Natural Vision Improvement

Breathing is one of the first topics I discuss when starting students on their eyesight improvement programme. Why?

Your breath does much more than bring oxygen into the body and expel carbon dioxide.  Although even in this vital function our lack of awareness often allows us to miss out on the full benefits of this exchange of gases.  Shallow breathing that goes only to the chest (rather than all the way to the diaphragm and abdomen) is a common feature in those with anxiety and/or visual blur, and can contribute to a lack of total wellbeing and poor digestion.  It also plays a major role in the state of tension that is a part of the ‘staring habit’ of those in glasses.

On the other hand, ‘good’ breathing can be an important doorway to self-nurturing and provides free, easy and very useful tools for management of physical health and emotional hygiene.  Later in this article I will give you some effective breathing activities, that are simple and enjoyable and offer numerous benefits.  First lets discuss further the importance of how you breathe and why. Let’s explore how our breathing habits affect not just the physical, but in many ways are also intimately connected with our emotional selves, as both of these areas are important for eyesight improvement. 

Breath and your brain. Do you remember the smell of your Grandmother’s perfume?  I certainly do.  And if I ever encounter that smell in the course of my daily life (walking through a department store or encountering a woman wearing ‘Chloe’) I immediately have an almost physical feeling of being loved, comforted and safe.  It brings up vivid images in my mind of the beauty of Montana and my grandparent’s home there.  Why is this?  Smell (which of course requires inhalation through the nose) is the sense that is most strongly connected to the long-term memory areas of the brain. And memory, of course, is the image that you have made of past events, and evokes sight, sound, smell and yes, feelings. 

Breath and your nervous system.  Breathing in different areas of the torso creates different stimulation to the nervous system and brain. Breathing into the chest stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, the branch of the autonomic nervous system that supplies involuntary muscles and glands.  It stimulates the ductless glands and the circulatory system but inhibits the digestive system. Breathing into the chest also switches on the left hemisphere of the brain, our logical, rational, language and number oriented thinking brain.  This side of the brain is responsible for muscle tension (or contraction) and detailed close vision. Hyperopes tend to spend too much time with the right brain and could find it helpful to make sure that they are doing balanced full torso breathing.

Breathing into the abdomen (lower belly) stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system.  This is the part of the system that calms things down after the sympathetic part has hyped them up.  The parasympathetic nervous systems brings the heart rate down and the pupil to normal after stress has caused one to start pumping hard and the other to dilate.  It also stimulates the muscles of the digestive tract, so we do our best digestion when we are relaxed and breathing deeply.  Those who assert that ‘eating when in stressful circumstances or when thinking stressful thoughts interferes with digestion’ may have more behind them then just ‘wishful thinking’! Breathing deep in the belly also stimulates the right hemisphere of the brain, our relaxing, imaging and movement brain, which is responsible for clear distant vision.  Myopes and presbyopes both need to relax and switch on the right brain, so why not start by breathing deeply?  It’s time efficient (you have to do it all the time anyway), inconspicuous (everyone else is doing it too!) and is one of the best starting points to good vision habits. 

Breath in your body. What parts of your body move when you breathe?  In yoga class we lie down and place our hands in different locations on our rib cage.  Breathing deeply, we feel how very much the ribs can move.  Out and up, the range of movement is astonishing when you breath deeply into the belly and give your awareness to allowing, even encouraging the ribs to move, all the way in and out.  Now like many others who are working a lot on the computer these days, upper body tension is a constant issue for me. So I was very intrigued when the chiropractor was working in the area of my neck and started talking about tension in the ribs.  So often our concept of the rib cage is of something below the chest.  But of course the rib cage is an articulated unit that extends from waist to neck, front and back, and its state can have an impact on the condition of your spine, neck and shoulders.  Practicing full relaxed breathing then, will also have a loosening effect on the entire upper body.

