Movementality Education

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Eye-lates - why wouldn’t you train your eyes?

Modified with permission from Movementality - read the original 2017, client focused blog here.

In 2016, I stumbled across a webinar series introducing new ways of assessing and working with the body, from the focal point of brain training rather than purely movement and corrective exercise. One of those presenters was Annette Verpilot, and she opened with a fantastically simple but powerful clarification on what posture is: the result of sensory input going to the Central Nervous System. Basically, everything between the feet and eyes provides information to the brain on what we feel, and how to move, at any given point in time. So there is a lot of information to be processed right? And when we think of treatment strategies for injuries or postural dysfunction, the modern day theory is to focus on muscle and joint mechanics. Now they are a part of the equation for sure, but how much do we challenge our brain and stimulate our senses to better control our posture? Annette really emphasized that if you aren't doing this, you are missing the boat!! (cue my favorite slide of her presentation...)

Image courtesy of Posturepro

This is where she introduced the system Posturology: focused on stimulating sensory receptors in order to create permanent postural changes, without any of the historically prevalent manual therapy techniques.

The main focus points include the eyes, skin, feet and jaw.

Eyes - they take in everything around us, and if the muscles of the eyes aren't balanced, then it is pretty safe to assume the body will reflect some compensations.

Skin - the largest organ of the body and full of a vast network of nerves that feed the brain with information.

Feet - most often our connection to the ground. It is estimated that around 72% of people have an asymmetrical loading pattern through their feet. Safe to say this will impact on everything else upwards of their feet.

Jaw - developing at the same time as the eyes, ears, and spine as a foetus, the structural and/or muscular imbalances at the jaw impact the rest of the head and neck, and often also the spine.

Annette then delved into a bit of the anatomical connections between the eyes and the muscles around our head and shoulders, via our cranial nerves. Due to the nature in which our optical nerve passes through the brain, there is some pretty high level integration with almost all areas of the brain. From a physical stand point, an asymmetry at the eyes will have an impact on cervical rotation and shoulder flexion. It is even questioned if there is a connection to blood pressure, heart rate, abdominal strength and posture. At an anecdotal level, when working with clients to train their visual system, I have been able to see dramatic shifts in both the range, and ease of movement around the joints we were focusing on. 

So now that we have spent a few moments talking about how important our eyes are, what do we do to look after them? Well simply put, we train them in the same way we would train the rest of the body. We focus on certain movements to facilitate greater strength or flexibility in areas we feel we lack. As with the body, some things will shift quickly, and some things will be for intensely tied to other aspects of our physiological and mental health and will take more than some eye movements to correct. But here is a fun fact for you - the muscles of the eyes actually pull on the eyeball and change its shape, allowing the light entering our eye to land at the right depth. So with vision issues, if we keep strengthening the muscles, we’ll eventually reshape the eye ball and get clearer vision. I appreciate that may sounds far fetched compared to other treatments for the eyes but I’ve succeeded in doing this for clients in the past.

Below is a basic eye exercise to help the connections of our left and right hemispheres of the brain, and the coordination of our eyes.

Hold a pen with your dominant hand. Start 10cm from eyes, and draw a smooth clockwise circle for eyes to track. Start small, gradually working bigger. Progress to infinity symbol, in multiple planes of motion to help with near-far tracking.

Monitoring whether the eyes are tracking the movement. Refocus whenever necessary. Aim for 3x a day, 30s each time.

Although it is a simple exercise, it has a massive impact on the muscles of your eyes, which will impact immediately how you interpret your environment. I also find it helps get rid of a headache, especially if I've been at the desk all day.

We cover this exercise and several more in our Eye-lates workshop - check it out online and start taking your clients through it. Listen for key comments from clients to figure out when this would be best implemented, ranging from long hours at the desk or computer, through to stiff joints and significant imbalances in strength between limbs.