Relief For Tired Eyes – Try Palming

After a long week of work, are your eyes tired or dry? Having trouble focusing on the screen or your favourite book? Try Palming – it can help to relax muscles and improve lubrication in the eye, relieving strained, dry, and tired eyes. It also may help to reduce headaches.

Hi this is Dana Ranahan from Body Works Sports Physiotherapy in North Vancouver and today I want to talk about headaches and vision.

If you have headaches, neck pain, visual strain, dry or tired eyes, it might connect to long periods of reading or looking at screens.

One technique you can try is called palming, which I learned from an optometrist I’ve worked with. Basically we use our hands to put some pressure on our eyes, which helps to relax the muscles and lubricate the eye. It also helps to lessen tension and headaches.

So the technique that we use is:

  • Put both hands over your face, covering so your fingers are crossing each other
  • You can rest your elbows on your desk and put your palms over your eyes, then just resting there.
  • Don’t put too much pressure on the eyes, just letting it relax for a minute or two.

This can help your eyes feel much more relaxed. It may also help lessen headaches and increase fluid in the eyes, so they don’t feel so dry.

If you have any other questions, or if there are any other topics you might be interested in, please let us know and we’d be happy to put some information out there to help you along.