age can significantly compromise independence. The ability to see clearly—both outwardly and inwardly—enhances our capacity to live with purpose. Retinal decline can lead to profound disconnection from life.
I recently learned the retina becomes less responsive to light as one ages, affecting melatonin secretion, sleep-wake cycles and oxidative stress. Melatonin protects our retina from oxidative stress —we want to protect our eyes at night from blue light and be careful with our screen time day and night. With some awareness we can use our eyes to teach our body how to age well.
There are few simple eye exercises that only take minutes to do that will give you a very good return on your time investment. We rely on our eyes everyday all day long. Take time to give them a little love with some attention. I slip eye exercises into my pranayama and yoga practices everyday —always mixing in which ones I do. The exercises coming up are general for all eyes. If you want to take this deeper you can reference the two schools I have taken courses with where they will teach you further exercises for specific eye conditions such as myopia, presbyopia, astigmatism, glaucoma, cataracts, etc.
You have lenses in your eyes, and those lenses need to move. It’s not a rigid lens like a glass lens.
It’s a dynamic lens. The eye can dynamically adjust where light lands by moving the lens and changing the shape of the lens in your eye through a process called accommodation.
Accommodation is our eye’s ability to accommodate to objects that are up close or further away. To accommodate, the iris, the musculature around the eye, and a structure called the ciliary body move the lens.
Accommodation can enhance the health of your eyes, and improve your concentration. Much of our mental focus, whether it’s for cognitive endeavors or physical endeavors, is grounded in where we place our visual focus.
Practicing accommodation may help your ability to focus better on physical and mental work.
When you see things far away, your lens relaxes, flatten outs. And you’ll notice that it is relaxing to look at a horizon. Whereas if you look at something up close, like a phone or a computer screen, it takes effort.
These days we’re spending a lot of time looking at devices up close indoors. You are not giving your lens the opportunity to flatten out and for these muscles to relieve themselves of this work, and you are also training your eyes to be good at looking at things up close and not far away.
As a consequence, you are reshaping the neural circuitry in your brain and it is not good for your eyes. You want to get outside to maintain the health of your visual system. You want to exercise eye muscles that involve the lens moving, getting thicker and then relaxing and thinning out.
You can do an exercise for this called accommodation, there are a couple ways to practice accommodation.
My favorite; get outside and look at a horizon. Let your eyes go soft — drishti style where you are not really looking at anything. Just gaze off into the distance blinking a few times. This relaxes your lens, relaxation of the lens is one of the best things you can do for the musculature of the inner eye.
Another way to help keep your eyes in accommodation, for every 20-30 minutes of screen time or focused work— look up for a few seconds —think or lions pose where we turn the eyes up and stick out our tongue. Then try to relax your face, your eye muscles, and your jaw. These are closely linked in the brainstem.
If you are feeling tired, looking up can be beneficial to the wakefulness systems of the brain —the locus coeruleus and the areas of the brain that release norepinephrine (norepinephrine motivates us). Moving your eyes only (not your head and face) look up toward the ceiling for abut 10-15 seconds. When our eyes are focused down it tends to have a suppressive or sedative signaling to the brain.
Another way to save your vision during computer work is to allow your eyes to go into a panoramic vision where you’re not focusing on anything — its helpful to have your work area near a window where you can lift your gaze for a few seconds and scan the horizon. Then refocus on your work.
Also practice accommodation by using your finger or pen, focus your eyes on it then move it out as far out as you can and bring it in close —you’ll feel the strain on the eyes when you bring in in close and you’ll feel your eyes relax when you move it out. Do that a few times then give your eyes some rest with palming.
Practice accommodation for a couple minutes every other day —accommodation also helps prevent cataracts. Cataracts develop in the crystalline part of our eyes when you practice accommodation it exercises the sac keeping the fluids healthy and and aiding in preventing cataracts.
Most eye doctors blame stiff lenses on aging, as the lens gets stiffer it loses the ability to accommodate. Hopefully practicing these accommodation exercises will prevent the aging of our eye’s lenses.
Convergence
I like to practice accommodation and convergence together. Convergence is when your eye muscles pull both eyes inward towards your nose smoothly when you look at an object close up. If your eye muscles are weak you will see two objects instead of one when you do close up work.
To strengthen the eye muscles that help with convergence, when you are doing your accommodation exercise as the pen or fingertip gets closer to your nose you may see it double. When this happens stop moving the object and continue to look at it, use your eye muscles to pull the images together into a single image. Do not look away, start from the beginning, or close one eye this will not strengthen your convergence.
Once you can make the image single again slowly bring it in closer til it doubles again. Keep repeating this process until you can bring the pen all the way to your nose. The closer it gets to your nose the harder this will be.
If whilst doing this exercise you happen to notice that you can see double of other objects in front of or behind the pen, do not worry. This is a normal phenomenon called physiological diplopia.
Getting outside is good for the eyes.
Spending at least 10 minutes a day outside viewing things off in the distance —over a half a mile or more. Go see a horizon, try and get your vision out to a location that’s beyond four walls —it’s good for your eyesight. It will keep your lens elastic and eye muscles strong that move the lens — all the while relaxing your eyes.
Too much time indoors in artificial light is not good for your vision and the overall function of your body. Modern light bulbs, especially LED and fluorescent lights eliminate many light frequencies that are beneficial.
Try to get out side different times of day — the light composition changes during the day. Getting outside different times of day —including in the mid-day UV light gives you the benefit of the full light spectrum.
