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Hi, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining me. I really appreciate your company. I'm gonna teach you today an exercise, an easy exercise that you can do, physical exercise, that can help convert bad stress to good stress in a matter of about 10 seconds. This exercise has a physical side. And then it has a mental side, which I'll talk to you about later.

But first, the physical side that's quick and easy. Ten second help. Before I explain this exercise, I need to talk about two different modes that we have of visual focus, we have tunnel vision and we have panoramic vision. What is tunnel vision? Tunnel vision is when your field of view narrows. So your peripheral vision fades or disappears, and you're just focused on a small area right in front of you. So it's linked to the sympathetic nervous system or the fight or flight mode. When you perceive a threat, your brain is tells your visual system to narrow your focus. So this is great for tracking danger, especially you know you're gonna be attacked by a tiger, it's really good to zone in on that tiger and be totally focused on him so that you are aware of everything that he's doing and you're not aware of extraneous information outside of that. So this is our tunnel vision which gets activated when we feel threat, when we feel bad stress. We've talked before on the podcast about the difference between bad stress and good stress. We've talked about how stress isn't necessarily bad, but there is a bad kind of stress. And the bad kind kind of stress is where your brain decides that the demands that you're facing are too much for your resources, and the good kind of stress is what happens when your brain decides that your resources are up to the demands that you face. And it triggers different hormones and reactions in your body that help you to rise to meet the stressor and you actually perform better than you would if you didn't feel stressed. So that's why we call it good stress 'cause it helps enhance your performance and it's not the kind of stress that's bad for your health. The other kind of stress, the bad stress, where you feel like the demands that you're up against are too much for your resources, this kind of stress is bad for your health and this kind of stress does not facilitate performance. That's what we're referring to when we talk about good stress and bad stress. But anyway, it's, it can be difficult to access your brain's assessment of the situation and get it to switch out of that mode where it's seeing your demands as too much for your resources. So this exercise that I'm gonna teach you is something you can do with your visual system that can send a message with your body to your brain that things are safe, and help you to switch out of that mode where you feel like the demands are way too much, and help you to feel like, wow, I actually have some great, great resources and I'm gonna be okay.

So this is how it works. When you are in bad stress, when you perceive a threat, your field of vision narrows to something very small. This happens automatically when your brain perceives threat. It's part of your autonomic nervous system. There's different things that happen when we go into bad stress or a threat state or fight or flight. Some of these things are that our breathing will probably pick up. Our heart rate will increase and our vision will narrow. It affects our circulation. It affects all kinds of different parts of our nervous system that we can't directly control. We can't directly make our heart rate slow down. There's different things we can do that can influence that heart rate, but the autonomic nervous system is pretty automatic and mostly out of our control. But there's two things that we can control in our autonomic nervous system, and one of them is breath. And we had a whole episode on different breathing exercises that you can do that can help with anxiety, which I'll link in the show notes. But the other part of your autonomic nervous system that you can directly control is your visual system.

So when you go into bad stress, when you feel that threat and your field of vision narrows, you can consciously widen your vision to have a panoramic view of everything around you. So this is how you do it. You pick a point straight ahead of you. It can be a wall or a tree or a mug or anything. It doesn't matter what it is, but without moving your eyes, you start noticing what is at the far edges of your vision. Left, right above, below, you don't look at the things directly. You keep looking kind of straight ahead at that thing that you picked the wall or the tree or the mug or whatever. But you're just aware of these different things at the far edges of your mo, of your vision. And you see if you can notice movement and shapes in these different areas of your peripheral vision without, focusing on them directly. And as you do this in within five to 10 seconds, you should feel a subtle drop in tension in your body. Now why does this work? It's because manually practicing this panoramic vision that your brain automatically does when it feels safe, when you manually put it into that safe vision mode, then it sends a safety signal to your brain that there's, there's not a threat here. It's safe to connect with this environment. So your parasympathetic nervous system comes online and starts to calm your body down. Your heart rate will slow down a little bit. Your stress chemistry will start to change.

So I like to do this by looking straight ahead. Right now I'm looking at the camera, which is filling filming me, but while still keeping my eyes toward that point straight ahead, which I've picked, I try and name 20 things that I can see in my field of vision. So I'm looking straight ahead at the camera, but I'm also seeing that behind the camera and above it out the window, I can see some palm trees that are kind of moving in the wind. I can see the blue sky behind the palm tree. I can see the neighbor's house across the street. I'm not looking at those things directly, but I'm aware of them. I can see a bookshelf in my room over here to my left. I can see a filing cabinet over here to my right. I can see a window over here, kind of more back on the left, outside left of my vision. So I go through and try and name 20 different things that I can see in my field of vision. And as I'm naming those 20 different things, I start to feel this relaxation in my body as my parasympathetic nervous system gets activated, which is the rest and digest and connect mode. So this mode of my bo body starts to get activated and starts to send signals to my brain that, you know, you can handle this. This is not too much for you.

