The Ultimate Guide to Splatter Vision/Wide Angle Vision

Description

Splatter vision, wide-angle vision, and owl vision are all names for the practice of becoming aware of our peripheral vision. This guide gives four exercises which help you not only experience wide-angle vision, but integrate it so that it becomes your "default" mode of visual perception.

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Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods,Splatter vision,wide-angle vision,owl vision

Video Transcription

if you're a hunter a warrior if you're practicing situational awareness we are just trying to develop heightened perceptions in the woods then you've probably heard of something that people call owl vision splatter vision or wide-angle vision in this video I'm gonna help us understand how our habits of awareness limit our visual capabilities I'm gonna give you a full understanding of wide-angle vision and give you specific exercises for developing this awareness superpower here's a forest scene with a gray fox in the center of the scene this picture is what our mind tells us we're seeing a clear scene much like a photo but what we're actually seeing is more like this the center of our vision is very clear incapable of seeing great detail but the further we move from our center or foveal vision into our peripheral vision the more blurry things become to see this in action pause the video pick up a book look at a single word on the top of the page notice how clear it looks now keep your eyes on that same word just stare at it and try to read the text on the bottom of the page you're gonna notice that it's too blurry to read we've just seen first hand the difference between mobile vision and peripheral vision now like most things in life there's not really a clear line between phobia and peripheral we have more cone cells in the center of our vision and the cone cells are more sensitive to detail in color rod cells begin to dominate as we move away from the center of our vision and the rod cells are not as good at discerning that detail because of this because of cultural preferences we've learned to see using a method that I call fovea hopping when we're out in the woods our vision darts from spot to another we're largely unaware of our peripheral vision but why would we even want to be tuned into our peripheral vision if it can't see the same amount of detail the reason is that just as our cone cells are more sensitive to detail our rod cells are more sensitive to motion and they function better in low light situations so in practice a person who is fovea hopping it's almost blind compared to someone who's tuned into their peripheral because they notice only the center of their vision they're at the mercy of their minds choices of what's important to look at if I'm fovea hopping and I look at a deer well I'll miss the oyster mushrooms there on a log just a few feet away and the person what's hiding alongside the trail just ahead the most glaring example of this mode of mobile hopping is when we engage in trail staring you've all seen this happen before you've probably seen it in yourself if you've ever sat alongside a trail plain site you may have noticed that 90% of the people walking by they don't even see you they're staring at the trail it's not at their cell phone okay and their peripheral vision is turned off you are effectively invisible even though they are clearly in plain sight here's that deer I talked about again we imagine that we see the whole picture in detail but what we really see is a detailed center that fades to blurry if all we see is the center then we won't be aware of clues in our peripheral if you decide to chase this deer and you're not aware of your peripheral you might not notice the cat prior that might cut your legs or more importantly the line of barbed wire that's going to clothesline you and we certainly won't notice the raspberry plants on the left that tell us that this might be a good place to come back to

in a few months for a delicious treat I hypothesized that this peripheral method had seen the world this was our ancestors default mode a vision a tree while you I get to see students shift into peripheral and when they do they begin to notice things it would be pretty important to our ancestors if you're a hunter do you practice awareness skills you've probably experienced this yourself moments when you seem hyper aware of your environment you can sort of take in the whole picture in a way that you can't when you're full wheel hopping if you'd like to develop this awareness superpower I'm going to explain how with the exercises I share in this video you'll be able to develop this wide-angle vision in a surprisingly short time still like any other habit we have to break our old one and form a new one so be patient with yourself here's the secret like a Zen master telling someone that they've already awakened but they just don't realize it the truth about your vision is that you are already seeing the full range of your foveal and peripheral vision we just aren't aware that we're seeing remember those pictures of the fox and the deer i said that our vision is actually like this but when we add an awareness or more aptly lack of awareness then our picture actually looks more like this when we practice foveal hopping were effectively blind to everything except what is centered in our visual field we move from seeing one dot of awareness surrounded by darkness to another so what is more important than what we're actually able to see is what we are aware of where we put our awareness within our visual field is the true key to this to train ourselves into focusing our awareness

consciously we have to practice two things first we have to practice bringing awareness to the edges of our peripheral vision when we do this we will automatically retain our ability to be aware of our foveal don't worry you're not going to lose it then we'll start to see the real picture delivered by our whole visual field secondly and even more importantly we have to retrain our habit of collapsing our vision into foveal every time that we notice something interesting exercise one entering wide-angle vision the first method of training is the easiest and it's going to give you a moderate boost in your skills right away all you have to do is find a place to sit with the scene in front of you this can be enforced this can be in the city find a distant object straight ahead of you to look at keep your eyes fixed on that object now expand your awareness into your peripheral vision don't change where you're looking just look straight ahead

but become aware of what's on the edges I'm not just talking about to the left in the right but to the upper and lower ranges of your peripheral as well the cool thing is that when you do this your center of vision will remain in your awareness as well because you're so habituated to it again you're not going to lose it with this simple exercise of bringing your awareness to your peripheral you've just expanded your vision to its full range this is a type of vision that we'll be trying to make our default using the next exercises exercise 2 walking wide-angle vision like any skill it's relatively easy to practice it under the controlled environment of exercise 1 but usually we're moving and our eyes are scanning the environment instead of staring straight ahead

