8 Limbs: Limb 5: Pratyahara

“Just as a tortoise withdraws its limbs, so when a man withdraws his senses from the sense objects, his wisdom becomes steady.” ~Bhagavad Gita

Prati: away or against. Ahara: the things we take into ourselves

Quite simply, pratyahara is the withdrawal of the senses through practice and concentration. As we fine tune our attention, our senses naturally turn inward. When the mind focuses intently, pratyahara becomes a natural state.

What is it like to actively participate in life without being led by our senses? If we are working on our inner self and we are able to attain a space where the mind is quiet and we can see clearly, it makes us less likely to have knee-jerk reactions to the comings and goings of our life and we can then make more conscious choices. You can either respond to a stimulus or step back and not respond. Don’t get me wrong, it is not “running away” from it, rather not reacting and choosing how to respond.

Think of savasana for a moment, when you enter savasana you are first finding awareness of the physical body relaxing. The second part of savasana is when you are withdrawing from the external world without completely losing contact with it. This withdrawal is an example of the experience of pratyahara. Most of us know this state; when you’re in it, you feel like you’re at the bottom of a well. You register the sounds that occur around you, for example, but these sounds do not create disturbance in your body or mind. It is this state of nonreaction. You still register input from your sense organs, but you don’t react to that input. There seems to be a space between the sensory stimulus and your response here. Or, in everyday language, you are in the world but not of it.