- 💛 A Letter First
- 🌱 The Seed Verses
- 🪷 The Practice
- 🧍 What Āsana Is
- 🎯 Dṛṣṭi: The Third Leg
- 🗂️ The Fifteen Families
- 📜 The Fifteen Classical Āsanas
- 🦴 Anatomy: How the Eye Holds the Body
- 🏔️ What Is Mastered, and How
- ⚖️ Three Doshas on the Mat
- 🧅 Five Bodies in a Posture
- 🤝 Companions of the Practice
- 🌏 Other Paths & Views
- 📖 Stories & Allegories
- ❓ Misconceptions
- 📜 More Verses
- 🗂️ Sources & Notes
- 🙏 A Closing Blessing
💛 A Letter Before We Begin from my heart to yours
My dear friend, let me describe a yoga class, and you will tell me whether you have been in it. 🧍
The teacher says "tree pose". Thirty people lift one foot. Twenty of them begin to wobble at once, and their eyes begin to wobble with them: down to the foot, across to a neighbour, up to the mirror, round to the clock. The harder they try, the more they sway. A few stand like posts. If you look at those few, you will see that they are not stronger and not more supple than the rest. Their eyes are still.
Or it is a forward bend. The hamstrings burn, the jaw is set, the breath is held, the eyes are screwed shut or glaring at the knees. The body is being ordered to lengthen and is answering as any body answers an order given in anger: by tightening.
Or it is the last pose of all, lying still, and the limbs twitch and the eyelids flutter and the mind is at the supermarket.
This is the pain I want to speak to: years of sincere practice in which the postures are done and never quite arrived in. The shapes improve. The steadiness and the ease that Patañjali names as the whole definition of āsana do not come, or come only on good days.
The old tradition of posture stands on three things together: the placing of the body, the breath, and the gaze. Modern classes teach the first with great care, the second sometimes, and the third hardly at all. Yet it is the third that governs the other two. Balance is read from the eyes. The breath follows the eyes. The tone of every muscle answers to the alarm or the calm that the eyes report.
I am a Trataki. For hours every day I rest my gaze on one point, in the gentle way I describe at Trāṭaka Yoga, and I find that the body becomes stiller, lighter and more flexible for it. On this page I want to show you why: what āsana is, how the postures are sorted into families, what each family asks of the body, and how the steady eye serves every one. I will keep three things apart as I go: what the texts say, what has been measured, and what is my own experience. 💛
🌱 The Seed Verses Patañjali, Svātmārāma, the Lord and a sage, on what a posture is for and what the eyes do in it
Everything Patañjali says about posture is in these three sūtras, and none of it is about shape. Sthira: steady, firm, unmoving. Sukha: easy, comfortable, sweet. A posture is not defined by how far one bends. It is defined by two qualities, and a deep bend held with clenched teeth has neither.
Then the method, and it is astonishing: prayatna-śaithilya, the slackening of effort. Posture is perfected by doing less. And ananta-samāpatti: by the mind becoming absorbed in the infinite, in something without edges. Mastery of the body, he says, is an act of the attention.
And the fruit: heat and cold, pleasure and pain no longer strike. The body has stopped complaining, and can be forgotten.
कुर्यात्तदासनं स्थैर्यमारोग्यं चाङ्गलाघवम् ॥haṭhasya prathamāṅgatvād āsanaṃ pūrvam ucyate |
kuryāt tad āsanaṃ sthairyam ārogyaṃ cāṅga-lāghavam ||Being the first limb of Haṭha,
Posture is spoken of first.
Posture should bring about steadiness,
Health, and lightness of limb.
Svātmārāma's statement of what āsana is for. Three fruits. Sthairya: steadiness, the same root as Patañjali's sthira. Ārogya: freedom from disease. Aṅga-lāghava: lightness of the limbs. If your practice is leaving you steadier, healthier and lighter, it is āsana. If it is leaving you strained, injured and heavy, it is something else done in the same shapes.
सम्प्रेक्ष्य नासिकाग्रं स्वं दिशश्चानवलोकयन् ॥samaṃ kāya-śiro-grīvaṃ dhārayann acalaṃ sthiraḥ |
samprekṣya nāsikāgraṃ svaṃ diśaś cānavalokayan ||Holding body, head and neck in line,
Unmoving and steady,
Gazing toward the tip of one's own nose,
And not looking about in any direction.
This is the oldest complete instruction for a yoga posture that we possess, and I ask you to read it as a teacher of alignment would. Samam: even, aligned; body, head and neck in one line. Acalam: not moving. Sthiraḥ: steady. And then, in the same breath, the gaze: samprekṣya nāsikāgram, and diśaś cānavalokayan, "not looking around".
The Lord gives four instructions for the seat, and two of them are for the eyes. In His teaching alignment and gaze are a single act.
चित्तं स्थिरं यस्य विनावलम्बात्स एव योगी स गुरुः स सेव्यः ॥dṛṣṭiḥ sthirā yasya vinaiva dṛśyād vāyuḥ sthiro yasya vinā prayatnāt |
cittaṃ sthiraṃ yasya vināvalambāt sa eva yogī sa guruḥ sa sevyaḥ ||One whose gaze is steady even without a thing to see,
Whose breath is steady without any effort,
Whose mind is steady without any support:
That one alone is a yogi, a teacher, and worthy to be served.
Three steadinesses in order: gaze, breath, mind. The word for each is Patañjali's word for posture: sthira. And the second line contains his method: vinā prayatnāt, "without effort". The steadiness that āsana seeks begins, according to this verse, in the eyes, and travels inward from there.
संविद्दृशि प्रशाम्यन्त्यां प्राणस्पन्दो निरुद्ध्यते ॥dvādaśāṅgula-paryante nāsāgre vimalāmbare |
saṃvid-dṛśi praśāmyantyāṃ prāṇa-spando niruddhyate ||Twelve fingerwidths out beyond the nosetip,
In the stainless sky the gaze is laid;
With eyes half-open, gentle and still,
The stir of breath & mind is finally stayed.
The verse on which the practice rests; it is opened fully at Trāṭaka Yoga. Read it beside Patañjali. He asks for the slackening of effort: Vasiṣṭha's gaze is praśāmyantī, growing tranquil. He asks for absorption in the endless: Vasiṣṭha lays the gaze in vimala-ambara, the stainless sky. He promises freedom from disturbance: Vasiṣṭha says the quivering, spanda, is stilled. The sūtra on posture and the verse on the gaze describe the same event.
🪷 The Practice how Trāṭaka Yoga is joined to the practice of postures
The method itself lives on one page only: Trāṭaka Yoga. It has three elements: a single point, half-open eyes, and a gentle gaze. I do not repeat the instructions here. I only say how the practitioner of āsana may use it. 🪷
🧍 Trāṭaka Yoga for the practitioner of postures
Before you practise. 👁️ Learn the gaze at Trāṭaka Yoga, and sit with it for a while before you begin your postures. You will step on to the mat with the eyes already quiet, the breath already even and the body already listening. The first posture then begins where the last one used to end.
While you practise. 🎯 Carry the three qualities of the gaze into every posture. Let the eyes rest on one place and stay there for as long as the posture is held: your own tradition will tell you where. Let the lids be soft, not wide and not squeezed. Let the look be gentle. When you find the eyes roaming or hardening, that is the moment the posture was lost. Bring them home, and the body follows.
