The eyes are an extension of the brain and so knowing ways in which you can use your visual system to influence behaviour can help optimise productive energy, emotional regulation and quality sleep.
More Productive Energy
Whether you are looking for more energy for a mentally or physically productive challenge, neuro-ophthalmology research on how the eyes influence our behaviour shows that what we see influences how we think and therefore how we behave.
Being In Sight Of The Goal
For exercise challenges, such as long-distance running, athletes have demonstrated how the narrowing of visual focus is key for maintaining motivation. While running, they focus their visual attention on a particular marker at a reachable distance - making that their goal to reach. Having a spotlight-type visual focus puts you into a higher energy expenditure mode than if a goal was out of sight. This is because energy conservation is the priority when the goal is out of sight and higher energy output is implemented when the goal is within sight. This idea could be applied to goal motivation outside of exercise goals. Having a goal within sight by having reachable steps brings a bigger goal into focus.
Increase Brain Cross-Talk
Ideally, you want as much cross-talk within the brain across the two brain hemispheres. The corpus callosum is the connective area of nerve bundles which could be likened to the fibre optic wires. The more connected your left and right brain hemispheres, the higher the bandwidth the brain can access due to the two hemispheres working together and sharing information across to each other. The brain engages in this cross-talk between hemispheres as it consolidates memories during REM or Rapid Eye Movement sleep (from which EMDR therapy or ‘Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing’ is derived).
Rather than being left for right brain dominant, you can rebalance your brain and body for accessing a more robust nervous system state. Before starting a session at the gym, an idea could be to prime your nervous system by doing a mobility session that involves cross-body eye and body movement. This could be exercises such as opposite raised knee taps, bird dog, or crunches on the diagonal.
Visual focus tips for productivity while working at a screen:
- Set up your desk in front of a window to allow for long-distance gazing when you look up from the screen.
- If you find your shoulders feeling achy, keyboard height can be a factor for tight shoulders but so can having fixed eyes for too long. A trick is to move just your eyes in a diagonal tracking pattern (look upper left to bottom right and vice versa) and your shoulder strain should find instant relief.
- Clear your visual field from distractions. Turn your phone upside down and on silent so that notifications don’t catch your eye. Keep a post it note in sight of the top 3 tasks that are the most productive or profitable actions you can take to keep them in focus.
Eye Movement For Emotional Regulation
Using eye movement is a natural subconscious way we regulate our emotions. You’ve probably heard ‘chin up’ when you are feeling down but literally looking up does lift your nervous system out of feeling emotions as deeply. Equally looking down connects your brain to collect more internal information if you have something to contemplate, as referenced by the statue The Thinker by Rodin.
When stressed by anger or fear, eyes tend to become fixed in focus. A way to calm the nervous system out of stress is to reorient the eyes to a wider perspective via a peripheral field of vision. You can do this by going for a quick walk which expands your vision by having things pass by your peripheral. A walk on a treadmill does not have the same effect for this purpose but walking up a hill to a viewpoint amplifies this benefit to your nervous system, especially if there is a panoramic view to enjoy!
Sleep
Hormone production is influenced by the light your eyes capture. One example of this is your circadian clock, which is set by light which sets your body's sleep schedule. Getting out in sunlight as close to sunrise as possible and watching the sunset is a key way to balance your sleep-wake cycle. If it is winter time, aligning artificial lights to sunrise and sunset is the next best available option, by using light up alarm clocks and colour filter settings on screens to cancel out blue light after sunset hours.
If you want to drift off to sleep quickly, use an eye movement pattern that brings your brain into a lower theta state by keeping your chin level, looking up and slowly blinking (while keeping the eyes up position). This eye trick mimics how babies naturally fall asleep by inducing a drowsy state. This technique to reach theta brain wave state is also useful if you want to go into meditation or have a power nap during the day (- try having an espresso just before a nap for a wake-up boost!)
Given how our visual focus impacts how we think and behave, keeping these ideas in mind can help focus for greater health and wellbeing.
