As a yoga practitioner, we seek to view an inner reality, becoming more aware of how our brains only let us see what we want to see—a projection of our own limited ideas. Often our opinions, prejudices, and habits prevent us from seeing unity or seeing more clearly. I taught a class about seeing clearly earlier this year, and it is on the website as Avidya.
Our drishti, our gaze, our visual focus through our asana, is more than just about overcoming distractions. It is a technique for looking for the Divine everywhere—including within, and seeing more clearly the world around us. The practice of drishti can lead to Vidya, seeing clearly, thus allowing us to see God in everything.
In our yoga practice, allowing the eyes to wander creates distractions that lead us further away from yoga. To counteract these habits, control and focus of the attention are fundamental principles in the practice. When we control and direct the focus, first of the eyes and then of the attention, we are using the yogic technique called drishti. This continual re-focusing, re-directing of attention, strengthens the muscle of the mind, helping us not only in our practice, but off the mat as well.
When I did the Baptiste's drishti practice, the same class many of you have taken from me, I considered it one of the most powerful moving meditations I had ever done. At some point in the practice, my block became a mirror, my drishti shed a light within, and I saw things I had tucked away, and when I went down into half pigeon, I let them go. The release I felt brought me to tears.
Your focus determines your reality, and combined with yoga, your focus shines a light of awareness into the corners of your body and mind. When I went into the heart opening poses of the practice, I cried some more, because I fell a little bit more in love with me. The use of drishti with the block opened my heart, deepening those heart-opening poses. When I sat the block behind my head before pushing up into wheel pose, I couldn’t wait to get back up in wheel and put my gaze back on that block. I had more determination to do 6 wheels and hold them longer than I had before. It might be hard to believe that keeping your drishti on a block would motivate you to do 6 wheels, but it did me!
I can’t explain how much I enjoy sharing this beautiful gift of yoga with my students, but I can tell you that I am grateful that you show up, do the work, and allow me the opportunity to do what I love. Thank you for choosing me as your teacher. There will be a drishti class on the website for members access in late January, 2023!!
Namaste,
MaryBeth