After you practise. 🪷 Postures were devised to prepare a body for sitting. When they are done, sit again with the gaze. Now the hips are open, the spine is awake and the breath is long, and the practice the postures were made for can take place.
That is all. Before your practice and after it. Before you teach and after you teach. 💛
🧭 Does it replace āsana?
No. The body needs to be moved, stretched and strengthened, and the gaze does not do that. It supplies what makes the moving, stretching and strengthening into yoga: the steadiness, the ease, and the attention that is absorbed and not scattered.
🌡️ How to tell it is working
You sway less. You come out of postures less tired than you went in. The breath stays long in the difficult places. The face is quiet in the mirror. And one day a posture you have fought for years is simply there.
🩺 A word of care
A calm nervous system lets muscle release, and a released body can go further than its joints are ready for. Go by sensation and not by ambition, never into pain, and learn postures from a qualified teacher. The third element of the gaze, gentleness, applies to the whole body.
🧍 What Āsana Is the word, its history, and how one seat became eighty-four
Āsana comes from the root ās, to sit. It means a seat: first the thing one sits on, a mat of grass or a deerskin, and then the way one sits. In the Gītā and in Patañjali it means nothing else. The yogi takes a seat in order to meditate, and the only requirements are that it be steady and that it be comfortable.
A thousand years later the Haṭha yogis widened the word. They found that a body which could be held in certain shapes became strong, clean and light, and that its breath and its energy could then be worked with. Their postures included balances on the hands, twists and bends. But they never forgot what the postures were for. The Haṭha Pradīpikā describes fifteen, and then says that four are the essence, and that all four are seats.
The athletic sequences that fill studios today are newer still. Most of them took their present form in the twentieth century, in Mysore and Pune and Rishikesh, and they drew on Indian wrestling exercise and on European gymnastics as well as on the old texts. There is nothing wrong in that; a living tradition grows. But it means that the modern student has inherited a great many shapes, and often not the two qualities that make a shape into an āsana.
| Source | How many postures | What it says they are for |
|---|---|---|
| 🕉️ Bhagavad Gītā 6.11–13 | One: a firm seat, body, head and neck aligned, the gaze steady | "For the purifying of the self" |
| 🕉️ Yoga Sūtra 2.46–48 | None named. The commentator Vyāsa lists about a dozen seats | Steadiness and ease; freedom from the pairs of opposites; fitness for breath-control |
| 🔱 Haṭha Pradīpikā (15th century) | Says Śiva taught eighty-four; describes fifteen; names four as the best | Steadiness, health, lightness of limb |
| 🔱 Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā (17th–18th century) | "As many as there are species of living beings": eighty-four hundred thousand; eighty-four are distinguished; thirty-two are useful to mortals | "By posture comes firmness" |
| 🧘 Modern schools (20th century) | Several hundred, with variations in the thousands | Health, strength, flexibility, relief of stress; in the best teaching, still a preparation for sitting |
तेभ्यश्चतुष्कमादाय सारभूतं ब्रवीम्यहम् ॥
सिद्धं पद्मं तथा सिंहं भद्रं चेति चतुष्टयम् ।
श्रेष्ठं तत्रापि च सुखे तिष्ठेत्सिद्धासने सदा ॥catur-aśīty āsanāni śivena kathitāni ca |
tebhyaś catuṣkam ādāya sāra-bhūtaṃ bravīmy aham ||
siddhaṃ padmaṃ tathā siṃhaṃ bhadraṃ ceti catuṣṭayam |
śreṣṭhaṃ tatrāpi ca sukhe tiṣṭhet siddhāsane sadā ||Eighty-four postures were taught by Śiva.
Taking four from among them, I tell you the essence:
The Adept's, the Lotus, the Lion and the Gracious: these four.
And even among these the best: let one always abide at ease in the Adept's Pose.
After describing his postures Svātmārāma reduces them. Of eighty-four, four. Of four, one. The direction of the whole tradition is toward a single steady seat. And when he describes these four chief postures, his instructions for three of them include the eyes: in the Adept's Pose one looks "with unmoving gaze"; in the Lotus one "looks toward the tip of the nose"; in the Lion one "gazes toward the nose-tip, well collected".
The founding manual of Haṭha Yoga cannot describe its principal postures without saying where to look.
🔬 Science's word
Physiologists describe a posture as a position held against gravity by continuous small corrections. Standing still is not stillness: it is a constant fine swaying that the nervous system detects and cancels, using three sources of information: the inner ear, the stretch-sensors in muscles and joints, and the eyes. Flexibility, they have found, is governed less by the length of the tissues than by how much stretch the nervous system will tolerate.
🌿 Āyurveda's word
Caraka praises vyāyāma, exercise, which brings "lightness, capacity for work, steadiness, endurance of hardship, and kindling of the digestive fire", and insists that it be taken in measure; later physicians say: to half of one's strength. Posture practised with strain disturbs Vāta. See Trāṭaka Yoga & Āyurveda.
🕉️ Yoga's word
The third of eight limbs. It stands after the moral restraints and before the breath, and it exists so that the fourth to the eighth can take place. Vedānta goes further still: "that in which the contemplation of Brahman goes on unbroken and with ease: know that to be āsana, and not any other, which destroys ease".
🎯 Dṛṣṭi: The Third Leg of the Tripod posture, breath and gaze, and why the stool falls when one leg is missing
Dṛṣṭi means sight, a gaze, a point of view. In the practice of postures it means the place where the eyes rest while a posture is held. The school of Mysore names the principle outright: a posture stands on three supports together, which it calls tri-sthāna, "the three places": the placing of the body, the breath, and the gazing-point. Take one away and the practice becomes exercise.
📈 Chart 1 · The tripod of āsana
The dashed arrows are the reason this page exists. The gaze is not only one of three supports. It acts on the other two. That is why training it alone, away from the mat, changes what happens on the mat.
| The nine gazing-points of the Mysore tradition | Where the eyes rest | Typical postures |
|---|---|---|
| 👃 Nāsāgra | Toward the tip of the nose | The commonest: standing poses, many forward bends, seated poses |
| ✋ Hastāgra | The hand, or the tips of the fingers | Triangle, warrior poses |
| 👍 Aṅguṣṭha-madhya | The thumbs | Arms raised overhead, as at the start of the sun salutation |
| 🦶 Pādayor agra | The toes | Seated forward bends |
| 🔘 Nābhi | The navel | Downward-facing dog |
| ↔️ Pārśva (right and left) | Far to one side | Twists |
| ⬆️ Ūrdhva | Upward, to the sky | Some balances and backbends |
| 🔺 Bhrū-madhya | Between the eyebrows | Some backbends and seated poses |
Other schools say it differently and mean the same. One great teacher of alignment tells students to keep the eyes "soft" and to "look from the back of the eyes", and treats hard eyes as a sign that the brain is tense. Teachers of balance say "find one spot that is not moving". In every case two things are asked: that the eyes rest in one place, and that they be soft.
I add one remark about the practice I teach. Its point is not on the body and not between the eyebrows. It is in front, in space. I mention the nine classical gazing-points because they belong to the traditions of posture, and because each of them is an application, inside a posture, of the capacity that Trāṭaka Yoga trains by itself.
