Episode 51 - If Hindsight Is 20/20, What Is Your Peripheral Vision?

In this episode of Three Questions, I unpack why the visual system, specifically your peripheral vision, plays such a powerful role in how we move, balance, and interpret the world around us. When your peripheral vision is limited, your brain may hold back movement. But when your visual field expands, your nervous system suddenly feels safer in its environment.

I share practical examples from movement training and everyday life to show how improving your visual awareness can change your range of motion, coordination, and the way your body organizes itself in space.

In This Episode You'll Hear:
• Why peripheral vision helps your brain organize movement and safety
• How visual input fills sensory gaps in the nervous system
• A simple exercise that can immediately expand your visual field

Links & Resources For This Episode:
Episode 3: Your Eyes Do More Than See
Episode 26: Vision Check: How Your Eyes Shape Movement, Strength, and Awareness
Find a Neuro Studio Teacher Near You
Connect with me on Instagram
Connect with me on Threads

Transcript

Meghann Koppele Duffy: Welcome to Three Questions where critical thinking is king, and my opinions and research are only here to support your learning and understanding. Hey, I'm your host Meghann, and I am so honored you clicked on Three Questions today so we can talk about your peripheral vision. Now, hold on. Before you shut off the episode and be like, I don't care about my peripheral vision, trust me, by the end of this episode, you will not only care about peripheral vision, you might become slightly obsessed with it, and it might be your new nervous system regulation or movement tool.

So let me ask you question one right now. If hindsight is 2020, what is your peripheral vision?

It sounds profound, but I've got a point. Let me start with the saying, if hindsight is 2020, what does that actually mean? So 2020 vision would indicate you've kind of perfect vision based off kind of all the eye doctors of the world. They got together and they said this, you can see something at 20 feet that the average person can.

So you have 2020 vision, perfect vision. So we say hindsight is always 2020. Now, what do we mean by that? When we look back on something, usually we see it a lot differently. So you might be in the thick of something, you might be angry, or you might really think you've got a good play on it. You're like, no, this is what happened.

I'm right, they're wrong. I'm wrong. They're right, whatever the case may be. And you make a decision, you act on it. And then maybe a year, five years, maybe 80 years, I don't know how long it takes. You look back on that and say, oh, I saw that all wrong. What I saw, what I thought, what I took in might not have been super accurate.

Was I too emotional? Maybe. Maybe I got bad intel. Maybe. So taking a step back, what you're seeing now is perfect vision. You're seeing it clearly. So if our hindsight's 2020, I wanna ask you what your peripheral vision is. And why I'm so obsessed with your peripheral vision is maybe we can use peripheral vision as a tool to see our world, our surrounding help, our nervous system respond, help our shoulders respond, and help our body respond more appropriately in the place in time that it's happening, rather than having to rely on that 2020 hindsight thoughts.

Okay, sure Meg, sounds great. How do we do this? Glad you asked. So first of all, let's talk about the visual system. Now, I think this fascinating. This is fascinating. Maybe you don't, but stay with me what you're seeing right now. So maybe you're watching me on YouTube and you're seeing me moving around all the all over, sitting up, sitting back.

Or maybe you're listening to me and you're driving. So you've gotta really take in your surrounding. Maybe you're at one of your kids' sporting events and you're trying to pay attention and listening to me or, but that, like, what is that person over there doing? You're getting distracted because you're getting some visual intel from the person next to you.

Okay? All this matters because what we are seeing is not the only information our brain is getting. Say that again. So what we are seeing is not the only information our brain is getting. Our brain is getting a lot more sensory input, and the beautiful thing is the brain then processes it, processes it, and gives us a picture.

Now, it's a little more complicated than that, but think of it as this. Our eyes take in sensory information, depth, light color, motion, all the above, and then our brain processes it so we can get a clear picture. So if you've had any clients with neurological conditions or you have one, sometimes our visual system can be affected in the eye directly in the processing at the brain, or the pathways getting to the processing are getting back.

So there's a lot of ways where our visual system can be damaged. But let's talk about just kind of a healthy, normal, I'm putting that in air quotes, visual system. The other thing I want you to think about your visual system. Is we use and abuse it. I don't think we respect it. Don't even get me started on scrolling, how it really can affect your visual field and visual system.

But let's just say how we kind of don't really give ourselves visual breaks. When was the last time you gave yourself a visual break and you're like at night? Every night. Okay, but our eyes are actually doing movement. Okay. Research the REM cycle now. Sometimes we like to be in quiet rooms. Sometimes we close our eyes.

