Home Exercises - Jump Convergence Treatment for Convergence Insufficiency

The orthoptist will tell you and/or show you in clinic how to do the exercises and tell you how long to do them for. They may also change the exercises especially for you. The orthoptist will also tell you how important it is to relax your eyes after the exercises.

Instructions

It is better if you get someone to read you these instructions as you do the exercise, to help you.

1. Keeping your head straight, hold a pen with your arm out straight in front of you, in line with your eyes.

2. First look at something far away like a clock on the wall or a photo on the wall across the room, (at least 3 metres away). This should be right in front of you while you’re looking straight ahead.

3. After looking at the far away object, slowly count to three, then look back at the top of the pen held in front of you. Make sure the pen still looks like one pen and not like two pens (double vision).

4. Now look at the far away object and while doing this, move the pen a bit closer to your face (3 - 4cm). Then look back at the pen and make sure it still looks like one pen, not two pens.

5. If the pen doesn’t look like one pen, keep looking at it and make your eyes work hard to ‘pull’ the two pens back together to make one pen again. Once you can only see one pen, try to keep it like that and slowly count to 10.

6. If you can’t make the pen look like one pen again, even when you try hard, try moving the pen back a little bit (around 2cm).

7. Repeat this ‘jumping’ exercise, looking far away and near again, moving the pen a bit closer to your nose each time you look back at it.

8. Remember to RELAX YOUR EYES after this exercise, this could be looking far away for 5-10 minutes or even closing your eyes for a few minutes.

• Try and make sure you’re trying hard to ‘pull’ your eyes in, every time you look at the pen. It might feel like you’re going cross-eyed while doing this. This is normal and needed to get the best results.

• This exercise will get harder as the pen gets closer to your face.

• Your eyes might feel more tired, and you may get some eye ache in the beginning.

• If the pen looks like two pens, try not to make it look like one pen again by blinking lots or by closing one eye. This will not exercise the eye muscles. Try to blink normally when you are doing the exercise.

It is really important that you attend your appointments once exercises are started so we can see how you are getting on. This also allows us to change the exercises if it’s needed. If you can’t attend an appointment, please contact the team on the number below: 01253 953457.