Meditation with open eyes — how is it?

Inner, emotional peace and the physical state of the body seem to us inextricably linked. However, this is far from always the case: modern psychotechnics allow you to meditate, to enter into a state of harmony with yourself, even when the body is in dynamics. This means that you can do everyday activities and still meditate just as if you were sitting in a comfortable position with your eyes closed. This is a practice based on Holoscendence and Bakhtiyarov’s techniques.

The main rule is to do ordinary things (for example, washing dishes) “on the machine”, without trying to use the mind. By learning this dynamic meditation, you will acquire the habit of maintaining inner peace and harmony, regardless of what is happening around you and what you yourself are doing.

Exercise 1

Step one is classic meditation, but with open eyes. Find a quiet place, dim the lights, remove external stimuli, sit back and relax.

Look in front of you, defocusing your eyes: not highlighting any particular object or area, but covering with a “relaxed” look everything that surrounds you, including what is on the periphery of vision (at the edges of the visible area). It is better not to look out the window or at moving objects so as not to be distracted by the changes taking place with them. It is easier to look at the wall, curtains, while not focusing on them.

At first, discomfort is possible. Some people even have watery eyes. This is normal — our pupils are not used to working like this. Soon you will form a habit and it will become easier.

Gradually, you will move into the state of «I look, but I do not see.» The space around should be felt as something inseparable from you. It will literally consume you. At the same time, if you involuntarily focus your vision on some object, the meditative state will be lost.

Now we can move on to listening. Try to hear what is happening without isolating individual sounds, trying to put what you hear into a single continuous sound picture. Here, too, discomfort is possible at first, but gradually you will get used to such a sound picture without isolating individual signals.

Exercise 2

The next step is to combine vision and hearing: not to see and hear separately, making an effort to do this, but to see and hear at the same time. In a state of ordinary, static and comfortable meditation, we try to isolate ourselves from the external picture, and when we meditate with open eyes, on the contrary, we accept it.

Having accepted the outside world, it is important, without ceasing to look and listen to it, turn to the physical world: to feel everything that happens to the body, both pleasant and unpleasant. Then it is necessary to bring everything together: all external and internal sensations without concentrating on individual moments. The result should be a complete picture of what is happening inside and outside.

Exercise 3

After you «catch» this big picture, you can move on to the movement — get up and walk. Additional physical sensations will be added to the overall picture, some internal stimuli will become more noticeable, breathing will be louder.

It is necessary to fit all this into the already created overall picture. You will gradually feel that thoughts recede into the background. Only you remain, one with the body, listening to yourself and the world. This is the state of dynamic meditation with open eyes.

Once you learn how to enter into it, you can meditate while doing any work that does not require constant making of original decisions. At the same time, such meditation, like the classic one with closed eyes, teaches you to control your mind, which helps to improve memory and attention, and reduce stress. In the conditions of the modern world, it is important to be able to maintain the ability to be in the inner comfort zone, to feel yourself and the world around you.