Category: meditation

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sight, vision and yoga

Present in the yoga cosmologies is an  understanding that the world, the physical world with which we interact every day, is an illusion –  “Maya”.  What is  not an illusion is the love that is the creator who goes by many names. The illusion is ever changing but the loving awareness behind it stays constant and the same.  That loving awareness is within us and around us – omniscient, omnipotent, and everlasting.  The Sankhya philosophy maps out the non-spatial terrain between our sensory interactions with the illusion and our experience of that omniscient loving awareness. Our senses interact with Maya – and that is the field we must work with on our journey. Our sense of sight relates uniquely and powerfully to the experience of the illusion.  Through sight, we see a world full of enemies or friends, flowers or concrete. As with all the other senses, the yogic approach is to purify the sense of sightn so we can have direct vision through the eyes of loving awareness.  As our yoga practices blossom we don’t make ourselves think something positive about the world around us so we see it out there – we actually begin to naturally see differently.

We can consider two components of seeing and vision: the physical eyes (and all the associated physical organs), and the spiritual eye – which only opens as a result of spiritual conditions.  The physical eye sees the world of lack and separation – the illusion.  The spiritual eye sees the truth – loving awareness.  The seeing mechanisms of the physical eyes have a way of blocking the vision of the spiritual eye.   By consciously directing the use of our physical eyes, we unblock the visions of the spiritual eye. The means of preparing for this are our standard yogic tools of discipline (training the eye to focus), renunciation (turning our focus away from disturbing visions) and elevation (cultivating the desire to see in a more uplifted way, and seeking association with others who sincerely are seeing in that way). 

One fundamental practice is to monitor carefully what we allow in our visual field.  The yogi cultivates discernment and turns the gaze away from that which is not conducive to their path.  It’s not about ignoring the challenges before us, but but we don’t allow our sight to become absorbed in it. Think of the last explosive movie you saw…it’s easy to get pulled in. There are paths which work specifically with gazing on death or destruction but personally I don’t work with them, and I don’t recommend them – not because they are wrong, but because I believe that it requires extraordinarily skillful means to navigate that kind of practice effectively. It’s not something to be over confident or over trusting about.  It tends to plump the ego. There are many other simpler approaches.   

We work to choose what to invest our sight in. I think the best example of the challenge of gazing at the destructive was the television reporting after the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center.  I lived in New York City – and all our televisions went out – and were out – for days.  Most of us there saw the event as it unfolded in the material world around us.  The internet was not yet a primary source of information.  So, we went about doing what we needed to do.  Meanwhile in the suburbs and towns across the United States of America – the public was tuning in to a 24/7 hour a day show of the repeat of the film of the towers going down.  Many felt compelled to watch to be in the know about what was going to happen next.  I must say, my friends who watched that loop on repeat had a much harder time dealing with the trauma than most of the people I knew who lived in the city at that time.  That image of destruction looping before their eyes was burned into their consciousness – together with the accompanying fear.  Watching doom on a long term basis can create some inner conditions that are difficult to deal with and heal from.  So, yes, we must pay attention to the illusion, but elements of it which keep us fixed in undesirable states of mind we consume only enough to have the information that we need to manage our lives.  In this case a yogic choice may have been to check in from time to time for updates rather than really tuning for a long period of time.

In general the act of gazing magnifies what you absorb through the eyes.  Surround yourself with simplicity, beauty, upliftment, and check any tendency to rubber neck when the horrific or compelling crosses your path.  This isn’t a prescription for walking away from a tragedy where one might be helpful, but it is a prescription for discernment. While doing the work of helping if called to do so, the yogin focuses on the potential to be helpful and not the apparent tragedy.

A question we can ask ourselves regarding right sight is “Do I want my life force (or my time)  to be spent looking at this?” Intention and conscious decision making are fundamental to success in yoga.  Know that what you absorb will, in some way effect the mind.

The potency of the ability to direct our gaze becomes illumined as we train on our yoga mats and meditation cushions.  The directed gaze becomes a propellant for the movement of the life force, or prana, traveling in the yogi’s sushumna nadi (a central pranic channel which travels along the spine).  The gaze “pulls” the life force. An uplifted gaze will pull the prana upward.  This is cleansing and uplifting.