🗂️ The Fifteen Families of Āsana every posture belongs to one of these; what each asks of the body, where it is lost, and what the steady eye gives it
There are hundreds of postures and thousands of variations, and no one can hold them all in mind. But they fall into families, according to what the body is doing in them: standing or sitting, folding forward or arching back, turning, balancing, going upside down, or lying still. Teachers sort them in slightly different ways. I use fifteen families, which between them leave no posture out.
Read the table as you would a map of a country before travelling in it. For each family I give a few familiar members, what it chiefly trains, the particular way in which students lose it, where the eyes are traditionally placed, and what a trained, steady, gentle gaze contributes.
| # | Family | Examples | What it trains | How it is lost | The traditional gaze | What the steady eye gives |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🧍 Standing | Mountain (Tāḍāsana), Warrior (Vīrabhadrāsana), Triangle (Trikoṇāsana), Chair (Utkaṭāsana) | Grounding through the feet; strong legs; an upright spine | Weight thrown on to one edge of the foot; locked knees; eyes wandering round the room | Nose-tip or straight ahead; the hand in Triangle and Warrior | The line from the eye to the floor: a steady horizon by which the body finds vertical |
| 2 | 🌳 One-leg balances | Tree (Vṛkṣāsana), Eagle (Garuḍāsana), Dancer (Naṭarājāsana), Half Moon (Ardha Candrāsana) | Balance; ankle and hip stability; concentration | Swaying, hopping, falling; the eyes darting to the foot or the neighbour | One unmoving spot at eye level or on the floor ahead | Almost everything. Balance is read from the eyes. This is the family in which the gaze is the posture |
| 3 | 🙇 Forward bends | Seated forward bend (Paścimottānāsana), Standing forward bend (Uttānāsana), Head-to-knee (Jānu Śīrṣāsana) | Length in the whole back of the body; quietness; turning inward | Pulling with the arms; rounding and straining the low back; clenched face; held breath | The toes, or the nose-tip | A nervous system calm enough to let the hamstrings lengthen. One does not pull into a forward bend. One is let in |
| 4 | 🐍 Backbends | Cobra (Bhujaṅgāsana), Locust (Śalabhāsana), Bow (Dhanurāsana), Camel (Uṣṭrāsana), Wheel (Ūrdhva Dhanurāsana) | Opening of the chest and front body; strength of the back; courage | Throwing the head back; crunching the neck and low back; fear; eyes rolled up hard | Nose-tip, between the brows, or upward | A neck that follows the eyes smoothly. Where the eyes are flung, the head is flung, and the neck pays |
| 5 | 🌀 Twists | Half Lord of the Fishes (Ardha Matsyendrāsana), Bharadvāja's twist, Revolved Triangle | Rotation of the spine; massage of the abdominal organs | Yanking with the arms; turning only the neck; holding the breath | Far to the side, over the shoulder | The eyes lead rotation: the neck, then the ribs, then the waist follow the gaze round, in order, without force |
| 6 | 🌙 Side bends | Extended Side Angle (Pārśvakoṇāsana), Gate (Parighāsana), standing crescent | Length along the flanks; space between the ribs for the breath | Collapsing forward; shortening the lower side | The raised hand, or upward | A fixed point above keeps the chest turned open and the mind in the upper side |
| 7 | 🦋 Hip-openers | Bound Angle (Baddha Koṇāsana), Pigeon (Kapotāsana forms), Cow-face (Gomukhāsana), Garland (Mālāsana) | Freedom in the hip joints for sitting; release of deep held tension | Forcing the knees; impatience; strong emotion arriving unannounced | Nose-tip, or downward and soft | Somewhere to rest while the hips let go in their own time. These are postures of waiting |
| 8 | 🙃 Inversions | Shoulder-stand (Sarvāṅgāsana), Head-stand (Śīrṣāsana), Plough (Halāsana), Legs-up (Viparīta Karaṇī) | Reversal of gravity on blood and organs; calm; steadiness of mind | Disorientation; fear; pressure in neck or eyes; looking about | Nose-tip, or the toes in Shoulder-stand | Orientation. Upside down, the inner ear is confused, and the eyes must do the work of telling up from down |
| 9 | 🦅 Arm balances | Crow (Bakāsana), Peacock (Mayūrāsana), Cock (Kukkuṭāsana), Side Plank (Vasiṣṭhāsana) | Strength of arms and trunk; lightness; nerve | Looking down at the floor between the hands, and following the eyes into it | Forward of the hands, on the floor ahead | Lift. The body goes where the eyes go. A gaze placed ahead carries the weight forward and up |
| 10 | 🚣 Core postures | Boat (Nāvāsana), Plank (Phalakāsana), Four-limbed Staff (Caturaṅga Daṇḍāsana) | Strength of the abdomen and trunk, which supports the spine in every other posture | Shaking; breath-holding; grimacing; giving up early | The toes, or the nose-tip | Somewhere for the mind to be other than in the burning muscle. Endurance is mostly attention |
| 11 | 🪷 Seated, meditative | Adept's (Siddhāsana), Lotus (Padmāsana), Easy (Sukhāsana), Auspicious (Svastikāsana), Gracious (Bhadrāsana) | A stable base and an upright spine that can be held without effort for a long time | Slumping; fidgeting; drowsiness; numb legs | Nose-tip: the classical instruction | This is its home. The seat and the gaze were taught together from the beginning |
| 12 | 🧎 Kneeling | Thunderbolt (Vajrāsana), Hero (Vīrāsana), Hare or Child (Śaśāṅkāsana), Lion (Siṃhāsana) | Ankles, knees and thighs; digestion; humility; rest between efforts | Pain in the knees endured instead of adjusted; a wandering mind in the "easy" pose | Nose-tip; in the Lion, expressly so | The resting postures become real rest when the eyes rest in them |
| 13 | 🛏️ Supine | Bridge (Setu Bandha), Wind-relieving (Pavana-muktāsana), Fish (Matsyāsana), Reclining Bound Angle | Gentle opening with the spine supported; release of the abdomen and low back | Mechanical repetition; the eyes roaming the ceiling | Upward and soft; or the nose-tip | One spot on the ceiling turns lying about into a posture |
| 14 | 🐊 Prone | Crocodile (Makarāsana), Sphinx, Half Locust, prone rest | Strength of the back; breathing into the back of the body; grounding of the belly | Holding the breath; straining the neck upward | Forward and low; or closed in rest | A quiet, level gaze keeps the neck long |
| 15 | 🕊️ Restorative and relaxation | Corpse (Śavāsana); supported bends and inversions on bolsters and blankets | Complete release; integration of all that went before | Sleep, or twitching and planning | Customarily closed | The quiet brought from the gaze is what makes the difference between rest and collapse. See Yoga Nidrā and Yin Yoga |
A sixteenth thing is not a family but a way of joining them: the flowing sequences, of which the Salutation to the Sun is the best known, in which the body passes from posture to posture on the breath. Here the gaze has its own choreography, moving from thumbs to nose to navel in time with the movement; and the art is that the eye arrives at each place and rests, even for one breath, and does not slide. A movement in which the eye never settles is restless however graceful it looks.
🧭 Six things the body does, and what the eye does in each
⬇️ It stands on the ground
Families 1, 11, 12. The work is downward: to give the weight fully to the earth so that the spine can rise. The eye's part is the horizon. A gaze that is level and still tells the balance organs where "upright" is, and the feet spread and settle.
⚖️ It balances
Families 2, 8, 9. The work is constant correction. The eye's part is decisive. With a fixed point the swaying is small and smooth. With the eyes moving or shut it grows until the posture is lost. Here the gaze is not an aid to the posture. It is most of it.
