February 28th, 2026
“The wound is the place the light enters you” – Rumi
The quiet weight of the final moments of eye contact with my mother, as my sisters and I sat at her bedside while she let her body go, will reside in my memory forever. Although she couldn’t speak, words alone could not have expressed the depth of human emotion I experienced through looking into her eyes while her hand rested in mine. As I continue to process the profound tenderness and emotional connection I felt in those last days, the magnitude and significance of meeting one another in gaze, is not lost on me.
Eye contact is our first language. Before speech, before cognition, and before consciousness, the human nervous system learns safety and connection through the eyes of another.
There is substantial evidence supporting the relationship between eye contact and attachment, alongside additional OT theoretical perspectives, (theory of mind, behavioral conditioning, and social learning theory, et al) which describe how eye gaze regulates the nervous system through sensory and emotional input. To reduce eye gaze to a passive byproduct of rapport or an unexamined element of the therapeutic use of self, is to overlook its potency as an active clinical mechanism. If eye contact is a behavior that organizes connection and emotional attunement, why is it rarely named, structured, or prescribed as a part of interventions?
Marina Abramović understood the power of eye contact as an intervention for healing and connection. In her 2010 performance The Artist Is Present, exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the boundaries between performer and audience were intentionally destabilized through prolonged, silent, mutual gaze. As the work gained recognition, visitors came in droves, not to watch, but to be seen, encountering themselves through the sustained, intentional attention of another.
Unlike Abramović’s performance, where eye contact was foregrounded as the central medium of exchange, clinical practice often neutralizes gaze, rendering it implicit, unmeasured, and theoretically underdeveloped. What becomes possible when eye contact is no longer treated as atmospheric, but as intentional treatment that is occupationally meaningful? Might the experience of being seen function as the connective tissue that allows individuals to feel whole?
A number of years ago, I participated in physical theater workshop in NYC. I was living in Los Angeles at the time, pursuing tenure in an academic job, and participation in summer workshops added to my tenure portfolio and offered fresh perspectives to bring to students and my personal creative work. This particular workshop focused on Jerzy Grotowski’s innovative approach to performance which gave birth to the ‘poor theatre’ aesthetic. Eighteen bodies trained daily in work that was as physically punishing as it was emotionally unguarded. Among its many rules, the assignments were intended to strip away performative pretense and render the performers as expressive vehicles of raw human emotion and vulnerability.
Discipline was a central pillar of Grotowski’s work, and adherence to rules was non-negotiable. The entire fourteen days felt like a sustained experiment in constraint: there were many rules the participants were expected to follow, one of which required the entire group to eat lunch and dinner together every day. For many, this probably sounded benign, even pleasant. For me, however, extended social immersion sets off every anti-social alarm in my system. I knew that losing my precious alone time-my ritual cigarettes and silence on my West Village fire escape- was going to be a real challenge.
One particular assignment was especially unnerving. We were paired with a partner and instructed that we had to remain together for the rest of the evening. Since we dined nightly as a group at Angelina Café on Avenue A and East 3rd (my God, how the city has changed), this meant walking there together and sharing dinner. The catch? We were not allowed to speak to one another at all – and, oh yes, we had to feed each other. As someone carrying a generous amount of fifth chakra trauma, I did my best to internalize my full body freak out. To make matters worse, my partner was male, reasonably attractive, and about ten years older than me. I immediately cast him as an eccentric software designer who dabbled in theater on the side – so, yes, that guy.
So there we were: candlelight, silence, me and Steve Jobs 2.0, fumbling with each other’s bread. And then the first course arrived (soup!). Not something you casually feed yourself on a good day, let alone attempt to offer another human being in total silence while maintaining sustained eye contact. We tried to intuit, purely through gaze and energetic guesswork, when to lift the spoon, how full to fill it, and whether the other person was ready to receive it, all while silently negotiating gravity.
And if that weren’t enough, we were also required to wipe one another’s mouths. Gently. Deliberately. As if this weren’t already intimate enough.
Just when we thought we had survived the worst of it, the second course appeared: pasta. Long, slippery, entirely uncooperative pasta. Guiding noodles into another person’s mouth without speaking, gesturing, or laughing felt like some kind of relational obstacle course. Needless to say, it was one of those I don’t think I will ever experience that again kind of evenings.
My inner voice was loud for most of the night. And yet, within the awkwardness, there were moments of sublime stillness and unexpected connection. Sitting across from a complete stranger somewhere in the East Village, I sensed my own inner vastness through his sustained focus on me. The experience became less about intimacy with another person and more a process of self-seeing.
Western understandings of eye contact often emphasize its role in strengthening relationships, building trust, or signaling attentiveness. But what if we also embraced the union created through eye contact, its capacity to yoke us together, not toward one another, but toward ourselves?
