Eye Care Blog

People whose eyes are stressed often see fleeting images. These are similar to the images on a television screen after a station has signed off: patterns and colors that move about but often appear gray and diffused. The eyes even mirror mental restlessness. You experience this as swishing images and incomplete darkness when you close your eyes.

Therefore, this exercise is a good way to measure your rental state, as well as your eyesight. When you shield tour eyes, the transition from a shimmering, gray state to leep blackness indicates the change from actively seeing o a totally relaxed, restful state.

Only the eyes can experience the sensation of blackness. The feeling produced by this darkness can be of a deep mental rest or of a pleasing sense of mental emptiness, somewhat like diving deep into your inner center, from which essential energy emanates. This can be a deeply relaxing and joyful experience. Do the shielding exercise as often as possible.

Simple Biofeedback

Shielding is a surprisingly simple form of biofeedback. This technique, widely used in research and performance sports, involves expensive instruments which change body signals into acoustic or optical signals.

You don’t need any mechanical devices in order to use shielding as a method of biofeedback, and it doesn’t cost anything. It provides an excellent way to gauge the degree of tension or relaxation at any time of the day or night.

This exercise deeply relaxes the eyes. After a phase of complete darkness and total relaxation, the vision often becomes surprisingly clear. Colors and contrasts are more lively, and the total field of vision seems clearer, somewhat like the air after a thunderstorm.

If you use shielding regularly, particularly after periods of intense work, you will discover a distinct difference in the quality of darkness when you cover your eyes with your hands.

How to Use Shielding

You can do this exercise sitting down or lying down. Assume a comfortable position where nothing will interfere with your breathing. Breathe freely in a relaxed fashion. Recommended time: one to twenty minutes.

• Rub the palms of your hands together so that they are warm and charged with energy. Warm, relaxed hands release healing, negatively-charged ions and are very invigorating. Your closed eyes will directly absorb the energy created this way.
• Close your eyes. Gently place the palms of your hands over your closed eyes. Rest your fingers on your forehead with the palms of your hands resting on your cheek bones. The palms create a small dome over the closed eyelids. Place the center of your palms over the pupils, without any pressure. Make sure that no light penetrates through your hands.
• If you are sitting down, rest your elbows on a table or on your knees. If your are lying down, place a thick pillow under your elbows. Either of these will create a very comfortable position for your hands.
• Relax your whole body. Take a few deep sighs—be vocal. Allow your eyes to sink deep behind your closed lids, as if resting in a hammock with your head hanging over t edge or into a small, soft lining behind your eye sockets like sinking into a pillow when you lie on your back.
• Be aware of what is happening beneath your close eyes in the darkness. Do you see anything shimmering, do you see lightening, fog, or patterns? Is the quality of darkness equal or is something moving? Is the darkness me intense in some places?
• Inhale and exhale deeply. Allow every thought, emotion, and image that appears in the darkness to dissolve every time you exhale.
• When inhaling, feel the warmth, the protection, and the touch of your hands through your eyelids and in your eyeballs.
• Become deeply absorbed in this process, for at least ten to twenty breaths. When exhaling, observe how the shimmering, pulling sensations; the patterns you see; and the fog enter the darkness and dissolve. When inhaling, allow the energy from your hands to flow into your eyes, filling your eye sockets like a bathtub.
• Keep your eyes closed and conclude the exercise by removing your hands from your eyes. Allow your eyes to become accustomed to light again before you open them.
• Stretch and bend as if you have just awakened from a nap. Look around. Are your eyes more relaxed and refreshed? Are they interested in what is around you? Has your sense of vision changed in any way?

Important Tips for People Who Wear Glasses or Contact Lenses

Remove your glasses or contact lenses before starting the shielding exercises.

Relax the area around your eyes before starting these exercises. Do short tapping massages with the tips of your fingers.

Afterwards, look around without your glasses or lenses. Compare your visual impressions with what they were before.

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