Step outside in the morning upon waking, close your eyes and face the sun — take a momentary “sun bath”. Take a walk during mid-day. In the evening step outside into the sun again when it is low in the sky, face it for a moment with your eyes closed and let the light embrace you. Its so pleasant —and it activates your dormant visual cones which makes seeing easier and it improves light sensitivity to your eyes
Palming and Blinking
One of the best things you can do for your eyes is palming. Palming relaxes the eyes. Simply cup your hands over your closed eyes. Relax and breathe slowly in a resonance pace with your eyes covered for 1-5 minutes, 2-3x per day. As you are palming imagine what you are seeing behind your eyelids is black —pure darkness and black. The more black you can visualize the better you will see colors. It is necessary to use your hands, not an eye mask. Your palms carry energy and warmth that aids in the relaxation and healing of your eyes.
To supercharge this do a short energy meditation on the energy of your hands. Sit in a meditative position with your palms up on your lap. Put your mind on your palms for a few slow nasal breaths, pay attention to what you feel in your palms. Do you feel the air, warmth in your hands. Most people will start to feel tingling or a pulsation in the hands within a minute of doing this. If so, you just increased photon emissions. Feel your hands radiating healing energy. Now gently move your hands like you are holding a small ball between them, then slowly pull your hands away from each other, pause then slowly bring your hands together a little and apart again like the ball is pulsing. Do you feel an energetic pull when you try to move your hands further apart —like they have a magnetism —and they do! Its called energy. Imagine you are growing your ball of energy as your hands pulse inward and outward.
Now lay them over your eyes for your palming session. Imagine your eyes healing, your eye muscles relaxing and allowing your eyeball to return to its original round sphere shape.
One of the best times to palm is after you crawl in bed for sleep. Our eyes are active while we sleep and palming for a few minutes before sleep can help to improve your sleep quality. I place a pillow over my chest, rest my arms on it and palm til my hands start to slip off my face, then I roll on to my side and go to sleep.
Palming is great to do when you are on a screen for a couple hours, taking palming breaks even if only for a minute will help relax the muscles around your eyes. Relaxing the muscles around your eyes is what corrects your vision —tight muscles pull your eye either into a conical shape which produces near-sightedness, or a flatter shape which causes far-sightedness. Experts in natural vision say if you an palm for 20 minutes a day, it is one way of getting rid of near-sightedness. Personally … I’m still trying to get up to that —most days its hard with all my other activities …
Don’t Stare!
It tightens your eye muscles. Instead, blink — and blink often. A natural blink rate is about 30x/minute. And if you can look around while you blink —try to take in the whole scene around you including in your periphery. This will help you keep your peripheral vision healthy.
Eyelashes are there to trigger the blink reflex, they are not just there for aesthetic purposes. The eyelashes are there to prevent dust or dirt getting to your cornea, the eye blinks sooooo fast! Its the fastest reflex we own. Eyelids too are fascinating —as is our amazing bodies.
If you suffer from blurred vision and/or eye strains, a common cause is computer time which combines staring and up close work —both challenging for your eyes. Furthermore there has been evidence linking screen use to intraocular pressure —the pressure inside your eyes becoming elevated.
Dry eye is also a common effect from too much computer time. The main cause is not blinking while you are on screens. There are two glands that secrete fluid for your eyes, one of them secretes a salty fluid and the other an oily fluid. The oily glands around your eyes need you to blink for them to secrete their fluid, lack of blinking leads to dry eyes.
This is where blinking, palming breaks, being able to look outside from your desk, and take short breaks every 20 minutes from screens can be helpful.
- Practice the 20/20 20/20 vision breaks for your eyes. Every 20 minutes look at least 20’ in the distance for about 20 seconds and blink 20x.
Tears are made from water and electrolytes, mucus, and oil.
Our tears also contain natural antibiotics called lysozymes. Lysozymes help to keep the surface of the eye healthy by fighting off bacteria and viruses.
Because the cornea has no blood vessels, the tears also provide a means of bringing nutrients to its cells.
Reflex Tears From Irritants
When your eye is irritated, it produces reflex tears to wash out the irritants. You’ve probably shed a few tears when chopping onions or when you get dust in your eyes. These tears tend to have a higher water content.
Emotional Tears
The tears you shed when overcome with emotions have a higher protein content than the tears shed from irritants. Emotional tears have been found to have more hormones, including prolactin, adrenocorticotropic hormone, and leucine enkephalin.
Tears When You Sleep
When you sleep, your glands add less water and protein to your tears, and they increase the number of antibodies present, while infection-fighting cells also migrate to the conjunctival sac. This is why when you awaken with “sleep” in your eyes it is crusty.
Sunning
Another way to relax your eyes is to sun them. With your eyes CLOSED, turn to face the sun for a few minutes gently moving your head in different ways so the sun’s rays stimulate different angles of your retina. Remember to relax your face and eye muscles as you do this and breathe slowly through your nose.
Then spread your fingers wide and pass your hands around in front of your closed eyes creating shadows and shapes and colors behind your eyelids. This is good for your retina as well — its called the “inner kaleidoscope
Rest pose with a cucumber
And a bit more challenging for some but helpful nonetheless is to relax with either cucumbers or potatoes on your eyes —they offer nutrients for your eyes. You can do this during rest pose after your yoga practice. I also make a cucumber hydrosol I spray on my eyes while blinking to help clean and cool the eyes.
Ayurveda on eyes
The eyes are connected to our 3rd chakra which is the chakra of fire —it is the fire that shines our eyes. In Ayurveda the eyes are connected to the dosha pitta —also the dosha of fire (and water).
It is believed in Ayurveda that excess heat from out of balance pitta can lead to symptoms like redness, irritation, inflammation, and dryness in the eyes. Remedies often include cooling treatments such as applying cucumbers to the eyes, and ghee or herbal eye washes, or eye washes using rose and/or lavender hydrosols.