🔽 It folds and lengthens
Families 3, 7. The work is letting go. A muscle lengthens when the nervous system permits it, and it permits it when it feels safe. The eye's part is to carry the message of safety: soft lids, a quiet gaze, a long out-breath.
🔼 It opens and arches
Families 4, 6. The work is to open the front and the sides without jamming the back. The head is heavy and goes where the eyes pull it. The eye's part is to move slowly and then rest, so that the neck lengthens in an even curve.
🔄 It turns
Family 5. The work is rotation, segment by segment. The body is built so that the eyes turn first, then the head, then the trunk. The eye's part is to lead, and then to wait at the end of its range while the spine catches up.
🛌 It rests
Families 13, 14, 15. The work is to stop working. The eye's part is to have become quiet already, so that when the lids close, or soften, there is nothing behind them still moving.
📜 The Fifteen Āsanas of the Haṭha Pradīpikā the oldest list that most teachers follow, and where it tells the yogi to look
The number fifteen has a second meaning in this subject. The Haṭha Pradīpikā, the most widely used manual of Haṭha Yoga, describes exactly fifteen postures. I set them out here, with the family each belongs to in the scheme above. Notice how many are seats, and notice the last column.
| # | Āsana | Meaning | Family | What the text says of it | The gaze, where the text gives one |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Svastikāsana | The Auspicious | Seated | Feet between thighs and calves; body straight | |
| 2 | Gomukhāsana | Cow's Face | Hip-opener | Each ankle beside the opposite hip | |
| 3 | Vīrāsana | The Hero | Seated | One foot on the opposite thigh | |
| 4 | Kūrmāsana | The Tortoise | Seated | Heels crossed beneath the seat | |
| 5 | Kukkuṭāsana | The Cock | Arm balance | From Lotus, hands through the legs, body raised | |
| 6 | Uttāna Kūrmāsana | The Upturned Tortoise | Supine | From the Cock, hands clasp the neck, lying back | |
| 7 | Dhanurāsana | The Bow | Backbend | Toes drawn to the ears, like drawing a bow | |
| 8 | Matsyendrāsana | Matsyendra's Pose | Twist | Kindles the digestive fire; awakens Kuṇḍalinī | |
| 9 | Paścimatānāsana | Stretch of the West (the back) | Forward bend | "Foremost among postures"; sends the breath by the back channel | |
| 10 | Mayūrāsana | The Peacock | Arm balance | Body level like a staff on the elbows; destroys diseases of the belly | |
| 11 | Śavāsana | The Corpse | Relaxation | Removes fatigue; rests the mind | |
| 12 | Siddhāsana | The Adept's | Seated | "Bursts open the door of liberation"; the chief of all | "With unmoving gaze", looking between the brows |
| 13 | Padmāsana | The Lotus | Seated | Destroys all diseases | "Let him look toward the tip of the nose" |
| 14 | Siṃhāsana | The Lion | Kneeling | Mouth open; brings about the three locks | "Gazing toward the nose-tip, well collected" |
| 15 | Bhadrāsana | The Gracious | Seated | Heels beneath the perineum, held firm; removes all disease |
More than half of the fifteen are seats of one kind or another. And of the four that Svātmārāma calls the essence, three carry an explicit instruction for the eyes. The Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā, which describes thirty-two postures, does the same for several of its own. When the tradition is at its most serious about a posture, it says where to look.
मुद्रया स्थिरता चैव प्रत्याहारेण धीरता ॥
प्राणायामाल्लाघवं च ध्यानात्प्रत्यक्षमात्मनि ।
समाधिना निर्लिप्तं च मुक्तिरेव न संशयः ॥ṣaṭ-karmaṇā śodhanaṃ ca āsanena bhaved dṛḍham |
mudrayā sthiratā caiva pratyāhāreṇa dhīratā ||
prāṇāyāmāl lāghavaṃ ca dhyānāt pratyakṣam ātmani |
samādhinā nirliptaṃ ca muktir eva na saṃśayaḥ ||By the six acts, purification; by posture, firmness;
By the seals, steadiness; by withdrawal, composure;
By breath-control, lightness; by meditation, direct perception of the Self;
By absorption, non-attachment; and freedom, without doubt.
Gheraṇḍa's sevenfold yoga, one fruit for each limb. Posture gives dṛḍhatā: firmness, strength. Now recall that Trāṭaka is one of the six acts, which give purity, and that Gheraṇḍa says it ripens into a mudrā, a seal, which gives sthiratā, steadiness. So the gaze stands on both sides of posture in his scheme: it prepares for it, and it completes what posture begins.
🦴 Anatomy: How the Eye Holds the Body in plain words: the wiring from the eyes to the balance organs, the neck, the muscles and the breath
Try it now, if you are able to do so safely near a wall. Stand on one leg with your eyes open and resting on a spot in front of you. Then close them. Most people begin to sway within two or three seconds, and many must put the foot down. Nothing changed in your legs. You removed one of the three sources by which your brain knows where "up" is.
This is the anatomy of the whole subject, and it is worth a few minutes.
⚖️ Three reporters of balance
The brain keeps the body upright by listening to three reporters: the inner ear, which feels the tilt and turning of the head; the sensors in muscles and joints, above all in the feet, ankles and neck; and the eyes, which see the world tilt or stay level. It weighs all three. When the eyes send a steady, unmoving picture, the others are steadied by it. When the picture jumps about, the brain must sort out conflicting reports, and the body wavers. 🟢
🏠 The swinging room
In a famous experiment, people stood in a room whose walls and ceiling could be moved a few millimetres while the floor stayed still. When the walls drifted forward, the standing people swayed forward with them; small children fell over. They were standing on solid ground and were toppled by their eyes alone. Vision does not merely help balance. It can overrule the feet. 🟢
🎯 The quiet eye
Researchers who track the eyes of athletes found that experts, just before a precise movement, hold their gaze on one spot for longer than novices do, and that this steady final look predicts success. They named it the "quiet eye". It has been found in golf, archery, basketball, surgery and shooting. Skilled movement is prepared by a still gaze. 🟢
🦒 Eyes and neck
The small muscles at the base of the skull are wired to the muscles that move the eyes. Turn your eyes to the right without turning your head, and the neck muscles on that side begin to work, ready to follow. Tense, darting eyes mean a tense, busy neck; and the neck is the root of the spine's alignment. Soften and steady the eyes, and the back of the neck lets go. 🟢
🧵 Muscle tone and alarm
Every muscle has a resting tension set by the nervous system, and that setting rises with alertness and worry. This is why a frightened person is stiff. A stretch is resisted not chiefly by the length of the muscle but by a protective reflex that says "far enough". Studies of stretching have shown that what increases with practice is mainly the nervous system's tolerance of the stretch. Calm the system and the same body goes further. 🟢
🌬️ Eye and breath
Watch anyone concentrating hard with the eyes: threading a needle, aiming. The breath stops. Effortful staring and held breath go together, and so do a soft gaze and a long breath. Small studies of Trāṭaka have recorded slower breathing and a shift of the heart's rhythm toward the calming branch of the nerves. A posture held with a gentle gaze is a posture in which one can breathe. 🟢 small studies; 🟡 for the application.
