Eye yoga is an ancient practice now being explored through modern neuroscience. The eyes are not just connected to the brain; they are part of it. The retina is neural tissue, developing from the same embryonic layer as the rest of the central nervous system, and the eyes send signals directly into brain regions that govern arousal, attention and emotion. This means that where we place our gaze, and how we move our eyes, can alter not only what we see but also how we feel.
Deliberate gaze and eye movements have long been part of yoga practice, used to steady attention, shift mental states and prepare for deeper concentration. Today, their relevance in therapy is becoming more widely recognised as modern science maps the mechanisms by which altering visual focus affects the nervous system, helping to refine traditional techniques and guide safe clinical application.
Eye Yoga in Yogic Tradition (Drishti and Early Practices)
Drishti is an age-old yogic practice, referring to the intentional placement of gaze to direct and sustain attention. It appears in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, where concentration (dharana) is described as a means to still the mind. The Bhagavad Gita (VI.13) instructs practitioners to focus the gaze at the tip of the nose during meditation, while the Hatha Yoga Pradipika describes drishtis such as nasikagra (nose tip) and bhrumadhya (brow centre), used to steady the mind and draw awareness inward.
Over centuries, eye yoga exercises became part of preparatory practices in several yoga lineages. One example is Yantra Yoga, a Tibetan form of yoga arising from the Vajrayana tradition in the 8th century. Rooted in the text The Union of the Sun and Moon, it integrates dynamic postures, breath techniques and eye movements such as slow horizontal and vertical tracking, clockwise and counter-clockwise rotations, and near-to-far shifts of focus. These methods were designed to prepare attention, calm the nervous system and open awareness for meditation. This emphasis on training ocular behaviour created a conceptual bridge to later integrative practices in both yoga and therapeutic contexts.
Early Modern Eye Yoga Exercises and Research
In the 1920s, American ophthalmologist William Bates developed a programme of eye exercises aimed at improving vision and reducing strain. While designed for ocular health, these movements often also promoted relaxation and improved mental clarity.
Swami Kuvalayananda, a pioneering Indian yoga researcher and founder of the Kaivalyadhama Health and Yoga Research Center, later incorporated ocular exercises into yoga-based health programmes. He blended Bates’ methods with breath and postural practices, and his work laid much of the groundwork for the modern field of yoga therapy. This early blending of Western ocular training with yogic methods likely influenced what we now call eye yoga, though the historical record is incomplete.
Early physiological research also documented the oculocardiac reflex—a trigeminal–vagal pathway through which gentle pressure or movement of the eyes can slow the heart rate. Building on this, studies of human sensory and motor responses showed that specific patterns, such as rapid scanning or upward gaze, often accompany heightened sympathetic activation, while slow horizontal tracking or near-to-far focus shifts can promote parasympathetic activity.
If you’re interested in seeing how these principles are applied in contemporary practice, Dr Raquel Chinchetru explores visual-somatic movement for pain and nervous system balance in our specialist seminar, Beyond the Eyes – Coordinated Movement for Pain and Nervous System Balance.
Psychological and Eye-Movement Therapies
From the 1970s onward, researchers in applied neuroscience and psychophysiology began testing how eye movements and visual focus influence not only perception but also arousal and emotional state. By this point, it was widely recognised that the eyes are neural tissue, sending signals directly into circuits for attention, arousal and emotional processing. These insights set the stage for new therapeutic methods that deliberately use eye movement techniques to support emotional regulation and mental health.
Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing
The first well-known therapy to emerge from these insights was Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), developed in the late 1980s by psychologist Francine Shapiro. In EMDR, clients are guided through rapid, rhythmic side-to-side eye movements while recalling distressing memories, with the goal of reducing emotional intensity and supporting adaptive reprocessing.
Research suggests that EMDR works by engaging brain networks involved in memory, attention and emotional regulation. Rapid, alternating eye movements stimulate both brain hemispheres, which may reduce overactivation in the amygdala, improve coordination between the hippocampus (which helps organise and contextualise memories) and the prefrontal cortex (which applies reasoning and perspective), and support the integration of distressing experiences into a coherent narrative. This process is thought to mimic certain functions of REM sleep, a natural state in which emotional memories are reprocessed and integrated.
Although EMDR relies on eye movements, its application differs significantly from yogic eye practices, which typically involve slower, controlled movements paired with breath to steady attention and calm the nervous system.
Eye Yoga and Integral Eye Movement Therapy (IEMT)
Developed in the early 2000s by therapist Andrew T. Austin, Integral Eye Movement Therapy (IEMT) uses guided vertical, horizontal and diagonal eye movements while the client focuses on specific emotional imprints or identity-related issues. Unlike EMDR, which reprocesses traumatic memories, IEMT works to alter how such memories are stored and accessed, reducing their emotional charge in the present.
IEMT appears to work through guided bilateral gaze shifts. These movements may disrupt or reconfigure the way memories are encoded. Memories are not simply stored as narratives but are encoded with specific patterns of brain activity, which can include habitual eye positions. Changing the direction of gaze while recalling a memory can prompt the brain to retrieve it in a different spatial or temporal context. This altered retrieval can shift how the memory is stored again.
IEMT shares much with yogic eye practices: the movements are slow, the gaze may follow a moving target to maintain focus, and all three directional patterns are also used in eye yoga exercises.
