Nervous System Regulation: Eye Yoga

Eye yoga is a gentle stretching of the eye muscles that can help your body feel safe enough to let go of tension. Zara Dureno guides you through slow eye movements matched to your breath, then finishes with warm hands over the eyes to relax. Go at your own pace and skip any part that does not feel comfortable. This content is educational and is not a substitute for one to one professional care.

Transcript

Video let's practice the skill of eye yoga which is basically just a stretching of the eyes so we're gonna be really activating the muscles stretching the muscles out to give you that somatic sense of I am safe enough to release the need to hyper focus on something or dissociate away from something let's give it a try and if there's anything that makes you feel dizzy or makes you feel really uncomfortable you can skip that part of the exercise you can fast-forward the video somewhere else or you can skip all together until your body's a little bit more ready for it, You can always adapt it any way that works for you so that you're making sure you're meeting your body where it's at rather than trying to force it through something. Let's start with just a gentle stretching of the eyes left and right. So you can either just find things in your periphery that are on your left and on your right, Or you can put up your thumbs to look left and right. That works really good for me. We want to make sure that when we're looking, We're stretching the eyeballs so you're not going to be moving your face or head. So just stretching the eyeballs, Taking a deep breath, Looking right. On the exhale, We can look left. You can match it to your breath. Inhaling right. Exhaling left. Finding your own unique rhythm. And I just want you to notice a gentle stretch in the eyeballs. In and around the muscles of the eyes. Don't push yourself too hard. Give yourself permission to do less. You don't have to stretch them all the way. You don't have to fight your eyes to do more. Think about softening through the jaw, Through the shoulders, Through the belly. We don't have to do this exercise with any urgency. Soft, Calm. Letting your body know you're safe enough. Let's do one more round of breath. And then you close your eyes, Bring your hands down if you brought them up. Just give your eyes a little bit of a rest. Good. I'm going to stretch them a little bit more. So you can start with small circles. You can bring a hand up in front of your face. Little circles trace with your eyes. Going one way, I'm going to the right right now, Clockwise. Make that circle bigger like a spiral until you start to feel a little bit of a stretch through the eyes. And then make it as big as you can while respecting your limits. What are your limits? Without moving your neck or head, Without being too stiff. Without stretching your eyes too much. Just notice if there's a part of you that really wants you to try to do this at 110%. See if you can ask that part to just step back gently. We don't have to do this at 110%. Actually, I'd prefer it if you did it around 80%. Don't want you to stretch too much. Don't want you to cause. Too much of an increase in symptoms. We're here to give signals of safety to the system. So make sure you're taking nice deep breaths. Now let's switch. From this big circle down into a small circle. We're gonna spiral the other way. Just notice how that's feeling, Making it slightly smaller as you go around. Deep breaths into the belly. Amazing work. Trusting your body to let you know when it's time to stop. Take a break when you need to. Come back to it. You can pause the video at any time. Great, Now it's back in a tiny little circle. And you'll just allow the hands to come down. Take a deep breath. Long exhale. Just notice how the eyes are feeling. We're going to do one last exercise here. And you can always explore more yoga exercises as needed, As desired. If this really works for you well, Then you can dive deep into it a little bit more. We're gonna do a little, We call it a pencil push-up or a finger push-up. Going to start with your hand away from your face. Allowing your gaze to focus on the tip of your finger. Or a pencil if you have one. And then bring that close to the face. Taking deep breaths, Just track it all the way to your nose. It'll get a little blurry at some point, That's normal. And then on the exhale it goes back out. Inhale, We draw it in. Exhale out. Inhale and exhale. Follow your own timing if mine doesn't work for you. One more. Inhale. And exhale. Great work. I like to end with a little relaxation for the eyes. You can warm your hands up. Hold them over the eyes, Take a really deep breath here. Thank your body for all this hard work it just did. And then when you're ready, You can bring that down. And you can flutter open your eyes and just notice how that lands for you and your system.