Natalie Moore, LMFT, shares an anxiety-reduction technique based on Andrew Huberman's neuroscience research. Panoramic vision, like gazing at a horizon, activates calm; convergent vision on screens triggers stress. Try soft-gaze breathing and looking at vistas instead of your phone.
Hey guys, Natalie Moore, LMFT, here, and today I'm going to share a really simple way to reduce your anxiety in a minute or less. So this is actually based on research that I just learned about last night at a brain health conference, some research done by Andrew Huberman, who's a PhD, he's a neuroscientist with Stanford, and He taught us about how our vision is so connected to the stress response and how if we want to deactivate the stress response, the vision and breath are two really powerful entry points. So the thing that I thought was so interesting— I obviously talk a lot about breathing and breathwork if you've read any of my blogs or watched any of my videos or listened to the podcast— but as far as the visual system goes, this was not really an area that I had tapped into very much, so I'm super excited to share this. So what he talked to us about was how if you think about animals who have panoramic vision, so animals where their eyes are on the sides of their heads, they are able to calm down really quickly after a stressful incident like a predator eating, you know, their family member or something. They just go back to grazing right away. Whereas humans who have more binocular vision— so we kind of— or the binocular vision allows us to have depth perception, and it also allows for our eyes to converge. So that's how you can like look at the tip of your nose, and this is called convergence, when your eyes start to go towards the center. So apparently panoramic vision, which is the type of vision you would use if you were looking at a panorama, like looking at the horizon, a sunrise, a sunset, a beautiful landscape is really calming, which makes sense because how do we feel when we look at the ocean or a sunrise or sunset? We feel calm, right? And what's interesting is that we tend to use a lot of— we tend to converge our eyes a lot when we're looking at what? Cell phones, computer screens, laptops, all of those things. So one way to actually change your state of mind is to change the type of visual, the type of visual input that you're getting. So one of the ways that you can do this is through either going outside and looking at a horizon, or if you can't go outside for whatever reason, if you're in your office and you just want to try this, you can do what the yogis call soft gaze. So that's where you kind of just let your vision blur, and instead of just focusing on one point right in front of you, you kind of take in all of the periphery and all of the, the visual stimuli available to you. What's interesting too is that martial artists tend to use this technique as well, where they kind of have more of a soft gaze, and it allows for quicker response time. So probably something that athletes would be interested in learning about as well. So if you want to learn more about Andrew Huberman's work, you can follow him on Instagram @hubermanlab, and he posts like a neuroscience minute every day as well. So I hope you guys appreciated this video, and I hope you guys try it. See if it helps. I certainly have been more mindful of setting down my phone and going outside and looking at some beautiful vistas. So take good care, and I'll see you next time. Bye!
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