This started when I watched H.H. the Dalai Lama on TV a few months ago and noticed that he blinked about four times more frequently than I did. I decided to mirror his blinks, and found that voluntary blinks seem to ‘swat’ thoughts. So I started using blinks during my meditation whenever a thought didn’t just float on by.
After much success with this exercise, and trying some variations such as blinking on the Shumann Resonance (around 7.8 per second) which also is quite energizing, I did a Google on ‘voluntary blinks,’ which took me to a couple of scientific journal articles. I wrote to one of the authors, a research professor in London, and he very kindly replied yesterday, saying:
"The problem with blinks is that the muscle activity associated
with them sends out an electrical signal that interferes with
the EEG signal. So we can’t be sure whether there is also a
true interference or not.
“However, you might be interested in this paper about blinks that
we just published. This suggest that blinks may turn off
consciousness briefly.”
You can imagine how excited that last sentence made me! I interpret it – and the research in his attached article – as positive feedback from the scientific community that the voluntary blink does swat thoughts. One paper, “Vision: In the Blink of an Eye” by David Burr (not the same person I e-mailed), was published in Current Biology Vol 15 No 14,(need subscription) also is available on line via Burr’s various essays at:
http://www.pisavisionlab.org/burr_pubs.htm
ABSTRACT
Although we blink every 4 to 6 seconds, we notice neither the act of blinking nor the mini-blackouts they cause. A new study using imaging techniques identifies the neural structures in humans involved in suppressing vision processing and visual awareness during blinking.
-=-=-=-=
The other, “Blinking Suppresses the Neural Response to Unchanging Retinal Stimulation” also published in Current Biology, Vol. 15, 1296–1300, July 26, 2005, ©2005 Elsevier Ltd and requires a subscription. Here’s the free abstract from PubMed:
ABSTRACT
“Blinks profoundly interrupt visual input but are rarely noticed, perhaps because of blink suppression, a visual-sensitivity loss that begins immediately prior to blink onset. Blink suppression is thought to result from an extra-retinal signal that is associated with the blink motor command and may act to attenuate the sensory consequences of the motor action. However, the neural mechanisms underlying this phenomenon remain unclear. They are challenging to study because any brain-activity changes resulting from an extra-retinal signal associated with the blink motor command are potentially masked by profound neural-activity changes caused by the retinal-illumination reduction that results from occlusion of the pupil by the eyelid. Here, we distinguished direct top-down effects of blink-associated motor signals on cortical activity from purely mechanical or optical effects of blinking on visual input by combining pupil-independent retinal stimulation with functional MRI (fMRI) in humans. Even though retinal illumination was kept constant during blinks, we found that blinking nevertheless suppressed activity in visual cortex and in areas of parietal and prefrontal cortex previously associated with awareness of environmental change. Our findings demonstrate active top-down modulation of visual processing during blinking, suggesting a possible mechanism by which blinks go unnoticed.”
I’d like a few more folks to try thought-swatting with voluntary blinks. Actually, I have to confess that I now also add a quick uvula-tug and mulabandha squeeze to the blink, but what the hey… it works very well by itself.
Let me know if you try it out.
As I said, you don’t have to do the triple-swat. Just blinking seems to work just fine!
Ramon,
I think you are on to something there. You may also notice that sometimes if a person is embarassed, they may suddenly blink often, as if they want to swat the embarassment away.
I think the phenomenon extends to more than blinking – I think an actual movement of the eyes can do the same thing.
If you are curious, try googling on
rapid eye movements therapy
for food for further thought.
Movement of the eyes can easily be done while the eyes are closed, from side to side, up and down, or anywhere.
-David
Yogani alerted me that my original link did not work. I was able to link to one of the two mentioned articles (see first posting for info).
David_o wrote
rapid eye movement (singular) brings up a buncha sites.
Thanks, David. Yes, I also ‘blink’ with my eyes shut.
Also I had an interesting e-mail response from which I lift a few quotes:
quote:
Yes, eye blink is a known self-management technique. Reichians recommend it to soften to visage of those who are too intense and intimidating. Silva Mind control taught that as an entre to alpha long ago. EMDR therapy uses eye motions to reframe and discharge traumatic memory, and in NLP you can 'anchor' and discharge virtually any state or experience at will, ie, arbitrarily train yourself to discharge a thought with a blink or any other cue. Also, google "saccade". In vision terminology, a saccade means an extremely speedy shift of the eye between points where the gaze has become fixed. [/quote]
You may want to tip the scientist to sambhavi mudra.
Thanks for the reminder (for myself)! Blinking in sambhavi works very well also – not that it’s very necessary in that potent mudra!
(Smile)
BTW, while on food for thought, there is a certain fraction of people who can voluntarily make their eyes vibrate rapidly. This is not just moving them back and forth rapidly – it is actually ‘vibrating’ them — it’s much faster than a voluntary movement can switch from to to fro. I can do it, and I have found other people who can. I don’t know if it is possible to teach it.
