Owl Eyes: A Core Awareness Skill

Picture an owl perched on a tree branch 25ft above the ground. Sitting motionless with its owl eyes in a fixed gaze. The form we are gaining from the owl is that of wide peripheral vision. Stillness yields motion for the owl. When the owl holds perfect stillness, all motion is very evident.

Any bird language practitioner or tracker gains from this by practicing the same kind of stillness and wide-angle vision as demonstrated by the owl. To utilize this best, owl eyes should be applied in combination with Fox Walking, and other moving forms, and is an exceptional practice at the sit spot.

Owls have developed eyes so big and so powerful that they have actually outgrown their eye sockets and are frozen in place.

Imagine that you are an owl. Look straight ahead and imagine that your eyeballs are stuck in your eye sockets and cannot move.

Now, look straight ahead toward wherever your body is facing. Pick a spot directly across from you that you can train your eyes on without moving. Hold that spot in the center of your vision as your focal point. If your eyes wander off, bring them back to your focal point again. Always return to that one spot.

While staring at that spot and without moving your eyeballs, notice that you can also see part of the ground or floor between you and that spot. And without moving your eyeballs you can see part of the sky or ceiling between you and that spot. You can see the ground, the sky, and that spot all at the same time using your peripheral vision. This is owl eyes.

Build on this peripheral vision now by adding to your awareness the farthest thing you can see to the left and the farthest thing you can see to the right, all without moving your eyeballs. You can see these five things at once: your focal point, the ground, the sky, the extreme left, and the extreme right.

From an early age, most of us have mostly utilized a narrow field vision. Reading words on a page, for instance, mandates tunneling of our vision. Therefore, the rods and cones within the retina allowing owl eyes to work have not been physically exercised. Most likely you will repeatedly slip back into a more focused vision. Therefore a conscious effort to practice owl eyes is crucial for integrating this technique into your routines. Through practice, you will watch your field of vision literally expand to encompass a larger area.