so now we add some realism to the mix to practice this exercise we walk down a path or a sidewalk or just through the woods really you can do this anytime that you're moving let your eyes roll about however they desire but try to resist the habit collapsing into foveal vision as your eyes Rove keep your awareness at the edges of your peripheral you notice how you can now take in the entire scene even as it shifts when you look around yourself this exercise is essential because it helps us to break the habit of falling again and again into phobia you may feel like you can't really zoom in on the details of specific things and for this exercise try to resist that urge to do so you're going to see something interesting in the woods try to resist that collapsing stay in peripheral we're gonna address that inability to zoom in in exercise 4 but in this exercise remember just training ourselves out of the habit of collapsing our awareness exercise 3 conversation wide-angle vision now things get a little bit more difficult one of the best places to practice staying in wide-angle vision is during a conversation most of us have trained ourselves into seeing only a person's face when we talk with them somebody can walk right up next to you tap you on the shoulder without you even noticing when we stay in wide-angle we've become more aware of that person's body language the surrounding environment and of your friend who's trying to sneak up on you to practice this exercise it's the same as the other ones now however we're looking into the person's face we don't have to scan around a whole lot but do if that feels right the important thing is to give your full attention to that person but at the same time be aware of your peripheral if you master this during conversations then you can up the ante and try it when you're engaged in media yes

media media is designed to hypnotize us into entering that full wheel vision in fact movies video games they are designed specifically to move our foveal vision to certain places in that screen if you can watch a movie and still be aware not only of the whole screen but of the environment the room that you're in then you're starting to really get this a brief note before I introduce the last exercise you're gonna find that it's more difficult to bring awareness to your peripheral when you are looking up close at something this is one of the reasons that it's easier to sneak up on someone who is writing in their journal than it is to sneak up on someone who is watching wolf in the distance if you practice moving your awareness into your peripheral make sure to practice it when your eyes are focused at different ranges from flower distant objects to something up close in your hand okay with the first three exercises for retraining our mind to notice what's in our peripheral vision but there is still a major problem and that is our habit of collapsing into fovea over and over again because of this foveal hopping habit we'll be able to retain our wide-angle vision only for a moment or two but as soon as something grabs our attention boom will go right back into phobia unless we train ourselves out of this we'll be able to retain wide-angle vision only for brief moments and although that's pretty cool in itself it's much more useful to have wide-angle vision be our default mode of seeing in fact if you think about it there are very few situations in which we need to be locked into our foveal vision even quite delicate tasks we can do those while retaining a wide-angle vision so if we train this intelligently we can approach being in wide-angle vision 99 to 100 percent of the time yes our habit is to focus in when we're for instance sewing something you'd be completely unaware but that's not necessary we can train ourselves out of that into peripheral exercise for training ourselves out of phobia hopping walk down a path in a wide-angle vision when you sense movement something catches your interest turn your eyes go ahead and look at it but when you do keep your awareness in your peripheral notice that you can identify the source of the movement even be aware of details of it in your phobia while simultaneously being aware of your peripheral continue on the walk practicing this over and over and over again each time you do it you're gonna reshape the foveal hopping habit when you begin this exercise you'll probably find that your vision collapses into foveal quite often you're gonna look over your peripheral will be gone that's okay you're just learning this when you collapse just take conscious note of it say to yourself oh I collapsed into foveal again then move on continue the exercise what you're doing is you're bringing consciousness to where you place your awareness the more you do this the more that you will have conscious control of your awareness rather than having it run on autopilot here's a fun tip Buttrey well the University we get to do this for real especially if we have a group class what we do is just make a habit all the time of trying to sneak up on each other hide on each other this means that when you're walking down paths you better be aware of your environment looking around and kind of scanning for ninjas if you don't have a group of people to do this with you can use your imagination to do the same thing all you do is pretend that your environment is filled with ninjas and you better spot them before they get you so as you walk along scan your environment you're practicing exercise for looking around you're noticing hi noticing low whenever you see something it catches your interest maybe you think it's somebody hiding maybe it's a cool mushroom or an animal look at it practice exercise for look at it see the details but keep your awareness in your peripheral we just have to do this again over and over moving looking seeing the details but not collapsing with wide-angle vision which is really the practice of coming into full visual awareness will progress through three levels in level one where most of us begin we're in the habit of fovea hopping when we level up to the second level we learn to enter an awareness state at will where we can consciously expand our awareness into peripheral however we lose that awareness as soon as something grabs our attention now our wareness collapses back into phobia if you level up to the third level you'll gain conscious control of your visual awareness and will no longer collapse habitually into phobia you'll have habitual eyes the awareness state so that it's your default state of being then as long as you retain that good habit you'll have gained an awareness superpower that will give you a great advantage in wilderness tactical social and survival situations as well as just opening up the world and making it richer and more interesting awareness is key to our feeling of being vibrantly alive and it's relatively easy to retrain ourselves into the open state of awareness that we once all possessed as very young children if you've watched this long I'm going to reveal the final and most important key to this and that is learning to quiet our minds more than where you look more than how well you expand into your peripheral your state of mindfulness will affect how well you see things in the woods why because remember this is all about awareness if your mind is filled of thinking you will see only your thoughts you can imagine but you have ten awareness points to spend in any moment when we're lost in thought we're spending eight or nine of those points on the process of thinking with only one or two points left for being aware of our environment quiet your mind and you can reverse that so that you have eight or nine points directed towards your environment this can be the toughest part about developing truly effective wide-angle vision it means either a dedicated meditation practice or dedicated mindfulness practice when our minds are running around like wild monkeys our effectiveness in all areas of life is diminished fostering more awareness of your mind's activity this is the process that will open the world up in amazing ways if you don't experience with wide-angle vision if you have more training tips or you try out the exercises in this video please share your experiences insight your wisdom in the comments below if you'd like to help me co-create these videos by becoming a patron of my work and follow the link to patreon at the end of this video gratitude and thanks my friends