Use Your Eyes To Shift Your State

Welcome to Stretch—I’m Charlotte, a certified breathwork trainer and nervous system explorer. I believe we have all the tools we need right here in our body—we just need to learn how to use them. More energy? More motivation? Less rumination? It’s all there.

⏪ In the previous edition, I’m answering a question I’ve received many times over the last few months: running a marathon breathing only through your nose?! Why? How?

⏩ Today, we’re learning to, literally, see our eyes differently. Our eyes are sophisticated little tools for regulating our nervous system, and we can learn how to use them in a way that calm us down, improves focus and boosts creativity.

Soften your gaze for a moment.

Without moving your head, guide your eyes in a slow, deliberate circle – as if you're tracing the edge of a clock on the wall.

Feel the smoothness of this movement, the subtle stretch as your eyes reach each corner.

Let your eyes slowly close halfway, then three-quarters, then open them wide like you've just seen something surprising. You can direct them up toward your eyebrows, down toward your cheeks, or dart them quickly from side to side.

Play with these micro-movements.

Now focus on one single word on the screen.

One single letter.

And now expand your visual field, taking in as much of the space around you as possible without moving your head.

Notice how you can easily switch between these modes.

This conscious play with your eyes is more than just an exercise—it's a rediscovery of a powerful tool you've always had but perhaps never fully explored.

These delicate organs that move automatically throughout your day are completely under your conscious control. Each movement sends ripples of information through your nervous system, influencing your entire state of being.

How come the eyes are so powerful?

Because they’re pieces of brain. The only pieces of brain outside of the cranial vault.

It sounds strange but eyes aren’t just there to help us see things. Eyes were designed first and foremost to set the overall arousal state of the nervous system.

It makes sense when you think about it.

How would your brain, sitting in the darkness of your skull, know what time of day it is? How does it know whether to wake you up or to make you feel sleepy? How does it know what’s going on around you, and whether to make you feel vigilant or relaxed?

The brain relies on external cues to know what’s going on. That’s where the eyes come in. They’re responsible for instructing the brain, and then the brain takes care of the rest.

So to recap:

1. How you use your eyes has a powerful influence on your nervous system

2. Your eyes are under your conscious control

Do you see where I’m going? When I first learned about this, I immediately felt like it’s such a humongously wasted opportunity if we never take advantage of this!

3 ways to start treating your eyeballs as the powerful little tools they are ↓

01 Look far and wide (to relax your nervous system)

We spend most of our day indoor, staring at things up close, in some kind of tunnel vision. This keeps our nervous system in a state of heightened alertness—which is fine for a couple of hours, to focus and get stuff done.

But at the end of the day, we need to put in effort to do the opposite so we can relax our nervous system.

Go outside

• Walk your dog, take your kids to the park, go by yourself—just go outside

• Get natural light in your eyes (ideally around sunset time)

Look far

• Keep your phone in your pocket (that's just more up close viewing)

• Stare into the distance as you’re walking or sitting down

• Focus on distant, moving objects—let your eyes wander

Look wide

• Expand your visual field

• Soften your gaze and take up as much of your peripheral view

• Relax your face, neck, shoulders

• Again, keep your phone in your pocket (that's just more narrow tunnel vision)

Looking far and wide is like sending a signal to your nervous system that you’re safe. That makes sense when you think about it from an evolutionary survival perspective: if there was an actual immediate threat, your vision would be narrow and focused. I write a lot more about this bi-directional mechanism between narrow/wide visual field and your nervous system here.

02 Look up (to increase alertness)

It’s remarkable how much of our day we spend looking down—at our phones, laptops, books, the pavement. (I bet your eyes and chin are pointing downward right now, right?)

Because of the direct relationship between our brain and our eyes, whether our eyes are up or down has an impact on our energy levels.

When we’re awake:

• Eyelids are wide open

• Chin is up

• Alertness is high

(Like when you’re at a party, feeling buzzy and excited)

Then when we’re tired:

• Eyelids naturally droop

• Chin moves downward

• Alertness is low

(Like when you’re watching a movie, all cozy on the couch, struggling to stay awake)

Your level of alertness determines the position of your eyes and chin.

But this process also works in reverse.

The position of your eyes and chin influences your level alertness.

When we sit with our eyelids slightly closed and chin down, we activate neurons related to calmness and sleepiness. It’s like we’re signaling to our brain: “Hey, we’re ready to wind down.”

So by consciously adjusting our eye level and our posture, we can send a signal to our brain about how we want to feel. Here are a few tips:

• As you’re working, sit in an upright position and have your screen at or above eye level. This makes sure your eyelids are open, improving your levels of alertness. (Working with your laptop on your lap on the couch? No bueno)

• Energy levels dropping? Go outside and go for a walk. But instead of looking at your phone, look up. Look at the sky. The birds. The roofs.

• No time for a walk but need a quick boost? Raise your eyes and look up for 10-15 seconds. This activates the brain areas involved in wakefulness, triggering the release of epinephrine—a chemical that promotes alertness.

03 Close your eyes (to think more creatively)

Sometimes the best thing we can do is simply close our eyes for a moment.

When our eyes are open, vision accounts for two-thirds of the brain's electrical activity, utilizing approximately 2 billion of the 3 billion neural firings per second. (🤯) Around 40-50% of the entire brain is involved in vision processing, making it the most resource-intensive sensory system.

So the moment you close your eyes, you can free up a big amount of brainpower. And when this happens, your brain works harder to retrieve details, imagine creative ideas, or find answers to challenging problems.

This great post by Younes Henni goes into much more detail on the benefits and the research.

P.s. This idea of closing your eyes to free up brainpower is one of the reasons why I believe in visualisation/mental rehearsal so much. Ever notice how athletes and performers close their eyes during pre-performance visualization? It allows them to create more detailed and effective mental rehearsals of their skills. We can tap into that for our work and life as well. I’m writing all about visualisation in the next newsletter (might be a great skill to learn in 2025!)

What else I’m up to…