So we do give ourselves visual breaks and we actually give our vis self a visual break every time we blink. So if you are working with a client or you have a child or a spouse that blinks a lot, I want you to think, okay, there's a lot of reasons why, but think, hey, why might they need more visual rest than other people?

Now, oftentimes the visual system is overworked. I know I prioritize visual information I know might be hard to believe or maybe easy to believe. I am not naturally a good mover. I was like an average athlete at best. Never the best, never the worst, right? But things just didn't come naturally. I mean, movement.

So I would, whenever someone would teach me something, I would like have to like look down at my body, really get a visual representation of it. I would've to look in the mirror, not to micromanage my movement, but understand where the movement error was coming. I wouldn't feel that I was dropping my hip.

So you could tell me, you're dropping your hip. You're dropping your hip. I'd be like, all right. But then I'd over recruit because I wasn't really feeling it. But when I saw it. Oh, okay. Now I can change that based off a sensory input. You might have just had a baby. Maybe you're going through menopause or maybe you're going through puberty.

I mean, what a compliment. If I actually have young listeners, hello, gen Z. Um, I wouldn't be so arrogant to think Gen Z wants to hear anything I have to say. But anyway, during those phases of our lives. Our bodies really change. Sometimes we have growth spurts, sometimes we gain weight, sometimes we lose weight, skin changes, that's gonna affect our proprioception.

And if you don't know what proprioception is, that's kind of the sensory information. So we talked about the eyes getting sensory information. Proprioception is the sensory information from our muscles, our tendons, our joints, our skin. They're giving our brain information about where we are in space and our fascial system.

So when that system is affected. You know, especially if you've got like EDS or hypermobility, proprioceptions not reliable and your brain is really going to prioritize visual information. It needs it also vestibular, but we're just gonna talk about visual today. So why is your peripheral vision so important?

It's your eye camera to the world. That's how your brain is getting a lot of information. Now what happens is, is when our visual system is, our peripheral vision is small, here's what I'd like everybody to do. Just rotate your body to the right as much as you can, not thinking about how you're doing it.

You can overturn your head or your ribs, whatever you'd like to do. Now, take your hands and kind of block your peripheral vision. Make your visual field small and now rotate again. What do you notice? Now some of you are gonna be like, I don't notice anything. My rotation doesn't change. Well, your brain is not prioritizing your visual system.

If you are like me, I could still rotate my lumbar spine, but I ca like, it's weird. I feel like I can't turn my head. It's a hard no. But when I'm here and I put, watch this, so I literally can't turn my head anymore without discomfort. Put my hands down. Okay, so when you make your visual field smaller, your brain is like, I don't know what the hell's over there.

Not safe to turn. I don't know what the rest of the body is doing. I can't see the shoulder girdle, I can't see her chest. I can't. I need more information to know if I wanna create a motor output, right? So if nothing else. Your prior, uh, peripheral vision helps your brain organize your balance, how you move and interact through the world, and your range of motion.

So if nothing else, working on improving your peripheral vision and opening up your visual field is going to have a large effect on your movement. Okay? Now, people sometimes freak out because when they open up their visual field, they feel like their range of motion decreases. So before I go onto question two, let's talk about this.

'cause this is kind of cool. So everybody's body responds differently. So my body, if I, if I'm not reflexly, stabilizing it, kind of non-moving parts. So right now I'm just kind of moving my arm, trying not to knock over a plant. Okay? So when I'm moving my left arm, my spine should stabilize reflexly, but if it doesn't, it's going to affect my arm movement.

Like my arm doesn't wanna go any higher than that. But if I give it a visual stimulus so I could look at my spine, so I'm gonna put my hand kind of right on my sternum. I know that's not my spine, and I'm gonna lower my arm, and I could see my spine moved. I'm actually gonna go to my belly button. Okay. So from here I'm gonna lift my arm and make sure my belly button does not move closer to the microphone.

Now if you're watching me on YouTube, my arm really increased range of motion because when I was able to see my finger on my belly button in relation to the mic, my brain was like, oh shit, the spine's actually moving. It brought awareness so my spine could reflexively stabilize. I didn't pull my abs in or do anything.

