Using Your Eyes To Reduce Stress
(Stressless Eye Movements)

Rollo May (1965), a key figure in the human potential movement, defined the terms intention and attention. Intention refers to our desires, aims, agenda, and goals. It refers to where we want to get to and what we want to accomplish. Attention refers to the immediate awareness on our mind.

"Energy flows where Attention goes." This means that our mental-emotional, personal energies tend to move out to wherever our attention goes. But attention tends to be wild and untamed. It jumps, hops, darts, races, and pops in and out according to stimuli. Lots of people these days think that they suffer from "attention deficit." Actually, they seem to have lots of attentions, too many in fact. There's no deficit here. What they have too little of is intention. And even more, they have not aligned their attention to their intention.

The secret is Aligning your attentions with your higher level intentions.

Energy flows were Attention goes as determined and governed by the Intentional Frames that you have Set.

How does this relate to stress, distress, eustress, and relaxation? These states operate according to our attentions. The energy of these states emerge from how we have attended to the corresponding thoughts and acted them out in our body.

Now we can change all of this— we can take charge of these processes. By setting our intention as the highest level of focus, we can learn to develop higher levels and qualities of focus using our intentions and by aligning our attentions to our intentions.

In the 7-Day Instant Relaxation Program we provide examples for the focusing and refocusing of the eyes. Recall the eye focus on the words Slow Down, or the use of the numerals on the Clock (12, 3, 6, 9). By intentionally establishing an external focus so as to get totally consumed in that awareness, we provide a new focus. And the meaning of the words "Slow Down" add an additional, higher level meaning that goes along with the attention— protecting that attention and reinforcing it.

What you see around you effects your stress level. How do you feel when you look at your in basket versus looking at pictures of your children or your partner. What happens when you look at a clock and you have a deadline in a half hour? Focusing your eyes helps to make you aware of how different objects around us send us into a state of calmness or stress.