The directed gaze in an asana is called “Drishti”. Drishti means sight or vision.  In the Hatha Yoga Pradipika 1.37 we meet this beautiful description of the practice of Siddhasana or Adept’s pose. 

“Press the perineum with the heel of one foot, place the other foot on top of  genitals.  Having done this, rest the chin on the chest.  Remaining still and steady, with the sense controlled, gaze steadily into the eyebrow center; it breaks open the door to liberation.” P 102,   Swami Muktibodhananda tr. Translation by the Bihar school

Drishti is a practice where the Hatha yogin rests a soft gaze on a specific point while performing, moving into or out of their asana.  Opinions vary as to where to rest your gaze.  Some general principles to keep in mind are that you should select a gaze where the back of the neck is long and the heart lifted.  A well-chosen and executed Drishti is not just about the eyes, it’s about the whole body.  As your sense of Sthira and Suhka (steadiness and joy in a posture) develops in your practice, the whole body will be energized and uplifted by the gaze.  The body looks towards the divine. So, yes, generally it will be an uplifted gaze.  For specific instructions on drishti in various yoga postures see Light on Yoga, BKS Iyengar.

This uplifted gaze also is born in the mind of the yogi.  As we shall see when we get to the mind in our exploration of the building blocks of Sankhya Philosophy, the mind influences the senses and the senses influence the mind. And uplifted mind uplifts the gaze and an uplifted gaze uplifts the mind.

Another very potent yoga practice related to the sense of sight is tratak.  Tratak is a meditative, deeper more focused form of Drishti.  Taking a classic meditative posture, the yogin gazes, without blinking, at a candle lit at eye level until tears come and the eyes are flushed out.  Then, the yogin closes the eyes and gazes at the third eye center between the eyes and slightly back.  An inner vision will manifest of the flame, a blue dot, a deity.   The key to the practice is the steady gaze and not giving in to the temptation to close the eyes. Give the practice a specific length of time, say, 20 minutes.

 The practice of tratak is woven deeply into the experience of the third eye and the power of manifestation through the Manipura Chakra (the Solar Plexus Chakra). I don’t really recommend trying to manifest a specific desire, but rather to understand that  the truest desires of the heart – which we often are unaware of –  will manifest organically as we develop the skillful means of yoga: concentration, awareness, letting go, balancing, contemplating the Ageless wisdom, and cultivating joy, to name a few.

/*This concludes our exploration of the senses as the ground floor of the map of the Sankhya philosophy – the direct experience of the world around us and how we can work with them effectively to enhance our yoga asana practice. For the next post we will begin the elements.  All of the blogposts are accompanied by a separate newsletter I send out via mailchimp.  There is no marketing or advertising or charge (I promise)– it’s a just to share some deeper details with motivated students.  This month’s newsletter will touch on Yantras, and a closing statement on the senses.  If you’d like to sign up for the newsletter please subscribe below.  I don’t sell your info, I promise.  You can see this month’s newsletter at https://mailchi.mp/05b51002ed24/sankhya-the-senses-sight*/

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About the Body: The Body as a Communication Device

In the classic medieval text the “Hatha Yoga Pradipika” or The Guiding Light of the Yoking of the Sun and Moon – we learn that in classical yoga, the practice of Hatha Yoga culminates in the body’s resonance with the sound of “Om”.  We are tuned by the practice to a vibration where opposites are united and revealed as facets of one source. That state of unity creates a particular feeling tone. In my experience when that happens, we are feeling the love of the universe within our own form.  To do this, the biochemical aspect of the body requires cleansing (diet and various cleansing practices – the shat karma kriyas – the process of sweating during practice), the musculoskeletal system needs to be toned and balanced, and the energy body, emotions and the mind require discipline and clearing through meditation and sound practices (Om) and adjustments in personal care and ways of relating.  I know it sounds like a lot, but for most of us we do a little at a time, transforming at a pace that is appropriate for us.  The result of this is a clear “sound”.  We can hear it in the sound of our voice.  We can also hear it inside us as our intuition and wisdom become illuminated.  A common test is to listen to your Om at the beginning and end of the class. Or any old time you feel out of tune.  This clarity of resonance or lack there of is key to our capacity to communicate.  If you’ve ever tried to sort things out with a friend when you felt foggy day you know it’s more difficult than  when you are awake and clear.  The body is a communication device – not just with our tongues and mouths, but with our posture, the brightness of our eyes, and our health.  Imbalance in our system is reflected in the body.  And through working with techniques of Hatha Yoga we can bring the system back into balance. 