📈 Chart 2 · From a steady eye to a steady posture
The top row is established physiology. The loop feeds itself in both directions: a wandering eye unsettles the body, which jolts the head, which unsettles the eye further. That is the wobble in tree pose. A steady eye starts the same loop turning the other way.
🔬 Where the mind goes, the movement goes
One more finding belongs here, and it comes from more than a hundred experiments in sport science. People learn and perform movements better when their attention is on something outside the body, a target, a line, a point in space, than when it is on their own limbs. Balance on an unstable board is steadier when the performer attends to a marker in front than when attending to the feet. Thinking about one's muscles interferes with the automatic systems that run them. Read Patañjali again: posture is perfected by the slackening of effort and by absorption in something beyond the body. A point in front of the face is the simplest "outside" there is. 🟢
🏔️ What Is Mastered, and How grounding, balance, alignment, flexibility, stiffness, strength, movement, sweat, trembling and stillness, one by one
A posture is not one skill. It is ten, and a student may be gifted in some and blocked in others for years. I take them in turn. For each I say what it is, what goes wrong, and what the steady, gentle gaze contributes. I mark each as before: 🟢 measured; 🟡 follows from established science; ⚪ my own experience and the testimony of the texts.
| The quality | What it is | What goes wrong | What the gaze contributes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🌍 Grounding | Giving the weight fully to the floor through feet, seat or hands, so that the rest can rise | Gripping toes; weight on one edge; a body held up by tension in the shoulders | A level, unmoving gaze gives the brain its horizon. With "up" settled, the body stops searching and the weight drops | 🟡 |
| ⚖️ Balance | Keeping the centre of weight over the base by small, quick corrections | Swaying, over-correcting, falling; fear of falling | Vision is one of the three reporters of balance and can overrule the others. A fixed point cuts sway directly | 🟢 |
| 📐 Alignment | The placing of joints and spine so that load passes through bone and the breath is free | Head pushed forward or thrown back; twisted neck; one shoulder raised | The head follows the eyes, and the spine follows the head. The Gītā gives line and gaze in one sentence | 🟡 |
| 🤸 Flexibility | The range through which a joint can be moved with ease | Forcing; bouncing; injury; despair at "tight hamstrings" | Range is set largely by the nervous system's tolerance. A calm system releases its guard. I find the body more flexible after sitting | 🟢 ⚪ |
| 🪵 Stiffness | Resting tension in muscle and connective tissue; morning rigidity; the body's armour | Treated as a fact about the body, when much of it is a habit of the nerves: bracing | The alarm is lowered at its source. I find stiffness and the swelling of joints ease with the practice | 🟡 ⚪ |
| 💪 Strength and endurance | Holding a demanding posture for its time | Mind fixed on the burning; breath held; early surrender | An object for the attention other than the discomfort; breath kept moving. Endurance in a held posture is mostly a matter of where the mind is | 🟡 |
| 🌊 Movement | Passing from posture to posture smoothly, on the breath | Jerks; rushing; momentum in place of control; dizziness | The eyes lead every turn and reach. A gaze that arrives and rests makes the movement that follows it deliberate | 🟡 |
| 💧 Perspiration | Heat produced by effort, released through the skin | Sought as a proof of a good practice; or produced by strain and anxiety, not by work | Less sweat of the nervous kind. What remains is the honest heat of work, the first of the classical three stages | 🟡 |
| 〰️ Trembling | The shaking of a muscle near its limit, or of a nervous system over-roused | Feared, or pushed through until something gives | The fine tremor that every muscle has grows with adrenaline and fatigue. Lower the first, and the shaking begins later and is smaller | 🟡 |
| 🗿 Stillness | The posture held without fidgeting, the breath quiet, the mind in the body | Micro-adjustments without end; eyes roaming; counting the seconds | This is the gaze's own gift. I find the body becomes stiller by itself when the eye is still | ⚪ |
💧 Sweat, trembling, steadiness: the three classical stages
उत्तमे स्थानमाप्नोति ततो वायुं निबन्धयेत् ॥kanīyasi bhavet svedaḥ kampo bhavati madhyame |
uttame sthānam āpnoti tato vāyuṃ nibandhayet ||In the lowest stage there is perspiration;
In the middle stage there is trembling;
In the highest, one attains steadiness.
Therefore let one bind the breath.
Svātmārāma is speaking of the stages of breath-control, and every practitioner of posture will recognise them, for the body passes through the same three in any demanding practice. First sveda, sweat: the body is heated and is throwing the heat off. Then kampa, trembling: the nerves and muscles are being asked for more than they are used to giving, and they shake. Then sthāna: a standing-place, steadiness. The shaking ends not because the practitioner has given up but because the system has learned.
The verse does not treat sweat and trembling as faults. It treats them as stages, lower and middle. And it names the highest, which is neither. The aim of practice is not to sweat more. It is to arrive where there is no need to.
दृढता लघुता चैव तेन गात्रस्य जायते ॥jalena śrama-jātena gātra-mardanam ācaret |
dṛḍhatā laghutā caiva tena gātrasya jāyate ||With the water born of exertion
Let one rub the limbs.
By this, firmness and lightness
Arise in the body.
A small, practical verse that most modern students have never heard: the sweat of practice is not to be wiped off with a towel but rubbed back into the skin. Its promised fruits are the two that Svātmārāma named at the beginning as the purpose of posture: dṛḍhatā, firmness, and laghutā, lightness.
📈 Chart 3 · The three stages of the body in practice
Haṭha Pradīpikā 2.12, applied to posture. The first two stages are passed through, not lived in.
🔗 The order in which steadiness travels
📈 Chart 4 · Steadiness travels inward from the eye
The verse quoted at the head of this page, drawn as a chain, with the body's part filled in.
⚖️ Three Doshas on the Mat how each constitution practises, where it goes wrong, and which element of the gaze is its medicine
| 🌬️ Vāta | 🔥 Pitta | 🌊 Kapha | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The body | Light, dry, often naturally supple; loose joints; little stamina | Medium, warm, strong; good muscle; runs hot | Solid, heavy, strong; slow to warm; great endurance |
| How it practises | Quickly, changeably; loves variety and flow; skips the holds | Intensely, competitively; wants the advanced posture; pushes | Reluctantly; loves the resting poses; needs to be got moving |
| Where it goes wrong | Wobble, hypermobility, over-stretching joints; anxiety; exhaustion | Strain, overheating, inflammation, injuries of ambition; irritation with the body | Stiffness, heaviness, sleepiness; stopping too soon |
| Its eyes on the mat | Darting; looking at everyone | Hard; glaring at the mirror or the clock | Dull; half-asleep; fixed on nothing |
| What it needs | Slow, steady, grounding practice; long holds; warmth; standing and seated families | Cooling, unhurried practice; forward bends and twists; no comparison | Warm, brisk, stimulating practice; standing poses, backbends, movement |
| Its element of the gaze | One point. Steadiness for what flickers | Half-open eyes, a gentle gaze. Softness for what strains | A wakeful, open eye. Brightness for what sinks |
Āyurveda adds a rule that every teacher of posture should know: exercise is to be taken to half one's strength, the sign of which is sweat on the forehead and under the arms and the first quickening of the breath through the mouth. Beyond that it wastes the body it was meant to build. More in Trāṭaka Yoga & Āyurveda.
