Why Practice Screen-Free?
Eye Strain is going to show up as one of the most damaging side effects of this pandemic. We stare at our screens ten times more often than we did before this whole thing got started, and it was over the top back then. Blue Light has been shown to contribute to serious vision disturbances, and staring straight ahead locks up your neck, putting your brain on high-alert. It’s what your eyes do when you need to Fight, Freeze, or Flee.
Conversely, the Buddha is always shown with the outer edges of his eyes soft and elongated toward his temples. You may not have noticed, but he is represented this way over and over again for a reason. Learning to relax your eyes, expand your Peripheral Vision and ‘Gaze Within’ actually reduces the amount of cortisol in your body, helping you lose weight, fall asleep, and achieve a more effortless Meditation Practice.
Overuse of Centralized Vision leads to Migraines, Neck Pain and Shallow Breathing.
In addition to screens narrowing your vision, chronic stress can also wreak havoc on the long-term health of your eyes. Persistent stress raises bloodstream levels of cortisol, damaging your arteries and veins. This even affects the tiny blood vessels leading to your eyes, which can create conditions like glaucoma and optic neuropathy, resulting in serious vision loss over time. The combination of Screens and Stress is a vicious circle for your eyes..
As you are reading this or performing any other activity that requires you to stare at a phone, tablet, or computer screen, your eyes are engaged in focusing light onto your macula in the center of your retina, the light-sensitive layer of tissue at the back of your eyes. Used in extreme, this is called Tunnel Vision, fine, sharp, straight-ahead vision. It’s the type of vision a lion uses when he is stalking his prey.
in Yoga and Meditation, we are encouraged to use Peripheral Vision, which spreads incoming light over a widespread and diffuse area of our retinas, relaxing the muscles around our eyes and, at the same time reducing the amount of stress hormones in our bodies Think of a bunny rabbit or a gazelle; these sweet animals have very wide soft eyes, and the ability to see in almost every direction. Working toward this type of vision is part and parcel of authentic Yoga & Meditation Practice, which is why you see the Buddha always using this type of gaze.
It’s become a given that we require Healthy Sleep to live a long happy life. It is also common knowledge that a regular Meditation Practice reduces disease-causing Stress. But it’s not well understood that to reap Yoga’s deeper physiological and psychological benefits, we need to reduce ‘Looking Outside of Ourselves’ when we are Practicing.
How can we begin to Practice Yoga without Screens, especially now during the pandemic?
Where can you receive the kind of support that will help you feel comfortable moving away from staring at the Yoga Teacher? Believe it or not, I have given this a lot of thought, especially since I am now offering Online Yoga via paid Subscriptions. “Hypocrite!, “you say. Yes, it’s true. I do offer fresh daily Livestream content and pre-recorded Videos to my Members. Breathing fully and deeply, without fear of spreading or catching Covid is my reasoning for that. But, truth be told, my prayer is that our Club Members - and all who are serious about their Yoga - begin to press the Pause Button and take several minutes or more to relax their eyes, sink deeper, and make personally-tailored adjustments that meet them where they are.
Trusting Your Own Yoga can be challenging. The instructor is supposed to be the expert, and what if you are doing it wrong? It’s not easy to buck the last three decades of large classroom American Yoga, no less an ancient revered tradition of surrendering to ‘The Guru’. Even in ordinary life, we are not often taught to trust our own perceptions.
But we are in a New Era; we need new Solutions. Our Stress Levels and Screen Use are through the roof. Adopting the ‘Buddha’s Eyes’ when you are Practicing, even just for a pose or two, may save your vision in the long run, reduce your cortisol levels immediately, and allow you to enter into more of what you came to your mat for in the first place - ‘Whole Body’ systemic relaxation.
If we try to do more of our Yoga using Peripheral Vision, softening the outer edges of our eyes, allowing a little bit less light to flow in - inviting that light to spread diffusely across the entire surface of our retinas in a wide and relaxed way, I believe we can come through this pandemic healthier people. We can emerge with a profoundly nourishing Inner Practice, in which we are the experts about the deepest needs of our own minds and bodies. Maybe, just maybe, this evolution toward more consistent Inner Gazing can become the Silver Lining in a very challenging time for Yogis everywhere. May it be so.
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Kate has been Practicing Yoga since 1979. Many of those years, there weren’t Studios or Teachers nearby. From the very beginning, she Practiced by Listening - to her breath, her spine, her Inner Guidance. Even though she has chosen to study for decades with instructors of international renown, she still believes there’s a Teacher inside of each of us that truly knows best.
Namaste!
