When the S&P 500 dropped for the fifth consecutive week on Friday, June 10th, I took the event as a great opportunity to contribute to the stock-heavy mutual funds in my IRA. When the S&P 500 tumbled again for the sixth week in the row last Friday, this time finishing below 12,000, I started to question my previous week’s decision. I didn’t push the panic button, but my heart palpitated a little bit with the knowledge that my retirement accounts declined by a good $10,000 during this short span of time. I revisited my feelings of anger, fear, and disappointment at the world during the period between September 2008 and March 2009, when the stock markets behaved like an amusement park roller coaster called Free Fall. Then I reminded myself of the concept of focus.
In yoga, that focus is called drishti. The word comes from the Sanskrit language meaning “vision” or “insight.” In the practice of asana, drishti is the term our yoga teachers use when they instruct us to focus our eyes on a specific point in front of us. We’re not really looking at anything in particular. Instead, we’re looking past any real object and out to some horizon. The word usually surfaces during a pose called Warrior 2 (or Virabhadra 2, named after the fierce soldier with 1000 heads and 1000 eyes, kind of like Cyclops on steroids). For me, the goal of drishti is to get to a place of quiet meditation while in the midst of a physically challenging posture. Not even the sweat dripping to the eyelids or the burning sensation in the active quadriceps should cause the mind to wander. Needless to say, it is not an easy goal to accomplish.
Many of us have goals we want to accomplish, whether it’s our first home, a more secure retirement, or simply more money in a savings account and less debt hanging over us. As we work toward these goals, we must also understand that any number of forces, internal and external, will attempt to divert us from our plans. When the forces become even more intense, like six straight weeks of a down market, it becomes that much more important to not let them get in the way of the objective. That is the essence of drishti.
Isaias Sarmiento
© 2011
