Alright now many of you might be thinking...what the heck is "eye gazing" and why is Georgeanna blogging about it?! Eye Gazing or trataka is one of the six Shatkarma purification techniques used in Kriya Yoga. Shat (six) Karma (action) aims to create harmony between the two pranic flows, ida and pingala. This in turn creates both physical and mental purification and balances the three doshas (vatta/wind, pitta/bile & kapha/mucus) in the body. We become ill when these doshas become imbalanced. Trataka basically involves gazing intensely at a single point or object. For example: eye gazing, candle gazing or gazing at a particular design. One of the main benefits of this practice is that it can help enhance the power of concentration!
For those of you that know me then you know I am certainly not an eye gazing type person, so imagine my terror when our instructor told us that we were going to sit down across from another student and gaze into each other's eyes!? I wanted to melt into the floor as I sat there thinking that this could end up being the single most terrible experience of my adult life. As I sat there in sheer horror and totally oblivious to what was going on around me, my two bug-a-lo mates quickly paired up with each other. I snapped out of the initial shock and turned around to see that I was going to be pairing up with one of the only two boys in our course. This boy goes by the name of Jonathan and is a very handsome surfer who native to Australia. He has a very thick accent, so I have a rather hard time understanding almost everything that he says. He is sort of a goof ball, but in a very good way. So at this point I am even more mortified with what was going to transpire over the next few moments of my life. Not only do I have to gaze into someones eyes, but that someone just happens to be a very attractive guy that I barely know. Help!
Peter is one of our instructors and is totally amazing. He brings a very slow and meditative aspect to all of our practices and I thoroughly enjoy learning from him, but this eye gazing thing was pushing it! We being by sitting cross legged in front of our partner and Peter has us close our eyes while putting our hands gently on our knees. He proceeds to lead us through about a 10 minute meditation where we are visualizing ourselves to be a blooming lotus flower. He instructs us to immediately begin gazing into our partners eyes once he gives us the cue. I am sitting there thinking OMG...I am going to just burst out laughing and feel really childish!! So I started trying to think of something sad, but the corners of my mouth just kept creeping up and nothing sad would pop into my head. I thought that I was totally screwed.
The dreaded words "open your eyes" roll out of Peter's mouth and so begrudgingly I opened my eyes. I was instantly sucked into Jonathan's gaze and the dreaded fear of laughter immediately melted away. This was one of the most intense experiences of my life. The eyes truly are the windows into a person's soul and it is fascinating to really look into another person's eyes. I found it especially amazing because I did not know anything about this person, but I suddenly felt as though I understood who he was and it was if I had know him for years. The longer we gazed the greater this strange energy started to form between the two of us. It was not any sort of physical attraction, but more like a cosmic energy. This was a very powerful and strange experience that seemed to last forever, but in reality it was only just a couple of minutes. It felt like what I would imagine a journey to the center of the universe would feel like!
I caught a glimpse of my bug-a-lo mate, Maddy, laughing in the background, lost my concentration and began to giggle a bit. We stopped our eye gazing exercise at this point and I noticed that I was completely trembling from the intensity of the experience. I stood up and had the wobbles, so Jonathan gave me a fantastic hug to stop my from falling over. We discussed the crazy magnetic energy that had taken place and relished in the bizarrely wonderful feeling of it all.
Eye gazing is a beautiful practice to share with someone and especially with someone you are close to. It is a nice way to communicate with someone without the use of words, which can be really nice as we all tend to say things we don't mean from time to time. I wish I had known about this practice before now because it is a wonderful way to calm down in a heated moment and remember that you love the one sitting across from you and that they love you in return. It allows you to see the bigger picture and realize that the disagreement is probably not of any real importance, so it is not worth beating them up over it. Gazing into someones eyes can help open your heart to their universe.
Love & Light!