🧅 The Five Bodies in a Posture what a posture is at each layer, and what the gaze gives to each
The Taittirīya Upaniṣad teaches that we are five bodies, one within another. A posture done by the outermost alone is gymnastics. A posture in which all five take part is yoga, and it can be recognised from across the room.
| The body | What a posture is here | The sign that it is missing | What the gaze gives |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🍚 Annamaya · body of food | Bones placed, muscles working or released, joints safe | Pain; collapse; strain | The head and neck placed by the eyes; muscle guarding lowered |
| 🌬️ Prāṇamaya · body of breath | Breath moving freely through the whole shape; energy spread evenly | Held breath; red face; trembling | A breath that stays long in the difficult place |
| 💭 Manomaya · body of mind | The senses gathered into the posture; no commentary | Eyes roaming; counting; comparing | The chief sense at rest in one place |
| 💡 Vijñānamaya · body of understanding | Intelligent attention spread through the body: knowing where one is without looking | Mechanical repetition; injuries that "came from nowhere" | A quiet in which the body's own signals can be felt |
| 🌸 Ānandamaya · body of bliss | Sukha: the sweetness of a posture that has become effortless | Practice as duty or as struggle | The ease that Patañjali makes half of the definition |
🌈 The families and the seven chakras
| Chakra | Element and need | Families that work on it | What steadiness of gaze adds |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🔴 Root | Earth: safety, ground | Standing; seated; squats | The horizon that lets the weight drop |
| 🟠 Sacral | Water: flow, feeling | Hip-openers; forward bends | A calm in which the hips release and feeling can move |
| 🟡 Navel | Fire: power, digestion | Core postures; twists; arm balances | Effort without anger; fire that warms and does not scorch |
| 🟢 Heart | Air: love, breath | Backbends; side bends | A chest opened without fear, and a breath that fills it |
| 🔵 Throat | Space: expression | Shoulder-stand, Plough, Fish | A neck placed, not forced |
| 🟣 Ājñā | Mind: clear seeing | Balances; every posture held with a gaze | One-pointedness itself. (The practice I teach keeps its point in front, not between the brows) |
| ⚪ Crown | Beyond the elements | Head-stand; the final seat | The seat for which all the postures were a preparation |
🤝 Companions of the Practice what stands beside posture and gaze
🌬️ The breath
The second leg of the tripod. A long, even breath through the nose, never held in effort, is the measure of every posture: when it shortens or stops, you have gone too far. The gaze and the breath steady each other.
🧑🏫 A teacher
Postures should be learnt from someone who can see your body. No page and no gaze replaces a trained eye looking at your knees and your neck. I say this as one who has taught for many years.
🕊️ Rest at the end
The work of a practice is taken in during the rest that follows it. Do not leave before the final lying-down. For the art of that rest, see Yoga Nidrā; for long, quiet, supported holds, Yin Yoga.
🧘 The seat it was all for
Postures were made so that a body could sit, and sitting so that a mind could meditate. A practice of postures that never ends in sitting has stopped half-way up the stairs. See Meditation.
🍲 Food, sleep and measure
Practise on an empty stomach, after good sleep, to half your strength. A body that is fed and rested in proportion is supple; one that is not is stiff however much it stretches. See the Gut and Deep Sleep.
🧭 A quiet mind
Much stiffness is held worry, and much strain is ambition. What the body is asked to release it will release more readily when the mind is not gripping. See Overthinking and Trauma; for the wiring, the Science.
🌏 Other Paths and Views the modern schools of posture, the arts of movement elsewhere, and what each does with the eyes
| School or art | Its character | What it teaches about the eyes |
|---|---|---|
| 🧘 Ashtanga Vinyasa (Mysore) | Fixed sequences linked by movement on the breath | A named gazing-point for every posture; posture, breath and gaze as one |
| 📐 Iyengar Yoga (Pune) | Precise alignment; long holds; props | Soft, receding eyes; hard eyes taken as a sign of a tense brain |
| 🕉️ Sivananda, Bihar and the classical Haṭha schools | A small set of postures held steadily, with breath-work and relaxation | Trāṭaka taught as a practice in its own right; nose-tip and eyebrow-centre gazing |
| 🌊 Vinyasa and flow styles | Free, creative sequences to music | Often left to the student, which is their chief weakness |
| 🔥 Hot yoga | A set series in a heated room, before mirrors | Students fix the eyes on one point in the mirror: a single target, used to hold the hardest balances |
| 🌙 Yin and Restorative | Long, passive, supported holds | Eyes usually closed; the mind is the difficulty. See Yin Yoga |
| 🩰 Classical ballet | Turns, balances, line | "Spotting": the dancer fixes the eyes on one point and whips the head round to find it again, turn after turn. Without it, dizziness and falling |
| 🥋 Tai chi and the martial arts | Slow, continuous, rooted movement; readiness | A soft, level, wide gaze toward the horizon; Japanese swordsmen speak of "looking at a far mountain" |
| 🏹 Archery, shooting, golf | One precise act | The "quiet eye": a long, still final look at the target |
| 🎪 The rope-walker | Balance, pure | Never at the feet. Always at the far end of the wire |
The agreement is remarkable. A dancer in Paris, a swordsman in Kyoto, a wire-walker and a yogi in Mysore, with no common teacher, have all arrived at the same rule: fix the eyes on one point, softly, and the body will organise itself around it. The yogis alone took the next step, and practised the gaze by itself.
🏥 The therapists
Physiotherapists who treat dizziness and poor balance prescribe "gaze stabilisation": the patient fixes the eyes on a target while moving the head, daily, in gradually harder conditions. It is among the best-supported treatments in that field. Medicine uses the eye to rebuild balance.
🧪 Unusual and unproven ideas
For completeness. Some movement systems claim that the position of the eyes can instantly switch particular muscles on and off, and sell courses on it; the general link between eye movement and neck tone is real, the grand claims are untested. "Eye yoga" is sold as a cure for short sight; trials have not borne that out. Hold these lightly. What is established is plainer and sufficient.
📚 The storytellers
In 1974 a French wire-walker crossed between two towers a quarter of a mile above New York, and walked back, eight times. Those of his craft teach that the eyes go to the far end of the wire and never to the feet or the void. And every child who has learnt to ride a bicycle has been told the same by a parent running alongside: "Don't look at the wheel. Look where you are going."
📖 Stories and Allegories the teaching, told the old way
शिरः पश्यामि भासस्य न गात्रमिति सोऽब्रवीत् ॥paśyāmi bhāsam evāham iti taṃ pratyabhāṣata | na tu vṛkṣaṃ bhavantaṃ vā paśyāmīti ca bhārata || …
śiraḥ paśyāmi bhāsasya na gātram iti so 'bravīt ||"'I see only the bird,' he answered him, 'and I do not see the tree, or you.' … 'I see the head of the bird, not its body,' he said."
The archery master set a wooden bird in a tree and asked each prince what he saw. Those who saw the tree, the branches and their brothers were sent away without shooting. Arjuna saw the bird; then only its head. This is told as a lesson in aim. It is also a lesson in posture: the archer's stance, the drawn bow, the stilled breath all assemble themselves around the fixed eye. No one hits a target while looking about.
🌳 The tree and its root
A tree does not hold itself up by stiffening its branches. It stands because its root goes down. In a balance the "root" is in two places: the foot on the floor and the eye on its point. Between those two fixed ends the trunk can sway a little, as a tree does in wind, and not fall.
