The Body Follows the Eyes: A Guide to Peripheral Walking

The use of ambient vision, or peripheral awareness, while walking can be one of the easiest and most profound ways to re-educate the postural systems.
Our trainers regularly use peripheral awareness drills to help improve athletic performance and decrease pain, and adding the neural load of walking to the equation tends to boost the results and better allows the drills to carry over to sports and activities of daily living.
So what is ambient vision, and what does it have to do with posture?
Your visual system can be broken up into two components: foveal vision and ambient vision. You use foveal vision when you look directly at an object to collect visual details, and you use the ambient component of vision to look at everything else! Neurologically, we are wired so that our body reflexively follows our eyes. By expanding our peripheral awareness while walking and reducing the need to look down as much, our brain will alter our muscle tone to automatically undo the [caveman, hunchback, …) posture so many of our clients are trying to correct!
Video Highlights:
Discussing the difference between foveal and ambient vision
Use of the ambient visual system while walking
Using the visual system to re-educate the postural systems

[@TheLittleEconomist]

Love this. I have Parkinson’s and walk a lot across fields mainly. I’m conscious of looking down at the ground and think I always have. But I’m also conscious of looking around, so hope I do the looking up/down thing you talk about.
I do a lot of different exercises ballet, boxing, running, cycling, tai chi, but alway come back to longer walks as I feel they make me feel better.

[@arvindhirpara686]

"Body follows eyes" though this is perfectly true. To be very specific let me say that "Body follows master eye ( Everybody has one master or dominant eye and other non-dominant ). We usually see this world through master eye and other eye just support to enhance the binocular vision. So usually we do move in visual field of master eye repetitively, creating numbers muscle imbalances. - respectfully Dr Arvind Hirpara

[@johnnyveira9868]

Really great material, thank you for sharing, been practicing this today and it made a huge difference on the way my body postures itself.

[@lifelovesme]

I don’t think most people walk while looking at the spot in front of their feet. But it is getting that way- so many walk while looking at their phones !🤷‍♀️