Vision, Eye Sight and Peak Human Performance

My friend Steve Mosley (from Combat Hard in the Atlanta area) and I have been discussing several methods in helping his self-defense and tactical athlete students enhance their personal performance.

I shared with Steve numerous NLP and hypnosis techniques that are very effective.  Were now in process of putting together workshops were we will share and instruct on this info.

One key component that we have been discussing is vision (eye sight) and how peripheral vision can be very beneficial.

Before I go into the background of peripheral vision I’d like to thank nava ching for much this great information and inspiration!

For quite some time I’ve been very interested in what is variously referred to as flow, peak personal performance or optimal experience — those moments when actions and thoughts are unusually smooth, clear and effortless…perfect human performance! We seem to shift into a higher gear. Time slows and an almost magical feeling of control is accompanied by an oceanic sense of union with everything around us.

Accounts of flow are often found in what appear to be wildly different sectors of experience such as athletics and mysticism. And yet to a great extent both arenas are devoted to the attainment of the same physiological and neurological state, the same feeling of transcendence.

John Brodie, who was quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers some 25+ years ago, has talked enthusiastically and knowledgeably about flow, perhaps encouraged by his friend, Michael Murphy, founder of Esalen Institute. He once recalled how in the midst of a game his level of play would suddenly jump to a higher plane.

Though huge lineman crashed in on him, he was in perfect control as he calmly stepped back, set up, and threw. Brodie described how the football appeared to travel on a “wire of will” that connected him to his receiver, usually the peerless Gene Washington. He claimed that he had seen defensive backs cut in front of Washington to intercept the ball, but it had hopped over their fingertips and into the pass catcher’s hands. It seemed inevitable that the play be completed.

Bill Russell has described how the great Boston Celtic teams of the late 60s would sometimes get into such a flow, a scoring surge that could only be stopped by the opposition calling time out. He and his teammates were absolutely in tune with each other. Each player could “see the whole court,” and preternaturally anticipate his teammates actions. They were playing not only over their heads, but “out of their heads,” operating on instinct and maybe inspiration.

In religious contexts the vocabulary is different and we hear of “flashes of insight,” “clear vision” and “brilliant light.” Saul on the road to Damascus was such an example. In recounting events of sudden realization, many individuals give visual reports of the moment of enlightenment: “I suddenly saw the answer,” “It all became clear to me,” or “I saw with a crystal clarity that . . .”

Most people are familiar with this kind of high, at least in secular contexts. You might have felt it on the golf course, working in the garden or doing a crossword puzzle–the sudden feeling of being in absolute control, of feeling like you know what’s going to happen before it happens. You’re so totally engrossed in the activity that your eyes seem to open a little wider as visual data streams into your brain, flows through the realm of ideas, and floods into action, as if the three things were different aspects of one unnamable thing that connects you and the putter or the roses to be pruned or the clues to 36 across and 14 down. Stop and think about what you’re doing and the spell is broken; the whole brain engagement with the outside world interrupted by conscious involvement. The ball slices into the woods; the thorn that a moment ago caressed your fingertip now draws blood.

In the spring of 1989, the folks at nava ching decided to spend some time trying to find a way to maximize the potential for experiencing flow. They began with a theory, that people who have the ability to see farther, or wider, or more deeply or more clearly might have access to whatever the brain processes are that give rise to peak experience. They began to think that the descriptions of such experiences were not just metaphors, but were, in fact, literal representations of actual internal experience.

People who frequently experience flow aren’t just more athletic or smarter or more creative or holier than the average person but perhaps literally see–and therefore understand and even experience–the world in a different manner. This “seeing” might access a neurological facility enabling them to process vast amounts of spatial and even intellectual material and resolve it into inspired action or insight. As they looked for direct relationships between the meanings of words like seeing and understanding, vision (VEN – visual internal narrow focus) and Vision (VEB – visual external broad focus), it slowly became apparent that they might be on to something.

They knew that individuals’ reported of intensely joyful experiences often revolved around a change in visual perception and theorized that the converse was also true: that a change in visual perception could engender peak experiences.

Night Vision

From studies and personal experience it was discovered that in low light, peripheral vision is far superior to central or focused vision. Night vision relies almost entirely on the rod cell receptors of the peripheral region of the retina, which because of their neural connections and physical makeup are very sensitive to light. Rods need about 30 minutes of dark or dim red light to activate fully, and then, it is claimed, they have the capacity in the healthy eye to detect a single photon–the equivalent, under optimal conditions, of the flame of a candle that is ten miles away. In the dark, color-sensitive cones are not very useful–hence sight at night is almost entirely dependent on peripheral vision.

Most people in industrialized countries have come to rely almost entirely on focused sight. Our culture’s dependence on focused vision has deprived us of the mental processes which accompany peripheral vision. We don’t even have an adequate descriptive vocabulary for peripheral abilities. And this was one of the more troubling aspects throughout their investigations, our culture has little understanding, appreciation or experience with peripheral vision.

Perhaps the special perception claimed by mystics and athletes comes from the ability to observe the world and themselves from a “different point of view,” in a broader, more open context. Since it is clearly established that we all possess two visual systems, it may be that creativity, intuition and even some kinds of ecstatic experience might have a direct connection with second sight, a sight dependent to a great extent on the brain’s capacity for processing peripheral vision.

Additional references that shed more light on second sight were a succession of texts from the Taoists of early China and through the accounts of Carlos Casteñada that speak of a certain kind of all-seeing gaze. One in particular gave very precise description of the powers of second sight and instructions for its development.

In The Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi, the legendary swordsman of 16th century Japan, implies that he fought his greatest duels with his eyes crossed, and goes into considerable detail about developing and using this strange ability. He writes somewhat mysteriously about a state he entered while so engaged. He also refers to the two types of sight which he calls Ken and Kan. Ken registers the movements of surface phenomena; it’s the observation of superficial appearance. Kan is the examination of the essence of things, seeing through or into. For Musashi, Ken is seeing with the eyes, Kan is seeing with the mind, a difference paralleling that between style and substance. He gives instructions for developing Kan sight: “It is important to observe both sides without moving the eyes. It is no good trying to learn this kind of thing in great haste. Always be watchful in this manner and under no circumstances alter your point of concentration.”

It’s often thought that peripheral vision is a more passive type of sight, certainly not one to be used in a duel. Most of the references to cross-eyed meditation and “soft-focus vision” were in calm, quiet circumstances. In the search for methods to create peak experiences, it’s assumed that the peak experiences only became available when anxiety was absolutely abated, and that anxiety abatement would, by necessity, require serenity.

But reading Musashi changed all that. While anxiety abatement might be necessary, passivity certainly wasn’t. Musashi may not have understood the biology of sight, but he was acutely aware of the difference between cone and rod vision.

Neural structures existed within the eye and brain, which facilitate a way of seeing that is radically dissimilar from the one we’re accustomed to using, and that this way of seeing is available to all of us all the time. The question was how. A good method to experiment with is the 3d or Magic Eye pictures/books.  They are great a tool for developing second sight, but they lacked the depth, the passion and the experience of real life usage.

In the next post I’ll go into the advantages of peripheral vision for instant relaxation, especially in a stressful situation.

If you’d like more info on Combat Hard the Facebook Fan Page is:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=50471625015 

OK…what’s your experience been with peripheral vision?  Let me know in the comments below.