Aging

July 24, 2004

Aging Beautifully

Keep it SIMPLE Beauty Tip

Banishing Wrinkles

Every day, our eyes are placed

under severe working conditions—reading a manuscript, staring

at a computer screen, crunching numbers, and a whole host of other

jobs requiring intense focus and concentration. Even pleasurable

activities such as watching television, enjoying a novel, and sewing

can cause eyestrain when done for long periods of time. This can

result in fatigue, trigger migraine headaches, and worsen wrinkles

and bags under your eyes.

My answer to the quest for

vibrant, younger looking eyes? Treat the cause not the symptoms.

When your eyes are overworked and overfocused, the nerves and muscles

surrounding the eye become imbalanced, throwing you into a state

of sympathetic dominance. This causes you to tense and stress the

muscles of your eyes, which then creates those pesky wrinkles and

creases.

By practicing these eye exercises, you can move

to a state of parasympathetic dominance, which promotes the relaxation

response within your eyes and the tissues surrounding them, thereby

supporting the beauty of your eyes safely and naturally.

Both of these exercises can be done at your desk

or anywhere you are working, in order to break up periods of intense

mental focus and concentration. They are also nice to do before

bed, particularly if you like to read or watch television, since

they relax your entire body as well as your eyes. Doing these exercises

regularly will make your eyes feel more comfortable and relaxed.

Your vision will be clearer and sharper, and you will find colors

are more intense. Over time, these exercises will also help soften

the fine lines and wrinkles around your eyes.

Softening Your Gaze

This simple exercise is adapted from Paul Scheele’s groundbreaking

work on Photo Reading and can be done whenever you feel your eye

muscles beginning to tense.

1. Close your eyes and rest your arms at your sides.
2. Touch your eyes gently with the tips of your

   fingers. See if your eyes feel tense or even hard. Are you noticing

   a feeling of tightness or tension in the muscles that surround

   your eyes? If so, you need to soften your gaze.

3. Take several slow, deep breaths.
4. Open your eyes, but instead of gazing intensely

   at the fine print of the page or monitor, soften your gaze by

   widening your field of vision to focus on the entire page or screen.

   You should be able to see all four-corners of what you are looking

   at. Look at the white space of the margin and the areas between

   the paragraphs. As you do this, you will begin to feel the tension

   in your eyes melt away. You can also do this step if you are watching

   television by looking at the empty spaces on the screen.

5. Close your eyes again, continuing to breathe

   slowly and effortlessly.

6. Open your eyes. Repeat the process of softening

   your gaze while looking at the white spaces on the page.

Read More on Aging Beautifully:

Getting Started

Beautiful Skin: At What Price?

Beyond Moisturizer and Sunscreen

Acne? But I’m an Adult

Keep it SIMPLE Beauty Tip—Banishing Wrinkles

Nutritional Therapies

EFAs = Extremely Flawless Appearances

Foods to Avoid

Complementary Therapies

Aromatherapy for Hair Loss

Exercises for Varicose Veins