Sarah 0:12
Welcome back for another somatic snack episode of Co-Regulation Conversations. Okay, so today I have a quick snack for you related to darkness. It's getting noticeably darker here in South Central Alaska, and this is a part of fall, isn't it? So part of this time of year for those of us that live in northern places. So, I have a lot to say about the darkness and winter and ways to come into relationship with this, these different physical aspects of these transition seasons, but today we're just going to keep it really simple. I want to bring us into awareness of our eyes. Our eyes do a lot to keep us safe. I mean, there for humans who have vision, it tends to be our primary sense, and it's the senses that we use to keep us safe to identify threats and yeah, lots again. I'm kind of reining in my tangents I could go on with these different topics to try to keep these snacks sort of short, but you know it's interesting to observe animals in the wild, like animals like bears, that don't have very good sense of sight. It's fascinating. If we are downwind of bears in the wild, in the Arctic, they won't like if eventually we make noise and they like hear that there's something there. They often can't figure out what it is until they get a scent somehow, like get up the right wind direction, and can smell. And yeah, it's been helpful for me to notice animals like that and their different sensory behaviors, just to help put our human ones in perspective. Because we, it's the only thing we know, you know. So we just think it's it's like the water we're swimming in. But we, as humans, depend a ton on sight. Can see a bear from a long ways off, especially if it's moving way earlier than it can see us, generally, for us in open places, you know, different picture if you're in brush or yeah, different. There's many many scenarios, but yeah, okay. The whole point of that is to talk about how important our eyes are for our nervous system, and this in itself could expand out into a huge topic, but as it relates to the transition into less light that we move into in the fall season, and so one of the things I thought we could explore today would be the way that sometimes in darkness in lower light moments, our eyes will have like kind of effort, like over effort, to make sense for what's out there. So I'm. I wonder if there's. Maybe it's just. You know, either if you're in a place where you can like make the light dim right now and experience some darkness, or just a teeny tiny little bit of light. You know, you you could experience this in real time. With me, if you set the, if you have control over your lighting experience. If you don't, then I bet you can still get at some of this somatic information by feeling what it's like when your eyes are efforting to see, when you're efforting with your eyeballs, you know this. We could even expand this because this isn't only when things are dark. You know, Sometimes it's reading small letters, or maybe we need a glasses upgrade. Maybe we just notice that we effort with our eyes when we get stressed. We're working on a project that really matters. There might be some eye strain that shows up there. Be really normal if it would be actually okay. So my next invitation here is to see if we can feel into the experience of like darkness for good. One way to think of this: the kind of darkness that is so lovely and welcoming when you're in a place where you know that you're safe and cozy and comfortable. Maybe a place you know well. The dim lamp light or full darkness. Yeah, maybe this is a chance to cover your eyes, put your palms of your hands over your eyeballs, and let your eyes come into this type of dark rest break, like a sensory. It's a sensory rest for the eyes. They do so much for us throughout our days, and yeah, it might really feel welcome to have a moment to rest, receive some support from the hands, from the darkness.
Sarah 8:12
Sometimes we can feel the eyeballs settling, Maybe back, maybe back and down, coming to rest a little bit more in the hammock of the connective tissue that supports our eyes in, you know, being stabilized, moving around, And in these more restful moments, the eyes might be able to, like, lean back into the support of that connective tissue hammock. Okay, you might want to stay here for a little while. If it's feeling good, I'd highly recommend it. A sensory break for your eyes can go a really long ways, and coming into awareness of the ways our eyes might be working when they efforting, and what it feels like to let the darkness come in in a different way. Might be a nice thing to keep playing with. Feel free to return to this one if this feels supportive. Okay, have a good one. See you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
