The eye has both internal and external muscles. The internal muscles control focusing and pupil size. The external muscles direct the eyes to the point of interest and keep the retinal image in constant slight motion.

Any muscle system is subject to fatigue when it is used continuously without periods of rest. Although muscles of the eye do not work against forces outside the eye, they do exert forces against each other, and they become “fatigued” from periods of continuous ocular activity. As eye muscles are not unique, they too show evidence of fatigue when visual tasks require added effort and concentration. And, they too recover their optimal levels of function after rest.

As explained above, eye muscles are pretty much like our body muscles that need rest and relaxation. When the eyes are abused beyond limit, vision problems set in. If our body benefit from exercises, the same is true with our eye muscles.

Dr. William Bates, is a New York ophthalmologist who developed a series of exercises for the eyes for the main purpose of improving eyesight. This way, use of lenses or surgery can be avoided.

It is believed that stress, tension and laziness of the eye brought about eye problems. For such reasons, Dr. Bates thought that eyes could be treated without resorting to vision correction using lenses, eyeglasses or surgery. The methods used initiated by Dr. Bates are actually old proven techniques that was devised at the beginning of 20th century. It is not surprising to know that many use this method until now.

The theory circulates around the belief that eye muscles get fixed on one particular scene and this causes strain to the eyes. Considering this information, an improvement between the optic nerve and brain could manifest through clear vision if eyes can be made to relax.

Medicine has ignored such method for eyesight improvement for unknown reasons despite the fact that there has been remarkable improvements among those who used Dr. Bates method. Improvements have been seen among short and long sighted individuals. Those with astigmatism, squints and lazy eyes also get benefit from Dr. Bates’ exercises.

Eye exercises are performed for about 30 minutes each day. Some of the exercise techniques used are palming, swinging, and daily color awareness.