Trataka

Trataka is three cycles of three minutes gazing at a candle flame followed by two minutes with the eyes closed, which is about fifteen minutes in total, practised after dark in a dim still room at least an hour after food. Build from one cycle to three over three or four weeks. That is the dose.

The candle sits about a metre away with the flame level with your eyes. You gaze at the tip of the wick without blinking if you comfortably can, and then close the eyes and watch the after image fade. Both halves are the practice. Jyoti Trataka, gazing at a flame, is the version studied in the research literature; the same word covers gazing at a dot on a wall, at a shadow, or at the moon.

It is classified in the older texts as one of the shatkarmas, the cleansing practices, alongside Kapalbhati, rather than as a meditation, though it functions as a concentration practice and that is how I teach it. The reason it earns a place here is narrower than the claims made for it: it gives a beginner an object outside their own head, and that turns out to matter a great deal.

Almost every failure in this practice is a setup problem rather than a concentration problem, and it is worth being fussy for five minutes.

• The flame: a candle or a small oil lamp. Not a phone screen, not a bulb. A screen is bright, blue and modulated, and modulation is the last property you want in something you are going to stare at.
• The air: still. Close the window, turn the fan off, move away from a door. A flickering flame cannot be gazed at, and students who cannot settle usually have a draught rather than a restless mind.
• The height: the flame level with your eyes when you are seated. Put the candle on a stack of books. If it is low, the chin drops and the practice becomes about your neck.
• The distance: one metre to one and a quarter. An arm's length plus a little. Closer strains, further and it stops being a steady object.
• The light: dim, not pitch dark. You want the flame to be the brightest thing in the room and not the only thing.
• Fire: nothing within reach of the flame. No curtain, no dupatta, no loose hair, no paper. Blow it out before you stand up, every single time.

Sit in Vajrasana, Padmasana or a chair, and choose comfort over ambition: the head has to stay still for three minutes without effort, and a seat you are fighting makes that impossible.

Three minutes gazing, two minutes closed, three times. That is about fifteen minutes and it is where I stop.

• Week 1: one cycle. One minute gazing, two minutes closed. About five minutes with the settling.
• Week 2 to 3: two cycles at two minutes gazing and two closed. About ten minutes.
• Week 4 onwards: three cycles at three minutes gazing and two closed. About fifteen minutes. This is the finished practice.
• Frequency: once a day, after dark. Not twice.
• Never gaze for more than three minutes at a stretch. Lengthen the number of cycles, not the length of a gaze.

The eight week trial that found the reaction time improvement used twenty minutes a day, six days a week, which is a little more than I ask for and in the same territory. If you want to match the studied dose, four cycles rather than three gets you there, and I would still keep each gaze to three minutes.

Published instructions for Trataka mostly say to gaze until the eyes water and then stop, which is not a dose. This is a four week ladder, and the ratio column is the gaze to closed proportion that most pages leave out entirely.

The two minutes with the eyes closed is not a rest. It is where the concentration is trained, holding attention on a fading after image that nobody else can see, and it is the half students drop first.

There is more here than for most concentration practices, and less than the claims suggest.

Attention. A hundred and twenty healthy young adults, mean age 20, randomised to eight weeks of Jyoti Trataka at twenty minutes a day six days a week, or to a control group. Go response reaction time improved 19.5 per cent in the practice group, and susceptibility to two optical illusion measures fell 3.1 and 10.4 per cent. That is a decent sized randomised trial by the standards of this field. It is also all young adults, so nothing follows about anybody in their seventies, and the paper does not report adverse effects, which I would have wanted to see.

Eye pressure. A 2023 meta analysis in the Indian Journal of Ophthalmology reviewed yoga and intraocular pressure in glaucoma across six studies and 234 participants, and found Jyoti Trataka along with slow breathing and meditation reduced intraocular pressure compared with controls in three randomised trials of 212 patients. The same review found head down postures raise eye pressure rapidly while they are held. So a seated gazing practice looks like a better bet for somebody with glaucoma than an inversion, which is not the direction most people assume, and it is still a conversation for an ophthalmologist rather than a website.

What is not supported. It does not improve eyesight or correct a refractive error. It does not cure insomnia. It does not confer any of the perceptual powers claimed for it in the older literature. I looked for trial evidence for each of those and did not find it, and where a traditional claim has no support I would rather say so than repeat it.

It goes at the end of the day and at the end of a session, because it needs darkness and a still body.

1. Asana earlier in the day, or none at all. This practice does not need a warm body.
2. Chandra Bhedana or three part breath: 9 to 12 rounds. Five minutes, to settle the breath before the gazing.
3. Trataka: 3 cycles. Fifteen minutes.
4. Palms cupped over the closed eyes for half a minute. Candle out.
5. Bed, or yoga nidra if sleep is difficult.

For a beginner who cannot sit with the breath, I would reverse the emphasis and make Trataka the whole practice for a month, with two minutes of breathing at the start. An object outside the head is easier than an object inside it, and that is the entire pedagogical argument. The home practice guide has the wider order, and So Hum is the natural next step once sitting is possible.

In the online classes I do not teach this one, because I cannot see somebody's eyes over a screen well enough to tell strain from concentration, and this is a practice where that distinction matters.

It appears where concentration and the eyes are the subject, and it is fenced off on the pages where the eyes are a risk.

• Yoga for anxiety includes it as the practice for people who cannot yet sit with their own breath, with the caveat about visual migraine triggers.
• The eight limbs of yoga is where dharana, one pointed concentration, is explained, which is what this practice trains.
• The glossary has shatkarma, dharana and dhyana, which are the terms you will meet if you read further into this.
• Sirsasana and Sarvangasana both carry the eye pressure warning that the same meta analysis produced, from the other side: head down postures raise intraocular pressure while they are held.
• Yin yoga and restorative yoga sit naturally in the same evening slot.

If you have any eye condition at all, the person to ask is an ophthalmologist and not a yoga teacher, mine included. If you simply want to see the setup done properly once, that is what an introductory class is for.