Now you might be the opposite. You might arm go all the way up. Okay. Oh, look how, oh, I saw my finger on my, I was like pretty true. So your arm might have gone all the way up. Okay. I love when I have my husband, when I test his range of motion, he'll lift his left arm and like tilt his whole body. He doesn't realize he's tilting his body, so by opening up his visual field.

And giving him a visual, I might say to him, so we'll pretend on Brian. I'll say, Hey, did you see how your head got closer to that leaf? He'll say, yeah, do it again without your head getting closer to the leaf. Now he might lift his arm overall less, but he differentiated the shoulder more. So if you're kind of hypermobile or stealing from multiple joints, when we give a proper visual cue where your visual system.

It fills sensory gaps. So basically wherever you are making a movement error, if it corrected it, your overall range of motion is going to decrease, but the range of motion at the targeted joint will increase if you're someone like me who presents tight. When I use a visual, my range of motion at the targeted joint increases.

Okay, so I just used a visual, but here's something interesting. I want everybody to look straight ahead. Now if you have breasts, use breasts. If you don't use nipples, and you can actually touch your own nipples. Okay, so look straight ahead. Do not drop your head. Can you see your chest in your peripheral vision?

Okay, when my head is up, I cannot drop your head a little bit. Can you see your chest and your peripheral vision? It's gonna be a yes or a no. Now, just notice, go back to your original head position. Make sure you cannot see your chest. Now I want everybody to make an L with their non-dominant hand, so I'm gonna do left hand.

I'm gonna touch my sternum with my thumb and my chin with my pointer. Now I'm just touching two points so I don't move my head. Now what I'm gonna ask you to do is look your eyes up and down and up. Jump them up and down, up and down. Up and down. Now from here, I want you to put your dominant hand on top of your head.

Push your head up into your hand without the distance between your fingers changing. I know it might sound confusing with words. Watch me on YouTube. Again, I still have my hands here with my L. Now I'm gonna push my head up without changing the distance. I'm gonna get an isometric of my neck. And if you don't like this isometric, find another one.

Now jump your eyes up higher and lower. Notice if your visual field increased and rest. Now look straight ahead. Exactly how you were. Can you see your chest now? I can. So we did one visual exercise. I did a saka with proprioceptive, a hands-on cue so you didn't move your spine. Okay. That's what the whole hands on thing, so don't skip the damn hands.

Just do it. Most people don't feel when they move their neck, and I just opened up my visual field, so now I can see my chest pretty clearly. And you're thinking, Meg, why is this important? Well, say you're bench pressing at the gym, or you're doing lunges. Okay, now everybody lift up a shoulder. Lift up your right shoulder.

Lift up your left shoulder. Keep looking straight ahead. Can you see your shoulder girdle elevating? Yeah, easily. Maybe when I'm bench pressing, doing a single arm. Okay, so pretend you're bench pressing. When you do a single arm, I kind of wanna isolate that arm, unless I want my spine to rotate. I don't want it in this.

So when I punch my arm out, my brain is seeing that my chest rotates. So I'm looking at a target in front of me and I can just see my chest and my peripheral vision. It's not super clear, but I can see it. So as I punch my arm, I'm not gonna let my chest get closer to my visual target. Okay, now try to get it closer.

So I want you to see the error and then tighten it up. So I just showed you two examples of how having better peripheral vision, we'll bring more awareness to your movement era. So how can we use this immediately? Before I get to question two, whatever your coach is, whatever your Pilates teacher, whatever your weight training coach yells at you the most about, I want you to think, Hey, my brain keeps making that damn mistake.

How can I fill sensory gaps now if you're doing, if it's something going on in your feet, okay. You might not be able to see your feet if they're on the ground or if we're lying back. So you might have to use a different technique. I might have you bring your legs up into the air. So some people when they bench press and their, um, hips don't stabilize, I'll have them bring their legs up to tabletop, give 'em visuals cue and say, Hey, don't let your knees triangulate with that point.

Don't let your knees get closer to that visual target while they're benching. Now, the thing is, if they can't see their knees in their peripheral vision. This is a waste of time. Okay, so hindsight's 2020. Let's make our peripheral vision 2020 so our brain and body can make better decisions in the now with our movement issues.

Peripheral vision is the most underutilized movement tool, and if you work with hypermobile people or have some hypermobility, uh, shameless plug, you need to learn my triangulation technique. Okay. Um, more proprioception for hypermobile bodies is just, again, creating cognitive overload. And if you don't know what cognitive overload is, think of when you're overwhelmed.

