As you’re reading this, start to become aware of your breathing. Don’t try to change it, just notice it as it is.
Now, for a minute or two, stop focusing on the individual words. Instead, relax your gaze and take in the whole screen and then everything around the screen, reaching the edges of your visual field.
You likely noticed that while you concentrated on reading, your breathing became shallow, centered in your chest and quick. In contrast, when you broadened your view, your breathing deepened, involved your abdomen more, and slowed down. You probably felt more relaxed, calmer, and happier.
When we narrow our gaze, our sympathetic nervous system kicks in. This system is part of the autonomic nervous system involved in the fight-or-flight response. It searches for threats and readies us to respond. Unfortunately, we often keep this system overactive, filling our bodies with stress hormones and maintaining a high state of alertness. We jump from one focus to another, stuck in a cycle of anxiety and over-vigilance.
Relaxing our gaze activates the parasympathetic nervous system instead. This part of the autonomic nervous system calms us down, bringing balance and allowing us to rest. This exercise can help us trigger a parasympathetic response, breaking the cycle of constant vigilance and helping us relax.
This technique brings about a quick change and is easy to do. It just involves changing how we use our eyes—relaxing our gaze and letting things be less sharply focused. While you might not be able to read or browse the internet with this relaxed vision mode, you can take breaks, have conversations, attend meetings, walk, or drive.
Another activity you can do with a relaxed gaze is meditation. This is a method I often suggest to make meditation more effective. The way we focus our eyes influences how we focus our minds. When our eyes are in sympathetic mode—narrowly focused—we tend to concentrate on just one thing. If we apply this to being mindful of our breathing, we usually only notice a small part of the experience, which doesn’t keep the mind engaged and leads to sensory deprivation. The mind then creates thoughts to fill this gap.
Our narrow focus, much like a flashlight, switches to noticing thoughts, which are usually more emotionally engaging than physical sensations of breathing. This results in the common cycle of focusing on breathing, getting distracted, and repeatedly bringing our attention back.
When our eyes are more relaxed during meditation, we can take in the whole scene of our breathing, making it a richer experience. We notice more sensations and the connections between them, like how abdominal sensations relate to those in the nostrils and back. Our experience becomes dynamic, interconnected, and even sensual.
Thoughts will still come up, but with a relaxed focus, more like an oil lamp casting light in all directions, we can be aware of both breathing and thoughts. This allows thoughts to pass through our awareness without getting carried away by them, making meditation much easier.
This simple shift can significantly change our meditation experience and our overall outlook on life.