Each dosha has sub-dosha, Alochaka pitta is a sub-dosa of pitta that is located in the pupil of the eye. It represents the fire that digests light and visual impressions and its most important function is vision. However it can also be in deficit.
When there is a decrease in alochaka pitta, usually due to aging —some people become more vulnerable to eye disorders over the age of 40 because strength of the alochaka pitta weakens. Ayurvedic remedies for this recommend strengthening your alochaka pitta which consist of a pitta balanced diet including lots of leafy greens, herbs, and teas and staying hydrated. Then incorporating the eye exercises we are learning —along with the practice of sun salutes.
Smooth pursuit
Our visual system is exquisitely tuned for motion. Smooth pursuit is the ability to track an object moving smoothly through space. The brain has to follow the movement of your eyes, the neural circuits within the brain have to cope with changes in movement.
If you are doing a lot of reading, computing, or up close work, and you’re not viewing horizons you are not getting a lot of smooth pursuit stimulation in your life. Practicing smooth pursuit helps to keep the visual and motion tracking systems of the brain and eyes —and the extraocular eye muscles working in a coordinated fashion.
For just a couple minutes hold a pen or your thumb out at arms distance away at eye level. Without moving your head swing your arm right to left kind of quickly tracking it with your eyes only—as long as it does not make you dizzy, if so slow it down. Repeat going up and down. And repeat making the infinity symbol with your finger. Do this every couple days for your vision.
Apparent Movement
Apparent movement is when you turn your head one way and your visual system perceives your world around you as moving in the opposite direction. Being aware of apparent movement shifts attention away from ‘staring’ toward a natural sense of motion.
Try to perceive the apparent movement during daily activities, like when walking from one place to another —pay attention to your peripheral as you move about your days. Being aware of our peripheral vision while walking will improve our peripheral vision because you are using it more.
Apparent movement helps the eyes and brain create a smooth perception of motion, allowing us to interpret or interact with our environment. This can help us recognize moving objects better and navigate our spaces more effectively.
To practice apparent movement, swing right to left paying attention to your background whirring by. To enhance the perception extend your arm out at eye level with your pointer finger lifted and follow your finger with your eyes. Then try again without using your finger.
Snellen charts and other vision charts
A snellen chart is the list of letters you have to read at the eye doctors. Most people don’t realize your performance on the Snellen chart will vary depending on the time of day, your level of fatigue or stress, your ability to do accommodation among many other factors.
As you bring the quality of your vision into your awareness, you will start to notice when your vision is not as good —this is because you are fatigued, over-worked, stressed, or doing too much screen time or up close work. When you notice your vision getting worse, STOP. Palm, go outside view the horizon, check in -what is stressing you? Are you thirsty? Hungry? Fried? Use your eyes to help regulate your days and know when you are over-doing something.
Placing a snellen chart in your house and occasionally testing yourself is a great tool to improve your vision. Another way to use a Snellen chart —or any list of numbers is to have a small copy and a larger 8-1/2×11 copy. Hang the larger copy on the wall and hold the smaller copy.
For near-sightedness: Stand far enough away from the hanging copy that it is a little blurry. On a standard chart usually they ask you to read the 4th or 5th line. Hold the small copy and call out the first letter or number on the small chart, blink, breathe, shift your gaze to the large chart and call out the same letter you read on the small chart. Mark your distance from the hanging chart, over time you will be able to stand further away,
For far-sightedness you can do the opposite, hold the small copy where it is challenging to read and place the large copy on the wall where you can see it.
From my experience I think this exercise trains your brain to know what the letter or number is when it is a little blurry. A big part of your vision is the brain interpreting what the eyes are relaying —a blurry 5 can be learned to see as a solid 5.
Butterfly blinking and yogi eye exercises
Butterfly blinking while moving the head and eyes for about a minute, then holding the head steady and continuing to blink moving the eyes only are called saccadic eye movements.
Saccadic eye movements improve speed of focus shifting (important for reading, sports, and driving), eye-hand coordination, peripheral awareness, and micro-saccadic movements (the tiny stabilizations your eyes make when focusing on details).
This also makes a nice warm up to to your vision exercises, and/or a break from digital eye strain. Its an easy exercise that you can slip into your life —even while standing in line somewhere though folks around you may wonder.
The yogis teach eye exercises too as part of a comprehensive yoga routine. Though I don’t recommend the yogic practice of tratak —which is where you stare at a flame until your eyes tear. While tearing might have some benefit in clearing the eyes, I’m not so sure about the staring. And it hurts! I’ve tried it, it is not a pleasant experience.
Vision is affected by a number of physical and environmental factors—some should be treated with corrective lenses and others can benefit from eye exercises or vision therapy. There are six muscles that surround each eye, myopia or nearsightedness is a result of the muscles getting tight and pulling the eyeballs into a conical shape instead of round. Farsightedness is the opposite, it pulls your eyes into more of a disc shape. Learning to stretch and relax eye muscles is the core of many natural vision courses.
Eye exercises can be beneficial for a number of eye problems, including:
- Reducing eye strain
- Strengthening the focusing muscles that control eye alignment
- Improving eye-tracking problems
- Stimulating blinking which can reduce dry eye symptoms associated with computer viewing
Perform 1-2x / week Can do anytime, full stomach or not, morning, noon, evening. I slip these into my pranayama practices coordinating slow breathing with each eye movement.
Eye stretch exercises for all 6 sets of eye muscles, I like to perform them slowly doing 3-5 repetitions in each direction. To stretch the eye muscles don’t particularly look at anything in the direction you are turning your eyes. To strengthen eye muscles use a pointer to point in each direction and gently look at it.
in between each exercise squeeze your eyes shut for a second or two and release.
