The 8 Limbs: Pratyahara

The 8 Limbs: Pratyahara

In our chaotic world, we often neglect our internal landscape, fixated on external distractions. But to thrive in meditation, we must learn to withdraw our minds from the ceaseless stream of sensory input. Easier said than done, especially for the easily distracted.

Our minds, like mischievous children, have a knack for defying our intentions. Blocking out stimuli only makes them stronger. Yet, there's a secret—a practice called Pratyahara. It's about losing track of our surroundings, immersing ourselves in the present moment without intellectualising external stimuli.

Through techniques like Antar Mouna, we unlock the door to Pratyahara's tranquil realm, preparing ourselves for profound meditation. External disturbances fade away, akin to drifting into a peaceful slumber.

But to master Pratyahara, we must find comfort in stillness, free from pain or discomfort. It's through this bodily training that we can dive deeper into self-exploration.

Join us as we unravel techniques to guide our focus inward—our breath, sensations, sounds—satisfying the wandering mind while maintaining control. Claim mastery over your consciousness and unlock the secrets of Pratyahara.

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EP14 The 8 Limbs - Pratyahara

Welcome back! Such a juicy topic today. The 5th limb in Patanjalis 8 limbs of yoga. And that is Pratyahara. From a really basic understanding, this means sense withdrawal.
Most of us spend the majority of our life in the external world, meaning that we are concerned with things going on around us. We don’t spend as much time in our internal world, focussing on the workings of our bodies and minds. However to gain any sort of traction in meditation it is important to to be able to withdraw our minds from the external environment. Now, this is much easier said than done and can, in-fact, be incredibly difficult for people to achieve, especially if you are someone prone to distractions.
The biggest problem is that our mind is continually receiving data about the outside world via the sense organs: the ears, the eyes, etc. Our mind can’t really dissociate itself from the outside world until it is trained or encouraged to ignore this never-ending stream of stimuli from the sense organs.

What we need to do is not only limit the number of sense impressions that reach the mind, but try to eradicate it completely. We do this more often than we think. If we're reading a good book, we forget about what's going on around us. We don't hear the clock ticking, the people talking in another room, or the fire crackling in the room. During meditation, concentration, and pratyahara, we should try to lose track of our surroundings, but we can't do this with the help of a good book or anything else that draws the mind away from itself. The mind should be occupied, and should be focused, but not thinking or trying to intellectualise what’s going on around us.

The mind is like a mischievous child; it does the opposite of what you want it to do. So, if you try to block out sensory impressions, your mind will automatically make them stronger. For example, if I told you not to think about elephants, it would be tricky for you to think of anything except elephants, especially in that immediate moment. If, on the other hand, you force the mind to think about things outside while the eyes are closed, it will lose interest in sounds and other things outside after a while and won't connect them with sense impressions. We want to be in this state of mind, called pratyahara, when we meditate. Kind of like when you start to drift off to sleep, you stop hearing things around you and noticing the smells, temperature etc.
This quirk of the mind is used in a yoga technique called antar mouna, which is a great way to get pratyahara and get ready for meditation. We will discuss this technique in a future episode.

The degree to which a person can do pratyahara successfully depends very much on our ability to sit in a comfortable asana for the duration of practise. If we begin to feel pain or discomfort, our sense organs will constantly send information to our mind about the pain or discomfort, and other things. Pratyahara will no longer be possible, and then neither will be meditation. So, the practitioner must train the body so that it can stay in one position for a long time without feeling any pain.
Many of the techniques we will talk about are focussed on systematically moving your attention to different parts of your body, your breathing, sounds you make in your mind or out loud, and so on. This is used partly to focus the mind and partly to keep the mind busy internally so that it forgets about its surroundings and goes into a pratyahara state. This satisfies the wandering tendency of the mind, but in a controlled manner, and avoids the problems encountered in the practice of pure one-pointed concentration, during which the untrained mind tends to rebel against the forced restraints and all progress may be lost. And let’s face it, we don’t that.