The Strange Eye Exercise That Can Help Relieve Anxiety, From A Neuroscientist

Managing anxiety is already a complex undertaking, but tackling real-time moments of panic can be especially difficult to overcome. So when we had addiction psychiatrist and neuroscientist Jud Brewer, M.D., Ph.D., on the mindbodygreen podcast, we had to ask: Is there anything we can do when we feel those anxious thoughts start to creep up?

Brewer explains that when you feel anxious, your eyes tend to narrow. It has to do with somatic memory1, he says, where your body posture can actually mimic your emotions. So when you're feeling closed off (like, say, if you're stuck in a whirlwind of anxious thoughts), your vision literally closes off, too. "That association gets deepened and formed more strongly," says Brewer. It makes sense: Ever experienced tunnel vision?

That said, the trick to creating a more "open" state in the body, says Brewer, is to literally open your eyes. "You can open your eyes really wide," he says, and "your body posture says, 'Wait a minute: Are you sure you're frustrated? Because your eyes are not suggesting that you're frustrated.' That is how deeply entrenched this is."

He continues: "We can't be closed and open at the same time, so it forces that binary choice." Meaning, your body may subconsciously realize that feeling open, well, feels better than when you're tightly wound up. As a result, you may start to notice that stubborn anxiety start to melt away.