Pratyahara (Sanskrit: प्रत्याहार) or the withdrawal of the senses is the fifth element among the Eight stages of Patanjali’s Ashtanga Yoga, as mentioned in his classical work. For Patanjali, it is a bridge between the bahiranga (external) aspects of yoga namely, yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, and the antaranga (internal) yoga. At the stage of pratyahara, the consciousness of the individual is internalized in order that the sensations from the senses of taste, touch, sight, hearing, and smell don’t reach their respective centers in the brain and takes the practitioner to the next stages of Yoga, namely Dharana (concentration), Dhyana (meditation), and Samadhi (mystical absorption), which is the aim of all Yogic practices. Siddha Spirituality of Swami Hardas Life System also recognizes the utility and benefits of Pratyahara.

Pratyahara Meaning

Pratyahara is derived from two Sanskrit words: prati and ahara, with ahara meaning food, or anything taken into ourselves, and prati, a preposition meaning away or against. Together they mean “weaning away from ahara“, or simply ingestion.

Types of Pratyahara

There are four sub-types of pratyahara that allow you to fully experience its benefits:

Indriya pratyahara

To create the best environment for relaxation of the mind, indriya pratyahara focuses on withdrawal from the external stimuli you experience via the five senses: hearing, taste, smell, sense, sight, and touch. To withdraw from the senses, concentrate on your natural breathing pattern or turn your attention to a chakra.

Prana pratyahara

When practicing prana pratyahara, it’s essential to control your prana, which is the universal energy flowing throughout the body, so that you can avoid focusing too much of that energy on your senses.

Karma pratyahara

This is the control of the action. Karma pratyahara is about surrendering all actions or thoughts of personal reward in favor of acting in service to humanity or the divine. You can practice this through karma yoga, which teaches that desire is limitless and happiness is attainable when it is not attached to the results of your actions.

Mano pratyahara

This final type of pratyahara is the withdrawal of the mind. When you practice mano pratyahara, you not only withdraw from external stimuli, but you actively control your reaction to it and redirect your attention inwards.

Pratyahara within the eight limbs of yoga

The eight limbs of Ashtanga yoga outline ways to live a purposeful life. The earlier limbs focus primarily on basic ethical teachings, and the later limbs, including pratyahara, the fifth limb of yoga, focus on internal concepts like meditation. The eight limbs of yoga include:

Yamas: Social restraints and moral codes of yoga

The Yoga Sutra describes five different yamas, including ashimsa (non-violence), asteya (non-stealing), Satya (truthfulness), aparigraha (non-possessiveness), and brahmacharya (celibacy or fidelity).

Niyamas: Observances, rules, and guidelines

The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali describes five different niyamas, including saucha (cleanliness), santosha (contentment), tapas (self-discipline), svadhyaya (self-reflection), and ishvarapranidhana (surrender to a higher power).

Asana: Yoga postures or poses

This limb emphasizes the importance of caring for the body and developing the discipline to advance spiritual growth.

Pranayama: Use of breath

Pranayama consists of breathing techniques that can reduce stress and improve physical and mental health. In pranayama, you focus deeply on breath control through inhalation, breath retention, and exhalation patterns.

Pratyahara: Withdrawal

Pratyahara involves disengaging your mind from external disturbances and controlling your reaction to them. During pratyahara, your five sense organs still detect external stimulation, but you don’t allow them to disrupt your state of mind.

Dharana: Concentration

The goal of Dharana is to bind your consciousness to one particular object, place, or idea. Focusing your attention on one thing helps quiet your mind by closing off paths by which other thoughts intrude.

Dhyana: Meditation

Dhyana is similar to Dharana, except during dhyana, you reach a state of being where you are so completely immersed in your meditation that it becomes a part of your consciousness.

Samadhi: Bliss or enlightenment

Samadhi is the highest state of consciousness you can achieve through meditation. It consists of a yoga practitioner reaching spiritual enlightenment where the self, the mind, and the object of meditation merge together into one.

Every limb builds off of techniques in the previous limb. As such, the conscious withdrawal of energy from the senses during pratyahara is an important preparatory measure before you dive into the more internal, meditation-based later steps of Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi.

