Widening and Narrowing Your Focus

“What is it like to narrow your focus and your visual field?”

The children use their hands to put blinders on either side of their head and turn their visual field into a narrow pathway. What is that like?

How does that affect how you feel and relate to the world around you?

 

 

• Do you feel more contained and able to concentrate? Less distracted?
• Or too confined? Restricted or trapped?

The children investigate degrees of narrowing — max, medium, minimum. They experience how this affects how they see and how they feel.

“And how does this affect how you move through the room? Relate to others?”

The children slowly open their hands outward to increase their peripheral vision in three steps.

How does widening your visual field affect how you see? How does this affect your attitude? Your thinking?

• Can you see “the bigger picture”?
• Do you feel more spacious inside of you?
• Or more open minded?

 

 

 

• Or overstimulated?
• More scattered?
• Overwhelmed?

 

 

“When is it useful for you to narrow your focus or constrict how much you see or hear? And when is it useful for you to widen your vision or open your ears more?” The children explore narrowing  and widening their focus in three steps, experiencing how each degree of focus affects how they feel and how they can function.

Full Body Focusing

“Now let’s see how your focus includes your whole self. Not just your eyes and ears, but also your arms, legs, torso — chest, belly, pelvis. How do you move through the room with a wide, open focus? How do you move in your chest, your torso, your legs? What is that like?”

The children explore moving around the room while narrowing and widening their full body focus. They practice with 1/2 groups first and then everyone together.

“How do you change your full body focus as you move around the room with more and more people? Do you narrow your vision more or widen it?”

Then we shrink the space in which the group can move even more. “As the space gets more crowded, what do you do with your arms and legs? How do you change your internal space? Do you squeeze or soften in your belly? In your chest? Do you change your breathing? Do you widen your vision or make it more narrow? How much? How does that affect how you feel and act?”

The children explore different degrees of narrowing and widening their full body focus, how this affects how they feel, and how they can influence their feelings and their focus.