“Drishthi”is one of those terms you hear a lot if you go to any yoga classes. Even if you went to a meditation class, you’d often hear this term. It is roughly translated as focus point. In a yoga asana (posture) class, you may hear a phrase “Set your Drishthi” and it is understood to mean “focus your gaze on one single point.” Now imagine, if you had a gaze point on one single point and nothing else, your eyes will get tired first then everything else around that one point will be blur. This is an ineffective way of using concentration (or Dharana). Imagine you are driving a scooter and you had your focus point on one single point. You will soon crash into a ditch pretty easily even though you were “focused.” The yogic focus point, Drishthi teaches us that in order to effectively use our concentration, we must do so with softness (or Sukha). As we focus on one point, we still invite other things in your vision to enter so that you are taking in necessary information as you settle your mind on a single point. Similar to when you are making decisions or taking actions towards your goals. You’d want to focus on your target and at the same time, you keep all options at the back of your mind because we cannot see everything that is going on. We need to keep our mind open to all things that may be helpful to what we are trying to achieve. So this week in our yoga teacher training workshop, we’ll emphasise Drishthi as a balance of steadiness(sthira) in gaze and softness of focus (sukha). This is especially important in balancing poses and vinyasa.
