Soothe Eye Strain and Tension

This gentle guided practice introduces eye palming, a simple yoga-based technique to help soothe eye strain and reduce fatigue from screen use. You’ll be guided to use warmth, touch, and darkness to relax the muscles around the eyes while calming the nervous system. This short, accessible practice can be done at your desk and offers a refreshing reset for both mind and body. Ideal for relieving tension, headaches, and supporting focus throughout the day.

Transcript

Hello there and very warm welcome to this practice. My name's Jackie Barnett and today we're going to do a practice to help to soothe eye strain. Many of us spend many hours staring at screens these days and that can create tension, Eye strain and also fatigue and headaches as well. So this is a really simple yoga practice that can be done at our desk and I'll just show you first how we're going to do the practice and then we'll do it together so you can see what we're going to do and then we'll practice. So what we're going to do is rub our hands together until they get nice and warm and then what we're going to do is just cupping our hands so we're not touching our eyes at any point we're just creating little cups of nourishment with our hands that we're going to place very gently over the area there. So we're going to stay there for a few breaths so that gets all nice and soft and we have a rest there and then from here we're going to blink the eyes open and very gently come back to exposure to the light. So super simple, Very effective and it's just such a lovely reset not just for our eyes and the muscles around our eyes but it can be really helpful to just give us a nice break through the day. Touch is great for the nervous system, Stillness and darkness also really helpful. So this is what we're going to do now so let's get started. So first of all just rubbing your hands together nice and vigorously so they get nice and warm so just doing this for a few seconds so you can feel the warmth building up in your hands and then just creating gentle cups and lightly resting the cupped hands so they cover the area surrounding the eyes. We're not touching the eyes we're just gently resting the hands here and it's a very light touch. So noticing how it feels to experience the warmth of the hands and this can be so soothing for all of those muscles around the eyes and having the eyes shut here nice and gently and it might be nice here to take some deeper breaths so breathing into the lower belly and as you exhale just inviting the muscles around the eyes to soften and release as much as they want to and just taking another few breaths here breathing in all the way to the lower belly and softening on the exhale noticing how the eyes feel and just letting go and letting go and letting go really enjoying this moment of peace and calm eyes having a rest and not having to do anything right now other than soften feeling the soothing heat from the hands and when you feel ready to transition from the practice under the cupped hands just blinking the eyes gently open and then very gently starting to open the fingers so we're just gently coming back to bringing the eyes into the light and then just resting the hands down maybe just softening the shoulders and just noticing how that feels that can be such a helpful refresher not just for our eyes but also our nervous system and it's something that we can do several times a day so I'd really recommend building the habit of doing a little bit of eye palming through the day always making sure you don't touch your eyes you're just cupping very gently around them but it can be such a game changer for all that screen use we have so thank you so much for practicing with me today wishing you and your eyes well and looking forward to seeing you again soon take care