So, here's an interesting thing I learned tonight. I focus more when I can't see. Does that make sense? Not to me, not really. But I was doing yoga tonight and my glasses kept getting in the way. (I'm wearing them more and more lately because my one contact is pretty much done -- it's a 30 day lens and I've had it 11 months.) So, I took off my glasses. I worried that I wouldn't be able to execute the poses properly, or that my practice would suffer due to lack of drishti. I don't even know if that's an appropriate way to use the word, honestly.
For each asana, there is a drishti. It kind of means focus, or focal point. One of them is the tip of the nose, one of them is like your second toe, your belly button, your thumb. I remember how it suddenly occurred to me one day in down dog, as I was being instructed to focus my gaze on my navel, that the term "navel gazing" may somehow be related to that drishti. It also means vision, or gaze. As in, your drishti should be on your third eye. The tip of the nose one and the third eye one both hurt my eyes, so I just close my eyes in poses that call for those, or just look straight ahead.
But anyway, the whole purpose of drishti is sense withdrawal. If you focus all your energy on just that one single point, supposedly all of your senses fall away. I find that this is not the case for me. For example, when I am supposed to be looking at my second toe, I'll notice that my toenail has grown rather long. Suddenly it will begin to disturb me that it is long. The longer I stare at it, the less I can stand that unclipped toenail. Sometimes I stop to clip my toenails. Or push back my cuticles. Or scrape off some remaining scraps of nailpolish. You see? Drishti doesn't seem to help me much.
Today, though, after I took off my glasses, I did great. Obviously I could only look in the general vicinity of whatever it was I was supposed to be looking at, because I couldn't actually SEE it. But that was the key! With nothing to see, there was nothing for me to get distracted by. Focusing on some colored blob which represented my thumb yielded much better results than I ever had when I could clearly see anything. Of course, the goal is to be able to shut out all distractions even when I CAN see. But, if the purpose of drishti is to tune out your senses, why NOT do it blind? Sometimes I even do my entire flow with my eyes closed. I'm not sure if this is better or worse than using the designated focal points, but it seems to get me into a deeper meditative state.
I'm not sure if there's any meaning to that or not. Anyway I got all of my holiday shopping done today! Except my dad. There are a bunch of gifts under the tree, wrapped -- the tree is up (Tristan LOOOOOOOVES the holidays, and he was begging me since like 6 am to let him put up the tree so I did), there are candy canes and some ornaments on it, and we bought clear ornaments and paint to decorate as our solstice craft on Sunday. I mailed another letter to Kevin, I sent my rent, and I got money orders for my car insurance and phone bill. I also put money on my gas card. I meant to get groceries -- I tried -- but I get so overwhelmed. I didn't know what to get and what not to get, so I didn't get anything.
Tomorrow night, though, we are having popcorn, watching holiday movies, drinking eggnog, and relaxing. Then Sunday morning we are going to have a nice breakfast, read our Winter Solstice book, and make those ornaments. A girl from the sister circle is hosting a solstice gathering at her house and I'm thinking about taking the kids. We'll see how things go. I need to switch my laundry, ta ta for now!
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