Move Your Eyes

If you are reading this, then your eyes are moving. But not much. A little side to side is all they move when reading. The muscles around your eyeballs aren’t killing themselves working. In fact, those eye muscles, the six extra-ocular muscles, are taking naps and time outs, catching up on their email…..things like that.

It wouldn’t matter except………..your eyes are about 70% of how you move. They send signals to your brain, telling it where you are in relation to everything else. If your extra-ocular muscles aren’t working, then the signals to your brain suffer.  Now your brain has a problem. It isn’t sure what’s going on with you. The brain likes to predict your movement, so it can keep you safe. If it can’t predict, because it doesn’t get signals, then you won’t move as well as you’d like.

Think I’m crazy and this is all hooey? Yeah, so does my mother……

Let’s try an experiment and this one is obvious: start from a corner of any room in your house or office. Make sure that there is a clear path to the opposite corner. Walk to that corner with your eyes open. Easy peasy, right? Now close your eyes. Walk to that corner again. Not so easy peasy this time. You slow down, you’re hesitant, your stance is wider, you’re unsure of where you are going, and in fact, your probably won’t be able to walk a straight line to the corner. You have removed vision (70% of signals) from your brain. Vision is important.

Here’s another experiment, a little more subtle: test a range of motion. Try touching your toes or bending backwards or twisting around to each side, trying to look behind yourself. Notice any difficulty. Not difficult? Stand on one foot with your eyes closed. Time yourself: one thousand one, one thousand two, etc. Test each foot. See how long it takes before you begin to wobble or put your other foot down.

Now let’s do some eyes drills: keep your face still, but move your eyes from one ceiling corner of the room to the opposite floor corner. Back and forth, back and forth. Focus each time on each corner, and repeat 20 times. Then change corners to the alternate ceiling corner to floor corner, 20 times. Then dart your eyes back and forth from ceiling corner to ceiling corner, and finally repeat floor corner to floor corner, 20 times for each set. By now, you have changed eye positions 80 times. It took you under 2 minutes.

Now retest the range of motion: touching your toes, bending backwards, twisting, and/or standing on one foot with eyes closed.

Did the whole exercise get easier? Or quicker? Or improve your range of motion?

That would be your brain getting better signals from a huge source, your eyes, improving your functionality.

So, improving your visual acuity improves how well you can move overall. The secret of aging well is moving move. More eye movements insure better brain function, insuring better quality of life.

That’s Aging Intelligently.