Whatchyoulookinat?

Yes you! What are you looking at and how are you looking at it? We use our eyes differently for different situations.
I find that the way I use my eyes in everyday activities is as important to my overall posture and alignment as is a good warm up to a workout or dance class.
Loss of vision, close up work, particularly the computer are all things that narrow my peripheral vision. Creating a hyper-focus in front of me that starts a chain reaction of compression and collapse.  That attention to what is front of me, often disallows me to maintain an awareness of inner support.  My head collapses on to my jaw, my chin will jut out  compressing my neck, I no longer breathe efficiently….and that collapse follows me all the way to my pelvis, legs and feet.
Gazing down changes the  placement of the cervical vertebrae which in turn, effects blood flow, nerve pathways and influences misplacement of body parts below the head.  It can shift your whole body line forward or curled over itself…….displacing and compromising your mid-line(this is way important to me folks)….. you can have difficulty swallowing, balance, lack of freedom in the shoulder girdle…which shows up in other areas of the body in compensatory patterns, as it ( your body) tries to keep an upright position.
I often give the directive of \”make yourself as big as you can\” in the dance studio. You can apply this to your head and face.

Try to feel dimension and space in your head.  There is space in there, think of your sinuses or your palate.  If that feels collapsed or compressed, let there be space.  Let\’s differentiate our face from our head, our face is where our eyes, nose and lips are. The base of my tongue is closer to  my neck, than my lips are. The nasal cavity extends behind me, towards my ears, my eyes are encased in a bony hollow that extends behind me into the head. The jaw hangs under my head and behind my lips. The head/skull is where the brain is. On top of and behind my face, balanced on my spine.

Envisioning and breathing into all this dimension allows me to realize that my sight doesn\’t start at my eyeball or my glasses perched on my nose. It starts back in my head, behind me. Allowing an expansiveness in my face, head, breath and vision, while it relaxes my eye muscles, freeing up my lowered gaze, which is often locked by staring at a computer screen, mirror (hint, dancer friends) or lost in thought.

Diligently checking in with myself like a drill sergeant  may seem like a hyper-vigilance that\’s counter productive and it might be if you are trying to \”fix\” yourself. Try to change that mindset to \”find\” yourself.  Dose the continual adjustments you make with the same compassion you would show a best friend, or a Mother\’s soft caress to her child and let them become second nature.