"And Now Close Your Eyes or Lower Your Gaze"
A dive into what might be the only research study done to date on practicing meditation with eyes closed or eyes open and how these might effect mindfulness meditation practice.
During meditation, practitioners are usually instructed to either sit with a lowered soft gaze or close their eyes. We discussed this in a previous article on "Meditation: Eyes Open or Eyes Closed" and how practising with eyes open might be difficult initially because of the tendency to get lost in visual distractors. Sprawson et al. (2020) wrote how,
"Indeed, one particularly relevant factor that may influence the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions includes the surrounding visual environment, and the ability to sustain focused attention on the present moment." (p. 370)
Considering this, it is sometimes suggested that beginners start practising with closed eyes. Why? It might sound like a simple thing to do to sit with eyes open in meditation and be aware and accepting of whatever is happening including any visual distractors in our environment and not engaging with them. However, this might hinder meditation practice. Sprawson et al. (2020) argued that,
"Instructing individuals to become aware of and accept task irrelevant stimuli may not be sufficient to prevent visual distractors to attentional processes, resulting in poorer meditation experiences." (p. 370)
So, asking beginners to practice with eyes open might at first not be helpful. That said, this might not be the case for everyone, as there are some who might prefer to practice with eyes open.
Considering all of this in Buddhist contemplative tradition from where contemporary secular mindfulness has emerged, it is usually suggested to practice with eyes open (Dogen, 2004; Rinpoche, 2002; Wallace, 2022). The reason being that as we go through our day, we are with our eyes open, so practising with eyes open is a more realistic reflection of daily life and how, because of this, practising with eyes open helps "better" bridge the mindfulness cultivated on the "cushion" into daily life.
Despite these arguments, nearly no studies have been conducted to see which might be most beneficial, especially for beginners and identifying this gap in 2020, Sprawson and colleagues conducted the first-ever study to investigate how practising with eyes open or eyes closed during mindfulness meditation might effect practice considering that with eyes closed there are less "visual distractors" and if this might be helpful.
To date, I believe this is still the only study done on this subject, as a research journal search did not return other relevant studies on the topic. In this article, we will be looking at Sprawson and colleagues (2020) study, exploring their findings and what these might tell us.
To assess this, Sprawson et al. (2020) used eye movements during mindfulness practice to determine if the participant was distracted. This is because eye movement, especially increases in the frequency of eye blinks and erratic or random eye movements, have been associated with being distracted (Grandchamp et al., 2014; Smilek et al., 2010). Further, a study by Matiz et al. (2019) also identified that this might be the case during mindfulness meditation, arguing how eye movements could be used as an indicator of mind wandering during mindfulness meditation.
To investigate this Sprawson et al. (2020) recruited 48 participants, which were randomly allocated (16 participants in each condition) either to, "a black screen, patterned screen or an image depicting a lowered gaze" (p. 373). The black screen was meant to represent meditating with eyes closed, with the other two images representing meditating with eyes open lowered gaze, one being a patterned image, the other also being a patterned image but included other "distractors" like legs and chair. On each of these images, the researchers put a white spot on which participants were asked to rest their focus during the practice. The researchers then monitored the number of times participants' gazes moved away from the white spot and fixated on "distractors" in other parts of the image. The pictures below are the original used by the researchers to represent the different conditions in the study.
Overall, Sprawson and colleagues observed how, from the three conditions, those participants that were in the eyes closed condition (black screen) were less likely to fixate their gaze away from the white spot. One could argue that considering the setup of the experiment, what the participants were asked to do was more similar to doing an attentional exercise, keeping your attention on a white spot in front of you and not losing focus. This would be a valid argument; however, participants were asked to follow a guided mindfulness breathing meditation. Further, all participants were asked to fill out a state mindfulness questionnaire before and after the experiment where Sprawson et al. (2020) found how:
"State mindfulness scores increased within the eyes-closed perspective condition, and
these findings were statistically significant when compared with the two other conditions." (p. 375)
So, countering such argument.
What is curious is that the researchers hypothesised that the participants in the lowered gaze condition would be the most likely to get distracted, their gaze moving away from the white spot, as this scene was considered to have the most visual distractors (image c above). Counterintuitively, it was in the patterned screen condition that the participants' gaze moved away mostly and the longest from the white spot.
Ultimately, Sprawson et al. (2020) conclude the study by saying,
"The present study offers a step towards understanding whether mindfulness instructors should direct their clients to close their eyes entirely or simply lower their gaze." (p. 376)
And how,
"The results of the present study offer a significant step forward towards understanding why meditation may be most effective with the eyes closed rather than a lowered gaze, and how the visual environment can influence novice meditators." (ibid. p. 376)
Although I agree with the second statement that there is value in knowing how the visual environment can influence novice meditators so as to better support those starting with mindfulness meditation practice. However, as a mindfulness teacher and facilitator, I do not totally agree with their first statement as I think that practising with eyes closed or open is something that should be down to the client and as mindfulness teachers, what we are in a responsibility to do is offer and leave both options open. This is especially true if we are practising in a trauma-sensitive context (Treleaven, 2018).
