Definitions & Research
The January 1 entry describes the class philosophy. Below is research on some of the core ideas in the series. There will be a lot of information along these lines throughout the class, good if you like that stuff and ABSOLUTELY unnecessary if you don’t! Aside from giving feedback, there’s no homework in this class.
Foveal and Peripheral Vision Definitions
The fovea is the cone-rich part of the back wall of your eyeball. When you want clarity, you’ll angle your eyes so that the light passes though your pupil and onto the fovea. Cones are good for color and precision, whereas rods—which are dominant in the rest of the back wall, are better for movement and night vision. Strangely, the optic nerve exits the eyeball at the exact center of the back wall, what would seem to be prime photoreceptor real estate—so there are no cones there at all—it is actually a blind spot. The cone-dense area is a little bit ear-ward of center.
Foveal/Peripheral versus Convergent/Divergent
To look at something with your cone-rich fovea, you need to see as though from around your blind spot—the place where the optic nerve heads out towards the brain. The fovea of the left eye is off-center to the left, and the fovea of the right eye is off-center to the right. You need to tilt your head in such a way that the object you are interested in shines its light onto the fovea. This means you have to find a way to get two off-center fovea to train on the same thing. And that is how convergence happens. If you didn’t have that blind spot to work around, you wouldn’t have to mess with all that angling.
When the thing you are focusing on is close, that’s a lot of convergence. When it is far away, the lines are more parallel and when you look far out to the horizon, there is little or no convergence. If you are intent on a speck in the horizon, you’ll still be tilting your head to maximize your use of those foveal cones. It is still a foveal gaze, just not a converging one.
Likewise, you can use your peripheral gaze for close-up objects. Knitting is an interesting example—when you are trying to insert your needle in a particular tricky loop using very fine thread, in that moment you may need foveal close-up. But then those next three simple knit stitches may be more about taking in the context—what’s in this row, where are you in the pattern, how does the thread tension feel in your hands, what’s the rhythm of your clickety-clack. You stop at the end of a row and scan what you have done. Knitting can be tiring, but for most people it is tiring in a different way than, say reading. With reading there is an unrelenting foveal/convergent gaze with few breaks to scan the horizon.
In short: foveal can be close up or far away, parallel-ish or convergent, but we more commonly think of it as convergent—the combination is certainly a strain. Exceptions are looking for pirate ships on the horizon or driving. Peripheral vision can also be close up or far away, but we more commonly think of it as far away. But you don’t need to converge with peripheral vision because there is no particular rod-concentrated part of the eyeball you are trying to get lined up.
My point: encouraging some peripheral eye time can be like taking your eyes to the spa: but not just your eyes—also your facial muscles, your neck, your gut.
Scientific Jargon for the State of Being in Peripheral or Foveal Gaze
There is a big difference between the you using your peripheral vision and the you in a foveal gaze—and certainly different from periphery to a ‘foveal lock.’ But it is hard to put a name to the difference: sympathetic/parasympathetic, ergotropic/trophotropic (that won a Nobel prize) or Endophylactic… dynamogenic. None of these many syllables work, and they won’t. They can’t. You can recognize when you go from one zone to the other—or you will be able to after this series— but you can’t nail it down because it is like a shift in a cloudscape—made up of too many changeable factors to have clear stark boundaries.
Foveal-esque and Periferal-esque
The you looking calmly at a tree far away is different from the you concentrating on threading a needle, but trying to categorize the two states tends to kind of kill the complexity and nuance, so I don’t want to go there. Still, because words are useful I’m going to punt and call the states ‘periferal-esque’ and ‘foveal-esque.’
Experience is the Best way to Define the Difference between Foveal and Periferal States
I think the best way to grasp the difference between Foveal and Periferal-esque states is to feel them! And we’ll do plenty of that in this series. The big takeaway is the recognition—the lucidity about—when you are in one state or the other. Feldenkrais doesn’t criticize or fix—it is all about noticing and being in choice. So, now, notice your mood and level of tension and then, as soon as you get to the end of this sentence, look up from your screen and gaze out as if to a far distant horizon, maybe even in an imaginary evening (you can close your eyes for this—or not). Feel whether your eyes could soften, not to fix them but just out of curiosity. (If softening feels like a chore, don’t do it.) Breathe. Soak the evening light in, but a kind idle, lazy absorption. Now how do you feel?
The Foveal/Peripheral Shift sends a Powerful Message throughout your whole Self
About a billion websites will tell you that when you shift into a periferal gaze, you will have calmed your nervous system. And you will have. But… it is so much more than your nervous system.!Your cardiovascular, endocrine and immune systems will all adjust, as will the great connective/communicative fascia, throughout your body. And it won’t be because your brain got the message and sent down an order, but rather because the ongoing coordination communicating and integrating around how you use your eyes and how you use your visual processing.
Ok, ok some Differences from Peripheral to Foveal
Here are some generalizations we can make about the differences between Foveal and Peripheral-esque states but please remember—these are just some patterns in a complex state. There are no clear boundaries.
