Rewiring ruminating thoughts ◭
A few months ago, I wrote a blog alll about the general concept of “orientation”, and how it’s one of the most overlooked yet vitally important and foundational skills in somatic work.
If you missed it, click here to read through!
Today, we’re going to take our 🔍 magnifying glass 🔍 to the concept of visual orientation 👀
Visual orientation is a form of externally orienting to the environment around you. Using your eyes to check out where you are in space!
We naturally do this all the time, often unconsciously.
Have you ever noticed that when you’re angry, activated, stressed, hypervigilant, or even excited your vision physically narrows?
Our Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) is like a 🛡️ built-in security system 🛡️ scanning the environment, both externally and internally, for cues of danger or safety.
If registering more cues of danger over safety, the vision narrows (almost like “tunnel vision”). This is called “Defensive Orienting”.
On-guard. Ready to take action. Rapidly assessing your surroundings, looking for threats.
This type of orienting has a forward-moving quality… energetically and often physically in the body! The body tends to lean forward when defensively orienting.
This is also the same type of orienting that naturally happens when using technology! Forward-lean, narrow lens. This is why it’s SO important for your nervous system to take mini screen breaks throughout the day, even just looking up from your computer for a 1-2mins to widen/soften your gaze, giving your system a chance to de-active, before going back to the narrow-vision focus.
Now, let’s look at the opposite.
If registering more cues of safety over danger, we are able to soften, relax, ground, get curious with out orientation. This is called “Exploratory Orienting”. Relaxed vision. Open. Often combined with a backward lean in the posture. Receptive.
This mode of orientation is driven by a sense of curiosity and a motivation to gather information for learning, enjoyment, and adapting to new situations (check out photo of the cute dog exploratory orienting at the end of this email ☺️)
As you know, because we love both the science AND the witchy here, let’s take a moment to deep dive into the neuroscience of HOW & WHY visual orientation is one of the most simple yet highly effective skills to develop when healing your nervous system.
If you experience ruminating thoughts (I mean, don’t we all from time to time? 😅), visual orientation can break that cycle! Especially when practiced consistently.
If you know me, you know I’m all about consistency over intensity! Micro practices are QUEEN 👑.
I’m often really real with you in this newsletter, so I’ll lovingly admit here that I have been r.u.m.i.n.a.t.i.n.g. in the past few weeks, and visual orientation has quite literally saved my nervous system from spiralling further.
So let’s dive in.
We have these two networks in the brain called the Default Mode Network (DMN) and the Dorsal Attention System (DAS).
DMN = lights up when we’re ruminating about the past or fantasizing about the future — this could also look like supercharging experiences by catastrophizing in your mind.
DAS = lights up when we’re taking in visual information from our external environment, and we’re actually present with it.
These two networks in the brain have a reciprocal inhibition relationship, which is just a fancy way to say: when one is turned on, the other one is turned off (or dampened).
One of the best and most effective ways to rewire rumination is to curiously visually orient to your surroundings by widening your vision, softening backwards, and (this the most important part) NAME OUT LOUD what you are noticing.
This naming out loud process could be quite literal (ex: “I’m noticing a shelf, I’m noticing a plant”), or more detailed and curious (ex: “I’m noticing the play of light and shadow on the wall, I’m noticing the different textures and grains within the wood of the floor)
The former is usually a better place to start if feeling acutely overwhelmed or hypervigilant, and then the latter will naturally happen as your system starts to soften and find ease.
When the Wellspring launches (a free online platform I’m launching soon), there will be a few guided audio practices of visual orientation for you to enjoy. I’m so excited to be bringing this to you soon!
Thank you for being here love 💞