Gaze into Each Other’s Eyes
Eye-gazing is rooted in the traditional Tantric practice of trataka, which means “to gaze without blinking,” but you can blink during this exercise. In its classical form, trataka often involves focusing on and internalizing the image of a deity. It can be very helpful to bear this in mind when you begin to gaze, because it is an opportunity to see the divine in your beloved. After a moment, let the thought go, and allow pure experience to take over. You will probably go into a meditative state quite rapidly.
This is a deceptively simple and powerful practice. We started doing it on our very first date, and spent a few minutes at it whenever we were together. When we began sharing a home, we did it on a daily basis as a formal exercise. Now, it is second nature to us, and we do it both intentionally and out of habit. We also make an effort to use it whenever there is a feeling of disharmony between us. Taking a time-out and gazing at each other silently brings us back into balance and defuses conflict. We are able to do this because we built a strong foundation by practicing regularly when things were going smoothly. This gives us the ability to recognize when we’re out of synch and to make the choice to pause and connect, rather than allow the disruption to get worse.
Stand facing each other, with your arms at your sides, and gaze softly into each other’s eyes. Focus on your partner’s left eye with your right, and allow your left eye to relax and receive. Don’t worry about your thoughts. In all probability, your mind will start to go quiet after a couple of minutes.
We are aware that people teach this technique in a variety of ways. For example, some encourage either observing your emotions or talking about them while you gaze. We feel it is more effective to keep your full attention on your partner’s left eye, as this practice has its origins in a technique that is intended to create one-pointed concentration, the ability to focus intently on one thing without becoming distracted. More importantly, just thinking about, let alone expressing, your emotions in this context takes you out of the moment and will interfere with the harmonizing effect of the practice.
Fig. 2: Eye-gazing is an energetic exchange that involves looking deeply
into your partner’s eyes. It brings you into alignment by
harmonizing your emotional states.
We have also met people who have been taught to gaze left eye to left eye, because the right eye is said to be “aggressive.” We have tried this method and do not believe it is nearly as effective for a few reasons. First, it requires you to look at each other with a kind of sidelong glance, which feels awkward to us. Second, in traditional Tantra, the right side is the active, sending side and the left the receptive one, so it makes more sense for us to keep our attention on the sending side while letting the left side passively receive. There’s an additional basis for our feeling; it has nothing to do with the Tantric tradition or beliefs about energetic circuits. Research suggests that the left side of the face reveals more about our emotional states than the right.17
Focusing the right eye on your partner’s left, and hence on the left side of the face, is a much easier and more direct way to see your partner’s emotional state because you are looking intently at the part of the face that reveals it. You can’t register as much if you’re looking left eye to left eye. We also suspect that by keeping your mind on your right eye as you look into your partner’s left, you are keeping your brain’s left hemisphere occupied with a single task, thereby quieting the mind. Remember that the purpose of doing this is not to read emotions consciously but to create harmony and to renew and deepen your connection.
This practice will bring you into synch. After a couple of minutes, you will have harmonized your moods and metabolisms. Beyond that, you are re-creating the process of falling in love, on multiple levels. Although we think the word healing is overused, we suspect that eye-gazing can do a great deal to repair emotional wounds of many kinds, since it replicates perhaps the most primal form of bonding that takes place during infancy—the gaze between baby and primary caregiver.
We also recommend that you gaze into your own eyes in the mirror. Solo gazing is a very valuable thing to do even if you are in a relationship. We’ve had students who found this form of the practice to be profound and even life-changing; one of them approached us at a conference several years after we’d taught it to him. He told us that gazing into his own eyes in the mirror and honoring himself on a daily basis had transformed him.
Many couples find it challenging to gaze together at first, especially if they’ve lost the habit of looking at each other. It is not uncommon to laugh or feel some initial unease. These are perfectly natural responses, but if you stay with it, the discomfort will pass, and you should start experiencing the benefits.