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Enjoy reading this
sample online Tip:
Eyes Technique for Emotional Intelligence
by Arman Darini, Ph.D.
November 29, 2005
Do you ever get stuck in a mental rut? Is
there some state of mind that visits you occasionally and you
have a hard time getting out of it? It might be sadness, melancholy,
anxiety, depression, anger, or just plain feeling upset. Perhaps someone
in your family or a friend tends to stay negative for a long
time, and you would like to help them out. Not to worry, help is
only a few glances away - literally! Here is a simple way to
get unstuck.
Background
Our eyes are often called "a window into the soul".
Biologically, it is more appropriate to say that our eyes
are the window into the brain. Directly linked to the gray
matter by an optical nerve, the eyes do a lot of visual
processing before electric impulses ever reach the brain. So
it is not too surprising to discover that by shifting our
eyes we can affect the way this processing happens.
In NLP it is well know that the direction
of your glance is directly linked to how you are thinking at
the moment (for more information about that look up NLP subfield called Eye Accessing
Cues). In particular it turns out that the vast majority of
people has to look down to connect to their emotions. This is
especially true for negative emotions - one of the simplest
ways to tell tears of sadness from tears of joy is by the posture
- huddled, looking down is typical for sadness (think of pillow
crying).
Looking down does not necessarily mean that
you are connecting to your emotions. You can look down to step
over a puddle or to button up your shirt. It is looking down when
there is no other physical reason for it that is the emotional
giveaway. But people also look down to engage in self talk.
You can tell self talk apart from emotions by noticing where
people look - left or right. A common generalization we can
make is that looking down right is for self talk, and looking
down left is for emotions. But absolutely the best way to tell them
apart is by asking a few key questions - a wonderful topic
for a future newsletter.
Basic Technique
If you have to look down to feel emotions, then you will have
a very hard time feeling emotions while looking up. So, if you
are feeling bad and want to get unstuck, all you have to do
is look up for a few minutes. If your partner or a friend is
feeling bad, gently take their head and move it up, so that
they are looking at the ceiling (or the sky). Or you can even
be sly about it and point out the beautiful clouds or the stars.
Your goal is to keep yourself (or them) focused on looking up
for two minutes, and you'll see how quickly the bad mood evaporates.
Some people might resist you helping them
move beyond their stuck state (those stuck states are pretty
sticky), so explaining what you are doing will help. Keep in
mind that once you let go of their head they might occasionally
step back into the old stuck state, so you have to act quickly
and refocus their attention on healing and solving the
problem, rather then wallowing in it. Of course, there are dozens of NLP techniques to help
you do just that easily and effectively (we explore some of
these in other issues of the newsletter).
Advanced Technique
For really heavy negative states, looking up for a few minutes
might not substantially move the mind out the mental rut. For these
times, there is an advanced version of this technique called
Eye Rolls that rapidly activates a sequence of resourceful
brain states thereby releasing the stuck state.
Start by rolling
your eyes in a wide circle while keeping your head straight.
First clockwise for two minutes, then counterclockwise for another
two minutes. Then follow up with moving your eyes in a
horizontal figure eight pattern (it's also the symbol for
the infinity). As you do that make sure your eyes move up
through the center of the figure and down the sides. Go in
one direction for two minutes, then in the other direction for two
minutes. Make sure you keep your head straight and move only
your eyes. You might want to sit down beforehand in case you
get dizzy.