So it's really interesting that our emotions influence our vision. So when you feel threatened, when you feel anxious, that this narrows your field of vision. But that vision can also influence our emotion. That if you deliberately soften your gaze and take in your peripheral vision, turn your vision to panoramic mode, that you can send a safety signal to your brain mechanically, that helps to reduce this perception of threat. So on the other hand, if you stare intently at one point in this, in a real intense tunnel vision mode, you can actually induce kind of a mild sympathetic arousal, which can help you to focus, but it can be anxiety provoking if you prolong it. In other words, tunnel vision, it's when we feel threat, when we feel urgency. It gives us narrow focus. It's when we're in survival mode. Panoramic version is when we feel calm, curious, open, connected, and you can shift between these different modes to lever a change in your mental state and your emotional state. And it can make a change. It can already influence it in as little as five to 10 seconds if you do this exercise.

But there's more to it than this. This is the physical component of this exercise, which is really great for those moments when you've got performance anxiety, for example, you have to walk out on stage and your body is in high alertness. You can choose to exercise this panoramic v uh, vision and help your mind to feel more comfortable, even when your body is really highly activated and really revved up to go on stage. So this is the physical side of this concept.

But there is a mental component to this concept as well. And Lisa Miller, who is a professor of psychology at Columbia University, has a book called The Awakened Brain, where she talks about two different modes of awareness, which are really related to these different modes of visual focus. So she calls them the Achieving Awareness and the Awakened Awareness. So the Achieving Awareness that's kind of similar to this tunnel vision mode. Achieving awareness is really important. She talks about, it's what helps us to focus on a goal, to direct energy toward a particular task. So whether it's studying for an exam, completing a project, getting someplace on time, practicing a skill. When we're in this achieving awareness, when our brains are filtering out incoming information and we're just focused on what it is that we want to do, a particular goal or a particular task that we are wanting to do. It filters out other information in our environment and we just focus on that goal. It helps us to organize and control our lives. But she talks about how we can get stuck in this mode and we can overuse it, and that can be unhealthy. When we get stuck in this achieving awareness, this tunnel vision as far as our goals go, then we can get out of balance and it ends up changing the structure of our brains brains, such that we experience a lot more depression, a lot more anxiety, a lot more bad stress, we end up feeling caught up and just obsessed in what we don't have. We feel like it's up to us alone to make good things happen and prevent bad things from happening. And our brain gets overly focused on internal thoughts about myself, and it disengages from the environment. So the achieving awareness or the tunnel vision type of awareness, it's important 'cause it keeps us focused on a task or a goal. But if it's out of balance, it will put us in anxiety and depression and bad stress and a sense of constant craving and isolation.
So the other type of awareness, the one that parallels the panoramic vision mode, Lisa Miller calls the awakened awareness, and this is where we are able to perceive things all around us, not just the things in our own head, not just the goals that we have in mind, and just like the panoramic vision happens when our brain feels safe, this awakened awareness comes with this feeling of safety. So if you compare it to a soccer analogy, the achieving awareness or the, the tunnel vision focus helps us to move and chase the ball up and down the field. But the awakened awareness helps us to decide where the ball needs to go, see the bigger field of play, be aware of other players on the field, understand the consequences of our choices in this game, and perceive even why we're playing the game in the first place. So we need both modes of awareness in order to play the game well. Being in the awakened mode of awareness is also not great if we are continually in that mode, then we are just kind of untethered and we have all these insights, but we're, we're disconnected from this sphere where we can actually put them into practice. So we really need both, we need both modes. We need to be able to toggle between the two modes of awareness, depending on what's necessary in the moment, right? But the problem is if you have a problem with anxiety or if you find that you are stuck in negative emotion a lot more than you are in positive emotion, then that probably means that you get stuck in tunnel vision.

Why do I claim that? Well, because studies show negative emotion causes a narrowing of our attention and our awareness. So if you feel like you have an issue with anxiety, then you probably get stuck in this achieving awareness and you need to learn how to balance it with an awakened awareness so that you can toggle back and forth, because it's bad if you get stuck in either type of awareness too much of the time.
So, as I've said before, I always, I've had a problem with anxiety my whole life up until several years ago where I feel like I was able to get a handle on it, but because of this, I really had a tendency to get stuck in this achieving awareness and in this hyperfocus on control and on what I don't have yet, what I need to change, problems that in my life and different goals that I need to work on. So I needed to learn how to practice awakened awareness in order to balance it out. So I'm gonna tell you just about a couple of different ways, two of them are shown by research, and one of them is just my own personal way of implementing these things.