Physiological Parameter Peripheral-esque
Autonomic nervous system
Parasympathetic dominant (vagal tone ↑)
Heart rate variability (HRV)
High HRV (adaptive, healthy variation)
Respiratory rate
Slow, diaphragmatic (8-12 breaths/min)
Blood pressure
Decreased systolic & diastolic
Cortisol
Decreased (adrenal downregulation)
Catecholamines
Low epinephrine/norepinephrine
Oxytocin
Elevated (social bonding, calm)
Baroreceptor sensitivity
Enhanced (adaptive BP regulation)
Vagal afferents
Mechanoreceptor & chemosensory signals ↑
Spinal afferents
Reduced pain/temperature signals
Gut motility
Enhanced peristalsis (rest & digest)
Inflammatory cytokines
Decreased IL-6, TNF-α
Lymphatic drainage
Enhanced (fascial mobility ↑)
Sympathovagal balance
Vagal predominance
Allostatic load
Reduced (efficient homeostasis)
Neuroanatomical pathways
Cranial/vagal → nodose/jugular ganglia → nucleus tractus solitarii (NTS) → parabrachial nucleus (PB) → ventromedial thalamus → posterior insula
Insular cortex processing
Posterior insula (primary interoceptive sensory)
Forebrain lateralization
Left hemisphere dominant (approach behavior, positive affect)
Ways of Losing the Periphery: Dementia and Screen Time
Most forms of dementia result in loss of peripheral vision, to the point where eventually the person living with dementia may only be able to see as though through a keyhole. This could be about deterioration in the eye, but it is even more likely to be about diminished brain function. Another way to reduce periferal vision—significantly, though not so dramatically—is with screen time. And wow, is this complicated!
Losing the Periphery as a Reinforcing Negative Spiral
To lose one’s peripheral vision is scary. Perversely, being scared probably encourages a foveal gaze. Perhaps dementia inevitably will result in the same vision loss regardless of the fear factor, or perhaps fear and other impacts of dementia accelerate the loss. Screen time also has its negative-reinforcing-spiral (aka addiction) aspects. But what we can guess at is that losing one’s peripheral vision has far-reaching and complicated effects to *everything*—the heart, the hormones, the breath, the resilience to disease… to happiness and emotional temperance. To a person’s connection with nature. To the gut.
Insight from Feldenkrais: Engaging the Eye for NonVisual Tasks
We don’t just go to a foveal gaze when trying to read fine print. Sight that requires specific attention to detail—such as driving— is foveal. You have two types of non-visual tasks that may also be foveal-esque: imagining something visual, like getting to the hardware store and trying to remember how high up that hinge needed to go or engaging in concentrated (often abstract) thought. Difficult mental tasks—in our culture—often mean squinching up the eyes. This is partly high tone in the extraocular muscles—the ribbons of muscle that insert on the eyeball and on the bones of the face and skull, kind of like rubber bands on a billiard ball—and also tension in the intraocular muscles, such as the tightening of the iris. You have influence over all of these—as you will ‘see’ in the lessons! Since the more you go foveal, the more you tend to go foveal, it is particularly nice to have choice. (Again, we Feldenkrais teachers don’t fix, but we do invite a larger repertoire, and in this case that might mean ‘go ahead and figure out the square root of 72 *without* squinching your eyes.’ Sometimes. If you want to.)
Foveal Gaze and the Gut
And then there’s the gut. The connection between the gut and skull, and between eye muscles and belly muscles, is well documented. This suggests that as a person living with dementia loses their peripheral vision, the impacts elsewhere in the body may be surprising. But the eye-gut connection also gives us a remarkable way to feel our presence in the foveal or peripheral zone. Maybe you don’t yet trace your shift from your peripheral-you to your foveal-you. But you might be able to feel the softening and tensing of your belly, with your hand or your belly or from within your belly or both. To become aware of your belly (and therefore your breath) and your foveal-esque or periferal-esque whole self is to gain incredible influence over your own processes. And so gently!
(TBH the lessons are gentle and the approach is kind but if these lessons shift something in how you organize your eyes, there could be some sense of disruption along the way to the wider repertoire. One can’t say ‘this has profound influence on your whole self’ and also claim that opening the repertoire is always easy.)
Foveal/Peripheral: prevention? cure? adaptation?
No we’re not here to cure dementia or, for that matter, screen time. It certainly seems plausible that these lessons, about as neuroplastic as it gets, would add to cognitive resilience. And assuredly, people report improvements in their eyes with these lessons—I would expect some in the class will experience a long-term difference to their foveal/periferal balance. Gently. The big question may be about adaptation. When a person loses their peripheral vision, they lose some their ability to find themselves in space. Can proprioception—the hallmark of Feldenkrais—substitute? Vibration? Sound? This is where it would be so wonderful to have experienced gerontologists participate in the class. Of course we won’t resolve any medical questions to anyone’s satisfaction. But maybe we could at least identify what the questions are. Maybe we can come to understand this journey at a practical level.
Come and be part of this exploration!