Emotional Struggles

[seetheleaves]

nancy, your personal experience is a great inspiration to me, thank you for sharing it here. i could definitely use some work on my breathing because my breathing gets shallower when i'm trying to focus on too much at once. i am learning qi gong and i think that will help me both with deep breathing and slowing down.

and hammer - great advice, thank you. reading your post set off a light in my mind that i am really bad at peripheral vision.

So you also must be intrested in a person, one at a time, not everyone instantly because it would be impossible.

i have found that i try to listen to everyone and sense the dynamics of everyone in a conversation rather than just focus on the person speaking to me directly. good advice.

If you still have problems, just focus on one object with your central vision and handle surrounding as a noise around you with the widened peripheral vision.
Just admit to your self that noise is something that relax you, because you must trust your mind to handle it automatically.
If you feel that many people stare at you, then you shall just widen your peripheral vision even more and continue to focus on an object/detail with your central vision. The peripheral vision handles the city "noise" in a low power state as it is more blurry.

does this mean that you are able to have a split attention? one part of your attention is clear and centrally fixated and the other part of your attention is peripherally taking in the people and environment everywhere else? it seems correct that this would lessen the anxiety, but i'm not sure how to do that yet. emotionally i have a tendency to let myself be absorbed into every corner of my environment at once and it is exhausting.

If you should try to see all this city "noise" with your central vision you probably would die due to stress, or get blind due to overheating

absolutely! that's why i feel so overwhelmed.

thank you for these ideas on peripheral vision - it's a wonderful illustration for me to start with!

[Andrea Major]

I just want to say that qi gong sounds excellent! I know a lady who has been practicing it after getting treatment for cancer and to her optometrist's amazement, her presbyopia has disappeared! She didn't even know about the Bates method! I find it quite difficut and have no patience for it... but if you can do it, good for you!!! :-)

[seetheleaves]

I just want to say that qi gong sounds excellent! I know a lady who has been practicing it after getting treatment for cancer and to her optometrist's amazement, her presbyopia has disappeared! She didn't even know about the Bates method! I find it quite difficut and have no patience for it... but if you can do it, good for you!!! :-)

wow! that's amazing! i would love for my myopia to disappear after practicing qi gong. it does definitely take some adjustment to get into but now that i've got the hang of it i love how peaceful and 'cleaned' my mind feels after half an hour of practice.

i had an amazing experience a few days ago where i had a sustained clear flash for several hours. the most unbelievable and encouraging part of the whole experience was that this issue of emotional struggling somehow just disappeared. all the anxiety, tension, worry, mental chatter just melted off me. i hadn't even intended or expected that kind of effect at all. i was practicing palming, then did a bit of beads-on-a-string work, swinging and -bam!- clear flash. it was a sunny day so i went outside and not only could i not believe the degree of depth, expansion of peripheral vision and overall clarity - but the feeling i had inside of me was one of total calm - not a sleepy or disengaged or spacey calm, but a full-body awareness of non-struggle.
i felt as though everything was in its perfect place, including me. and without any sort of rational dismissal of worry or fear, they disappeared on their own. i didn't feel like i had to analyze the feeling or concentrate on keeping it or 'try' to relax (all of those things that a perfectionist does to make something work) - i was so absorbed in every detail that i saw, and all of the natural movement in the environment, that it was the most natural thing in the world to be without anxiety. i just kept thinking how much i enjoyed seeing - it filled every part of me.

of course now that i know that feeling i am actively trying to chase it which makes me laugh at myself because obviously that's the exact wrong approach. but the experience certainly gives me great hope not only for permanent improvement in my vision but for permanent improvement in my state of being.