- Holding your head steady, only moving your eyes; Inhale slowly and look up, then exhale slowly and look down. 3-5x
- Repeat as above; Inhale look to your left, exhale look to your right keeping eyes in the horizontal plane and parallel to the floor or ground, turning your eyes as far as they will go. 3-5x
- Repeat as above on a diagonal; inhale turn your eyes up right, exhale move your eyes down left. 3-5x
- Repeat as above other way diagonal; inhale up left, slowly exhale down right
- Then scribe half circles with your eyes; start looking all the way to the left, inhale slowly and circle your eyes upward and over to the right corner. Exhale and repeat right to left.
- Repeat downward; inhale start at left corner and slowly circling the eyes toward to your right corner. Exhale repeat right to left.
- Full circles clockwise, start slow and try not to cut out your corners: Inhale and look up, then as you exhale turn your eyes to the right and down, then inhaling bring eyes up and to the left. 2-3x
- Repeat counterclockwise: Inhale look up, exhale left and down, inhale up and right.
- Lastly do a little accommodation; use thumb or pen, extend arm at eye/nose level, inhale and slowly move object toward the tip of your nose, pause, then exhale and slowly return it.
End with palming in a rest pose position.
An Eye Practice
Sometimes I even do a 15-20 minute eye practice.
- Warm up – start with a couple minutes of tapping qi gong style like we do sometimes before sun salutes, and then do a sun salute or two.
- Next, move into swinging side to side letting your world blur by your eyes — when I do this sometimes I use my finger as a pointer to enhance the moving, blurred background. Swinging from side to side improves awareness of apparent movement.
- Next slowly sit down, and start your saccadic eye movements first moving your head and eyes, and then with only your eyes.
- Shift your attention to your breathing, using a slow nasal breath of about 5-7 seconds for both the inhale and the exhale do the yogi eye stretches.
- Follow with the accommodation exercise, convergence, and smooth pursuit
- Follow that with a scalp massage, massage around your eyes and the sides of your face —catching your hair and pulling the scalp away from the skull and slightly upward, then massage back of head where eye muscles attach, and back of neck supporting lymphatic fluid and wastes out of the body.
- Lie down and end with five minutes of palming.
- Once done with palming, slowly butterfly blink as you step out into your world.
Exercise in general benefits your eyes
Blood flow is critical for the neurons of the eye. Those little neurons are some of the most metabolically active cells in your entire body. The cells within the retina specifically because blood flow is required to get them the energy and nutrients they need via oxygen and blood.
Any type of exercise; cardiovascular, strength, walking, yoga all improve blood flow in the body which indirectly improves blood flow to the eyes. You still need to do some of the other eye exercises to prevent some of the aging effects on vision however our lifestyle, food, and activity levels all benefit the eyes as well.
And just a side note I learned several years ago working with a client on blood pressure meds, if the meds take your blood pressure too low one will end up with insufficient blood flow to the eyes —it takes some pressure for the blood to flow upward and into the tiny vessels in the eyes.
Blood pressure is a balance that can be hard to regulate with medications. Blood pressures naturally drop while you sleep. Many people on blood pressure meds end up with eye diseases and this may be partially due to blood pressure dropping at night while they sleep.
Slow breathing at a resonance pace will help restore healthy blood flow to the eyes. In the book “Heart Breath Mind” by Leah Lagos, Psy.D. she explains a study where participants breathed at a resonance pace of 6 breaths per minute for five minutes. “They found that when subjects were in resonance, the resonance induced oscillations seen in the heart were also observed in all nine brain regions.” What this means is the slower breathing relaxed the blood vessels in the brain, dilating them and improved oxygenation via blood flow to the brain, which aids in cognitive and emotional control.
Head Posture is important for your eyes
I like to observe people —you know people watch. Most times I observe whether they are mouth or nasal breathing and compare that to how their overall health seems to look, but lately I’ve also been paying attention to people who tilt their heads to one side. Many who do wear glasses (or contacts).
Head tilt is believed to be a major cause of astigmatism. Our eyes prefer to look from a mostly central position. When a person tilts their head toward one shoulder their eyes are forced to look at everything under an angle — creating a muscular imbalance in the eye muscles. The brain must compensate for the tilt by adjusting the images so they are seen straight. Our brain likes to be efficient, it automates processes. If someone habitually tilts their head the brain initiates a more permanent “fix” and automates the mathematical adjustment to see everything straight. It turns the muscular imbalance in the eyes into misshapen cones which expresses itself as astigmatism.
I say believed because natural eye vision courses teach the head posture caused the muscular imbalance while eye doctors claim the muscular imbalance makes people tilt their head to see better. So which came first? The muscular imbalance or the head tilt? Either way I used to be a head hanger —especially when working up close. I’ve since increased my awareness around this, and make a habit of keeping my head level and my astigmatism is getting better.
Food and your Eyes
Light has to arrive at the retina and get converted into electrical signals. That process requires vitamin A (a fat soluble vitamin), carotenoids, essential fatty acids and more. This biochemical cascade is essential for vision.
As I’ve said many times there is no aspect of your health that is not affected by what you put in your mouth. And its the same with your eyes. And as I emphasized over the years …EAT YOUR VEGETABLES!
You don’t need to eat super human doses of vegetables to keep your eyes healthy, you need a threshold level of vitamin A in order to see well.
Colorful foods rich in carotenoids help protect our eyes from oxidative stress, filter harmful blue light, and support the macula.