Mouth or nose? Breathing through the nose with awareness activates nerve receptors inside the nasal cavities that stimulate the frontal lobes of the brain, triggering the parasympathetic nervous system. This has a calming effect on the brain and emotions.  Nostril breathing also warms and filters the breath; allowing cleaner air and more oxygen to be taken into the body then mouth breathing. Any of the following breathing activities can include a mouth exhalation, but wherever possible inhale through the nose as a general principle.

In part 2 of this article we will discuss the lungs and their emotional connections, smoking, addiction, and how to use sound for therapeutic benefit.

Now I would like to guide you through three breathing practices (two here and one in part 2 of this article) that I have found the most useful in my life and work. These are part of the yoga tradition of ‘pranayama’, which connects the breath with the flow of life energy.  The first one is a breath that can be used constantly, and also greatly increases the effectiveness of the following two activities when used at the same time.
 
The One-Part Breath: The Ujjayi (ooo-jai-yee) Breath
Slowing and consciously controlling your breath is an important step in using your breathing as a tool for health and happiness.  This breath allows us to lengthen our inhalation and exhalation to get the most from the two following activities.  It can be used at any time that you want to calm and centre yourself, without needing a lot of thought. It’s very simple and involves closing the throat slightly as you breathe both in and out.  Imagine that you are going to snore but the sound is made only in the throat.  Find a way to make the space in your throat smaller so that the air makes a sound as it flows through.  It can be a quiet steady sound that may make you think of a calm Darth Vader (he wasn’t always so angry).  Breathe in as deeply into your belly as possible. The first practice, and the way to use this when stressed, is just to breathe deeply and slowly, all the way in and all the way out with the slow steadiness of the Ujjayi breath. 

I ask vision students to notice the times when they are breathing shallowly or unconsciously holding their breath, and suggest at any time they notice themselves doing this to immediately and consciously use a deep slow Ujjayi breath for a few minutes, even as they continue whatever they are doing.  Before long the body will automatically slip into this breath whenever you start to stress and breath less - and lo and behold, you have formed a good vision habit for life.

When practicing your Ujjayi breath for the purpose of improving breathing in general, do the following a few times as well:
Lying down on your back on a rug or padded mat, with your head flat on the floor or with just a roll under the neck, bend your legs and put your feet flat on the floor or up on a chair. With each inhalation allow your belly to expand, and your ribs and chest to move outwards. Use the slowness of the inhalation to let the breath trickle into every area of your chest and abdomen. Take the time to consciously relax each rib and muscle and allow them to move outward.  You can hold the in breath for a count of 2 to 4 and relax your torso as much as possible.  Then exhale with the slow breath and allow all parts you expanded earlier to soften and ease back into their starting position.  Then pull in these areas to expel the last of the breath. Breathe in again and continue in this way for 5 to 10 minutes.  

The next activity is great to practice when you want to stimulate the two hemispheres of your brain in a strong way, and also calm yourself.  This breath stimulates and soothes every part of you, with balance. 

The Two-Part Breath: The Alternate Nostril Breath.
Sit in a comfortable upright position, with straight spine. Take one hand and fold down your ring and little fingers.  Place your index and middle fingers on the centre of the bridge of your nose.  Now place your thumb on the nostril on the side it is on and press gently but firmly enough to completely close that nostril. Using either a normal steady breath or the Ujjayi breath, breathe all the way in, deeply into the chest and belly, through the open nostril. Now breathe out fully through this nostril, expelling all the air possible.  Close the open nostril now with your two smallest fingers, and lift your thumb. Now breathe all the way in, then all the way out, through this nostril only.  Continue alternating for the duration of this practice.  You can benefit from doing this for 2 minutes or 2 hours, whatever feels good and you can fit in.

For a variation, you can hold the breath at each fully in stage, even closing both nostrils and closing your eyes for a count of 4.  You can do this at each fully out stage as well.

This article will continue with Breathing and Eyesight Part 2.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 at 12:48 am and is filed under Vision Improvement Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.