Your eye is clamped open, sounds painful, but it is not. I had to move machines halfway though the process. One cuts the eye and the other is the laser. You just have to look at the dot/forward and that is it. Just have to try and stay calm (they gave me stress balls to squeeze, which helped), you will lose vision in your eye for for like 30 seconds after they cut it. It freaked me out a little bit, but made it out with better than 20/20 vision, so worth it.