Self Portrait with Spectacles by Francisco Goya

by Nina

One of the requests we recently received was for information is about how yoga can help with eye health, including whether there is anything that helps prevent macular degeneration, what can you do/not do with cataracts, and what about just plain nearsightedness.

Because I knew that we had quite a bit of information about eye health on the blog already, I decided it was time for an overview on eye health and yoga. In this post I’ll start by providing links to overviews about eye health and yoga and then provide links to posts that address individual eye conditions. While we already have information about cataracts, glaucoma, and detached retina as well as other eye health topics, we do not yet have a post on macular degeneration, an eye condition I’m familiar with because both my father and his sister suffered from it. So, I wrote a short note about that condition under “Macular Degeneration” below.

But I want to start by saying something general about yoga and eye health. While it would be very nice indeed if yoga could help improve your eyesight or help prevent certain conditions from developing, right now there is no evidence of that, including—though there are claims to the contrary—from practicing yogic eye exercises (for more information on this, see “Yogic Eye Exercises” below). Oddly enough, the exception might be macular degeneration.

So, in general what we have here is information about how to practice if you have a given condition or problem. That’s because there are often certain poses you should NOT being doing because they could worsen the condition. Hopefully this information will help both practitioners with eye conditions as well as yoga teachers to help people preserve the vision they do have as well as possible.

Overviews on Eye Health

Balance and Aging (and Yoga) by Nina includes a short overview of aging and its effects on vision, including which compensatory yoga skills you can work on that will help you maintain the ability to balance with vision loss.

Friday Q&A: The Safety of Yogic Eye Exercises by Baxter provides an overview of three eye conditions, cataracts, detached retina, and glaucoma, including what they are and what might or might not help.

Glaucoma

This is a particularly important topic because glaucoma is a serious eye condition that can lead to blindness and there are definitely poses you should avoid if this is a condition that you have or are in the process of developing.

Friday Q&A: Practicing with Glaucoma by Baxter provides information about the condition and guidance for how to practice if you have it.

Alternatives for Inverted Poses by Nina provides alternatives for inversions for those who need to avoid them, which includes those with glaucoma.

Cataracts

Yoga After Cataract Surgery by Baxter provides information about the condition along with cautions for doing yoga after surgery.

Alternatives for Inverted Poses by Nina provides alternatives for inversions for those who need to avoid them, which includes those who have had cataract surgery.

Detached Retina

Friday Q&A: The Safety of Yogic Eye Exercises by Baxter provides a short overview of this condition with cautions for doing yoga after experiencing this.

Alternatives for Inverted Poses by Nina provides alternatives for inversions for those who need to avoid them, which includes who have had a detached retina.

Eye Floaters

Friday Q&A: Eye Floaters by Baxter discusses what the condition is and how you should approach your practice if you have them.

Alternatives for Inverted Poses by Nina provides alternatives for inversions for those who need to avoid them, which includes who have eye floaters.

Broken Blood Vessels

Friday Q&A: Broken Blood Vessels in the Eyes by Baxter provides information about this condition and guidance for how to practice if you have this condition.

Macular Degeneration

Macular degeneration is caused by thinning of the eye’s macula, which causes central vision—as opposed to peripheral vision—to become blurred or reduced. It’s a common eye disorder in people over 50 and can be hereditary, as there are several genes that are related to developing macular degeneration.

As far as I know, yoga doesn’t have poses or practices that can directly help prevent this condition. However, I did a bit of research about what does help, and it seems like you could use yoga indirectly to help prevent this. Please keep in mind that I’m not a doctor or scientist, so this is just me speculating.

I can’t find any information about movements not to do if you have macular degeneration. So, if you have this condition, check with your eye doctor just in case, asking especially about poses that put pressure on the eyes, which include inversions, partial inversions, and backbends where you drop your head back.

What Might Help

Both the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic say the following can help prevent macular degeneration from developing and/or worsening:

1. Maintain a healthy weight. Many yoga practitioners have said that yoga helps them maintain a healthy weight. Stress management in particular can help lower your cortisol levels, which is a hormone that stimulates your appetite, especially for sugar. See Not So Sweet: Cortisol and the Problem with Sugar  and Restorative Yoga Better Than Stretching For Reducing Subcutaneous Body Fat for information about cortisol. See Stress Management for When You’re Stressed for information about reducing stress.

2. Exercise regularly. Of course, an active yoga practice, including either static active poses or dynamic ones, counts as exercising. And it’s a good way to get a well-rounded type of exercise, though obviously other types of exercise provide different benefits.

3. Manage cardiovascular health and blood pressure. This is definitely something yoga can help with! It can help you maintain cardiovascular and heart health and even to lower high blood pressure. Of course, stress management in general is helpful for managing cardiovascular health and blood pressure (see Stress Management for When You’re Stressed). But you can also find specific information about cardiovascular health and blood pressure in the following:

Practicing with Glasses

Friday Q&A: Glasses and Balance by Baxter and Shari addresses the question about whether or not you should wear your glasses while doing balancing poses and other yoga poses.

Yogic Eye Exercises

Friday Q&A: The Safety of Yogic Eye Exercises by Baxter not only address whether or not these exercises are safe to practice but also discusses the lack of evidence for their benefits.

 

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