Gaze

Last Friday at 5 am the air was finally cool.  Wednesday had (yet again!) reached over 100 degrees.  Storms broke Thursday & by Friday I began to remember what it felt like to be refreshed.  I joined my students for a sweaty, steamy yoga practice at 6 am.  I love practicing when the rain drums outside.  It seems to pull everything in a little bit tighter.

I've mentioned previously on this blog that I do my best to attend to theme.  I teach in a studio that also considers the Jivamukti Yoga School's theme of the month.  July is Yoga & Sexuality.  When I first heard I was so hesitant to speak overtly about sexuality in a yoga class.  I know some students come to yoga to work through sexual trauma.  I know some students are partnered and some aren't.  Sexuality means so many things to people.

However, as the month has unfolded it has felt increasingly important to address sexuality in the context of yoga, just as we use this practice to delve a bit deeper into every other area of our lives.  To do my homework, I've been reading "A General Theory of Love."  This book was written by several psychotherapists who consider both the body of art & literature on love as well as psychiatric & scientific studies on the subject.  I've learned a ton thus far from this read.  So much of it smacks of Yogic thinking.  In reading about "limbic resonance" the authors considered gaze.  Limbic resonance refers to the limbic brain, which only mammals have.  It's the part of the brain that enables us to relate & emote.  The resonance develops in relation to one another.  The authors mentioned how different one of us might experience a staring contest with a lizard vs. gazing at our newborn's eyes for the first time or stealing a furtive glance on a first date.  There's a spark or connection in that meeting of eyes that creates a bond, or resonance.

In any yoga practice there should be attention to gaze, or drishti.  Usually, that gaze will help hold the attention internally, like Friday's rain emphasized in my own practice.  I can't think of a moment when we would gaze in another's eyes for the purpose of yoga.  But isn't it lovely & interesting that we are so encouraged to attend to our gaze.  I usually consider drishti linked to pratyahara, the withdrawal of the senses & deepening concentration.  It certainly is.  But isn't it interesting to consider attending to our gaze as cultivating a deeper relationship with ourselves.  Perhaps even allowing for a more profound internal resonance.  This idea isn't mutually exclusive from pratyahara, or any other aspect of practice reinforced by drishti.

As my students & I began steadying in the studio to the drumming rain outside, we considered gaze.  We pulled it hazily back to the tip of the nose, the navel, the corners of our eyes, or towards the third eye, depending on each asana's prescription.  The primacy of gaze caused me to remember other moments of seeing & being seen.

My sister is 11 years older than I am.  She was at college in Bryn Mawr, near where I grew up, when I was about 10.  My mother was in grad school so while she had a night class once a week I joined my sister in her figure drawing class.  I was shy & inhibited so she put me in the corner with homework, playing cards, & my own art supplies.  From time to time I would glance at her or the model.  My own body seemed so strange and foreign.  To see a woman comfortably sharing her own body in this space of respect & learning felt freeing.  None of the side conversations reflected judgment or assessment.  All were about beauty, line, form.

A few years later I modelled for friends of mine who were art students.  I never modelled for a stranger, only people I knew.  Through the process of sitting for them, & later in witnessing their creation, my own gaze of myself shifted.  I saw myself through their eyes or the eyes of others who would consider their sculpture.  I found myself pulling away from self-critique & towards a gradually deepening appreciation to hold form & take shape.