Meditate With Eyes Open Or Closed?

Should you meditate with your eyes open or closed? The truth is, pure awareness doesn’t depend on either - but your experience might. In this short talk, we’ll explore how to listen to the body and choose the practice that best supports you in the moment. When the mind feels busy and scattered, closing the eyes can help draw awareness inward.

When the inner world feels crowded with thought, gently opening the eyes may anchor you in the present. We’ll also look at how open-eyed meditation can prepare us for everyday life, where our eyes are almost always open. Ultimately, this is about curiosity, intuition, and trusting what you need each day.

Transcript

So this is a question that I've wrestled with in my past,

Whether to meditate with my eyes open or closed.

But the truth is that pure awareness is pure awareness,

Whether your eyes are open or closed is kind of irrelevant.

But depending on what is going on in your life and within yourself,

It's really helpful to listen to the body and what it needs on that day.

Often you may find that you have a lot going on in your head and you feel quite disembodied,

Persistently thinking about what's going on in your life.

Then potentially closing the eyes will help you to come back home into the body.

Closing the eyes will support you,

Bringing your awareness gently away from the outside world and into the inner world.

In another way,

If you're meditating with your eyes closed and you find you have a lot of internal distraction going on,

It may be helpful to open the eyes to bring you into the present.

But in the beginning especially,

When we open our eyes,

We can very easily get drawn into the visual field in front of us instead of resting the awareness in what's going on internally.

If you wanted to try and meditate with your eyes open,

As you open them gently,

Consider resting back into your body so that even though your eyes are open,

Your awareness is centered in the body and into ground.

Your eyes may be open but your awareness is inward.

Practicing with your eyes open can be helpful for daily life because when we're walking around in our daily life,

We have our eyes mostly open.

So practicing with the eyes open can be kind of an intermediary.

So I encourage you to play,

To be curious,

To trust your intuition and to listen to what your body needs on the day.