What is Drishti in Yoga?

Transcript

I'm John Campbell I'm here at the University of Virginia with yoga students and talking about what is known as the Drishti which is a Sanskrit word that means gaze or can mean viewpoint even we're talking about important component of especially asana yoga practice where with each individual exercise in the yoga repertoire a very crucial component along with the position of the feet and the hands and the torso is the directional focal point that is what you actually are looking at so I'm going to be leading the students here through a few poses in a sequence and talking about Drishti or the gaze so we're going to begin with the surya namaskara B bend your knees ekam inhale arms up look to your thumbs today exhale reach down look straight ahead trini inhale head up gazing down at your nose Chuck body exhale jump back again looking at your nose punjah inhale head back but looking at your nose and exhale press back look to your navel Supt right foot forward arms up look to your thumbs hushed Oh hands down looking to your nose upward dog inhale to the nose exhale back looking again to the navel the Agathe sha left side step arms up tip your head back and look at the thumbs go down exhale lower gazing at the nose upward dog inhale downward dog exhale and now they will bring their gaze to their Center to their navel in traditional especially ashtanga yoga practice there are there are a set of different gazes really a limited set which are applicable to each of the poses that is downward dog the gaze is supposed to be the navel up for dog the gaze is supposed to be the tip of the nose but in fact the gaze point is really a work in progress because if you're not able to do the pose to its fullest extent it would be improper for you to be using the gaze point how illustrate what I'm talking about as they first of all punch it the SHA jump forward head up inhale shoulder SHA head down sup the de Shah bent knees arms up and some us the game turned it aside for Tita trikonasana feet three feet apart arms out inhale and the exhale grab on to the big toe and the gaze is now up at the up stretched hand here for most practitioners the gaze will appropriately be the hand and that's only because it's not that hard to actually turn your head and look it up at your hand now they raise up and inhale and pivot to the left side again exhale go down and once they're truly in the pose again turning their head to look up at the head three four and five and buncha inhale rise turn back to the right side now you'll see as they exhale go down again the gaze point is the up stretched hand but it's not so obvious that anyone would be able to do this so if they are able to turn their head and actually look up at the hand that is a guideline that helps to configure the asana it helps with balance but a stiffer person might not actually be able to turn their head and look up at their hand that doesn't mean they won't have a gaze it just means they'll have to make up a different one inhale rise turn your feet and exhale go down the one thing that is impossible or the one thing that doesn't fly is that your eyes are wandering around the room it was never acceptable the yoga practice is all about cultivating concentration 4 & 5 so rise up inhaling and some us the tea heat to the front yay come inhale look up at your thumbs today exhale reach down Trini head up looking to the nose shut Waddy jump back and keep going right the way jump yours go to upward dog downward dog and then you're gonna jump through to mutt each asana a on your own so what they're gonna what you'll see that practitioners doing now is a pose known as muddy cheese pose the sage muddy cheat pose and the gaze initially is their nose as they lift their head and then as they go down to their leg the prescribed gaze is the tip of the toe of the big toe on the front foot now that's only practicable if they actually can go deeply down into the pose where their chest is laid out on their leg and they can turn their head and look forward if as is often the case when somebody's learning the practice they don't have that kind of flexibility their gaze will simply be right in front of them as they'll put their head on their leg and inhaling rise up exhale and now switch sides to the left just switch and again on your own head up inhale exhale go down one other important interesting thing to think about with this whole gays component of each of the asanas is as I mentioned earlier the dish team means not only gays but in a more abstract sense it means viewpoint it means the way you look at things it means subjectivity after five breaths inhale rise and then jump back on your own at that point in a more abstract sense the idea of brewski is the viewpoint literally that we cultivate in yoga practice as we work with the breath and the body we begin naturally to withdraw attention from the world around us mut each asana see and turning here the prescribed gaze as they say is to the side Parvati and they're looking back as the practice evolves and becomes deeper not only is there just simply a physical focal point the the ideal focal point that's prescribed for a given asana but a certain kind of way of looking at the focal point and in particular what kind of focal point what kind of viewpoint are we trying to cultivate well they say in the yoga tradition for example the most important shift in viewpoint that we're seeking is one that is less less self-preoccupied less hung up on one's own experience as you're ready finish and switch to the other side at that point the gaze is not only a physiological orientation where your vision rests but what do you see when your vision rests there my teacher used to say something quite far out and quite beautiful and wonderful and that is that once yoga practice was complete and perfect everywhere you look you see God now I'm not sure what he meant by it meant everything to him but what he literally was saying was that as the result of yoga practice that everywhere he would look things looked very different for him and inhale head forward exhale and jump back the final thing to say about gays at the moment is that gays is not just something that we obviously look at jump through sit down and take Lotus position it's not something that we would obviously look at in just the context of our yoga practice but think about how there is gays at work in virtually every undertaking if you're a tennis player you're learning to look at a moving object in space seeing the ball if you're trying to hit a baseball so any kind of athletic activity but what about interacting with loved ones what about in the workplace what about being alone your ability to maintain full attention and the kind of viewpoint that you bring to what you're looking at in a sense is the full story of the kind of life that you're needing and experiencing and what yoga invites us to do is to strip down to the basics of the experience of looking ask ourselves how we are looking how well we are looking and paying attention and the quality of that attention and overtime in yoga we learn hopefully to look ever more beneficial