I have found that I can do it in Shambhavi too, and the result can be interesting — and effective.
-D
try moving the vibration down through the chakras.
Thanks, I’ve tried, but I can’t. This particular thing is a voluntary light spasm of the eye muscles; it isn’t a subtle energetic thing. It’s very physical and can be seen and felt (if closed my eyes and someone puts their finger on my closed eyelid, they can feel the vibration easily). I can’t get any handle on bringing it down.
Ok, maybe I misunderstood the phenomenon you’re talking about…'cuz it’s not something I can do! Sorry for the dead end.
If I open my eyes very wide,there is a very subtle vibration that begins, and that stimulates the solar plexus region. Nice!
I just created a bumpersticker for my car that read:
“Stressed by traffic? Flare your nostrils on the inhale.”
(Hard to flare your nostrils on the inhale and not take a full breath -
one that begins at the perineum.)
Hari Om
Hello rabar,
its been over a month since discovering the blink technque.
Any progress to report??
[ “a nod is as good as a blink to a blind horse” - so says Rod Stuart 
]
Peace,
Frank in San Diego
Hi, Frank:
Sorry not to check in here more frequently, but life seems to have kept me other places! Yes, I still am using blinks to move any thought that stalls - sort of like clouds. If one doesn’t just drift on by and threatens to ‘rain,’ I push it with a blink and off it goes. Also, I checked with a local Vipassana teacher, Howie Cohen (out of Spirit Rock in Marin) who’s also done some Dzogchen training, and he said that yes, some lamas teach voluntary blinks to break out of consciousness states. So between the two basics, smile-purr on the in and exhales, and voluntary blinks, I’m very truly sat-is-fied! At least for now! (smile)
I had an interesting experience with blinks last night. I was walking through my neighborhood at night in a pretty high energy state and I found myself paying attention to how often I blink my eyes. I started feeling that I blink too often which is not suprising considering I had an eye tic for most of my childhood and wear contacts. I started supressing the urge to blink and found that my sight and perception became extremely clear and in high resolution. This would become so intense that I would feel dreamy and would also feel like I’m about to cry and that all these emotions were coming up to the surface and wanted to be released. I wasn’t sure if this was delusional thinking and if maybe I am just forcing my eyes to water but it occured to me that one could blink conciously throughout the day as one would breathe conciously.
In Macrobiotic philosophy it was stated that blinking a lot indicates excessive thought and that an
appropriate macrobiotic diet overtime would remedy this by producing a calm mind with much less eractic thought patterns,try a 2 day brown rice diet and see if it changes your blinking rate.
Eckart Tolle, in one of the DVD’s of his retraits, talks about blinking with the eyes to get rid of a (persisting)tought. He there says that the material the eyes are made of, are very similar to the brain material.
That is what interests me - the relationship between blinking and thought. I find I can blink less often, but it definitley causes an increase in awareness similar to being very centered on the breath. It is something I would like to experiment with, however, unlike the breath, blinking feels like it should be an involuntary reflex and I am timid to begin trying to control because it might drive me crazy. Has anyone experimented with this?
I tried just yesterday, I’d just stare at something, until I felt the urge to blink, and as soon as I’d blink, I’d move my gaze to another object, and I’d put some intention to “change my focus/thinking/feeling” to that new object.
I reckon practicing just the above would get the results you’re after. I might try it more and see just how well it works. If so, I’ll be back to post more.
I can get in a pretty meditative “absorbed” state of mind after just a few minutes of doing the above. Everything but what you’re looking at can seem to melt away. Especially if you really relax the eyes and let them gently wander curiously around the object of your attention. Just do this, add the blink, and then take away this and keep the blink, and I’d say you have a pretty good “thought chaser” (I don’t really believe in that word hehe, it’s nothing running away from nothing really… but I think anyone who gets to know processes like these gets to learn that heh ).
A great synchronicity this post with what I have been experiencing. I had problems with my eyes in the past and read the thoeries of Dr. BAtes of natural vision improvement (I have myopia). One of his advices is actually voluntary blinking.
Recentely while watching tv I noticed myself to blink very often, quite involuntarily. It soothed my eyes nad mind and made my eyes wet what was quite soothing. So I decided to blink very often during my daily life. It works. It relaxes em a lot and I do find those effects on thoughts: it makes them go away or something like that. At least it makes it more clear. It seems to be a paradox but a myopic person tends to stare to try to see mmore but you see better blinking more and sketching (i.e., not staring and not trying to see everythoing at once).
A friend of mine once told me that with each blink is like we die to the world and are reborn again each time. I find this thought beautiful and quite true iwhen seen this way! We go in and die to the world and are reborn refreshed again! Especially true if you have inner silence cultivated inside
Greetings!
blinking with the eyes and time : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_units_of_measurement
so dont blink too often ( as some girls do ) lol