Exercise Program for Glaucoma
• Peripheral Exercise: 20 minutes daily.
• Palming: 6 minutes at a time, three times daily, with at least 5 minutes between sessions for 30 minutes a day.
• Sunning: 20 minutes daily.
• Headlines (from the section on astigmatism): 10 minutes.
• Block the Strong Eye (tape the medium-sized piece of paper onto the bridge of your nose so that it blocks the central vision of your strong eye; now read with your weaker eye while waving your hand in the periphery of your stronger eye): 10 minutes.
• Physical Exercises for Glaucoma: 20 minutes daily.
Note: While working on your eyes, also address your emotional state and create a good emotional environment for yourself. And remember to work on your eyes throughout the day. Find time here and there to always work on healing your vision.
Physical Exercises for Glaucoma
Good thoughts and good prayer can be healing. Visualize that blood is circulating to your retina, making it soft and nurturing your optic disk. Also visualize that the fluid in its clear form is flowing in the area between the cornea and the macula. Visualize that good blood circulation is nourishing your optic disk and retina. Visualize the blood coming from the back, and from your neck to the back of the head, and nourishing your optic disk. Visualize that blood is flowing into your eye and draining from it. Then visualize that the aqueous humor is flowing into the front area of your eye from the lens to the cornea, nourishing both, and draining into the area of your nose. It’s amazing how powerful the body is and how much it does all at once. It’s not power that belongs to you but to nature, and you are a wonderful guest of nature’s within your own body. There is a connection between that power and of all universal powers around you; this connection gives that power a tremendous amount of strength.
The power that brings rain from the sky and wind to the earth, the power that is mysterious to all of us and runs the whole universe, is the same power that moves your blood and your fluids. It does so constantly. The more you acknowledge its power and its strength, the better it will work for you. There is a connection between your mind and soul and the natural functions of your body. When you have glaucoma, physical exercises are important to prevent the pressure from mounting and growing in your eyes and, in fact, will reduce it. Other exercises will be important to preserve your vision. All of them will be a pleasure to do. When you work on your body, you work for the purpose of having fun with it, and it is a pleasure to do the work. When you have that feeling, it’s going to be wonderful to heal your glaucoma and to overcome it. It will create a better connection between you and your internal forces, and it will help you to tune in to the forces of the universe. It’s probably the best antidepressant you can ever have.
Special Instructions for Palming with Glaucoma
You should only palm for up to ten minutes at a time. Then wait at least five minutes before palming again. You can do this many times a day. But if you palm too long all in one session, you can experience an increase in pressure. If, for example, you have closed-angle glaucoma and you palm for a half an hour all at once, you can have an increase in pressure of 4 mercury points.
Exercises for Glaucoma
Sunning is one of the best eye exercises you can do for glaucoma because it temporarily reduces your pressure. It also contracts the pupils and creates better fluid flow within your eyes. So, for the time that you do it, your pressure is being reduced. And the reduction of pressure will last if you could also release the tension in your neck. This exercise will help you do that.
If you are a typical glaucoma patient, if such a thing exists, most likely you have a very tight neck. Tension of the neck, to a great extent, is a result of mental stress as well as physical stress, but not in all cases. Nevertheless, I have found that many people who have a tendency for glaucoma exacerbate that tendency with either injury or tension in the neck.
It’s important for you to know that you need to work on your neck, first spiritually, then mentally. It’s good to write about your thoughts and feelings in a journal. Then meet with a good friend or maybe with a psychotherapist who can help you. Hopefully, with holistic inclinations, you will see your whole life and all phenomena as one unified experience.
Sometimes, it’s important for you to take a good vacation or to do things that can improve your life. For example, let yourself be drawn into having a relationship if you don’t have one, or into finding a way to get out of your shell of loneliness if you are lonely. And, if you have a relationship, allow yourself to examine it and to find out if you really spend enough time with your partner; allow yourself to develop good communication skills with your partner in order to bring smoothness into your life. It’s important to do the work that will help you to feel that you are doing well emotionally and that you’re advancing yourself spiritually. Then, you just may find yourself in a whole new place of physical self-improvement with these exercises. Often, the exercises will bring back emotional phenomena, which you’ll want to deal with whenever they come, in order to reach a place of neutrality and tranquility.
These days, many people do not understand the value of neutrality. Somebody wrote me a postcard that said, “Meir, never tell me to relax. My tension is the only thing that holds me together.” That’s why many people function with tremendous amounts of tension and think it’s good: because they always have it. Life is much happier with less tension. In a place of relaxation, you feel security and love in the universe.
Now, while facing the sun with your eyes closed, hold your head steady and stroke your cheekbones, massaging around your eyes and nose. Massaging the areas around your eyes is very helpful for relaxation. Quite often, the tension of the eyes leads to squinting, as I’ve mentioned throughout this book. That is a tension that you want to undo. When you take away squinting, you take away pressure, and when you take away pressure, the eye becomes healthy.
Move your head from side to side. Then move your head up and down while moving from side to side. Your chin points up toward the sky and down toward your chest. You should move your head up and down four times, from the edge of your shoulder to the middle, and four times from the middle of your shoulder to the edge. This really helps to loosen up your neck and to create more space between the first vertebrae and the crown. After doing this forty times, palm for thirty seconds. Then you should do it another forty times, if you can relax while performing the exercise. Do not massage around the eyes here, because it’s not safe to do this when you move the head up and down. Just move your head up and down as you’re facing the sun with your eyes closed. Then palm again. Do this exercise a third time and then palm yet again for thirty seconds to a minute. Next, move your head from side to side and massage your eyebrows and cheekbones.
Now bend your knees and straighten them again. Try to bring your knees to the level of your abdomen or chest (this depends on how flexible your hips are) while moving the head from side to side. If balance is an issue, hold onto a wall or a chair as you do this exercise. Make sure that you don’t fall while doing it.