Vision Therapy Exercises You Can Do At Home | Accent Eyes

What Is Vision Therapy?

Vision therapy is a form of optical training through repeated exercises that are targeted to improve binocular vision, or the coordination between your eyes. Binocular vision is essential to depth perception. Vision therapy aims to overcome many vision disorders through the implementation of regular practice and exercise. Some of these conditions include:

• Convergence Insufficiency – A nearsighted problem that impedes binocular vision up close. This is one of the most common suspects of double or blurred vision.
• Amblyopia – Amblyopia occurs when one eye becomes dominant over the other, resulting in imbalanced binocular vision. An eye patch is often all that’s needed to strengthen the amblyopic eye.
• Trauma Recovery – Brain or optic nerve injuries such as a concussion can affect cognitive functions and field of vision. Vision therapy is perfect for recovering trauma victims.
• Strain Relief – After long periods of focused vision your eyes become tired. This is especially common with the development of TVs, computers, and smartphones.

Vision Therapy Exercises at Home

One of the best parts about vision therapy exercises is that you can do them anywhere to warm up your visual acuity, relieve optical stress, or correct disorders. This allows you to improve the response speed between your eyes and body.

• Pencil push ups are a common exercise used to treat convergence disorders. You can do this anywhere by holding a pencil at arms length from your nose. Draw the pencil in slowly between your eyes until you experience double vision, then move the pencil back. Repeat this several times per day for the best results.
• The figure eight is a great exercise to warm up your muscles and can increase your eye’s flexibility.
• Patching is the most common treatment for amblyopia and it can be applied to a variety of conditions. Over time this improves the strength and coordination of the weaker eye. You can also do other exercises along with this, such as the figure eight or pencil push ups.