Imbalance of Attention, Walks, and Plants
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Introduction to Plants Seen During Walks
*I have significantly revised and added to this, as it was difficult to read.
After I developed a condition called fibromyalgia, I was plagued not only by severe pain but also by various other symptoms, and I was troubled by the appearance of symptoms that felt like a "malfunctioning sniper" or a "broken lock-on."
I could not broaden the scope of my attention.
When looking at something, I would focus abnormally on a narrow range, with a sensation like a sniper staring fixedly at a single point.
For example, while the pattern on a wall would look extremely vivid, I would overlook other things.
Because of this imbalance of attention, my mind and body were constantly tense, and it was a situation where life was very difficult, not only because my body was incapacitated by pain, but also because my other senses were strange. It was extremely painful to be in that state the entire time my eyes were open.
This is not something that can be solved by taking painkillers or antidepressants.
In order to somehow improve this situation, I desperately thought about whether there was a way to gently broaden the scope of my attention.
There is a treatment for depression that uses a machine to make you follow light with your gaze.
Remembering that, I thought that moving my eyes might be a trigger to help improve the imbalance in my brain, so I tried doing simple eye-movement training. However, it was difficult to continue with just that. In the end, I quit.
Later, while commuting to the hospital, I was looking at a thicket from the train and realized something: when I look at natural scenery, the unnatural staring is alleviated.
Things made by people are easy to focus on at a single point, but the complex scenery of forests and woods makes it difficult to focus on one point, and a situation where you look at the whole thing softly was created naturally.
Also, in an environment where the train is moving, my gaze changes naturally, and because I end up looking softly at things in the distance, I could tell that the abnormal concentration loosened a little.
Triggered by this experience, I started "walking" by looking for courses with many plants where I could see far into the distance.
When the weather wasn't bad, I made an effort to go for walks.
It didn't have an immediate effect, but I feel that walking is helping to alleviate the imbalance of attention.
I forgot to write that there was one more important thing.
I feel that not only "moving your gaze" but also "how much the focal distance changes" is important.
Because, in my case, there wasn't much improvement even when I looked at images or videos of plants and forests.
Eye movements that significantly change the focal distance are difficult unless the outdoors is a very wide place.
After all, I think it is important to "go outside and look at the scenery while moving," rather than using images or videos.
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Bonus
Something I remembered.
It might be hard to understand, but
when I couldn't get rid of
the abnormal single-point visual concentration and hyper-tension
like a sniper's eye,
and my head was pounding,
when I watched the steam from a humidifier,
the steam would change and spread one after another,
so there was no way to fix my concentration, and I felt a little better,things like that also happened.
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Introduction to Plants Seen During Walks