That said, I found this study very insightful and needed as it gives some insight into the burning question of whether one should practice meditation with eyes closed or open.
Some Final Thoughts
First, we have to say kudos to Sprawson et al. (2020) for coming up with this novel approach at representing eyes closed meditation and how they used an objective measure to identify distraction and not a subjective one that is relying on participants reporting if they were distracted or not which would be highly susceptible to social desirability effects.
That said, considering the challenge of creating a condition that represents eyes closed meditation, although their findings potentially reflect that eyes closed meditation might potentially be less susceptible to visual distractors. I think what this study mostly demonstrates is that for beginners with meditation, visual distractors can be quite challenging because they can easily highjack one's attention and practising with eyes closed might help with this. Not that eyes closed is in any way marginally better than eyes open, as within all conditions, participants were practising mindfulness meditation with eyes open. Participants needed and were instructed to keep the eyes open to focus on the white spot. The major difference was that in the black screen condition (eyes closed), there were fewer visual distractors.
Further, I think one of the reasons for the lack of studies on the topic on meditation with eyes closed or open is the difficulty of creating an experimental condition that is an ecologically valid one that accurately reflects or represents practising meditation with eyes closed that is "scientific" and stands to scrutiny.
That said, on the other hand, a question that continues to ponder in my mind is why the study did not use EEG recordings to monitor eye movements, similar to the study done by Matiz et al. (2019), considering that this can effectively identify eye movements even when practitioners are with eyes closed. On the other hand, I see value in the approach taken by Sprawson et al. (2020) one because the study done by Matiz et al. (2019) used "expert meditators" while Sprawson and Colleagues used novice practitioners - having EEG electrodes stuck to your face as a novice might have acted as a source of distraction. While at the same time, asking participants to keep their eyes open, with the variation being the amount of stimulus in the picture they were focusing on, might potentially have reduced the possibility of intervening variables and have helped the researchers in monitoring what the practitioners were doing as it offered more direct instructions to practitioners (focus on a point in the picture and follow the breath) considering they were novices. An idea to balance this out could be to perform the same study using "expert meditators."
So, ultimately, what does this research study, in my opinion, indicate. It does not give us a direct answer which one is best, and I think that is something that is illusionary and is difficult to establish if practising with eyes closed is better than eyes open or vice versa.
As I said in previous articles, I would argue that both have their place. It all ultimately boils down to what works for the practitioner to help them not be carried away by distractors but to see them as distractions. How these arise and how easily it sometimes is to get lost in distraction and for the mind to wander away. It just happens. So, to better see and familiarise themselves with the movements of the mind and how the mind moves, which is the purpose of meditation.
So, ultimately if we lose ourselves in the debate of trying to prove which one is better – if practicing with eyes closed is better than eyes open - we will ultimately be missing the point of the real purpose of meditation practice.
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References
Dogen, Z. M. (2004). Beyond thinking: A guide to Zen zeditation [epub]. (K. Tanahashi, Ed.) Boston, MA: Sambhala Publications Inc.
Grandchamp, R., Braboszcz, C., & Delorme. (2014). Oculometric variations during mind wandering. Frontiers in Psychology, 5(31), 1-10. doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00031
Matiz, A., Crescentini, C., Fabbro, A., Budai, R., Bergamasco, M., & Fabbro, F. (2019). Spontaneous eye movements during focused attention mindfulness meditation. PLoS ONE, 14(1), e0210862. doi:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0210862
Rinpoche, S. (2002). The Tibetan book of living and dying (2nd revised edition ed.). London: Rider & Co.
Smilek, D., Carriere, J. S., & Cheyne, J. A. (2010). Out of mind, out of sight: Eye blinking as indicator and embodiment of mind wandering. Psychological Science, 21(6), 786-789. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610368063
Sprawson, I., Wood, J., & Mantzio, M. (2020). "And now close your eyes or lower your gaze": Exploring novice meditators and their attentional processes during meditation. Journal of Cognitive Enhancement, 4, 369-378. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s41465-020-00175-3
Treleaven, D. A. (2018). Trauma sensitive mindfulness: Practices for sale and transformative healing [epub]. New York, NY: WW Norton & Co.
Wallace, B. A. (2022). The art of transforming the mind: A meditators guide to the Tibetan practice of Lojong. (L. Quirolo, Ed.) Boulder, CO: Sambhala Publications.