Or maybe you've just had a baby. I hate that they call it mommy brain, but your proprioception is just been through something. Very, I don't wanna say traumatic, but a lot happened. Okay. So our brain is really gonna prioritize visual information, but if our visual system is small and it can't help us react and our or our visual system is affected, all that information the brain is getting, it's gotta process all that.

Think about what that does to cognitive load. I am always working with my clients how to challenge them without. Increasing cognitive load. So if you have brain fog, if you have any one of these things, there's a lot of factors why that's happening. But if you are not addressing the cognitive load, the stress and the work it is to process visual and proprioceptive information, you're always going to feel overwhelmed.

Okay. So if that's you and you're like, oh my God, I feel like she just said that to me directly, reach out so I can point you in the right direction. If you have someone you love to work with, great. It takes a village. I can help find you someone that can bring in the movement tools. So all that hard work you're doing is worthwhile.

Okay. So now that you're excited about peripheral vision, you're getting in good information, quality information. So it's not only gonna help your range of motion, but it's gonna help your body respond better. Let's take this a step forward. I mentioned it before, of those shoulders, it's like the most common QI hear, shoulders down, shoulders down, shoulders down, nah.

I'm so sick of that cue. Packing your lats shoulders down is actually inhibiting the lat from really doing its job, so it completely disconnects you from your lower body. Yes, it might be able to help you do that one exercise in the gym. But guys, I don't care about being green in the gym. I wanna be able to move around, play tennis, um, joke around, do a handstand with my niece, do a cartwheel, like have fun and be pain free for my life.

Those are my goals. Now if you wanna get good at something at the gym, awesome. But again, that the shoulders down is actually compressing and pulling a lot on the neck. I see so many people in chronic spinal pain, and honestly, their head is disconnected from their body. They're pulling their shoulders down, they're reaching their head up to try to create length, and it becomes a huge sensory mismatch to the visual and vestibular system.

So. Going back to the shoulders. I'm not telling everybody to lift your damn shoulders up. Don't put words in my mouth. Our shoulders should be floating beautifully. That is challenging. But if your shoulders keep elevating during a specific exercise, that's your brain's most efficient movement pattern.

Right. I know it's annoying. I get it. But if your brain doesn't feel that slow elevation of the shoulder girdle, it can't fix it until you're at your end range. And if you don't believe me, what I want everybody to do right now is to slouch. Okay? Slouch as low as you can, and then sit up nice and tall. And I want you to think about your slouch, your brain, if you're slouching throughout the day, it doesn't notice the small.

Tiny little movements of the spine. It only notices you've slouched when you're at your end range because you're gonna feel excessive tension or stretch on the spine, the glutes, wherever you're slouching from. So what we wanna do is we don't wanna wait until it's a big movement for the brain to respond.

I want the brain to respond immediately, and this is why all my clients, they, I have to explain this to everybody. Because they wanna do big range of motion. And when we're trying to fill sensory gaps, I want them to go big, but I also want them to go small. So I want you all to do this right now. Let's put both our hands on our head, so our elbows are out to the side.

Now I want you to look straight ahead, just find a visual cue. Anything is fine. Now I want you to move your right elbow towards your midline or towards that visual target in a way. Okay? Can you see it moving towards and away from the visual target? Just keep in mind you're not looking at your elbows.

You're looking straight. Now, move your left. Okay? Now we're gonna stay on the left. You can see that left moving in and out. Stop focusing on the left. I want you to notice you're right, so if you're watching me on YouTube when I'm doing this, you can clearly see my right arm moving, okay? Well, what if I wanna isolate and remap so my brain knows that I have two separate arms post-stroke or post-injury?

Well, I'm gonna look straight ahead and I'm going to check, check in with my elbow in my peripheral vision. I am going to see the record button as I move my left. I wanna make sure my right doesn't get closer or further from that record button.

And rest. Okay, so two things I improved did. If you were watching me on YouTube, you could see that I was moving my elbow less. Now, I might have been moving a little bit, but my brain could not track any micro, any more movement. To me, it didn't look like it moved at all. Now, when we think about that, why is that important?

Well, that is important. Like I said, when we're trying to brain map. And if you don't know what I mean, let me simplify. In our brain we've got a sensory and a motor map, so basically everything. So the hand is next to the wrist, next to the elbow in the brain map. So this is why everybody put down their fourth finger, see how your third finger and pinky also moved.

