Roll The Eyes

While you continue to breathe, roll the eyes to all four directions (up, right, down, left). If you start clockwise then switch after about five minute to counter clockwise and, of course, the opposite too. Keep your breathing going.

You may have to start this exercise with very slow rolls. It is harder to do then it would seem. When you can do the exercise smoothly and for about 10 minutes (5 in each direction), then start to speed up. The rate of rotation is not tied to the breathing. Irrespective of the rotation rate, the breathing continues at the normal approximately 12 breaths per minute.

This is like the previous "eyes in directions" exercise except that there is no pause. It is kind of an advanced eyes in directions. In the eyes in directions exercise each direction involved a complete breath but here the breathing and the eyes are not connected. The breathing continues on while the eyes are rolled.

Don't try for speed right away. Most people when they try for speed simply reduce the distance that the eyes move, they no longer get the full directionality of up, left, down, right.

Here is where the ability to let go of control of the breathing and focus on something else really shows up. If you have really freed your belly and chest and reached the point where the full deep belly-chest breathing is habituated, then this will present no problems. But if you are still not willing to let your body take over and simply feel the rhythm of the breath, then this exercise will really show up that issue.

When you get really good at the breathing and your eyes are really free you will find that you no longer have to concentrate on the rolling of the eyes. You simply start them rolling and it is as though they continue on their own from there. But it is not easy to get to that point. It is actually a good idea, once you get to this point, to start each session with first some breathing and then follow that with a few minutes of roll the eyes before you go to any other exercise in this book.

Express Feelings In The Eyes

This is part of your daily work but here I am adding the breathing which makes the exercise much more powerful.

It is OK if the sound (the 'ah' sound) changes during this exercise. Sometimes, as for example with anger, some other sound feels, or seems to be, more appropriate. In a latter exercise in this book I will add the facial expression to this exercise, but here it is only with the eyes.

Don't think that because later I will add the face that therefore there is no special value in expressing feelings only with your eyes. Think of actors and actresses in movies. Think how often there is a tight shot with only the eyes showing and expressing the feelings of the actor in just the eyes. The eyes are very expressive.

While you can choose any emotion or set of emotions you want to express, here is the list of the most important ones:

Fear

Anger

Longing

Sadness

Tenderness

Concern (empathy)

Liking

Disinterest

Pity

Disdain

Don't slight an emotion. That is, don't just make a half hearted effort to express the emotion in your eyes and pass quickly onto the next one. Give each emotion as much intensity as you can.

Don't worry about the breathing. It is reasonable that your breathing in fear would be different from anger and both different from tenderness. Just immerse yourself in the emotion and let your breathing change in whatever way it happens to go. Let go of control and get as fully involved in the emotion as you can.

As always, if something is too strong then stay with it only as long as you can. There is always another session. Even if it takes many months to get back to the intensity of an emotion that you were expressing in one session, that is fine. The emotion is still there and when your system is ready for it to become intense again, it will happen.

Bug Eyes, Skull Eyes

Before I even describe this exercise, a word of caution. I could have put this exercise in a separate section labeled "advanced exercises" but I wanted to keep all the exercises for each area together. This exercise is advanced for two reasons: (1) if you start to do this eye exercise before you have fully freed your eyes, you will cause the eyes to tense instead of relax; that is you will increase the tension instead of releasing it and (2) this exercise can have rather profound effects on your dreams.

You might recall that in Part One I mentioned that most of the change in your nature will occur in your dreams. Now some people do not remember their dreams at all and other people remember their dreams so well that they keep a dream journal. The point of this is that we are all accustomed to our own dreams and when they change it can leave us disoriented or preoccupied, unable to concentrate properly. As you worked on the breathing, freeing up the chest, the belly and the diaphragm you might already have experienced this effect so you know what I mean.

But this exercise is the first of a number that I will present here in

Part Two that will have a more significant effect on your dreams. Forewarned is forearmed, so here is the exercise.

On the inhale try to protrude your eyes, like a bug with big eyes sticking out. On the exhale try to retract your eyes as though your head were a skull. Neither the breathing nor the sound changes.

Sounds easy, doesn't it? When you are ready for this exercise then you will find out how difficult it is and the profound effects it can have.

I would like to show you pictures, but even if our models could do this exercise without preparation the difference between the bug eyes and the skull eyes would not show up in pictures.

This exercise should not be done for more than a few minutes until you have done it over several sessions and until any upset in either you mood or your dreams has passed. Then it can be done for a longer time, but, as usual, not over 15 minutes.