The echo of less

My first experience with pratyahara (praht-yee-HAR-ah) was in high school. I played flute in band and orchestra. Making music with others is something astonishingly beautiful. Each member of the ensemble plays a slightly different thing that may not always make sense or even be pleasant to listen to in isolation, but together with every other player putting focus into their own role, the result is music. Real music. Rich, complex, transcendent.

And then the baton swipes to the right and it is over. It ends. Silence.

That deep, deep silence made my brain quake a bit with its sudden drop; it seemed to echo upon itself.

I came to understand that silence, particularly THAT silence, was just as precious as the music. It is what makes the music music. And it became my favorite moment of any practice or concert.

What is pratyahara?

Pratyahara is the fifth ‘limb’ of yoga and, with the fourth limb, pranayama (prah-nah-YAH-mah, often referred to as breathwork) continues the transition of the yoga practitioner from the outer world to the inner world. Pratyahara means withdrawal of the senses, which can take many, many forms. The purpose of sense withdrawal is to give space for the inner, more quiet world of the true self to step forward.

Our senses are key to keeping us safe. They are tied into the amygdala, the most primitive and reactive part of our nervous systems. The amygdala does many things, but it is also what drives our most urgent reactions, our need to fight or flee or freeze. Our senses are prime inputs that trigger our fight/flight/freeze responses. Learning to sort through the information the senses give us is key to countering hyper-arousal and its opposite, desensitization. It is a foundational practice for (1) cultivating mindfulness and precision in our reactions in everyday life and (2) sitting for long periods and doing the necessary work that surfaces in meditation.

What less does for us

In ordinary life, we can capture bits of pratyahara, just as I did in high school. We can choose to go on a news or social media diet. We can choose to turn the radio off when we drive. We can choose to sit in nature, close our eyes, and open our ears.

We all know what happens when we do these things. Our heart rate drops, we are less argumentative, we may even experience bliss. And all we are doing is asking for less — less stimulus, less thinking, less activity. Just less.

It is like clearing out a closet of unnecessary things. Suddenly, we can find that old fishing pole we have been wanting to use, or that necklace that mom gave to us. In the case of pratyahara, we can give our true, inner self the space to stretch its arms and legs. And we can, in turn, become more familiar with it.

The ancient yogis did not quite have all the sense-bombardment we have today, but they certainly understood the impact of reducing stimuli into our brains. We each benefit by becoming more aware of sensory stimuli every day. We may learn to manage it, or at least observe how stimulation (over-stimulation, under-stimulation) affects us. And we can grow that awareness and explore within it.

The link with aging

When I was pregnant, there was so much going on inside my body that was new to me that I often lost patience with the things outside of me. I was tired. I was clumsy. There was a low murmur of worry in the back of my mind day and night. And so I just had less mental energy for normal stuff. One day, an older family member tried to cheer me up, and I snapped at him. I still cringe when I think of that moment. But, I eventually came to see that I could only take in about half of what I could from the outside compared to before I was pregnant. Lesson learned.

As I age, I find a similar re-orientation to the body. And I hear this from students all the time. ‘I need to think more about how I get up from the floor,’ or ‘I cannot eat like I used to,’ or ‘I love to go for walks, but I need to stretch my ankles before.’

Aging bodies are fussy. They need our attention. We feel tired. We feel clumsy. There is a low murmur of worry in the back of our minds day and night. If we are aware, we repeatedly recalibrate our activities and capacities each and every day. To do that, we need to improve our ability to interocept (use our inner sense perceptions to understand what is happening with our bodies). And that takes energy, patience, and the willingness to be curious rather than frustrated.

According to the ancient yogis, the older years are ones in which we turn inside. We naturally become more contemplative and more inner-focused. As we do, it is necessary to begin to manage better the things that we allow to rile us up from the outside.

Coping with too much

Another aspect of how pratyahara can support us as we age has to do with managing life’s most difficult times. A few years ago, my family experienced a number of deaths in a couple of months, and care still needed to be available to other elderly family members, dinners still needed to be made, kids still needed to go to their school activities, and, also, my husband and I had full-time jobs. We have big families and there was a lot of support, but still it was a tidal wave of grief and new tasks and extra worries.

As we age, we occasionally encounter these ‘tidal waves,’ when there are simply far more needs on the table than we can possibly digest, much less handle. Learning to manage the inputs, understanding what ‘gets our goats’ and what nurtures our sense of well-being, is a key tool in walking through these periods with resilience and kindness. It is key to putting our limited energy into the right things in the right way. Building the pratyahara muscle offers a lifeline.

I have come to love pratyahara practice and have made it part of what I think about almost every day. Sometimes, it is a matter of turning off screens and radios; sometimes, I focus my meditation on my senses; and sometimes, my asana practice is focused on the sensory input of movement. Your senses are such a dominant part of the way you encounter the world that there is an endless array of options to bring this practice and awareness into your everyday life.

For more ideas for how to practice pratyahara and for a guided meditation focused on it, click here.