178: New Life Perspectives with Liz Larson and Bill McKenna - Episode 178178: New Life Perspectives with Liz Larson and Bill McKenna - Episode 178
UK Health Radio Podcast
Liz Larson and Bill McKenna discuss research suggesting that feelings in the body trigger thoughts, and explain how eye position and body tension influence mood, cravings and decision-making. They share simple eye and relaxation exercises aimed at easing anxiety, depression and other uncomfortable states.
45:12•28 Sept 2026
Hidden Causes of Your Thoughts: Eyes, Feelings and Fast Shifts
Episode Overview
- Feelings and bodily shifts appear to arise before conscious thoughts, challenging the idea that thinking alone drives behaviour.
- Experiments with amnesia patients and economic games show how gut feelings guide safety, trust and fairness even without conscious memory.
- Long periods of looking down at smartphones may reinforce low-mood and anxious states because eye position strongly links to emotional patterns.
- Simple tools such as slow eye-rolling exercises and deliberate relaxation of body tension can reduce the intensity of unwanted feelings and cravings.
- Changing where you look gives different parts of the brain a chance to assess a problem, helping to ‘rewire’ emotional responses over time.
“Our feelings are primary, and your eyeballs are the joystick for your brain.”
Curious about how others manage their thoughts and feelings in day-to-day life? This episode of New Life Perspectives on UK Health Radio zooms in on an idea that flips a common belief on its head: what if thoughts start in the body, not the mind? Hosts Liz Larson and Bill McKenna unpack the work of neuroscientist Dr Antonio Damasio, sharing experiments that suggest feelings and bodily shifts happen first, and thoughts come after.
From an amnesia patient who can’t remember people yet still senses a “good guy” vibe, to brain scans showing the body reacting before conscious emotion, you’ll hear why trying to “think positive” might feel like fighting upstream. Bill also links the explosion of depression and anxiety diagnoses since 2007 with the rise of smartphones, painting a vivid picture of how hour after hour of looking down at screens may be training brains into low-mood states.
As he puts it, “your eyeballs are the joystick for your brain”, and where you look can tilt you towards tears or relief. Things get practical too. Liz and Bill walk through simple eye-movement and relaxation exercises designed to shift uncomfortable feelings—anger, fear, cravings, resentment—by releasing tension in the body and letting different parts of the brain weigh in.
They even tease out how something as everyday as a craving for ice cream is a physical sensation first, long before it becomes a mental story. If you’re on a recovery path and tired of wrestling with ‘bad thoughts’, this conversation offers a different route: work with your body and eye position instead of arguing with your mind. Could changing where you look change how you feel about your next craving or trigger?
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