A good place to start is always the musculoskeletal system. The density of the bones and the memory capacity for the fascial tissue and muscles impacts the balance of the whole body mind spirit system.  So how do we start? 

All yoga starts with Tadasana – or Mountain  -or Simple Standing Posture.  It is so simple and straightforward that every tension is apparent. We just stand upright with the balance of the weight distributed evenly across the soles of the feet, arms alongside the body.  Personally, I never try to force change in Tadasana.  I use it as a measure.  How is my Tadasana at the beginning of practice? What is it like at the end.  Like the Om, it’s often very different, reflecting as greater state of balance and resonance.  Sometimes I’ll just stand in it for a long time and feel the tension patterns surface. 

Those tension patterns can tell us a lot about how we could create positive change in our lives.  There is no formula.  For me it’s always my hamstrings get short and tight and my head juts forward.  Over the years – through spacious self-reflection and input from yoga colleagues – I’ve come to know that when that pattern emerges – some piece of me is not in the present moment.  I’m hanging on to a belief, or perception or way of being that doesn’t serve me anymore.  Often by the time my body communicates something – I’ve been ignoring it for a while.  Sometimes insights about what needs to change will emerge during asana practice, sometimes meditation or the other forms of practice can help to illuminate the issues.  The key is to seek to understand in a receptive way rather than just to fix or overcome and that understanding lays the groundwork for transformation of the body and everything else through my practice.

My newsletter lays a philosophical ground drawn from Patanjali Yoga Sutra 1.40 to work with in conjunction with this blog post. Take a look here: To Know – Results of the Experience of Yoga – https://mailchi.mp/4f8d72e44e70/to-know-yoga-and-the-experience-of-knowing

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Pranayama: Potency and Subtlety

Patanjali Yoga Sutra III.43  When you focus on the relationship between the body and the space around the body, the lightness of cotton fiber is attained and allows one to travel through the sky. 

We use the word  focus here, but it is about Samayama, restraint of the qualities of attention.    When our casual attention, our intermittent attention and our constant attention are all resting in one concept, we become that concept.  We lose our identity in that something.  It’s just something that human minds do.  We slip into falling in love and we become the other’s partner instead of being ourselves.  We become our role, instead of inhabiting the role for a time.  Patanjali, the great yoga psychologist teaches how we can master this tendency and use it intentionally.  This sutra is one of the many where he describes a practice one can do, here focusing on the body and the space around the body, where the qualities of lightness is revealed.  We focus on the edge of our density and the air around us and our own spaciousness is revealed.  In Yoga the intention is to identify with the unlimited aspect of consciousness, and then operate from that vantage point.  In order to do this we must develop our awareness of the subtle.  We developed this awareness by learning about prana – the subtle energy.  Learning to work with prana transforms our relationship with the body and with the asanas.

Asanas work powerfully on the gross level, developing muscles and balancing bone structure.  Squeezing out the internal organs and changing the blood flow.  Working with prana impacts the subtle fluid energies of the body and their conduits – the veins and nervous system – purifying blood and lymph and plasma.  In the traditional Chinese system, chi, a relative of prana (it appears to function differently), is associated with the spirit in its function in blood.  We can understand then that the finer the substance the closer it is to spirit.  To understand our prana is to come to understand ourselves.

A primary yogic technique for working with the prana is pranayama, or restraint of the prana.  We practice consciously controlling, restricting and releasing the prana. The result is energy, wakefulness and creativity.

Don’t be surprised if you go through a period of transition before you feel that.  The heavier elements of consciousness formed by lifestyle factors may present obstacles to clarity.  But that’s part of the gift.  Like dropping sandbags out of a balloon we may decide to let things go.  It’s important to note that  it’s not necessarily the object of attention that we let go of, it could be how we relate to it.  We see things differently when we take a few steps back.  When we release the obstacle and  gather our attention on what lifts us up we float, like a cloud, or a helium balloon when what weighs it down is released. In the case of this sutra, the we learn that what weighs us down is the compartmentalization that there is space and there is body,we are the body, and not space. And they are separate.  The deeper our intimacy with breath and space through the practice of pranayama, the more we develop discernment of the subtle in our practice, and find our way to lightening up.