- Leafy Greens – good sources of Vitamin A, and some of the best sources of Lutein
and zeaxanthin,
- Essential Fatty Acids — both omega 3s and 6s. Omega6s are readily available in our diet, most of us need to pay more attention to increasing our omega 3 intake at this time. Omega 3s are in grass fed animal products, nuts, seeds, and fish.
- Carotenoids and Anti-Oxidants — Colorful vegetables are loaded with carotenoids that are good for your eyes. As my Naturopath on Maui used to tell me “eat rainbows”.
- Astaxanthin – is a fat soluble carotenoid that helps in reducing cataracts, retinal detachments, and macular degeneration. Astaxanthin increases the amount of ocular blood flow to the eyes —making it an interesting compound. It’s also been shown to have positive effects on skin elasticity, skin moisture, and skin quality, probably due to its effects on blood flow. Good sources are shrimp, lobster, salmon, crab, carrots, and red pepper.
- Lutein is an anti-oxidant that protects your eyes from free radical damage. Lutein is in the pathway that relates to vitamin A and the formation of the opsin, the photopigment that captures light in the back of your eye or literally absorbs light in your eye. Lutein converts into electrical signals and allows you to see. And there is some evidence, through quality peer-reviewed studies that supplementing with lutein can help offset some of the detrimental effects of age-related macular degeneration. But, I want to emphasize —only for individuals with moderate to severe macular degeneration. Good sources are broccoli, spinach, lettuce, mustard greens, egg yolks.
- Lutein reduces damage caused by blue light — According to a team of researchers from Harvard Medical School and The University of Hong Kong, writing in the journal Nutrients: “As the peak wavelength of lutein’s absorption is around 460 nm which lies within the range of blue light, lutein can effectively reduce light-induced damage by absorbing 40% to 90% of incident blue light depending on its concentration.”
- Zeaxanthin – an anti-oxidant that protects the eye by absorbing the blue light of UV rays and reducing glare that damages the lens. It helps in reducing macular disorders and degeneration — zeaxanthin is found in the center of the macula. Good sources; saffron, kale, spinach, kiwi fruit, broccoli, lettuce, oranges, peas.
- Berries that are high anthocyanins improve eye muscle function, which is key for focusing and reducing eye strain. Specifically, Bilberries has been shown to enhance the responsiveness of eye muscles after short periods of screen use, suggesting these nutrients could help eyes recover from the strain of digital devices. Bilberry is known as the vision herb, if you can find this fruit it can help your eyes. Many recommend it in supplement form, although I am cautious about supplements and prefer not to use them if food is available.
- And Cysteine, taurine, quercitin and rutin are the essential amino acids which help in preventing several harmful effects that cause various eye disorders. These antioxidants protect the eyes from free radical changes and assist blood circulation to and within the retina. Good sources are clean proteins such as; grass fed milk, pastured eggs, fish, and meat. Additional sources: onions, garlic, oats, apples, cherries, citrus fruits, pears, and more.
I like saffron, saffron is particularly beneficial for the eyes (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6681062/). When I infuse saffron into room temperature water and let it sit overnight, in the morning it is the color of sunshine. I sit outside in the sunshine and meditate, sipping my saffron water feeling the nourishing plant pigments permeate through my body into my eyes where they catch the sunlight and help to spread the sunlight inside of me
Sunlight and your eyes
Reminder —mentioned at the start of the work; the human eye contains photosensitive cells in its retina where it senses the light. This is known as extra ocular light perception. It is the ability for light information to get to the cells of our body through our eyes.
This information connects directly to the pituitary gland, pineal gland, and the hypothalamus in the brain effecting our biological clocks, hormone regulation including melatonin, reaction times, and behavior. Cells in the body have their own circadian rhythm, any area of the body can falter without adequate outdoor natural sunlight exposure.
We also absorb vitamin D through our eyes. Wearing sunglasses will block some of this communication with the biosphere.
While we want sunlight in our eyes, never stare at the sun, instead be outside in the sunlight during different times of day — including 10am – 2pm. A nice way to sun your eyes during this time is to close your eyes and face the sun —even better is to be under intermittent shade; for example from leaves of a tree. This intermittent light exposure stimulates the retina and can improve nearsightedness.
Andrew Huberman in his podcast (he is a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at the Stanford University School of Medicine) says getting two hours a day of outdoor time without sunglasses has a significant effect on reducing the probability that you will get myopia, or nearsightedness.
Most studies say it is safe to look at the sun at sunrise and at sunset for a few minutes —the red in the sun will protect your eyes from damage —and maybe even improve your eyesight. This study showed three minutes of gazing at infrared morning light improves eyesight.
“Looking at 670-nm red light for three minutes a day can significantly improve cone color contrast sensitivity (the ability to detect colors) and rod sensitivity (the ability to see in low light).
(The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, Volume 75, Issue 9, September 2020, Pages e49–e52, https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/glaa155 Published: 29 June 2020)
However I also found gazing at artificial infrared and red light does come with a warning —and other studies linking longer gazing times with retinal damage. It seems three minutes of morning red light is the Goldilocks zone for improving eyesight—and you don’t need to stare at the sun. Staring is not good for the eyes in general and I prefer not to stare at the sun —even if it is red light or infrared light.
Sunset your sunglasses
NO MORE SUNGLASSES! Sunglasses interfere with how our eyes take in light information. Sunglasses also restrict the movement of your pupil when exposed to the sun impairing vision and allowing UV light into areas of the eye the pupil protects by reducing pupil size. I gave up my sunglasses in February (2025) for good and I’m liking it.
