Drishti

The word means sight or view. In the Ashtanga method each posture has a prescribed gaze — at the thumbs, at the navel, at the toes, at a point on the floor between the hands — and other styles use the same idea more loosely: find one unmoving thing to look at and leave your eyes there.

What it is for is mostly neurological and entirely practical. Balance depends on vision as much as on the inner ear, and a moving gaze gives the system a moving reference, which is why a standing balance collapses the moment you look at the person in front of you. A fixed point also closes off the most common distraction in a class, which is comparison. You cannot watch someone else's posture and your own breath at the same time.

In a KEO session you will hear this as a plain instruction: pick a point on the floor, or on the wall, or a leaf if the class is outdoors, and keep it. Outdoor classes make it more useful, not less — a park has far more to look at than a studio. In the stillness at the end the eyes close and the same principle moves inward, with the breath becoming the thing attention rests on.