0:00 - Intro

Hey, everybody! I'm Shane. And I'm back for day two of our daily stress-reducing tips. Yesterday we talked about belly breathing. Today, we're going to attack the second most important thing that you're probably overstressing; your eyes. I know, personally, while working from home I'm spending a lot more time on the computer instead of getting to interact with my clients in person. There are also all those nice little downtimes, where we're watching a whole lot more TV.

0:28 – Why The Eyes

The thing about using our eyes like this, is the nerves that control our eye muscles actually tie into the same part of the brain that stimulates our sympathetic -- fight or flight -- nervous system. When we're constantly having our eyes move inward, looking at our phones, computer screens, or even the television screens, we're actually stressing out our nervous system. So in today's tip, I want to show you two different ways -- that's right, you're getting a little bit of a bonus -- to help relax your eyes.

1:00 – #1 Distance Looking

The first one is really, really simple. Stop looking at the screens! Yes, we have to do it as we're working. But just like I mentioned yesterday, set a timer every 20, 30, or 40 minutes. When that timer goes off, take a moment to get away from your screen and just look out the window. When we look out into the distance our eyes, instead of narrowing inward, start to diverge or look outward. And that stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest and digest or de-stressing nervous system. So just looking out the window can be a wonderful way to not only relax your eyes, but de-stress your entire body.

1:43 - #2 Palming

Tip number two is maybe not something we should be doing if you're out in public, considering we're not supposed to be touching our faces right now. But if you're at home, safe in your own environment and you haven't been around other people who might be sick, it's probably safe. This is called an eye-cover. What we're going to do is take the pocket of your hand and you're going to hold that around the eye. So the edges of the hand are what's actually touching the face and nothing is making contact with your eye or eyelid itself. What this is going to let you do, is by pressing your palm and pressing your hand up and over your face this way, you'll be cutting out all the light that's coming into the eye. It would look like this. And once you have the hands covered, you're going to close your eyes and you're going to now be able to see pitch black. Chances are though, when you first do this, you won't see pitch black. You might see some ghostly, cloudy shapes, or some different colors. That's totally normal. That is your optic nerves still firing. But the more you practice this skill, the quicker you can get to pitch black and you might even have to spend some time just telling yourself, "this is black, this is black". Teaching your brain that there actually is no more stimulus coming in. And what you'll find when you do this, you'll start to relax. Particularly if as you're covering your eyes, you're adding in the belly breathing that we learned in yesterday's video.

3:16 – Try It Out!

Let's try it really quick. And I'm going to add one more little piece into it. It feels a lot better if you warm your hands up first. So take your palms, rub them together. When you feel that warmth, cover one side and then the other. Close your eyes. Take some deep belly breaths. Notice what's going on in your vision. Is it pitch black? Or are you seeing different shapes, clouds, or colors? If you are, just keep breathing slow. Tell yourself that what you're seeing is black. And we're not going to do it right now, but ideally, you might actually stay that way for 2, 3, 4 even up to 6 or 7 minutes. It's very, very relaxing, I highly recommend that you give it a shot today.

4:10 - Recap

That's it for the tips today. In review, just remember for the first one to set your timer, get away from your screens, and just look outside, look out into the distance. If you don't have any windows, look down along a hallway. It will have the same type of effect. Even better than that is actively resting your eyes by covering them with your palms, closing your eyes, and taking some of the deep belly breaths that we worked on yesterday.

4:36 - Farewell

I hope you find that helpful. Hopefully, it's helping you to reduce some of your stress. And we'll check back in again tomorrow with a different type of tip.