“The moon commends herself to the matter-of-fact people by her usefulness, and makes her uselessness adored by poets, artists, and all lovers in all lands.” —Walt Whitman
“Sometimes change is directly visible, but sometimes it is apparent only to peripheral vision, altering the meaning of the foreground.” —Mary Catherine Bateson
I wonder at times what is necessary and what is not. Water is, but is it, when you cup your hands to drink, encompassing many yin-and-yang contexts? Maneuvering life’s many different manifestations is not always easy. Richard Adams, in his book Watership Down, echoing Walt Whitman’s quote above, once said, “We need daylight, and to that extent it is utilitarian, but moonlight we do not need.” Maybe so or not, depending on one’s perspective.
During my 40-plus years as a systemic psychotherapist, the most effective visual exercise that I use to help set a productive framework for therapy is peripheral vision. It is a powerful segue into recognizing how one can expand and improve perspective in an aesthetic manner. It helps us reveal how each relational experience offers a multitude of possible contexts, all of which are simultaneously part of other wider contexts. This interactional reality, familiar to all artists, stems from how William Blake could see the world in a mere grain of sand. Peripheral vision offers opportunities that foster improvisational possibilities, which is how our species learns and evolves. All artistic endeavors come to fruition this way, as does nature herself in her messy and beautiful ways. This is systems or ecological thinking at its best. It opens the door to random, creative, novel ways to harmonize and mutually learn from each other and our environment.
Most literature on peripheral vision describes the physical attributes separately from the mental/emotional ones, only hinting at its potential to create a wider, all-inclusive lens to see, celebrate, and take advantage of our shared global interdependency. Given the way our autonomic nervous system works, the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis can and often does get stuck when the sympathetic part of our nervous system is revved up in our fight-or-flight mode. You don’t have to save your life 24 hours a day. Peripheral vision may help calm us by giving us more space to see alternatives that can reduce stress.
Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist at Stanford often quoted on “panoramic vision,” believes it stimulates calmness; however, he warns that it could lead to such focus that it can be used to increase productivity rather than relieve stress.
That is a true cultural constraint, especially in Western cultures. However, in my experience, it also encourages and maintains a pathway back to the parasympathetic, calm part of our nervous system for better decision-making. Mary Catherine Bateson advocated for the wider benefits of peripheral viewing through “recognizing that the self is not identical through time; it is a first step in celebrating it as fluid and variable, shaped and reshaped by learning.” Albert Einstein concurred that important discoveries were made by those willing to leave the details and “take in a bigger picture.” Kaja Perina, in a recent Psychology Today Editor’s Note regarding the search for the Goldilocks Moment, writes, “You don’t always know when you’re there, after all. It is our nature to miss fulfillment in the here and now.”
When I work with those exploring better relationships and striving to resolve conflicts, I try to help them avoid models that try to fit everything into narrow outcomes of certainty (see my recent blog post about the value of being uncertain). These models just do not get your nervous system unglued with consistency. Our vagus nerve, the most intriguing wandering part of our nervous system, is energized through compassion that relates to your specific needs. According to Dacher Keltner, author of Born to Be Good, it even glows as an aesthetic response to your personal needs. The process recognizes how our ecology of mind and body works in countless ways.
This opens the door to understanding our need to share our individual concerns in a harmonizing, win-win way. It’s a biological need that drives first-order change toward individual health and, in turn, influences other related changes. It demonstrates how our whole being has a unique and distinct role in sustaining our relationships.
Here is my induction exercise using peripheral vision for those looking for differences that make changes and impact their lives. It is interwoven, as is the nature of complexity and life, with improvisational possibilities and can be adapted for individuals, couples, and families.
Start by sitting in a comfortable chair in a room with a view of the outside. Begin by doing some “coherent breathing,” developed by Stephen Elliott, to soothe the vagus nerve, the nerve of compassion and security (a six-second inhale and a six-second exhale with a positive thought) for 5 to 10 minutes. Then “will” each muscle area of your body to relax progressively downward, head to toe. With your body relaxed, look straight ahead and imagine a camera-like lens in your eyes with peripheral vision, seeing each wall in your room as well as the ceiling and floor. Pause, look inside yourself, and visualize the differences you would like to see in your life right now.
After a few minutes, zoom outward beyond the immediate room to your outside view. Imagine using all your senses to see how you might make the differences you desire. Now close your eyes and, with your mind’s eye, zoom even further outward into your community, pausing and using all your senses to accept whatever arises from your subconscious regarding making a difference that matters in your life. After a few more minutes, with your eyes still closed, zoom further out into the wider world you live in, including contexts such as schooling, medicine, work, media, religion, etc. Again, pause and reflect on the differences you are seeking to create. After a few minutes, zoom back inward to your room, pause, and revisit your original desire, noticing any changes in how you may make that initial difference
In all the hundreds of times I have used this exercise, everyone has had a new, useful perspective that helped them better understand how to proceed in relation to their world and with others.