There are some exceptions to the sunglasses, number one if you are a pilot, you will need to wear sunglasses and also seamen; captains, boaters, crew, people who like to go out on the water, skiers, and if you are in the desert, you will need to protect their eyes from the glare during a sunny day. The only other time it might be advantageous to wear sunglasses is if you were driving into the sunset, it might be safer to wear your sunglasses so you can see better.
In fact, I was totally shocked to learn that the rates of sunburn and skin cancer increased only after people started wearing sunglasses. Because the sun can penetrate the deepest through your eyes, your body can regulate what it needs to protect you from the sun — such as more melanin during UV light exposure times (10-2). The Australian aborigines never experienced sunburn until sunglasses were introduced. Totally crazy I know!
Sunglasses only became popular after World War II, pilots had to wear sunglasses and pilots were the heroes of the war. So sunglasses became popular then. And of course, after the war was over, there was a lot less to produce or manufacture so sunglasses were made popular to increase jobs.
To transition to no sunglasses buy a hat with a wide rim. When you first step outside your door, pause and let your eyes adjust. Close your eyes, face the sun or the sky for a few seconds, then blink as you turn your head away from the sun. After a short adjustment period, a wide rimmed hat will most likely be all you need on a sunny day.
Nutrition plays a key role in protecting eye health from UV light; anthocyanins from berries and carotenoids (lutein and zeaxanthin) from egg yolks act as natural blue light filters. And maybe these foods protect the eyes from sun damage? Many doctors still teach that the sun causes cataracts and sun glasses prevent that —but it might be a bit more complicated —like diet plays a role.
After learning about how the pupils react to sunglasses and how the sun enters our body through our eyes I’m challenging this long held medical belief. It might be that sunglasses are causing cataracts. I also say research on statins linking statins to cataracts. In my natural vision course several people in my class shared when they changed their diet their cataracts went away! Huh, it might the SAD standard American diet that is causing cataracts —not the sun.
Visualizations and Imagery
We create with the power of our mind. There is study after study of artists and athletes who perform in their mind only and experience enhanced performance. And also on sham or placebo surgeries with outcomes similar to real surgeries. Visualizing your direction each day, before each project, before each meeting will help to define the outcome.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/sports/olympics/olympians-use-imagery-as-mental-training.html?_r=0
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3747442 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24369076
Mental training enhances the cortical output signal from the brain, this signal tells the muscles to move —before you move a muscle voluntarily the brain has to signal it. When we imagine the movement and don’t actually move we are still employing this action in the brain and it drives our muscles to higher activation when they do move.
I would classify this as a Neuro-Muscular improvement — improving how our brains and muscles communicate. This communication between brain and muscle enhances strength and performance even without movement.
Your mind is a powerful tool it also shapes your life
Your thoughts become your reality —this is why we need to scrutinize our thoughts. We know that a placebo pill can be as effective (with less side effects) than a real pill. Instead of looking at this as a problem let’s take advantage of it!
Imagery is a type of mind body medicine that works like a placebo. Guided imagery reduces stress, and improves immune function by increasing white blood cells and lymphocytes. If you are ill, have disease, or planning a surgery you can use guided imagery to improve your healing response. You can also use imagery to enhance any area of your life —including your eyesight.
However have you tried to visualize an image or to picture something but can’t?
Here are two images for you to put in your mind. Look at them for a few seconds, then close your eyes and see if you can recall them.
Figure 2. Phagocytosis
Coloured scanning electron micrograph of a white blood cell (orange) caught in the act of engulfing bacteria (blue rods). As Ilya Metchikov observed, wandering cells called phagocytes migrate to areas of tissue damage or infection to engulf and digest any harmful foreign particles, bacteria, and dead/dying cells.
Credit: Dr Kari Lounatmaa / Science Photo Library.The photo was kindly provided by Dr Kari Lounatmaa / Science Photo Library.
Memory and imagination are prerequisites to building vision health. They help you show your brain what it means to see clearly, how to see movement, and how to correctly fuse together the images each eye sends to the brain. Learning this skill can be particularly helpful in the case of cataracts, lazy eye, astigmatism, myopia, double vision, and hyperopia. it is not an easy skill to learn for some.
Can you Imagine?
As we age we lose some of the ability to imagine and we don’t realize it. The brain is extremely visual — many signals delivered to the brain through our other senses are translated into visuals for the brain to understand and act upon.
Smell a rose, can you see it in your minds’ eye? When you can see it sharply in your mind your brain gets the best information from what you are sending in. Your brain is responsible for 90% of the seeing process. Visual images hold power —it’s worth your while to practice this skill.
Let’s start easy; take a moment, close your eyes and envision a square. Start with a grey square. After you have the image in your mind, can you change the color?
Now think of a banana? Can you see it? Paint it in your mind. While you are envisioning it, remember the taste of a banana, the smell of a fresh banana, and remember the feel of it in your hands. If you are having a hard time seeing it, look at a picture of a banana first. Then close your eyes and try to re-imagine it.
Now try to see in your minds eye a picture from a fun vacation. Or how about your child’s face when they were younger? Or your own?
You can also build this skill by looking out your window, study the detail of what you see. Then close your eyes and see if you can re-imagine it.
Take a moment in your meditation time: See yourself seeing clearly in your minds eye. If you are nearsighted see yourself outside looking off into the distance able to see tree tops clearly. Or perhaps if you are far sighted see yourself reading a menu with ease.
Breathing slowly through your nose as you work with your imagination. This is a simple technique you can incorporate easily into little cracks and corners in your everyday life. For example, when you sit down for a meal, look at the food on your plate —close your eyes for a moment and recall what your just saw. Sneak in little visualizations —like when you are working on your computer take a vision break and look up at something then close your eyes and recall it. When you are outside, when you are on hold on a phone call, just before sleep at night —literally any place in your day you can take pause for a moment and imagine. Try it!
