Every one of us who sits in front of a computer every day, whether we’re working in the office or surfing the Internet from home in the evening, knows the of eye pain and fatigue. As time passes, you may start having a hard time focusing on distant objects, such as seeing street signs from far. If you identify with these symptoms, you may be experiencing some muscle damage, but the good news is that the problem can be easily treated. Get to know the ball exercise that’ll help calm your eye muscles and maintain their normal functioning.
Our eyeballs are worked by a number of different muscles: six extra-ocular muscles, two diagonal muscles, a muscle in the eye socket and four straight muscles called medial, lateral, upper and lower. Some of these muscles are responsible for looking at close objects and some help us locate objects that are far away from us. There are also muscles that help us look up, down, right and left.
However, for quite a bit of the day, especially when working in front of a computer monitor, we exert uneven effort on the eye muscles. This is because we look mainly at one very close object that is the monitor itself. Focusing the two eyes at one close point activates mainly the medial muscle and doesn’t make us of the others, and therefore our eyes become used to a situation similar to the left illustration in the image below. When at the end of a long working day we try to look at objects that are far away from us, sight more fitting of the right illustration is required, but our muscles are no longer accustomed to acting in this way.
One of the more common tips suggests that we look up every half hour of work and focus on a distant point. But even when we think we’re doing this exercise correctly, we may still only be working the muscles we’ve become accustomed to and not really doing anything to break our vision routine.
The following simple exercise will help you activate the eye muscles you may be neglecting, and "remind" each of the eyes to act separately.
1. Click here to print the next image in good quality (press Ctrl and P to print).
2. Stick the paper to a wall at eye level, and move about a foot (or 30 centimeters) away from it.
3. Now, concentrate on the page and try to bring each pair of balls together until they become one ball. In other words, allow each eye to look at a different ball separately, and then move both eyes together toward your nose, so that the two balls "move" towards each other until they look like one ball.
4. After you've done the first line, go down each row and try to do the same for the next pair of balls. Each step down your eyes will relax more and more causing the image to appear slightly blurry, but you’ll still be able to perform the exercise without a problem.
5. Once you’ve completed the exercise, do it again from the bottom up.
6. Make performing the exercise a habit doing it several times at the end of each working day, and you’ll feel an improvement in your eyes’ condition.
Notes:
1. Make sure you're performing the exercise while looking as demonstrated in the left illustration and avoiding the “cross-eyes” demonstrated in the right. Because, as mentioned, most of us are very used to looking at close objects for long hours, your eye muscles may try to "work" in the same way here too. The result is that in order to be able to focus on two remote objects at once, your left eye will try looking to the right while your right eye will try looking to the left, and this is a mistake.
To avoid this, try closing your right eye and looking at the left ball with the left eye allowing it to get used to the direction of focus. Then, do the same for the other eye. Once you’ve been able to remind your muscles which ball to focus on, perform the exercise with both eyes.
2. People who suffer from congenital myopia are advised not to stress their eyes and consult a doctor before performing the exercise. In contrast, if your vision has deteriorated over the years, this may be due to incorrect operation of the eye muscles, and then this exercise may be very helpful.
