MWAB Lesson 3.2: Convergence & Accommodation Applied

I incorporate convergence work as a regular feature in many of the yoga group classes I teach. It's really useful for almost everyone to work on, and especially so for groups where most of the participants spend a lot of time looking at screens.

In this video I show a few different ways to incorporate convergence work into a group flow class. Please note: unlike some other techniques where I might theme a class around working on a given technique and layer it in again and again in different ways throughout the class, vision work is intense! It can be placed into a class in many different ways, but I would incorporate it into a single class session only once.

That is to say, please don't ask your classes to do convergence work during warm-up, again during low lunge, again while standing in crescent warrior or warrior II, and again just before savasana. Pick one place to incorporate it, use it there, and always follow it up with a release or relaxation for the eyes before moving on to the next element of your class.

As with the infinity walk and VOR work, you can absolutely set convergence work up by beginning with an assessment of your choosing (based on the client or group in front of you), then do a convergence drill (whether from a yoga pose or simply seated/supine/standing), and then re-assess to see if the drill has improved your/your client's/group's mobility/balance/strength/coordination. But you can also choose to weave convergence work in as I do here, simply as part of a flow.

One of my yoga teachers, Yogi Charu, who spent a decade or so as an ascetic yogi living in a cave in the Himalayas, would teach very similar vision work towards the start of his classes and simply tell his students, "And now we are going to do some yoga for the eyes." You can introduce this work as simply as that, or you can get much more in-depth with your explanations, depending on the client or group you are working with.

Comments? Questions? Thoughts on how this could work with your clients? Ideas on how to connect this to other things you are studying or working on? Feel free to share in the comments below.