How to Cross Your Eyes

Focusing on Your Nose

Focus both your eyes on the tip of your nose. Slowly lower your gaze until both of your eyes are focused on the tip of your nose. This may cause a bit of an eye strain, since you're probably not used to using your eye muscles this way. Though you won't be able to see it yourself, your eyes should now be crossed. But this is no fun so far -- since you're looking down, no one else can see that your eyes are crossed.

Move your gaze upward. This part is tricky. Once you've mastered looking at the tip of your nose, you should slowly move your gaze upward, as if you were staring straight ahead, while trying to keep your eyes angled inward, just as they were when you were concentrating on staring at the tip of your nose.

Practice, practice, practice. You will probably find it difficult to keep your eyes crossed once you stop focusing on your nose. Crossing your eyes is a very natural technique that allows you to focus on something that is very near you, and as soon as you bring your eyes away from that object (in this case, your nose), your brain will automatically try to refocus your eyes on more distant objects, thereby uncrossing your eyes almost immediately. You can, however, control your eye muscles to stay out of focus, but it may take some practice. Don't forget to keep your eyes open, so anyone can see your cross-eyed face!

Get help from a friend. If you really want to master eye crossing, then you should have a friend there to watch you do it, so you can make sure you're really doing it successfully. If you look up at your friend and the friend says, "Ew!" or makes a gross face, then chances are that yeah, you've successfully crossed your eyes. People say you can try taking a picture of yourself in the cross-eyed position to see if you've done it successfully, but that just takes way too much coordination.

Using a Pen

Hold out a pen at eye level at arm's length. Focus on that object, trying to ignore everything behind it. This is really another version of staring at the tip of your nose, which exaggerates the process and makes it just a bit easier.

Bring the object closer to your face. Do this slowly, and make sure to keep your focus on that object only. This will take some practice. Don't get frustrated if you can't seem to keep your gaze on the object, at first.

Stop when the object is close to your face. Once the pen is about 2–4 inches (5.1–10.2 cm) from your face, your eyes should cross. Take a moment to continue to focus on the object with your eyes crossed.

Remove the object from your line of sight, but don't move your eyes. This part is tricky. As with the technique above, keeping your eyes crossed is the hard part, but it can be achieved with practice. You'll know when your eyes "uncross" because your eyes will seem to "snap" back into focus.

Moving One Eye at a Time

Be a master at crossing your eyes. This is an advanced skill you can master only after being a pro at crossing your eyes the regular old way. Crossing your eyes while moving one eye at a time has an extra gross-out factor, because, if you do it successfully, you'll be able to move your eyeballs in different directions.

Cross your eyes. Just use whatever technique works best for crossing your eyes, whether it's looking at the tip of your nose and then looking up, using a pen, or doing whatever works for you.

Focus on moving just one eye away from your nose. While your eyes are crossed, focus on, say, moving your right eyeball all the way out to the left side of your face. At first, it should at least get to the middle. As you do this, make sure to keep the left eye crossed, focusing on the tip of your nose. This will create a disturbing look, with one eye crossed all the way, and the other either facing out or even to the side.

Repeat with the other side. You may have more control of one eye than the other, so you should try the opposite, keeping your right eye crossed while moving your left eye to the center or all the way to the left corner of your eye. See which one is easier for you.

Keep practicing! This is an even harder skill than crossing your eyes, but if you master it, it is guaranteed to freak out your friends even more. Take just a few minutes a day to practice this skill and you'll be a champ in no time.