That just means there's some smudg in your brain map. Okay. This is also why people have a foot fetish. Now, I just have to say I do not have a foot fetish. Um, but when people see or feel feet or do other things with feet that we do not have to get into in this podcast. They get arousal. They'll actually get genital arousal and people will be like, oh, because your foot is connected to your pelvic floor.

Everything is connected in our body, people, but in utero our foot. So think you're in utero getting, get in a little bowl fetal position. Our feet are right next to our genitals, so your feet and your genitals are right next to each other on the brain map. So this is why if somebody touches your feet, and also I know during I think your last trimester, you're not supposed to get like foot massages 'cause it can induce labor.

Something like that. It's because when you have sensation in your feet, it can create sensation in your genitals. Arousal can even cause an orgasm. Okay. So fascinating how the brain map works. Now, it's not wrong to have fuzziness in your brain map or move like two joints at the same time. Yeah, we wanna do that.

We want the body to move fluid, but if the brain doesn't know it has. The most mobile joint in the body. Your glenohumeral, that's the ball in the socket. It's the most mobile joint in the body. If it doesn't know how much movement it has just there, it's gonna steal from the nearby joints. And this can kind of lead to compensations and injuries.

Okay, so rewind back. Why do I wanna do that? Well, I want my peripheral vision to bring in sensory gaps so that I can isolate my left shoulder from my right. Why is that important to me? Well, I had a large amount of skin cancer removed from my arm and they had to take a little bit of my deltoid. It completely screwed up my proprioception.

And after about six months, I woke up with a frozen shoulder, but luckily using Neuro Studio techniques, it was fixed pretty fast. Um, and the real key was supporting that shoulder and remapping. So I'm still working on remapping because I don't want my right arm to always move when my left arm does.

Okay, now. Do this again. Elbows up. Now I want you to bring both elbows in and out.

Okay. Say we're doing a squat. I love my clients to use a head-mounted laser or sometimes like my athletes, I want their eyes to track down smoothly. But let's just make it easy where we have a visual target, and as we're squatting down, we're trying to stay in the center of our visual field and not let our elbows get closer.

But what if you don't see that your elbows are going in and out? So as you're trying to mobilize your hips, knees, and feet, in a squat, you're really mobilizing your shoulder joint. No, that's not what we want. So by stabilizing that upper quadrant, it can get us deeper into our hips. And if you want, keep packing your lats, do this drill instead.

Your lats will get so damn strong and we can use the tensegrity from the upper body to really get better movement in the hips. Okay, so I promise I have a point. I will get there. What I want you to do is I have my clients move super big with the arms, and then I have them move as small as humanly possible.

So as soon as your elbows go in, move them out. As soon as you feel them move out, move them back in. I want my brain to clock that movement tiny. I want my brain to clock the smallest amount of movement so that it will trigger a response. Different sensory input, different motor output to stabilize my shoulder girdle when need be.

Okay, so when you are working with clients that ha keep elevating their shoulders, we talked about this in question one, fill those sensory gaps, get their arms in their visual fields. Open up their visual field, get their arms in the visual field so the brain can use peripheral vision so the brain can process that information and create a different motor output.

Cool. So you wanna fix those shoulders, keeping going up and down when you don't want it, fix it at the level of the brain. And I'm telling you, peripheral vision is such a good tool for reorganizing your upper body. Why isn't it a great tool for the lower body? Well it is, except it's really hard to see what our lower body is doing because not everybody's peripheral vision is that big.

Let me tell you, athletes, their peripheral vision is great. And say you work on rotational sports, baseball players, tennis players opening up, their peripheral vision is going to be key. Think you're a baseball player, you're up at that If you have shitty peripheral vision. Okay, you're gonna have to turn your head more to see more of the field, okay?

You are going to have to track your body and eyes different based off of your visual deficits. I worked with this young, um, soccer player. Oh my God, she was so sweet. Uh, had some hypermobility issues, was having a lot, a lot of small, little issues that were really affecting her life and lifestyle. She was having trouble sleeping at night.

And you know, when you hear like all these little things, I feel like doctors roll their eyes and I was like, Nope, say more. Give me everything. I asked her what position she played on the soccer field. She was defense. And I was like, okay, say more. Where exactly. Well, usually on the right side. How are you on the left side?

I suck on the left side. I'm better on the right side. Okay. So we know if she's on the left side, probably that's a visual field issue. What's the difference between right and left? You can say, oh again, proprioceptive. Yep. But this girl's like a high level athlete. The difference is, say I've got a bigger visual field on my left side.

