The Physiology of Drishti
If you’ve spent any time at the gym, you’ve seen people putting in long stretches on the stationary bike, reading or watching TV to kill time. Or maybe they’re listening to music to take their minds off their routine.
If you want results, this is about as far from the right thing to do at the gym as you can get. Focusing on the exercise to do it safely and effectively, to make the workout as fruitful as you can, requires attention.
Alignment and doing the asanas correctly is only part of the practice of yoga. Breathing properly is also an essential element. But focusing the attention and the gaze is another and perhaps one of the most neglected.
Concentration is one of the basic principles of yoga. Directing attention by focusing the gaze on a specific point is called drishti. Though sometimes neglected by yoga teachers, every asana has a specific drishti. For example, in adho mukha svanasana (downward-facing dog pose), the gaze is directed at the nabi chakra, at the navel. Even when the eyes are closed, the point of attention and gaze is never neglected.
The Gaze
In Sanskrit, drishti can also mean a vision or a point of view. It can mean intelligence and wisdom. The drishti in asana is both a training technique and a metaphor for focusing consciousness for a spiritual purpose.