Pratyahara in Asana Practice

You can practice these pratyahara steps while practicing physical yoga poses, known as asana. It’s normal for the mind to wander during asana, especially if you are thinking about whether you’re doing a pose correctly or if you should switch to a new pose.

Practice pratyahara by taking the energy you’re using to think about your handling of the pose and turn that energy inward to concentrate on the pose itself. Savasana, the final resting pose that concludes many yoga sessions, is another great opportunity to practice pratyahara.

How to practice Pratyahara?

The practice facilitates the journey into the inner world where there are no loud noises, advertisements to buy, lists to do, and other things that might distract us from our intelligent being. Dassa said, “If you don’t learn how to withdraw from your senses during Shavasana, you might as well sit in a chair and do something else.”

Here let us know about the use of ‘how to withdraw our senses’ as the gateway into a surrendered Shavasana:

Five steps to Pratyahara while in Shavasana

Sight/Eyes: Begin with the most dominant sense

Lightly close your eyes and then lift the upper eyelid ever so slightly so that it does not press against the lower lid. This is difficult because when you lift the upper eyelid, you can easily tense the forehead. Do not tense the forehead. Slightly lift the outer edges of the eye toward the temple to avoid forehead tensing. Once the eyelids are in position and you are aware of lightness around the eyes, roll the pupil downwards, as if looking towards the heart. No straining. Once in position, the eyes do not move.

Taste/Tongue: Relax the jaw

Let the tongue drop away from the palate. Do not hold the tongue back. The tongue tip nestles gently behind the lower teeth. Relax the corners of the mouth, letting the corners melt downwards toward the jawbone.

Nose/Smell: Bring attention to the root of the nose

That’s the bridge of the nose. It doesn’t take long to relax here; just focusing attention on the nose’s root seems to relax the sense of smell. For help, image a dark warm circle—a black hole, if you like sinking from the nose’s root into the brain.

Ears/Sound: Relax the inner ear

Bring your attention to the upper rims of your cheekbones. Allow the cheekbone to meltdown toward the earlobe, which in Shavasana is the lowest part of your face. You will feel your inner ear let go of tension.

Skin/Touch: Skin is the largest sense organ

This step of Pratyahara teaches you to relax your face. Imagine a line in the center of your face. It begins at your hairline and divides your forehead in half. Center of your nose, upper lip, lower lip, chin, and neck. Now divide your face into upper and lower quadrants by drawing an imaginary line about 1/8 inch above your eyebrows. Softly move the skin of your forehead–the upper quadrants–from the centerline to the temples.

Allow the skin of the upper quadrants to pool at the temple. Bring your attention to the centerline of the lower quadrants of your face. Move the skin from the centerline to your lower earlobes. The skin is like warm wax; smooth.

Pratyahara is often compared to a turtle withdrawing its limbs into its shell– the turtle’s shell is the mind and the senses are the limbs. You can repeat the steps as many times as you like until your senses are withdrawn.  With repeated practice, over the years the steps can often take less than a minute to complete.

Unique benefits of Pratyahara?

• Pratyahara is the best practice to conserve psychic energy. Also, its regular practice relaxes the autonomic sympathetic nervous system.
• When Pratyahara is mastered by the yogi then he can easily engage thyself (self) in the state of Samyama – a combined simultaneous practice of Dharna (concentration), Dhyana (meditation), and Samadhi (union).
• In negative mental health persons who are suffering from anxiety, phobia, obsession, aggression, inferiority, etc, Pratyahara practice works as a preventive technique. It restricts those inputs to the unconscious mind which arises later in the form of mental health symptoms.
• As per the Ayurvedic point of view, different Pratyahara techniques can be practiced in different doshas to balance all three doshas. For example, a Vata dosha type person can practice the ‘Moving Prana’ technique to rest and turn their Prana inwards.
• Technostress is making people short-tempered, anxious, criminals, impulsive because of too much indulgence in new technology. A research study shows, Pratyahara reduces the physical and psychological effects of technostress.
• Different pratyahara techniques are good soothing exercises for the eyes. Practices like shammukhi mudra in pratyahara relax eye muscles as well as releases the trapped tension in this region.