Taking care of your eyes
I want to share a couple other tips I learned from the Natural vision courses I took that are controversial in the opinion of eye doctors. Consider these, talk with your doctor about them and most importantly follow your own intuitive guidance on them.
- Remove your glasses when you can. Glasses keep the muscles surrounding your eyes tight —the prescription of your glasses mimics the tightness of your eye muscles. By removing your glasses your eyes relax and possibly over time the muscles may stay relaxed improving your vision. Safety is most important though! If you don’t see distance well wear your glasses when you are driving or out and about and need to be aware of your surroundings. If you are far-sighted put on your glasses to chop vegetables. And don’t make yourself frustrated by trying to read without your glasses if you need them to read.
If you are sitting on your lanai relaxing with a cup of coffee, take off your glasses and look around. Don’t squint! If you are used to wearing your glasses all the time, your world will look a little blurry at first. The longer your glasses are off the less blurry your world will become. - Bifocals … not good. It is better to have multiple pairs of glasses —one for near and one pair for far. Check out https://www.zennioptical.com/ for affordable glasses. The point of ideal correction for various distances is located in non-central areas of bifocal glasses eliminating your ability to look straight at an object. Instead you need to tilt your head up to read and down to see distance. These can lead to postural challenges and muscular imbalance and some believe can lead to astigmatism.
A solution for clean and clear eyes
Another practice I’ve slipped into most of my mornings is to do a saline eye wash.
- Boil 1 liter (approx. 1 quart) of water
- Add 1 TBSP sea salt
- Store in a sterilized glass jar. To sterilize spray the jar and lid with rubbing alcohol or a high proof grain alcohol or vodka, then wipe it out with a clean paper towel. I keep my saline solution under the bathroom sink for easy morning access.
I got these glass eye wash cups from amazon. I fill them with my saline solution, lean over the sink placing my eyes in the cups and blink for a few seconds. I can also open my eyes in the saline solution and look in different directions. It feels very refreshing for the eyes. You can do this anytime of day or night, whenever you feel like there is something in your eyes, or you just need to refresh yourself.
Using a neti pot is also good for your eyes, as the water flows through your sinuses it runs over the optic nerve. When I do neti I notice a warm sensation behind my eyeballs. I like to do the saline eye wash first and follow it with the neti pot 1-2x per week, on the days I do this routine my eyeballs feel clean and energized.
More information on neti here, at bullet point #3
Other tips for your eyes:
Warm water eye compresses or alternating between warm and cool can relieve eye tension. Simply soak a washcloth in either warm or cool water, wring it out and lie down with it over your eyes.
Keep your eye relaxed most of your day. Avoid squinting and staring as these actions cause eye muscle strain.
Home remedies for minor eye irritations
None of this advise replaces a visit to an eye doctor, however it may help reduce your suffering until you can get an appointment — and maybe even save you from a round of antibiotics.
Hydrosols! They are my go to for the eyes. Gentle and safe hydrosols are the water soluble components of plants. They are distilled — mostly as a by product of essential oil production —though many hydrosols are distilled for their medicinal value. You can spray them around your eye area (as long as they are from a reputable source and in a clean, sterilized bottle) or make a compress from them.
I have warded off many eye infections with hydrosols. Hydrosols are rich in anti-microbial compounds making them anti-infectious.
Hydrosols can reduce inflammation, swelling, or other discomfort around the eyes. Hydrosols have natural cooling and soothing properties that can bring relief to tired, irritated and red eyes.
For infections such as conjunctivitis Myrtle hydrosol can be used, it is anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, and soothing for the eyes. Cornflower hydrosol is commonly used in French Medicine for allergic conjunctivitis and other eye irritations. Other hydrosols that are comforting for the eyes include rose, lavender, tea tree, and eucalyptus.
Green tea compresses can also clear an eye infection if you are traveling or not able to get to your eye doctor. If you can find a green tea bag (not a plastic tea bag!) pour warm water over it and use it as a compress. A client of mine tried this while traveling and it worked for her.
Ayurveda uses honey for eye infections. An Ayurvedic remedy would be to boil 1 cup of water, let it cool to body temperature and add 5 tsp honey. Make sure to use only clean honey —not honey with food particles in it. Best is to open a fresh jar when you make your honey eye wash. You can use this in eye cups, as a compress, or with a sterilized eye dropper.
Herbalism traditionally uses the herb eyebright (Euphrasia officinalis) for the eyes. It is a small flowering herb famous for the eyes. Eyebright is traditionally used to manage eye infections, alleviate cold symptoms, and reduce inflammation. It has also been used to help with allergy symptoms when used internally.
Modern research (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11244224/) has also confirmed eyebright has anti-microbial, anti-inflammatory, and an ability to protect against oxidative stress —and due to its anti-oxidant properties it may help protect eyes from UV damage.
There are different ways to use the herb, you can purchase eyebright eye drops, eyebright herb to make teas and compresses, and eyebright tincture for internal use. There is a good amount of data on its effectiveness. I infuse the eyebright herb into a mixture of oils, aloe, and honey and used it as an under eye serum morning and night.
The American Botanical Council recommends eyebright “the treatment of conjunctivitis, sties, and other ailments of the eye.”
American Herbalist Guild registered herbalist and well known in herbal schools, David Hoffman states it is supportive of eye conditions “acute or chronic inflammations, stinging and weeping eyes, and oversensitivity to light.”
World-renowned herbalist, Rosemary Gladstar, suggests well-strained eyebright tea “as an eyewash or compress for eye fatigue, conjunctivitis, sties, and other congestive conditions of the eye with profuse tearing.”