Fixed Gaze Practices: Brainspotting and Eye Yoga Parallels
Developed by David Grand in the early 2000s, Brainspotting involves identifying a specific eye position, known as a brainspot, that corresponds with the activation of a distressing memory or unresolved emotional experience. The process often begins while the client recalls a troubling memory or focuses on a difficult sensation, and the therapist observes a particular eye orientation.
Research and clinical observation suggest that keeping the eyes fixed on a brainspot sustains activity in brain regions linked to the memory or emotion being processed. As with IEMT, emotional memories are encoded in the brain in specific ways and are often tied to habitual eye movements or orientations. Holding the gaze in this way appears to keep the associated neural circuits active long enough for the brain to fully access and work with the material, revisiting sensory details, emotional tone and meanings, so they can be re-evaluated, reorganised and integrated into a less distressing narrative, within a supportive therapeutic environment that encourages gentle inquiry.
Although Brainspotting uses a fixed gaze rather than movement, it shares with yogic eye practices the principle of using intentional eye positioning to access and transform inner states. In yogic terms, this resembles a sustained drishti, a focused gaze that anchors attention, though in Brainspotting it is applied with a specific psychotherapeutic aim.
Diffuse and Focused Gaze
In addition to eye practices that move the eyes back and forth, some cultivate either a focused gaze or a diffuse gaze. Both approaches have been used in yoga and are increasingly relevant for therapeutic applications.
Focused vision
In a focused gaze, attention narrows to a single point, engaging the dorsal attention network (DAN), which heightens sensory detail and precision. This type of gaze can support concentration and anchoring attention, as well as help bring someone out of a dissociative state. Focused vision also slightly elevates sympathetic activity, which can restore engagement when arousal is too low.
In therapy, a fixed point can deliberately draw the mind away from distressing material. In yoga, the practice of drishti serves a similar function, intentionally directing the gaze to steady both attention and the mind.
Diffuse vision
Looking gently into the distance creates diffuse attention, expanding awareness to take in the entire visual field without locking onto a single object. This recruits attentional networks associated with spatial awareness and environmental monitoring.
Therapeutically, diffuse vision can reduce sympathetic drive, enhance parasympathetic activity and promote a general sense of spaciousness, which helps counter self-referential rumination. It is also linked to reduced amygdala activation, which can lower threat perception and calm the nervous system.
The Future of Eye Yoga in Therapy and Mental Health
Taken together, these therapeutic approaches to gaze and eye movement point to something yoga has recognised for centuries. In classical yoga, a drishti was not developed for trauma processing, and the eye movements of Yantra Yoga were not designed specifically for working with traumatic memory. However, both traditions long understood the link between mental states and eye positions or movements. It is only in the past fifty years that science and therapy have begun to explore these connections in depth, uncovering mechanisms that mirror what ancient systems appear to have grasped intuitively.
Eye Yoga for Trauma and Emotional Regulation
Within this expanding field, modern eye yoga stands out as a particularly rich system. Its wide range of techniques is now being explored for relevance to mental health and trauma recovery, sometimes as direct adaptations of yogic methods, and sometimes as part of broader research into eye exercises without direct knowledge of yoga. The gentle and deliberate shifts in gaze used in eye yoga may influence the brain’s attentional and emotional regulation systems, potentially helping to release rigid neural patterns linked to trauma.
When eye yoga is practised alongside slow breathing, it may also reduce the risk of emotional flooding while the nervous system adjusts. Slow breathing supports parasympathetic activity and dampens amygdala activation, and because the amygdala is closely linked to the ocular motor networks involved in traumatic memory encoding, this combination may increase both safety and the likelihood of positive change.
Integrating Eye Yoga into Modern Therapy
Although yoga therapy training does not currently include eye practices for trauma processing, and using them intentionally for this purpose would be outside a yoga therapist’s scope of practice, general eye yoga exercises may still offer significant benefits when combined with practices that promote nervous system regulation.
As the yoga community’s interest in trauma-sensitive approaches grows, and as evidence of yoga’s benefits accumulates, it is possible that in future, yoga professionals will develop the competencies needed to safely integrate eye processing techniques into their work. Such integration could bring together eye movement, meditation and physical practices in ways that echo the sophisticated methods of Tibetan yoga, while remaining grounded in contemporary understandings of safety, professional scope and neurophysiology.
Learn More About Yoga Therapy and Eye Yoga
The growing interest in eye yoga reflects a wider recognition of yoga’s ability to influence both body and mind. As research continues to uncover the connections between gaze, attention and emotional regulation, yoga therapists are uniquely positioned to integrate these insights into safe and effective practice.
To dive deeper into the connections between gaze, attention, pain, and nervous system balance, you can join our specialist seminar with Dr Raquel Chinchetru, Beyond the Eyes – Coordinated Movement for Pain and Nervous System Balance. The session offers a practical exploration of visual-somatic techniques and their role in pain modulation and embodied awareness.
If you are interested in exploring how yoga supports mental health, trauma recovery and nervous system regulation, The Minded Institute offers a range of professional programmes. From our Yoga Therapy Diploma to short CPD courses on breath, trauma and perinatal health, we provide evidence-informed training at the intersection of yoga, science and therapy.
