Taking time to care for one’s eyes leads to greater health and wellness. One of the biggest keys to better vision is relaxation. When eyes are relaxed, they are able to see with more ease. Here are five principles of natural vision improvement:

Relaxation - Periodically during the day, close the eyes and cover with your palms for five natural breaths, allowing eyes to deeply relax. Yoga classes, power naps and power walks also create pathways to de-stress and promote deep relaxation, which eyes love. Use the 20/20/20 mantra: Every 20 minutes, focus on an object that’s 20 feet away, for 20 seconds. Focus your awareness on how deeply the eyes can relax.

Circulation - Happy eyes have healthy circulation. One way to allow the eyes to relax and enhance circulation is to walk every day in nature while breathing deeply. Bonus points given for removing glasses or contacts during the walk—this will relax eyes even more. Another way is to gently massage forehead, hairline, temples and along eyebrows. This will increase circulation while gently releasing tight, overworked eyes.

Flexibility - Flexible eyes have greater relaxation, fluidity and circulation, just like a well-stretched yogi. Try this: Gaze at your thumbnail held six to 12 inches from your eyes with a gentle, slow breath. Now, gently shift your focus to an object 10 to 20 feet in the distance. Keep eyes and breath relaxed. Shift back and forth between thumbnail and the 20-foot object six times.

Awareness - As we learn to be aware of how our eyes are feeling, we start to notice just how often they are tight, dry and maybe even painfully irritated. Awareness can tell us when to stop, rest and relax our eyes or do some nearand- far focusing or even drink water. The more aware we are as we do relaxation practices, the faster the benefits of sharper and easier vision are noticed.

Balance - Balance is just as important for our eyes as we age, as for our body. It is important to teach our eyes to work in concert with each other. When eyes are strong, they’ll be able to focus together on a single point at the same time, which will help ease strain when reading and looking at objects.

Ree Coleman is a Certified Bates Method Teacher of Natural Vision Improvement. For more information, visit BetterVision.guru.