Prevention and Maintenance daily tips
- Blink gently every couple seconds
- Practice palming for 5-10 minutes every day
- Facial, scalp, and lymph massage most mornings
- When you experience eye strain, STOP! Palm for a few minutes, do a cool water compress or splash some cool water (or hydrosol) in your eyes.
- Try to sun your eyes (eyes closed!) 3-4 days each week
- Look as far away as you can every time you remember
- Pay attention to your peripheral vision —try to make it a habit
- Look at details of the world, people’s faces, plants and flowers, the sky, your dishes as you eat, etc.
- Practice eye stretches and some of the other exercises 3x per week.
- Spend as much time outside as you can every day! It is not only good for your eyes it is good for your whole being —physically, emotionally, and mentally — it is good for your physiology in every way, shape, and form.
Eyesight is so vital. It’s right up there with movement and our ability to take care of ourselves. Eyesight and movement are the main ways that we are able to take care of ourselves and take care of others.
Emos and your Eyes
It is said “your eyes are the mirror to your soul” implying that eye disorders are messages from your soul directing you to move in the direction of your soul’s purpose. Many systems of medicine (such as GMN or German New Medicine) relate every disease, pain, or disorder of the body to an emotional challenge. By connecting the emotional aspect to what may be changing your view of the world gives you another tool to heal your vision (and your emotions) and operate from a new level of awareness.
Your eyes represent your capacity to see clearly —past, present, and future events. For example myopia or near sightedness relates to a fear of the future. Near sightedness often develops when we are going through a stressful time —especially in our childhood or younger years. We feel insecure or fear and want to stay vigilant on what is happening around us, trying to control every situation we are in.
Far sightedness relates to fear of the present —not wanting to see what is happening before your eyes —such as aging of your body, a circumstance you are in, or a person close to you. Not being able to see what is in front of you is a form of denial.
Eye problems in general relate to not liking what you see in your own life —closing your eyes to what is happening around you. It is a way of protecting yourself. or being tired of keeping an eye on a situation. Astigmatism can be related to fear of seeing your higher Self (“I”), cataracts may represent an inability to see ahead with joy; a dark future.
Your left eye is connected to your inner view and what you learned from your mother. If your left eye is more out of focus, what ancestral trait from your mothers side is perhaps no longer serving you?
Your right eye is connected to your external world view and what you learned from your father. If it’s your right eye that does not see clearly are you watching the news and focused on how “bad” the world is out there?
If the eyes truly are the mirror to our soul then our eyes disorders are a clear message to move in a direction that is in harmony with our soul
And then we have our Third Eye
Our third eye is connected to our 6th chakra —the chakra of wisdom. It is described as the 3rd eye through which we perceive our entire world. It is said to control both incoming and outgoing thought. It is your center of intellect and reasoning, and involves your psychological skill at evaluating your beliefs and attitudes.
This chakra is called ajna chakra. Ajna means to perceive with the mind (drishti is perceiving with the eyes) —again nodding to how much of our vision is perception. Our perceptions are a big part of our life.
Our eyes see in our physical body, but perception happens in the subtle body. We can not see without the brain interpreting. Perceptions vary according to our past experiences and beliefs. Which is why in yoga lore “all of life is an illusion”.
Insight occurs through our third eye —it is an important vision as well.
Insight, being intuitive through the mind is the ability to gain perspective from within using our inner wisdom and inner vision to guide us.
- Thoughts are what our mind produce naturally — we can’t stop them we just want to let them flow through and out of our mind.
- Thinking is engaging with our thoughts some of this productive and some is not such as ruminating, worrying, and anxiety. This is where we need to discriminate and choose what we want to think on.
- Insight is valuable thoughts. They can be spontaneous sparks of wisdom that arise if we tune into them.
When we are mindful it is more conducive to enhancing our insight.
Tune into your insights, intuitions, and instincts —if we don’t we “lose” them —or aren’t as able to listen to them. Start to pay attention, honor your intuitive signals and the myriad of ways they come through:
- Insight is in the mind or brain
- Intuition comes from the heart
- Instinct comes through the gut
And furthermore
- Clairvoyance is insight through images
- Clairaudence is insight through sound
- Clairsentience is insight through touch or feeling
- Clair-olfactance is insight through smell
The more you pay attention the more intuitive hits you’ll get!
The Third Eye
In yoga the literal third eye is vertical and not seen, though it is sometimes depicted as this 
picture of Shiva. In most unaware individuals it is believed the third eye is closed. When you open it through meditation, breathing, and awareness practices you experience clear insight, strong intuitions, inner wisdom, open-mindedness, and intellectual balance.
Opening the third-eye is best done through contemplation and meditation practices—practices that increase your awareness. Breathing exercises are also a type of meditation and are many times easier to work with than sitting and noticing your thoughts only.
Have a meditation moment: Sitting tall, breathing through your nose only with your tongue on the roof of your mouth, slow down your breath and lengthen your exhales; meditating on your third eye, see it flutter open. With its vertical presence it sees different realms than our two horizontal eyes can see. Imagine gazing through your third eye and seeing unseen emotions or energies. Gazing through your third eye get a feeling for the different realms it can see and how that might guide you.
Other References not mentioned:
Huberman Lab Podcasts -varios podcasts and this one: Essentials: Protocols to Improve Vision & Eyesight, Apr 23, 2025 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/huberman-lab/id1545953110?i=1000704702189&r=165
Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust Wigan WN1 England https://www.wwl.nhs.uk/media/.leaflets/5fdb426abc4b08.13496553.pdf
Louise Hay “You can heal your Life”
Lise Bourbeau “Your body is telling you, love yourself.”