Eye strain. Headaches. Fatigue. A true fiesta. This party-for-one contains side effects of my visual impairment depending on my environment and my work habits and my health. Treating the physical side effects of a disability means being choosey–medication, physical therapy, occupational therapy, exercise, socializing, eating, drinking, resting–so many options exist for stress relief with varying personal effectiveness.
Disability or not, everyone is in need of self-care. Regular meals, showers, shelter, those are easy. Then go deeper. Particular habits that are part of your daily routine may not occur to most people. For instance, do you ever do eye exercises?
Now before you get skeptical, I hear ads that sound a bit too good to be true for poor vision correcting eyeball calisthenics, too. I’m not talking about eliminating the need for RX glasses. It’s more universal than that. Recently, I discovered writer Ingrid Rocks after reading an interview with her about her vision loss in New York. I added her books to my TBR (to be read) list, and then browsed her website which leads me to today’s post: self-care for your eyes. It’s party time excellent.
Ingrid Ricks does a physical routine every morning to support the health of her eyes. What I really liked was she included a video describing the accupressure points she focuses on to increase circulation. I’m partial to yoga and meditation and her routine offers a zen-like quality of presence. At the very least, it’s soothing.
Here is a link to her video. Check it out and let me know what you think. Is wellness something you incorporate into your daily routines? What do you do to protect and support your eyes? Tell me about it.
Adventures in Low Vision 
My mom didn’t want me to wear glasses, so she sent me to an optometrist who gave me eye exercises. The flashing lights would blink and I had to follow them. I hated it. That’s not something you want to be forced to do when you’re light sensitive. I will not, ever, do eye exercises again. They get enough exercise trying to keep me off the floor and away from the door jambs. 🙂
The flashing light drills sound tortuous.
In a word. Yep.
Regarding the exercise video, I had to laugh. Not because it’s funny, but because much of the things she does I gravitated to doing naturally. When you have as many types of headaches as Eskimos have words for snow, you learn how to ease the pain by trial and…well…trial. 🙂
You are a self taught genius, grin.
I should be doing eye exercises. I have a lot of headaches and it often hurts to move my eyes. I’ll have to go check out that video!
Those awful headaches, I hope you get some relief soon Trisha.
The exercises look interesting and if I suffered from headaches I would be willing to try pretty much anything. I wonder if the ritual of the “36 times” helps her as much as the exercises. If they aren’t doing further damage to the eyes, and that is confirmed by an ophthalmologist I say go for it. I don’t currently do anything like that but I am hyper aware about keeping my eyes protected with glasses or goggles when doing anything that might cause harm.
I wondered the same thing about the 36x, Casee. Good for you for wearing eye protection. Anytime I catch a headline about someone losing vision due to an accident, it upsets me to know a lot of times, eye protection would have prevented the harm.
We had someone in the area lose an eye to fireworks over the July 4th holiday weekend. He was setting off powerful ones and someone else lost a finger as well. Your eyes are so precious and it amazes me how people take them for granted as if you can grow some more or pick some up at the local discount store. 😦
Horrific. But you know when eyes can be regrown or bought at a store, we’ll be in that line, ha.