Strabismus, or as they commonly call is crossed eyes, is a condition that can be identified when both the eyes of a person don’t look at the same place at the same time. This condition arises because of the poor ability of the eye to focus. Although it is generally associated with heredity, and is commonly found to occur in kids and toddlers, it can also occur in adults who have gone through problems, trauma or suffering from medical conditions like diabetes.

While surgery is the only way to cure strabismus, optometrists now recommend that patients try to carry out some simple exercises to help them recover from the situation and improve eye coordination after the surgery. Here is a look at those exercises for strabismus.

1. Brock String

Developed by the Swiss Optometrist Frederick Brock, this exercise requires you to have a five foot long string with three differentially colored beads. What you need to do is secure one end of the string to something stationary while putting the three beads on it at equal distance. Now you need to bring the other end of the string close to your nose.

Now you must shift your focus from one bead to the other, observing a consistent pattern. As you shift your focus, the bead you are looking at must appear at the intersection of two identical strings forming doubles of other beads. Or simply put, it must form an X. If the eyes are not focused properly, you won’t get that X.

2. Pencil pushups

The second exercise is based on the focus technique. It goes like this – get both your eyes to focus at a fixed point. Now stretch your arm holding a pencil that points away from you. Focus on the pencil and slowly move it toward the bridge of your nose. Continue to move and focus as long as the image of the pencil gets blurry in vision. Termed as an ocular workout, this exercise helps to strengthen the eye muscles and is also known as convergence exercise.

3. Barrel cards

The last one that we have is a simple technique based on drawing three barrels of progressive size in red and green (lengthwise) on the two sides of a card. Now hold on to the card vertically with your nose against it in such a way that the largest barrel is the farthest. Stare at it until you can see just one image, with the two colors and the other two images of barrels getting doubled. Maintain the gaze for approximately five seconds, and repeat the same with the remaining barrels that you made.

These simple and handy workouts can actually help your eyes recover from the problem of strabismus help the eye(s) building stronger muscles.

While it might not appear to be much of a problem to us, strabismus is quite bad in developing countries. This is simply because people don’t have access to basic health care, much less to specific eye care. That said, professionals like Dr. Haines and the Give Me Sight Foundation are pouring their heart out to help such people in need of treatment for eye conditions like Strabismus. If you want to contribute towards helping give the gift of sight and self-confidence, then be a part of the organization and join hands with them for a better future of humanity.