So just like Jaime said last week in the interview, meditation is a great way to be able to practice this type of panoramic vision, awakened awareness state. But not every type of meditation is great for this. Research shows that there's a particular type of meditation that's gonna be most helpful. So you're probably aware that there are types of meditation where you just focus on your breath and whenever your mind wanders, you try and bring it back to your breath, or you just focus on one word and you always try and bring your mind back to that word. That's what we call the focused attention meditation, where you just try to focus on a single point. That's not the type of meditation that is gonna help you the most with practicing awakened awareness, panoramic vision. What will help you is practicing what research calls open monitoring meditation. So this type of meditation is what we have talked about before on this podcast, and we referred to it as mindfulness, but it's where you're simply just trying to be aware of everything in your experience at this present moment, both things inside of your body and outside of your body, both physical sensations and emotions, everything that is present right now in your experience and not judging it, just noticing it, just being aware of it. And I'll give a link in the show notes where I talked more about meditation and different ways to do it . So open monitoring meditation is one way to practice this awakened awareness.
Another way that research shows that we can practice awakened awareness or panoramic awareness is through things like yoga, especially when the yoga includes things like holding a certain posture while also thinking about your breath, while also looking at a point on the wall in front of you, where you're holding various different things and sensations in your awareness all at once. This has also been shown to increase panoramic awareness or awakened awareness.

A personal way that I have developed to practice awakened awareness is that I have Sabbath moments where I set aside certain times every day, from five minutes to an hour every day, and also one day every week where I try consciously to practice and awakened awareness and this is how I do it. So I explained at the beginning how panoramic vision is, what happens when our brains feel safe and we feel like it's okay to connect with the environment. It's okay to explore. I just take this day or these five minutes or an hour for panoramic vision and to try and focus on the things that my problem solving oriented brain is usually not aware of. The things in my life that are going right, the signs of safety, I try and consciously recognize and name things that I don't control and that I didn't produce that are coming to me free of charge that I need right now. So be aware of the sunlight. Be aware of oxygen, be aware of systems in my body that are working right so that I can think and so that I can move . I reflect, reflect on, all of the plants growing outside that I didn't plant, and all of the fruit and food in the world that is growing right now so that I can eat it.
And as part of this sabbath of observance I try and take a time when I just make my brain very still, and I just try and see if any ideas come to my mind. And there have been many moments during this time when I'm just trying to be aware of everything in my present experience when insights and ideas and solutions to problems have come up for me that I wasn't able to attain when I was just focused on them so intently in this tunnel vision mode that I am often in during the rest of the time during the week. So it's a really important time for generating ideas, for having creativity. For having insight into different issues and problems in my life. These are some of the ways that I have practiced this awakened awareness.

So just to summarize. We have these different modes of vision. We have tunnel vision, we have panoramic vision. We go into tunnel vision when we feel threat. If you want to send your brain a message of safety, manually practice panoramic vision. This isn't just valid as a physical practice, it's also valid as a mental practice because our attention also narrows when we feel threatened. And if we can practice expanding our attention, then we can also be aware of more things that are outside of our head. So these two modes are really important. It's important to be able to practice the one that you're not good at, because probably if you're listening to this podcast, it means you're good at the achieving awareness and you might need to practice the awakened awareness.

So I'd encourage you to do that.
Thanks for listening. And now we are going to have our kindness narrative. Stay tuned. This is one way to practice your awakened awareness because we're not normally hyper aware of kindness around us. Even more powerfully than just listening is to share your own kindness narrative. So I'd encourage you to do that. You can send it to me by email or on Instagram. The information comes on after this kindness narrative.
So thanks for listening today. Bye-bye.

When I moved to Canada and we moved to our new house, I didn't have reception on my phone. And I wanted to go on a longer run just to kind of explore around the neighborhood, and I went out to run in the late afternoon and I ran for a long time and eventually realized that I didn't know my way back. I didn't know how to get back to my apartment. I, by myself, am trying to navigate back to my home, back to my apartment, which was very difficult because it was a new place and I wasn't familiar with how the roads kind of turned and weaved around. And I was too scared, I was too nervous to ask for help for a really long time. There was, you know, cars that were going by and there maybe one or two people who I saw, but I didn't ask anybody for directions or ask for help. But eventually, it started to get dark and I thought, thought to myself, you know, I'm out here in, in who knows where and I've gotta get back home. And so I just finally built up the courage, I told myself, the next person I run into, the next car I see, I'm gonna try to like wave at them or like get their attention if they're in the car or if it's somebody on the side of the street, I'll ask for directions. And the next car that came by, immediately, as soon as I waved to them, they of course stopped. And I asked for help and they just told me to hop into their car and that they would give me a ride and try to figure out where I lived. And we, we worked together and pretty quickly they, they were able to get me back home. In the car it wasn't very long, it was just 10 or so minutes, but it would've taken me forever to try to figure it out myself. And it was really special to me because it showed me just that as long as I can kind of get over my fear of asking for help and be willing to, to be vulnerable most people many people are willing to, to do a kind deed or to help other people out.