🐈 The cat
Watch a cat about to leap to a high shelf. The whole body goes still; only the tail-tip moves. The eyes fix on the landing-place and stay there, sometimes for many seconds. Then the leap, exact. The stillness and the gaze are not a pause before the action. They are the first half of it.
🦩 The crane
The crane stands on one leg in moving water for hours, and an old verse on the marks of a good student lists among them "the meditation of a crane". It does not look at its own leg. It looks at one place in the water, and its body is so quiet that the fish come to it.
🏹 The bow that is never unstrung
A bow kept always strung loses its spring. A body kept always braced loses its suppleness in the same way. Much of what we call stiffness is a bow that has not been unstrung in years. A posture is not the drawing of the bow tighter. Practised with a quiet eye, it is the unstringing.
🪵 The post
The Haṭha Pradīpikā says that when the breath is still the yogi attains sthāṇutva, "the state of a post". A post is not rigid with effort. It simply does not move, because nothing in it wants to. That is the stillness of a posture mastered: not held still, but still.
🚲 The child on the bicycle
The child looks down at the front wheel, and the wheel wobbles, and she looks harder, and it wobbles more. The parent calls: "Look up! Look where you are going!" She lifts her eyes to the end of the lane, and the bicycle steadies under her as if by magic. She has not learnt to balance. She has learnt where to look.
❓ Misconceptions, Gently Answered twelve things sincere people believe about postures and about the gaze
1 · "Yoga means postures."
Posture is the third of eight limbs, and in the old texts it means a seat. The shapes are a preparation. The yoga is in what they prepare for.
2 · "The deeper the bend, the better the posture."
Patañjali's test is steadiness and ease. A modest posture with both is āsana. An extreme one with neither is contortion.
3 · "I am too stiff for yoga."
Stiffness is the reason to practise, and much of it is in the nerves and not in the tissue. The Haṭha Pradīpikā says the young, the old, the very old, the sick and the weak all succeed by practice.
4 · "Flexibility is a matter of long muscles."
Largely it is a matter of what the nervous system will allow. Studies of stretching find that tolerance changes more than length. Calm is the best lubricant.
5 · "Balance is a matter of strong ankles."
Close your eyes on one leg and see. Balance is the brain's weighing of the inner ear, the body's sensors and the eyes. The eyes can be trained.
6 · "More sweat, better practice."
The Haṭha Pradīpikā calls the sweating stage the lowest of three. Sweat shows heat. It does not show yoga.
7 · "Trembling means I am weak."
It means a system at its edge and learning: the middle stage. Come back a little from the edge, breathe, soften the eyes. It passes with practice.
8 · "The eyes should be closed to feel the posture."
Sometimes, in rest. But closed eyes remove one of the three supports of balance and invite the mind to drift. The classical texts give open-eyed gazes for their chief postures.
9 · "Where I look does not matter."
The head follows the eyes and the spine follows the head. Look down in a balance and you will go down. Fling the eyes back in a backbend and the neck is flung.
10 · "Dṛṣṭi means staring hard."
It means resting the eyes in one place. Hard eyes tighten the neck and stop the breath. The gaze of posture is soft, like the gaze of Trāṭaka Yoga.
11 · "Pain is progress."
Pain is information that tissue is in danger. Sensation is to be met with attention. Pain is to be obeyed. The verse on posture asks for ease.
12 · "Trāṭaka has nothing to do with āsana."
It trains by itself the third support on which every posture stands. I do not say it replaces the mat. I say that what is learnt in it is used in every posture you will ever do.
📜 More Verses on the seat, on practice, and on skill
आसनं तद्विजानीयान्नेतरत्सुखनाशनम् ॥sukhenaiva bhaved yasminn ajasraṃ brahma-cintanam |
āsanaṃ tad vijānīyān netarat sukha-nāśanam ||That in which the contemplation of Brahman
Goes on unbroken, and with ease:
Know that to be āsana,
And not any other, which destroys ease.
The Vedāntin's definition, and a rebuke to all straining. A posture is whatever lets contemplation flow sukhena, comfortably. Anything that destroys ease, sukha-nāśana, however impressive, is not one.
अभ्यासात्सिद्धिमाप्नोति सर्वयोगेष्वतन्द्रितः ॥
क्रियायुक्तस्य सिद्धिः स्यादक्रियस्य कथं भवेत् ।
न शास्त्रपाठमात्रेण योगसिद्धिः प्रजायते ॥yuvā vṛddho 'tivṛddho vā vyādhito durbalo 'pi vā |
abhyāsāt siddhim āpnoti sarva-yogeṣv atandritaḥ ||
kriyā-yuktasya siddhiḥ syād akriyasya kathaṃ bhavet |
na śāstra-pāṭha-mātreṇa yoga-siddhiḥ prajāyate ||Young, old or very old, sick or weak:
One who is untiring attains success in all the yogas, through practice.
Success comes to one who practises. How could it come to one who does not?
The perfection of yoga is not born from merely reading books.
The kindest verse in the Haṭha Pradīpikā, and the sternest. No one is excluded: not the old, not the ill, not the feeble. And no one is excused: reading about yoga does not produce it. That includes reading this page.
जनसङ्गश्च लौल्यं च षड्भिर्योगो विनश्यति ॥
उत्साहात्साहसाद्धैर्यात्तत्त्वज्ञानाच्च निश्चयात् ।
जनसङ्गपरित्यागात्षड्भिर्योगः प्रसिद्ध्यति ॥atyāhāraḥ prayāsaś ca prajalpo niyamāgrahaḥ |
jana-saṅgaś ca laulyaṃ ca ṣaḍbhir yogo vinaśyati ||
utsāhāt sāhasād dhairyāt tattva-jñānāc ca niścayāt |
jana-saṅga-parityāgāt ṣaḍbhir yogaḥ prasiddhyati ||Over-eating, over-exertion, talkativeness, clinging to rules,
The company of crowds, and fickleness: by these six yoga is destroyed.
Enthusiasm, boldness, patience, knowledge of the truth, resolve,
And giving up the crowd: by these six yoga succeeds.
Look at the second of the six destroyers: prayāsa, over-exertion, straining. The founding text of the yoga of effort lists too much effort among the things that ruin yoga. And the sixth: laulya, fickleness, restlessness; the roaming eye is its outward form.
सिद्ध्यसिद्ध्योः समो भूत्वा समत्वं योग उच्यते ॥yoga-sthaḥ kuru karmāṇi saṅgaṃ tyaktvā dhanañjaya |
siddhy-asiddhyoḥ samo bhūtvā samatvaṃ yoga ucyate ||Established in yoga, do your work,
Having given up attachment, Dhanañjaya;
Even in success and in failure.
Evenness is called yoga.
Samatvam: evenness, balance. The Lord's definition of yoga is a word for standing level. The student who is the same on the day the posture comes and on the day it does not has understood more than the one who can put a foot behind the head.
योगी स्थाणुत्वमाप्नोति ततो वायुं निरोधयेत् ॥cale vāte calaṃ cittaṃ niścale niścalaṃ bhavet |
yogī sthāṇutvam āpnoti tato vāyuṃ nirodhayet ||When the breath moves, the mind moves;
When the breath is still, the mind is still,
And the yogi attains the steadiness of a post.
Therefore let one restrain the breath.
Sthāṇutva, "post-ness": the stillness of the body named as a fruit of the stillness of breath and mind, and not as the result of muscular holding. Steadiness comes from within outward.
