As Erich Schiffman says about yoga, ‘This is going to be easy. And this is going to be hard.’ Pratyahara (praht-yee-HAR-ah, sense withdrawal) is easy in the sense that pretty much everyone can close their eyes. It is hard in that you will find all sorts of obstacles to keeping them closed. But take heart, Schiffman also said that doing yoga is like weeding a garden. The first time you go in, you must weed, weed, weed to really clear the land. But as you garden more and more, there are fewer weeds to be seen, and you can pluck them more easily.
Here are some ideas to explore pratyahara in your own life:
(1) Start in an obvious place — a stimulus that really riles you up, like social media or the news. Go on a diet from this stimulus for a day, for two days, for a week.
Here is the heart of the practice: Notice what shifts in you. Are you jumpy? Do you need that ‘hit’ of self-confirmation you get from these stimuli? Notice what you learn about how your ego and your inner, true self are treated by this source of stimuli. Can you get past the jumpiness? If so, what happens then?
When you go back to the stimulus, can you keep your reactions at bay? Can you be more measured in how you interact with it, or how it affects you?
(2) Spend 30 minutes eating one thing. No talking, no screens, no reading, just eat this one thing. Deborah Adele (inYamas and Niyamas) recommends eating an orange, and spending the time to explore the orange with all your senses. The first time I did this, I ate a bagel and made it to 23.5 minutes. This is the easy and hard side of pratyahara. It is super easy to eat a bagel. It is super hard to slow it down this much!
Again, notice what surfaces for you. Perhaps you will learn that your taste receptors have more to say to you than you normally allow. And perhaps all the other senses want ‘in’ – maybe, like a room full of kindergarteners, all your senses get excited when you focus on just one of them.
What is the reaction of your body/mind ecosystem? Once you deal with the first reaction, what happens next? Keep working through the layers of reaction. That is the purpose of this practice.
(3) Explore a guided meditation focused on turning on and turning off your external and internal senses. According to Pandit Rajmani Tigunait (in The Practice of the Yoga Sutra), most people will need 8-12 minutes in meditation to clear the senses so that you can explore what happens when you do. So allow yourself 15-20 minutes for this meditation. The recording below guides you through a pratyahara-focused meditation. Give it a try, and see what comes forward for you.
(4) Indu Arora (inYoga: Ancient heritage, tomorrow’s vision) suggests spending one day each month in a silent ‘retreat’ at home. This means no screens, no books, no speaking, bland food, no email, no exercise, etc. Focus perhaps on a mantra and come back to it throughout the day. This can be very difficult, even just to arrange; it might make sense to start with a single morning and work up to a full day over a year or so.
But remember that your job is not just to clear your sensory input; it is to notice how doing that shifts your insides. It may be news to feel how uncomfortable your body is when all the sounds around you pause. Then, what happens when you press through the unease?
(5) Try a silent retreat. This is more difficult to arrange, but it can open your eyes further. And, in a retreat, you will get the support you need to work through the internal stimuli that may surface. Again, the heart of the practice is not speechlessness per se, it is how your mind/body ecosystem responds to speechlessness, what you learn, and how you maneuver through the things that surface for you.
This guided meditation is intended to help you build awareness of your senses and your ability to tune them down. If the button below does not lead to the meditation, click here and a new window will open that will play the meditation for you.