Okay. I wanna be on the right side of the field because I can see the whole left side of the field. What if I have a shitty left visual field and I'm on the right side of the field, I'm a little screwed because I see the right side and only to the middle of the field. Okay. Also, for her, um, we, I described it as if you have any athletes or students that you're like, yo, did you not see that coming?

And what was funny, I asked her, I'm like, what are your strengths and weaknesses as a player? She's like, oh, my coach is always yelling at me like I'm not paying attention. I was like, yeah, because she couldn't see the defenders coming until they were right on her. But the crazy part is she had excellent reaction time once she saw them.

This is what's fascinating. So if you're working with athletes, stop just working on reaction time. I mean, keep working on reaction time, but don't only do it. Because I want my athletes to have good reaction time, but re reaction time. What's the sensory input? What's gonna trigger their go? And if it's visual, usually it is.

So for me, if I'm playing tennis, what's gonna determine where I go on the. Court. Well, I have to wait. I'm not good enough player where I can read my opponents like racket, mostly because it's too far away and it's too much cognitive load. When I overthink, when I play tennis, it's not cute. Okay. I call it Meghann being unathletic.

I look very unathletic when I play tennis or I look like locked in athlete. It's like Jekyll and Hyde. So what I do is I wait until I see the ball and based off the ball's trajectory. That's where I go now I'm like that soccer player. Despite my size and shape, I am very fast. Okay? I played this woman once.

She would always try to like go, uh, really cross court short, fast. And she's like, it pisses me off. You're the only person who can get to that ball. And I was like, yeah, but I also know you're gonna hit it 'cause that's your shot. So I kind of had the advantage, but anyway. The problem is I'm fast. Once I see the ball, if you listen to the episode I did about sports, my dad used to say to me, look alive Meghann, when I was playing softball, and what would I say?

What do I look dead? But to my dad, he was like, is this girl paying attention? She looks like she's just, yeah, because my visual system was taking in so much information, I couldn't focus. But then when I saw the ball, I was able to react. So peripheral vision could be the difference between your body re uh, responding beautifully or your body responding, but too late.

And I'm just like having a, a senior moment here. I don't even think I asked you question two. I was just so excited I got right into it. So did I answer question two? Let's see. Let's use backwards design and let's test me. Question two. I was saying if you're now excited about peripheral vision, could it be the key to your shoulder organization and sports performance?

And maybe I said the question, I don't remember. I'm so excited about this conversation. You know, I lost focus. Something I do a lot. Alright, so last thing. Could your visual field or your peripheral vision be negative, nega, negatively affecting, easy for me to say your nervous system regulation tools. So right off the bat, what are your nervous system regulation tools?

How do you relax? Do you meditate? Do you breathe? Do you infrared sauna? Do you use cold plunges? What is your nervous system regulation tool? Now I find we're selling these nervous system regulation tools, and I'm not against any of them, but my question to you is why do we need so much nervous system regulation?

What if we did not need these tools? Because we are able to regulate our nervous system on the regular. Okay. Now I know it's hard and guys, last week was hard. Um, I'm not gonna get into to the news, not because I don't care. But this is our escape from that. But man, it is heavy. It's complex, it's scary.

I've had a lot of friends and families and countries where they couldn't get home or they were worried for their lives. There's a lot going on. It's hard to keep our nervous system regulated. It's hard when we're hearing and we're seeing so much shit going on in the world. Okay, so I'm not saying abort your nervous system regulation tools, but I want you to think in your day to day, what sets you off.

I know mine. Peripheral vision is not negative, affecting my nervous system. It's my saving grace, my visual system, auditory is my issue. If I, if there were too many noises going on, I even didn't even enjoy, like my walks with Willie. My beagle are sometimes hard 'cause he does a beagle bark when he gets a scent and I know him beagle barking, getting a scent.

That's him working his body and using all his tools. But it is so jarring in the head and I just, I'm embarrassed because my neighbors are always looking. And it makes me crazy. So for me, my lack of auditory processing that negative affects my nervous system regulation. So I am someone, people think this is strange when I go for a run or I haven't run in like forever a walk.

I don't like music, I don't like talking. I just want to be alone and quiet. Okay. I think I take after my mother on that. She loved quiet when we were kids, but for you. Maybe you're around so much noise and chaos, whether you're a teacher or a coach or a parent, and you're like, Meg, I am. I can tune my kids out or my husband out when I need to.

