131 - Vision and the Nervous System: Three Practices To Help Expand Awareness
In this solo episode of Threshold Moments, we explore the powerful relationship between vision and the nervous system. Most of the sensory information entering our brains is visual, yet stress can dramatically narrow our field of awareness, creating both physical and psychological tunnel vision.
When we enter fight-or-flight states, our gaze often becomes fixed, our attention narrows, and our ability to perceive new options decreases. This episode offers three simple practices designed to help expand awareness, support nervous system regulation, and create a greater sense of safety and possibility.
Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Hello, welcome to Threshold Moments. Today, we are looking at vision and the nervous system. I will give you th- three tools today to use to practice when you're feeling like you have tunnel vision, and that might be a psychological tunnel vision when you're feeling stressed, when you're feeling all or nothing, to do a little visual reset and see how it feels in your body.
Remember that every body is different
For a while now, I have been sharing with you all the interesting aspects of the reticular activating system, the part of our brain that is [00:01:00] letting in just a tiny amount of information of sensory input that is coming in every second. So 11 million bits of sensory input coming into our brain, into our consciousness every second.
40 gets through Which means there are so many shades of truth. There are things that people say to us that we physically don't hear and don't process. There are things around us that have always been there that we do not see. Somebody did a nervous system class with me, and she said, "The most amazing thing happened.
I was driving through my town, and I said to my husband, 'Oh my gosh, look at that. Has that building always been there?'" And he's like, "Yes, love, it has been there for the 20 years that we have lived here." There are things that we don't [00:02:00] notice because it doesn't seem important to our systems. Our systems like things that seem new and flashy, things that seem like they would be dangerous that we should look out for, or anything that is going to back up a bias that we have, a belief that we have It was not until recently that I realized that of those 11 million bits, that the 10 million were visual.
I do believe that so much of this must be very hard to actually document, and that person to person, there has got to be enough variety. But the ratio is still staggering, and it made me think about the different nervous system tools we have and about what happens to our vision when we get stressed.
There's one tool that I have been using more recently this year. I remember seeing Elena Brower do it [00:03:00] 15 years ago when we were both recording at a studio together, and my understanding is that it is It is a practice that has been around for thousands of years. It's an Ayurvedic technique, and it tends to promote deep relaxation and is calming to the nervous system.
This practice is called eye palming, and so you can give it a try. And I'll also say that they use something like this in neurosomatic intelligence, where you take the base of your hands and you rest it on the top of your cheekbone right around the orbital rim As your hands rest here, as the base of your palm rests here, the rest of your palm will cup your eyes so that there is room around your [00:04:00] eyeballs and the hand, the fingers are up on your forehead.
When you close your eyes, your awareness tends to go inward, and we tend to scan internal thoughts, internal feelings. So we leave the eyes open, which allows the attention and the scanning to go outward, but the sensory input decreases dramatically. And so when the amount of information coming in lowers by around ten million bits, the system can relax more.
It feels important to me that the cue here is actually to leave the eyes open. And when you do that, you can notice what happens to your breath I'm literally recording a podcast with my hands over my [00:05:00] eyes right now
What happens to your breath when your eyes are open? What happens to your thoughts when the eyes are open, but there is nothing to perce- perceive externally If it feels stressful for you, you'd say, "Oh, this isn't for me." If you have a hard time noticing your interoception of like, "I can't even tell if something's stressful or relaxing," you can do a range of motion test.
You could put your arm like a goalpost so that your left arm would go out 90 degrees at the armpit, bend 90 degrees at the elbow, and the fingertips would be facing the ceiling. And you would use your right hand to hold the left shoulder in place and then just rotate the arm so the fingers go from p- pointing up towards the ceiling towards pointing out in front of you and [00:06:00] possibly all the way down to the ground, and you see your range of motion.
And if the range of motion gets less after doing this tool, you'd say, "Oh, maybe this tool isn't for me now." And if it gets to be greater, you'd say, "Actually, this seems to be useful for me." You can test both sides. You can also do a range of motion test of just moving your head, looking all the way to the right and all the way to the left.
