Looking for Your Drishti

Photo courtesy of Carl Newton

“The use of drishti in asana serves both as a training technique and as a metaphor for focusing consciousness toward a vision of oneness.

Drishti is a technique for looking for the Divine everywhere—and thus for seeing correctly the world around us. Used in this way, drishti becomes a technique for removing the ignorance that obscures this true vision, a technique that allows us to see God in everything.”

David Life

Once again I find myself in what has now become a familiar site, the yoga studio where I am currently learning. Standing on my mat, arms extended, trying to be in the moment. Our teacher is discussing a pose. How the hips are rotated, the angle of the spine, remembering to breathe. Then she says, “Find your drishti point” before we begin to attempt to balance on one foot.

A drishti point is a place during the asanas, or movements of yoga, to focus your gaze, providing an anchor to help you maintain your balance. By giving the vision an unmoving connection, the brain can more easily hold the body stable in an inherently unstable position. It is a concept that pertains to more than physical balance, but to spiritual and emotional equilibrium as well. Sometimes life serves us up more than we had counted on. We find ourselves struggling with rocky emotions, going up and down. The storm seems to toss us about and the tendency is to flail and grab onto whatever we can to stop the fall.

But falling is a part of learning. As toddlers we waddled along on awkward legs exploring our world falling constantly. Sometimes, we’d get a good bonk, scrape our knee, cry from the pain and then move on to the next adventure, repeating the process again and again. But over time we learned to balance, to manage the activities that made us likely to topple, to recognize the positions that helped make us feel more secure, and how to focus to increase our stability.

So it is with those stormy emotional moments. We have to look for the drishti points in our lives that give us that sense of safety, of greater balance. Perhaps it’s external like a good friend, your pet or that spot just ahead of you on the floor. Maybe, instead, it’s inside yourself, like drawing on your sense of humor or leaning on your capacity to hug. It is the focus, whether within or without, that lends that extra stability for you to keep moving forward.

So, ground yourself, my friend. Find that unmoving point ahead (or inside 😊), breathe and go ahead and pick up that foot.