TRATAKA MEDITATION: STILL EYES, STILL MIND

http://liveanddare.com/trataka/

The contribution of Eastern philosophy and the“consciousness experimentation” of the Yogis is that the opposite is also true: your eyes and breathing patterns also directly influence your mental and emotional state. This is really good news, because it is much easier to work on the level of the breathing and eyeballs, than it is on the level of the mind (which is so subtle and volatile).

Interestingly, in the past few decades Western Psychology is developing theories and methodologies based on the same principle. One of them is EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), which is a therapeutic modality for treating trauma, started in 1987 by psychologist Francine Shapiro.

In a research done by the National Institute of Mental Health, EMDR was found to be substantially more efficacious than Prozac for PTSD. It is now recognized as an effective treatment by the World Health Organization (WHO), and is one of the treatments for PTSD sanctioned by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Conclusion: Your vision is tightly connected to your mind. Your mental/emotional states affect your eye movements. You can also affect your mind, and even manage trauma, by doing certain practices with your eyes.

Distractions in the mind translate to micro movements in the eyes or eyelids, and vice-versa. Stillness of eyes brings stillness of mind, and vice-versa.

Stilling the eyes is not the only way to achieve stillness of mind, but it is a powerful way, and the feedback is much quicker. Schools of Yoga, Zen, and Tibetan Buddhism have developed techniques based on this principle.

Interestingly, research from neuropsychologist Marcel Kinsbourne shows that there is a definite relationship between eye position and the dominant hemisphere of your brain; so much so that changing the eye position can directly affect your mood and experience of the world. In his experiments, pictures appearing on the left side of our viewing field, and sounds in the left ear (both transmitted to the right brain), are perceived less agreeable than when they are presented to the other side.

This is relevant because most of the techniques below involve holding a central gaze. This can explain the experience of many practitioners regarding tratak meditation and similar techniques: that there is an integration and unification of the whole brain. If looking right activates the left hemisphere, and looking left activates the right hemisphere, then it’s not unreasonable to conclude that holding a perfectly centered and forward gaze produces a balanced brain activity in both hemispheres.