This is a tool that can be really useful after hours on the computer or 20 minutes on the computer. Just a little reset so there's less filtering for your system to do.
Another one that I shared with you on this podcast, I shared it on The Widening podcast. So again, when we get stressed, our vision tends to go forward. Our head tends to go forward in space, and if [00:07:00] you all were to take a second to allow your head to go forward in space And then notice what happens to your breath
The eyes look forward. It's not uncommon that the, the body might go more upright, and it has this feeling of like, "I have something to do. I need to get this thing done. What's the next thing I need to get done?" And we begin to go into a fight or flight state where we will go back to old patterns that we've done before, old s- problem-solving patterns that have worked before, and we may not be able to get an updated pattern or even see other options that are available to us when we're in fight or flight.
And our actual visual range tends to be forward and block out the periphery. So when you take your head back in space a little bit, or you imagine looking at a sunset, or you look at a sunset, or you look out to the forest, or you look at the horizon, the [00:08:00] head naturally comes back in space. And notice what happens to your breath
And as soon as your vision goes more peripheral, the breath tends to slow and it signals to your body that you are not in a fight or flight state. I remember when I was working with professional athletes, there was also a golf coach in there who did mental training, and he would have those athletes look at a point five inches beyond the ball to the right and five to the left and say, "Look at those two points and then try to think of anything else."
So you could even do it with your hands. You could take a hand five to 10 inches away from center. I'm taking it just outside my shoulder and just outside my shoulder on the other side and trying to keep both of those hands within my attention and my view[00:09:00]
And noticing how many other thoughts can go through
So tool number two is widening your perspective, which generally will do that for you emotionally and mentally as well. We're going to physically widen your perspective either through moving the head back and breathing or taking one hand wide and then the other hand wide and trying to see both points at once.
The last tool that I love is one that we do every M- Wednesday in my Juice class. You can do this in a variety of ways, and again, you might wanna test before and after. It may be too much for some systems. This one is putting a thumb directly out in front of you, so your arm is going straight and your thumb is out in front of you.
You're going to look at your thumb with your eyes [00:10:00] and begin to bring your thumb up towards the ceiling and rotate it all the way up and follow it with your eyes, and then allow your head to go with it. Sometimes people will incorporate opening the mouth, almost like yawning. And I move this very slowly, coming all the way around until you come back down towards the bottom and back up towards center
This is one of the easiest resets for me, and it may not be for everybody. There are a variety of ways that you can utilize this The reason why I love this is it includes the vestibular system along with your ocular system, and you are scanning, so kind of orienting to your space in a smooth circular movement.
So again, if I'm in [00:11:00] fight or flight, my eyes are going forward, my head is going forward, and everything is forward. When I take my head back and I look into the distance and I look up, but I'm also looking to my side and I'm looking behind my shoulder, and I'm not scanning for threat, I'm noticing something so simple.
I'm noticing my thumb. I often feel a sense of awe when I do this, and I immediately start to feel calm and centered. And again, I feel a sense of awe, and I love doing this move to a fast song so I can feel like even when the environment is really fast, I can use my eyes and my vision to take it beyond forward, to widen it to the horizons.
But there is also something so incredible about not only including the vestibular system in the eyes, but also beginning to bring in an awareness of the space behind [00:12:00] you over and over and over again. This would be a different podcast as people begin to attune to space behind them. It again tends to take their physical body from leaning forward to being more centered or even slightly back, which again signals a sense of centeredness and safety.
It takes us out from the forward thinking and more into present time feeling
I hope these three tools were helpful for you. If you want to learn more, please check out other Threshold Moment podcasts where there are mini musings, where you'll hear all different tools and ways to orient the nervous system that have been highly useful for so many people. And you could subscribe to my newsletter as well, where you will hear weekly or biweekly insights to nervous system orientation, [00:13:00] tools that could be useful.
And last but not least is signing up for 21 days of support, which is totally free, and it's one little tool each day that is so simple that might even save you time. Taking a nice big inhale if you'd like. An exhale of your choice. Thank you so much for joining me today.