When you picture a Meditator are they sitting cross-legged with their eyes closed?
Some version of this is what many of us picture when we imagine someone meditating.
Is this the only way to meditate?
Can You Meditate With Your Eyes Open?
The short answer is yes, absolutely!
Mindfulness Meditation Techniques are exercises which develop the 3 attentional skills of Mindfulness.
The advantages of approaching Meditation as a skills based activity include that:
- we’re not limited to a single technique or a single focus range
- the range of experiences we can focus those skills upon is virtually unlimited when you know how
- we can practise virtually any time and any place
When all sensory experiences are possibilities for Meditation many will lend themselves to your eyes being open – focusing on sights in the environment for example. Others such as focusing on inner experiences (like visual thought, auditory thought or emotional sensations in the body) could involve having your eyes closed or open.
The choice to have your eyes open becomes an individual one. The reasons you may choose to Meditate with your eyes open or closed might be influenced by a range of things including:
- what you’ve chosen to focus on
- when you’re practising
- where you’re practising
- a practice challenge you have set yourself to deepen your practice and expand your skills
What Influences Whether to Meditate With Your Eyes Open Or Closed?
What You Choose To Focus On
If how you Meditate involves a single technique with a limited focus range then it may seem like a fairly straight line as to whether or not having your eyes open or closed is a good thing.
If you approach Mindfulness Meditation as attentional skills based activity that can be focused on ANY sensory experience then your focus options will be almost infinite. Depending on WHAT sensory experience (or experiences) you choose to focus on you’ll then decide whether or not you to have your eyes open for all, some or none of your practice.
To come to grips with having so many options the Unified Mindfulness System has a helpful way of categorising sensory experience into:
- 3 broad categories of See, Hear and Feel
- Each category is further divided into Inner and Outer
- All of these are further divided into experiences which are either Active and Restful
Some examples of inner experience in See, Hear and Feel are:
- Visual thought you See in your mind
- Self Talk you Hear in your head
- Physical Sensations in your body that are emotional
Restful experiences could include:
- Physical relaxation in your body
- Silence (as opposed to sounds) you hear in the world around you
- Moments of mental quiet (the space between thoughts)
This is an incomplete summary but it begins to paint the picture of the scope of meditative possibilities that surrounds every moment of our lives. You can learn more and explore how to meditate with any or all these possibilities at Aussie Meditation.
Choosing to focus on Outer Experience lends itself to having your eyes open.
For example if you’ve chosen to focus on:
- Visual experience in the environment around you then you’ll need your eyes open
- Visual experience which includes both inner and outer experience will include having your eyes open (you can practice with inner visual experience with your eyes open too)
What may seem less obvious is that any practice can be done with your eyes open.
In the early stages of practising a technique that is focused on inner experience closing your eyes might help you become more familiar with the location and the activity of these experiences. With some practice you could then decide to try them with your eyes open too.
When You Are Meditating
Certain times may offer their own opportunities for growing the skills of mindfulness. Some of these will likely seem and natural with having your eyes open, closed or even a bit of both.
You might choose to meditate at sunrise noticing details of the changing colours, the sounds of the world waking up and your own reaction to the beauty of what you are seeing and hearing.
You might choose to pair certain daily activities with certain kinds of practice. Some of these may naturally lend themselves to having our eyes open while others maybe able to be done with your eyes open or closed.
For example you decide to meditate:
- while doing the dishes – an activity best done with your eyes open!
- while on your way to work by focusing on the sights and sounds around you
- when you first sit in the drivers seat of your car. You do a short burst of practice before turning on the ignition. Sometimes you practice with your eyes open. At other times you find it helpful to close them if you’re focusing on inner experiences like thought and emotion.
- when you are listening to the evening news – you close your eyes and notice any emotional body sensations that the news is triggering within you.
Where You Are Meditating
The circumstances of the environment in which you’ve chosen to meditate may offer challenges or opportunities that influence whether or not decide to practice with eyes open or closed.
For example:
- If you’re meditating while walking and you’re focused on sounds or silence in the environment around you then you’ll want your eyes open to avoid injury.
- If you’re doing a background practice while sitting in a meeting having your eyes open is obviously important. A background practice requires only a small amount of attention as you attend to the tasks and activities of your day.
- If you’re doing a practice while around other people. This might involve having some attention on any emotional sensations (or emotional peace) that are occurring in your body as you interact with others. Alternatively you might choose to have some focus on the sights and sounds of the other people as a focus range for practice while you are around them. This can be quietly happening in the background as you practise again with your eyes open.
These kinds of practice in life opportunities surround us all day and are a way to continue to grow the attention skills of mindfulness which builds our likely access to the benefits of practice.
A Practice Challenge
Practice Challenges are ways to expedite the growth of your mindfulness skills. There are various ways to approach this. The Unified Mindfulness System has 4 ‘practice accelerators’. As with focus options these practice accelerators will also offer many opportunities for practising both with your eyes open or closed.
Some examples:
- A Response Challenge involves intentionally taking in sights or sounds and working with any reactions we have.
- A Motion Challenge involves attempting to maintain a technique during both simple or complex activities.
- A Situation Challenge involves strategically practising mindfulness during life situations
These 3 examples will likely involve having your eyes from all or part of the time. It really is up to you and what you feels helps serve the goal of developing your attentional skills.
Related Questions
Can You Meditate When You Are Looking At Someone?
This article has touched on this briefly. You certainly can meditate while looking at someone. If you are involved in a very little weight exchange that doesn’t really much cognitive ‘load’ the degree of attention you could give to a practice may well be more than a typical ‘background practice’. There are many ways you could maintain a practice during any conversation. A little awareness of your emotional body sensations is an option for a background practice, as is maintaining a focus on restful experience (relaxation) in the body. There are others too and you can learn more about these options at Aussie Meditation.
Where Do I Focus My Eyes When Meditating?
The answer to this will be influenced by the focus range of the meditation you’ve chosen to do. If you are focusing on active, external visual experience then your eyes may focus on a variety of visual experiences. If you are doing a Noting Technique (which involves short period of high concentration before moving to the next sensory experiences) then your gaze will likely be shifting frequently.
Doing a technique that specifically focuses on external, restful, visual experience might involve deliberately defocusing your gaze to remove some of the detail from what you see. In this case your eyes may not necessarily be moving a great deal as you explore the sensory characteristics of this kind of visual experience.
Practice that doesn’t specifically involve external visual experience doesn’t involve your eyes in any particular way. Your focus is elsewhere and your gaze can be wherever you like.
Does Walking Count As Mindfulness Meditating?
If you’re doing a practice which involves the attentional skills of mindfulness working together while you’re walking then yes it counts as a meditation.
Learning to take the practice of mindfulness skills into every corner of our lives is a huge step forward in developing and deepening those skills. Our experience which seems solid, ordinary and normal proves itself to be extraordinarily alive, fresh and full of change. As unlikely as that seems when you’ve spent years getting used to ‘how things are’ this IS the gift that mindfulness skills offers people. So whether or not you choose to practice with your eyes or closed is entirely up to you. If you feel one option supports your practice more at any given moment that is the choice I would make. It is the practice of the skills themselves that supports the benefits of mindfulness. At Aussie Meditation our purpose is to give people the knowledge to learn, practice and grow through Mindfulness.