THE JOURNAL OF ALTERNATIVE AND COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE

Volume 16, Number 12, 2010, pp. 1265–1267

ª Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
DOI: 10.1089/acm.2010.0012

The Effect of Trataka, a Yogic Visual Concentration

Practice, on Critical Flicker Fusion

Taruna Mallick, MSc, and Ravi Kulkarni, PhD

Abstract

Objectives: The study objective was to study the change in the critical flicker fusion (CFF) after a yogic visual
concentration practice (trataka).
Design: Thirty (30) subjects participated in a study where they were evaluated for the CFF immediately before
and after the practice. The subjects also participated in a comparable control session.
Subjects: The subjects were 30 volunteers in the age range 25–40. Fifteen (15) of the volunteers were male. The
mean age was 31.33  4.67.
Results: The CFF showed a statistically significant increase from 37.35  2.84 to 38.66  2.91 after the yoga
practice of trataka. The control session did not produce a statistically significant change in the CFF.
Conclusions: An increase in the CFF is seen immediately after the yogic concentration practice called trataka.

Introduction Materials and Methods

A long with physical postures and breathing practices,

an important role is played in the hatha yoga tradition by
certain cleansing practices called the kriyas. These are de-
scribed explicitly in a text1 (circa 10th century ad) that is
considered one of the sources of the hatha yoga tradition. Four
(4) of these six cleansing practices deal with the cleansing of
the nasal and digestive tracts, one is a practice roughly akin to
hyperventilation, and the last is a practice called trataka, the
subject of this work. (This Sanskrit word means ‘‘to gaze
steadily.’’ The first ‘‘a’’ is pronounced as in ‘‘art,’’ the other two
are pronounced ‘‘uh.’’) In the version of the practice studied in
this article, the subject sits very still in a dark room and fixates
the vision on the flame of a candle, which is at eye level about
4 feet away. The practice is described in greater detail below.
The critical flicker fusion (CFF) is defined as the frequency
at which a flickering stimulus is perceived to be continuous.
It is known to be affected by many factors: the luminosity of
the source, the wavelength, wave form, and the light–dark
ratio of the stimulating light, the light-adapted state, and the
area of the retina illuminated.2 It has found use as a medical
diagnostic tool and has been studied as a means of under-
standing the mechanism of vision.3,4 An increase in the CFF
after yoga practices over several days that included postures
and breathing routines has been reported before.5–7 The ob-
jective of the present work was to compare the CFF before
and immediately after the practice of trataka.
In this experiment, the subjects were novices to the practice
of trataka and were first introduced to the practice in five
sessions on separate days before the assessments. The practice
itself consisted of two distinct parts. In the first part, the
subjects were taught eye exercises. These consisted of eyeball
movements in the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal directions
and were followed by circular movements of the eyeballs.
These were done with eyes open, in a well-lit room. The sub-
jects were instructed to pay attention to the objects perceived
in the changing field of vision, rather than moving the eyeballs
mechanically. This was followed by the practice of palming to
relax the visual system. Palming consists of putting slightly
cupped palms over the eyes, so that the eyes perceive com-
plete darkness. Subsequently, there were three rounds of fix-
ating the gaze on the candle flame in a darkened room. In
each round, the subjects were told to hold their gaze on the
flame for at least 2–3 minutes, suppressing the urge to blink as
far as possible. These three rounds were interspersed by the
practice of palming for 2–3 minutes to relax the eyes. The
entire practice as described above took roughly 30 minutes.
After the subjects had learned the technique in the pre-
liminary group sessions, each subject did the practice indi-
vidually for the CFF assessment. Each subject also
participated in an individual control session where they did
the eye exercises and palming and then sat blindfolded in the
dark for 10 minutes, before being assessed for the CFF. This

Swami Vivekananda Yoga University, Bangalore, India.

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Table 1. Values of the Critical Flicker Fusion (Hz)
Trataka Control
Pre 37.35  2.84 37.33  2.67
Post 38.66  2.91 36.88  2.84
Values are mean  standard deviation.
was done to account for the possibility that the ambient
darkness and the relaxation induced by palming could
influence the CFF. The design of the experiment thus was
‘‘self-as-control.’’ Each participant did trataka and the control
session on consecutive days, at the same time of the day (late
evening for everyone). The subjects were randomly allocated
to two groups, to randomize the order in which the trataka
and control sessions were done.
Thirty (30) subjects (15 were male) volunteered to partic-
ipate in the study. The mean age was 31.33  4.67 years and
the ages ranged from 25 to 40. All subjects had normal vision
and none were color blind. None of the subjects had any
previous training in the practice of trataka.
The CFF was measured using a standard electronic ap-
paratus. The apparatus consisted of a red light-emitting di-
ode, 6 mm in diameter, with a luminous intensity of 50 mcd,
a flicker rate adjustable between 12 and 95 Hz with equal on
and off times. A white background with an illumination of
150 lux surrounded the stimulus. The CFF was assessed four
times for each subject in each condition (trataka and control),
twice with frequency increasing and twice with decreasing
frequency to determine the critical point, and the mean of
these was taken to be the CFF for that subject.
Results
Table 1 shows the means and standard deviations of the
CFF immediately before and after the trataka and control
sessions.
All data were normally distributed. The trataka group
showed a statistically significant increase in the CFF from
37.35 to 38.66 ( p < 0.001, paired-samples t test). The control
group showed a statistically nonsignificant decrease in the
CFF from 37.33 to 36.88 ( p ¼ 0.06, paired-samples t test). The
two sessions showed no significant difference in the mean
CFF before intervention ( p ¼ 0.953, paired-samples t test),
while the difference in the CFF after intervention is signifi-
cantly different ( p < 0.001, paired-samples t test).
Discussion
It is well known that it is impossible to keep the vision
absolutely fixed on an object. In fact, if this happens, the
visual perception itself fades away.8 The eye always per-
forms tiny movements called saccades to counter this hap-
pening. Saccades of the type called microsaccades are
believed to play an important role in visual perception. Mi-
crosaccades typically carry the retinal image across several
dozen to several hundred photoreceptor widths and are
about 25 ms in duration. Recent research indicates that mi-
crosaccades lead to neural activity in the visual pathway.9
Moreover, the induced neural activity occurs at all levels of
MALLICK AND KULKARNI
the visual system, from the ganglion cells in the retina to the
cortex. Flicker rates above the perceptual threshold are
known to generate cortical and subcortical responses,10 in-
dicating that the fusion does not occur in the retinal cells, but
later in the visual pathway. The practice of fixating the vision
in the trataka practice would therefore seem to indicate
changes at a cortical level in the processes that mediate fu-
sion. Subjects also uniformly report a feeling of calm alert-
ness after the practice of trataka, which is consistent with the
fact that the CFF increases, since it has been observed that the
CFF decreases under stress and fatigue.11
The CFF and cognitive performance are known to be re-
duced in patients with sleep disorders.12 It would be inter-
esting to see whether regular practice of trataka can result in
improvement in cognitive functions and subjective alertness
in such subjects. A recent study on visual experience indi-
cates that the CFF threshold can be increased by prolonged
exposure to stimuli.13 While this article studied the imme-
diate effects of trataka, it would be interesting to see whether
regular sustained practice of trataka can lead to an elevated
CFF threshold.
Conclusions
The CFF rate has been shown to increase significantly as
the result of a yogic practice (trataka) that involves fixating
the vision on a candle flame.
Disclosure Statement
No competing financial interests exist.
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