सर्वाण्यपि हठाभ्यासे राजयोगफलावधि ॥pīṭhāni kumbhakāś citrā divyāni karaṇāni ca |
sarvāṇy api haṭhābhyāse rāja-yoga-phalāvadhi ||The postures, the various breath-retentions,
And the divine seals:
All of them, in the practice of Haṭha,
Last until the fruit of Rāja Yoga is gained.
Svātmārāma's last word on his own first chapter. Pīṭha is another name for posture. All the postures have one purpose and one term: they are practised until Rāja Yoga, the yoga of meditation, bears fruit. They are scaffolding, and good scaffolding; and they point beyond themselves.
🗂️ Sources, Editions and Notes so that you can check every line
📚 Texts and editions
📚 How the verses were checked
- Quoted exactly as on the Trāṭaka Yoga page, where the editions are given: Yoga Sūtra 2.46–48; Yoga Vāsiṣṭha 5.78.27; Bhagavad Gītā 2.48 and 6.13 (second line); Haṭha-tattva-kaumudī 1.16; Haṭha Pradīpikā 1.70 and 2.2; Aparokṣānubhūti 112; the Mahābhārata lines on Droṇa's test.
- In the standard readings, not separately checked: Haṭha Pradīpikā 1.15–16, 1.17, 1.33–34, 1.64–65, 2.12–13 (verse numbers differ between editions); Bhagavad Gītā 6.13 (first line); Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā 1.10–11. The descriptions of the fifteen postures, and the phrases on the gaze in the Adept's Pose, the Lotus and the Lion, are paraphrased from Haṭha Pradīpikā 1.19–54; the count of postures in the Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā is from the opening of its second chapter.
- The fifteen families are my own arrangement of the groupings commonly used by teachers; other teachers count differently. The nine gazing-points are those of the Ashtanga Vinyasa tradition of Mysore. Caraka on exercise is Sūtra-sthāna 7.31–33, paraphrased; the rule of half one's strength is from the Aṣṭāṅga Hṛdaya, Sūtra-sthāna 2.
- The Devanāgarī on this page is generated from the transliteration. If you find an error in either, please tell me and I will correct it.
🔬 The science of posture, balance and gaze
🔬 References
- Lee DN, Aronson E. Visual proprioceptive control of standing in human infants. Perception & Psychophysics 1974;15:529–532. Lee DN, Lishman JR. Visual proprioceptive control of stance. Journal of Human Movement Studies 1975;1:87–95. (The swinging room.)
- Paulus WM, Straube A, Brandt T. Visual stabilization of posture: physiological stimulus characteristics and clinical aspects. Brain 1984;107:1143–1163.
- Vickers JN. Visual control when aiming at a far target. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 1996;22:342–354. (The "quiet eye".)
- André-Deshays C, Berthoz A, Revel M. Eye-head coupling in humans: I. Simultaneous recording of isolated motor units in dorsal neck muscles and horizontal eye movements. Experimental Brain Research 1988;69:399–406.
- Wulf G, Höß M, Prinz W. Instructions for motor learning: differential effects of internal versus external focus of attention. Journal of Motor Behavior 1998;30:169–179. Wulf G. Attentional focus and motor learning: a review of 15 years. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology 2013;6:77–104.
- Weppler CH, Magnusson SP. Increasing muscle extensibility: a matter of increasing length or modifying sensation? Physical Therapy 2010;90:438–449.
- Lundberg U, Kadefors R, Melin B, et al. Psychophysiological stress and EMG activity of the trapezius muscle. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine 1994;1:354–370.
- Youkhana S, Dean CM, Wolff M, Sherrington C, Tiedemann A. Yoga-based exercise improves balance and mobility in people aged 60 and over: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Age and Ageing 2016;45:21–29.
- Cramer H, Lauche R, Haller H, Dobos G. A systematic review and meta-analysis of yoga for low back pain. Clinical Journal of Pain 2013;29:450–460.
- Pascoe MC, Thompson DR, Ski CF. Yoga, mindfulness-based stress reduction and stress-related physiological measures: a meta-analysis. Psychoneuroendocrinology 2017;86:152–168.
- Cramer H, Ward L, Saper R, et al. The safety of yoga: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. American Journal of Epidemiology 2015;182:281–293.
- Hall CD, Herdman SJ, Whitney SL, et al. Vestibular rehabilitation for peripheral vestibular hypofunction: an evidence-based clinical practice guideline. Journal of Neurologic Physical Therapy 2016;40:124–155. (Gaze-stabilisation exercises.)
- Singleton M. Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice. Oxford University Press, 2010. (On the modern history of posture.)
👁️ Studies of Trāṭaka
👁️ Trāṭaka
- Talwadkar S, Jagannathan A, Raghuram N. Effect of trataka on cognitive functions in the elderly. International Journal of Yoga 2014;7:96–103.
- Raghavendra BR, Ramamurthy V. Changes in heart rate variability following yogic visual concentration (Trataka). Heart India 2014.
- Raghavendra BR, Singh P. Immediate effect of yogic visual concentration on cognitive performance. Journal of Traditional and Complementary Medicine 2016;6:34–36.
- Mallick T, Kulkarni R. The effect of trataka, a yogic visual concentration practice, on critical flicker fusion. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 2010;16:1265–1267.
- Swathi PS, Bhat R, Saoji AA. Effect of Trataka (yogic visual concentration) on the performance in the Corsi-block tapping task: a repeated measures study. Frontiers in Psychology 2021;12:773049.
- Swathi PS, Saoji AA, Bhat R. The role of trataka in ameliorating visual strain and promoting psychological well-being during prolonged use of digital displays: a randomized controlled trial. Work 2022;71:327–333.
- Shathirapathiy G, Mooventhan A, Mangaiarkarasi N, et al. Effect of trataka (yogic gazing) on insomnia severity and quality of sleep in people with insomnia. Explore (NY) 2022;18:100–103.
- Rajbhoj PH, et al. Effect of Trataka Kriya on selected psychological parameters in school teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic situation: a randomized controlled trial. Indian Journal of Public Health Research & Development.
All of these studies used the classical form of the practice, most of them with a candle flame, in healthy volunteers or in people with poor sleep or tired eyes. None was a study of posture or balance, and none tested the form I teach. I list them so that you can see exactly how much is known, and how much is not.
🙏 A Closing Blessing from one who looks, to one who practises
Kauśalam: skill, deftness, the quality of a thing done well and without waste. The Lord gives it as a definition of yoga. A posture in which there is no wasted effort, no braced shoulder, no held breath, no wandering eye, is skill in action in its most visible form.
My dear friend, you have read a great deal about the body. Now let me take it all away again, and leave you with almost nothing. 🙏
There are hundreds of postures, and you will not need most of them. Whatever you practise, let it stand on three legs: the placing of the body, the breath, and the eye. The first two you have been taught. The third you can train by itself, sitting quietly, resting your gaze softly on one point as it is taught at Trāṭaka Yoga, before your practice and after it.
Then, on the mat, when the foot lifts and the body begins to sway, do not fight the sway. Find the eye, and bring it home. When the bend will go no further, do not pull. Soften the eye, lengthen the breath, and wait to be let in. When the last posture comes and you lie down, let there be nothing behind the lids still moving.
May your feet find the ground and your spine find its line. May sweat and trembling give way to the third stage. May your posture become steady and easy, and your seat become a place from which the endless can be seen. 🧍💛
Trataki Dhruvaji