Looking vs Seeing (and how to do both)
Just as we can absent-mindedly hear the words that someone is saying to us without actually absorbing a shred of it in a meaningful way, we can absent-mindedly cast our eyes upon a room, a landscape, a whatever without actually seeing a single thing. Try it out - look around the room or space you’re in right now - I’m almost certain you’ll notice something new!
So many of our daily experiences are contained and revealed in the eyes - we raise the brows and widen the eyes in surprise; we narrow our vision and furrow our brow in annoyance, we squint in the sun, we rapidly scan when anxious or harden them when we’re raging.
Do any of these movements consciously and for a prolonged period of time, and you’ll start to feel the building pressure. Go on - really try widening or squinting your eyes and hold that position for a while, noticing what you feel and where you feel it as you go.
The eyes themselves are connected to the brain through the optic nerve, which is an extension of your central nervous system - the body’s processing centre responsible for awareness, movement, thinking, speech, and the senses. That’s a lot of pressure for the peepers!
Richard Strozzi-Heckler - founder of Strozzi Institute (an industry leader in the world of somatics), author, NATO advisor, psychologist and seventh degree black belt Shihan - has a few things to say about this:
“If you bring your attention to your eyes and let that band—if you think of it as a band around your eyes that goes all the way around your head, kind of like one of those sweat bands, but it’s really at the level of your eyes, the tissues above and below—and you let that relax.
And so, sometimes I think people have these times, they’re talking to somebody else. They look in their eyes and they go, “Oh, they’re really not here.” They’re off thinking someplace else, or their eyes are hardened in such a way that they’re really unable to listen to me or to let me in.
…if we keep our eyes stiff—our eyes are connected to the brain through the optic nerve—that rigidity or stiffness in the eyes, at a very subtle level, will have the brain contract. So, if you imagine we are doing that 24/7, that contraction will, at some point, begin to precipitate through the central nervous system. So, just by being in our heads a lot, not seeing the world, not letting our vision open, relaxing those bands, relaxing the optic nerve, that would begin a contraction that will start to flow through our whole body. Subtle, but present.”
So, can you relate to either:
a) talking to someone who is clearly distracted and unable to really hear what you’re saying; someone who is looking at you without seeing you, and how frustrating it is to immediately lose any sense of connection to them
b) being the person who looks without seeing and who isn’t really present in the moment or truly aware of what’s going on around them
c) a feeling of tension, soreness, stiffness or pain in your eyes, your forehead, your temples, and/or the back of your head due to rigidity in the eyes
Yeah? ‘Cos same, on all three counts.
Which is why I’ve made a (free!) mini DIY facial massage tutorial that also doubles as a moment of sweet relief for the central nervous system to help you relax the eye band and the optic nerve and massage the tissue - trust me when I say it feels lavish at the end of a long day!
If you want it, it’s yours below.
And before I forget…
it’s my birthday month and I’ll be celebrating all month long with my pen pals! Join my mailing list for a free gift like this video (and other cool, useful stuff!) every week for the month of June.
