toward the navel
• toward the hand
• toward the toes
• toward the side
• toward the thumb
• upward
By doing this, one prevents oneself from looking around, which would let the mind reach out. Following drishti, the practice becomes deeply internal and meditative.
Drishti is also a practice of concentration (dharana), the sixth of Patanjali’s limbs of yoga. If we practice in a distracted way, we may find ourselves listening to the birds outside and gazing around the room. To perform all of the prescribed actions — bandha, ujjayi, drishti, and finding proper alignment — the mind needs to be fully concentrated; otherwise one of the elements will miss out. In this way the practice provides us with constant feedback about whether we are in dharana. In time dharana will lead to meditation (dhyana).
Drishti has also a significant energetic aspect. According to the Yoga Yajnavalkya, which contains the yoga teachings of the sage Yajnavalkya, “One must endeavour to retain all the prana through the mind, in the navel, the tip of the nose and the big toes. Focussing at the tip of the nose is the means to mastery over prana. By focussing on the navel all diseases are removed. The body attains lightness by focussing on the big toes.”12 According to A. G. Mohan, a student of T. Krishnamacharya and translator of the Yoga Yajnavalkya, the aim of yoga is to concentrate the prana in the body, whereas it is usually scattered. A scattered prana will correspond to a scattered state of mind.
The scattered state of mind is called vikshipta in the Yoga Sutra. Prana that is drawn inward and concentrated in the body corresponds to the single-pointed (ekagra) and suspended (nirodha) states of mind, which lead to objective (samprajnata) and objectless (asamprajnata) samadhi. In the Ashtanga Vinyasa method, drishti is one of the vital techniques to draw the prana inward. Anyone who has practiced in front of a mirror may have noticed how looking into it draws awareness away from the core toward the surface. Exactly this happens to the flow of prana, which follows awareness. Practicing in front of a mirror might be helpful from time to time to check one’s alignment if no teacher is present, but it is preferable to develop proprioceptive awareness — awareness that does not depend on visual clues. This type of awareness draws prana inward, which corresponds to what the Upanishads call dissolving the mind into the heart. The permanent establishing of prana in the core of the body leads to samadhi or liberation.
As enthusiastic as some scriptures are about techniques like drishti, we have to remember we are still just operating within conditioned existence. The master Shankara reminds us: “Converting the ordinary vision into one of knowledge one should view the world as brahman (consciousness) itself. That is the noblest vision and not that which is directed to the tip of the nose.”13
Vinyasa
Vinyasa Yoga is a system of yoga specifically designed for householders. The difference between a householder (grihasta) and a renunciate (sannyasi) is that the latter has no social duties and can therefore devote ten or more hours per day to practice. In fact, if individual techniques pertaining to all the eight limbs were practiced daily, one would easily spend more than ten hours practicing. For example a wonderful day could be had by practicing asana for two hours, pranayama for two hours, mudra and japa (repetition of mantra) each for one hour, reading of scripture one hour, chanting of scripture one hour, reflection and contemplation one hour, meditation one hour.
A householder — meaning someone who has a family and a job or a business to attend to — can never spend so much time on the practice. The idea of completely turning your back on society is actually fairly recent, relatively speaking. It was introduced by Gautama Buddha and elaborated on by Shankara. The ancient vedic and upanishadic rishis, although they spent considerable time in the forest, were not dropouts. Rishis like Yajnavalkya, Vasishta, and Vishvamitra had wives and children, and held positions such as priest or royal counselor.
For a yoga practice to work for householders, it would be necessary to compress it into two hours and yet retain its benefits, and so the eight limbs would have to be practiced simultaneously and not sequentially. With this in mind Rishi Vamana created the Vinyasa Yoga. The rishi arranged the practice in sequences, such that the postures were potentiating their effects, and combined them with mudra, pranayama, and meditation so that a ten-hour practice could be effectively compressed into two hours.
One of Vinyasa Yoga’s outstanding features is that postures are not held for a long time. One of the greatest traps in physical yoga is to get identified with postures and preoccupied with the body. One thinks, “Now I am sitting in Padmasana. This is yoga!” One couldn’t be more wrong. To perceive the awareness that witnesses sitting in Padmasana — that is yoga.
The core idea of Vinyasa Yoga is to shift emphasis from posture to breath and therefore to realize that postures, like all forms, are impermanent. The formed — asanas, bodies of life-forms, structures, nations, planets, and so on — come and go. The quest of yoga is for the formless (consciousness) — for what was here before form arose and what will be here after form has subsided. For this reason it was necessary to organize the practice in such a way that nothing impermanent is held on to. Vinyasa Yoga is a meditation on impermanence.
The only thing permanent in the practice is the constant focus on the breath. According to the Brahma Sutra,14 “ata eva pranah” — the breath verily is Brahman. The breath is here identified as a metaphor for Brahman (that is, deep reality, ultimate reality, infinite consciousness). This assertion is based on the authority of the Chandogya Upanishad, where the question is asked: Which is that divinity?15 Answer: “Breath . . . Verily, indeed all beings enter (into life) with breath and depart (from life) with breath.”16 Through vinyasa the postures are linked to form a mala. A mala is commonly used to count mantras during mantra meditation, whereas in Vinyasa Yoga every asana becomes a bead on this mala of yoga postures. In this way the practice becomes a movement meditation.
The practice produces heat, which is needed to burn toxins. Not only physical toxins are meant here, but also the poison of ignorance and delusion. The full-vinyasa practice, which entails coming back to standing between postures, has a flushing effect through the constant forward bending. It can be recommended in cases of strong, persistent toxicity and for recuperation after disease. The half-vinyasa practice, in which one jumps back between performance of the right and left sides of sitting postures, is designed to create a balance between strength and flexibility and to increase heat.
If asana only is practiced, this might lead to excess flexibility, which can destabilize the body. The proper position of the bones in the body, and especially of the spine, is remembered by sustaining a certain core tension in the muscles. If the tension is insufficient, frequent visits to a chiropractor or osteopath may become necessary.
In the vinyasa method, this possibility is avoided by jumping back between sides, which gives us the strength to support the amount of flexibility that is gained. This concept is important to understand. Flexibility that cannot be supported by strength should not be aimed for.
The underlying principle here is that of simultaneous expansion into opposing directions. Whenever we expand into one direction, we at the same time need to counteract that by expanding into the opposite direction. In this way we are not caught into extremes of body and mind. Patanjali says, “Thus one is unassailed by the pair of opposites.”17 For this reason one needs to place the same importance on vinyasa as on asana. As Rishi Vamana put it, “Oh Yogi, don’t practice asana without vinyasa.”
Vinyasa Count
In colloquial language today, the term vinyasa is taken to