Your visual system might be the problem. Like teachers I know don't get mad at me, but that kid moving in the back of the room, why are you letting that bother you? He's distracting the other kids. Let them deal with it. I. Have become so good. I lecture to a lot of movement professionals, a lot of people with hypermobility, a lot of people that can't sit still.

So in my courses I say, you are not required to sit still. You can get up, you can do back flips. I am not going to stop lecturing. You are not gonna distract me. And what I did is I practiced that. I practiced lecturing with a lot of distractions because in certain settings there's a lot of distractions.

There's always somebody who has a resting not happy face. There's always someone that looks pissed. There's always someone who's moving around. You can't let that bother you. So if you're someone who gets distracted by visual information, tightening up your visual system and improving your visual field, not in a, just make it big, but make it good way, might help your brain get a clearer picture so it's less processing, so it's less overwhelming.

Okay. I might suggest to you close your eyes more when you're meditating, close your eyes and challenge yourself to meditate with your eyes open and pay attention to a specific visual target. And notice your limbs and different body parts. Notice when you're breathing, let your body move towards or away of whatever you're looking at.

So you're training your visual system to integrate with your breath and nervous system tools. And I could, like there is research. There is research, it's super loose, but like research saying that the visual system has a direct effect on the nervous system, but not in the way we think. So because the visual system, there's gonna be some autonomic body functions.

Our visual system does affect posture and, um, what's, uh, what's another one? Uh, peripheral vision. Oh, sensory integration. So when we're using our eyes, our proprioception and vestibular system, so these are all part of our nervous system, so our eyes have a direct effect on that. All my researchers, researchers out there, I would love to see some studies.

On size and quality of visual fields and heart rate variability, right? Heart rate variability is one of these things to see how our body can respond to a good or bad sensory input. Up. So good heart rate, variability, variability, heart rate will go up, but then it can come back down. When you have bad heart rate variability, it is telling us our body is not super, um, flexible to change.

So it kind of gets stuck in different states, right? So like for me, some people who are stuck in a state of agitation, sometimes movement can help. Sometimes it can be worse if their proprioception or visual system can't integrate. So anybody who's like super fascinated in research and loves the brain and loves the visual system, do some studies on visual fields, quality, um, ability for eyes to converge and effect on heart rate variability be, and why I'm looking for that, or even breath patterns, because our eyes have a direct effect, like I said, on posture, shoulder stability.

And for us, if you really want good breath, the diaphragm has to mobilize. But the diaphragm does not mobilize well when the shoulder girdle is unstable. And I see so much instability post-concussion people with anxiety, hypermobility. And guess what? That instability in the most mobile joint in the body and the girdle that surrounds it creates high levels of cognitive load.

So I'm not saying all this will clear up anxiety and all that stuff, but it is a piece of the picture. So don't discount peripheral vision. So to close up shop hindsight is not always 2020. We are going to work to help our peripheral vision become more 2020, working on opening up our visual fields, working on seeing how our body responds to visual information, processes it, and can integrate with our other senses.

We're also gonna use peripheral vision, not just as eye exercises or a way to activate the cranial nerves, but to fill sensory gaps in our upper quadrant. Most people have no idea how they're moving their shoulder girl even, and the, even when it's the tiniest movement, can have a huge effect. So peripheral vision can fill sensory gaps in such a big way.

And if you're interested in learning more, please check out the Neuro Studio. When I talk about our triangulation method and how we uniquely use the head-mounted laser, um, I will be doing a workshop on the head-mounted laser and how it can really using the head-mounted laser with peripheral vision. So shameless plug, but I am doing this workshop because it is such cool and interesting work, and it doesn't take us away in movement pros, like nobody wants to do an hour of eye exercises. It integrates with the movement, so it becomes fun, powerful, and really improves sports performance. Right? And last but not least, keep trying to regulate your nervous system. Do what makes you feel good, but understand that your peripheral vision and all that sensory input could have a negative effect.

And if it does, don't get mad. Just think of, wait, I've been doing all this work to regulate my nervous system, but I'm missing a piece, and that small piece might be the key to being less reactive and more responsive. So thank you guys so much. Hope these three questions got you a little bit more excited about your peripheral vision.

Sorry if I got too technical. I'm a little obsessed with the eyes and if you have any follow up questions, please do not hesitate to ask whether you DM me, comment on social media, send a carrier pigeon or an email. I look forward to seeing you guys in the next episode.