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THE FIFTH LIMB: WITHDRAWAL OF THE SENSES (PRATYAHARA)

The world within and the world without are
two entirely separate realities.
The external world dissipates energy,
but the internal world showers blessings
that fill the vacuum created by the world.

Swami Rama

In the meditation hall, where hundreds of people sit in reflective silence, a woman begins to cry. The soft gulps of emotion soon escalate into deep, piercing sobs. The room begins to vibrate with bright tension as the outburst diverts others from their inward journeys, an unwitting and unwilling audience to the woman’s sensational drama. After a few moments, the person assigned to “hold space” for those meditating quietly but firmly says, “Please. Be quiet.”

Almost immediately, she is, and the room melts into silence.

Pratyahara combines the Sanskrit words prati, meaning against or away, and ahara, translated as food. This is a practice for gaining mastery over your senses and helps to develop the peaceful mind needed to achieve a deep, meditative state. Like the physical postures and breathing (asana and pranayama), it is a stepping stone. Many masters say that pratyahara is the most neglected limb of yoga, and yet it cannot be skipped on the way to meditation (dhyana) and absorption (samadhi). In the Heart of Yoga, T. K. V. Desikachar says pratyahara is when “our senses stop living off the things that stimulate.” In Western society, it is a particularly challenging practice, since our environment has evolved into a state of perpetual sensory overload. David Frawley, founding director of the American Institute for Vedic Studies, says, “Pratyahara is the key between the outer and inner aspects of yoga. It shows us how to move from one to the other.”

Computers, construction noise, food smells, televisions, billboards, beeping machines, music, traffic, overheard conversations—our senses are constantly assaulted. Pico Iyer, author of The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dali Lama, once told an interviewer, “I find that with my little laptop, I have the library of Alexandria and six billion people in my room. And it’s very hard not to want to communicate with them and hear what they’re saying and doing.” And he does not even use social media! Ironically, the modern defense against chronic cacophony is to shove buds into our ear canals and blast in more noise. This might be an effective strategy for shutting out other surroundings, but it does nothing to train your mind to a more natural state of peace and calm. It is no wonder we are literally driven to distraction.

Frawley asserts that most people are unaware of what they are taking in through this constant barrage of stimulation and how it affects their mental state. He likens this “infobesity” as mindlessly feeding our psyches empty calories. Maintaining a healthy body requires exercise, sleep, and setting aside junk food for wholesome, natural sustenance. It is equally sensible to train the mind to be discriminating about the impressions you feed to your senses. “We accept impressions via the mass media that we would never allow in our personal lives,” says Frawley. “We invite people into our houses through television and movies we would never allow into our homes in real life.” All these images are imprinted onto your subconscious and play a part in making you who you are.

Pratyahara is a healthy and elegant antidote to sensual overcharging. The art of withdrawing sensation is difficult and requires a conscious effort to close off all your senses to the constant clamor of the world. The practice teaches you to direct your senses inward, like a turtle drawing into its protective shell, and it arrives through yogic practices such as breath control, intense focus, and meditation. With persistent practice, pratyahara helps you develop a natural mental force field that can protect your mind from the steady, stimulating diet of mental and sensual “junk food.” It helps you get disentangled from the senses in a way that offers freedom. You become more calm and steady, less subject to the whims of emotion and attachment. “When the senses do not conform with their own objects but imitate the nature of the mind, that is pratyahara,” say the Sutras.

Reining in sensation and turning inward is among the most difficult limbs to practice. The payoff is a calm, disciplined mind with the capacity for intense focus. The ability to instantly find respite from a hypercharged environment will aid you in developing self-awareness and managing your energy. It will lead to better work habits, decision-making, and leadership.

For all her adult life, ambition has fueled Emmalyn’s career. She has been successful in the field of healthcare, where promotion after promotion eventually landed her a job as vice president of development for a medical research institute in northern California.

Emmalyn is responsible for raising millions of dollars for medical research, and she takes it seriously. She knows her work contribution helps make it possible for the institute to serve people who are suffering from serious diseases. The challenge in fundraising, which she calls a “lumpy business,” is that instead of selling a tangible product, “We are transacting trust and faith and belief. I am trying to exert influence without control, which comes with a lot of pressure and stress.” As her yoga practice has deepened over the last several years, she has begun to define success in different ways. “Within the last three years, I have realized that my yoga is a discipline for life. It has truly informed everything that I do, particularly at work. I’m far more observant of my own thoughts, which the practice of pratyahara helped me develop.”

During one fundraising project, the practice helped stop a downward mental and emotional spiral when things weren’t going as well as she hoped. At the end of a weekend event, she and her staff had achieved about 40 percent of the goal—much lower than expected. Emmalyn felt a sense of despair settling over the fundraising committee, and her anxiety ratcheted up. Her senses were agitated, and her head was whirling with a loop of questions for which no answers appeared: “Why aren’t we meeting this goal? What did we do wrong? What more can we do?” She knew something had to change. At home that weekend, Emmalyn went to a quiet place to meditate and began to draw her senses inward, evoking calm and “the observer.”

“What I observed clearly was my own franticness, which was a result of being overwhelmed with fear and desire. As I sat with that in meditation, I realized my motivating desire centered on showing people how competent I am. My fear was around potential failure, and how I might be judged if we didn’t meet our goal.” The loop of worrying about what could be or should be, and how people might view her performance, was obscuring her view of what was. “In fact, we were 41 percent toward the goal. We still had 10 days to achieve it.” The observer asked: Are you stressing about the work, or are you actually doing the work? As she sat in silence, connected to breath, the answer Emmalyn was looking for emerged.

“In each new interaction with potential donors, I realized I had been dragging the baggage of all the previous phone calls where I didn’t get what I wanted. I decided to ask myself: ‘How am I going to be fully present on each new call?’ Emmalyn set an intention to reach out to as many people as possible to help them understand the mission of the medical center and why support was needed—without fretting about the outcome. “Lo and behold, it happened! In a couple of days, we found a major gift that brought us 81 percent toward our goal. If my practice was not as strong as it is, I would have wallowed in the anxiety, or panicked, and I am absolutely certain I would have been less effective.” This wasn’t magic—it was the result of intentional action and focus combined with a determination to stay present.

SENSIBLE SENSES

Swami Shivananda compares the senses to children, because without training, their actions are instinctual and unruly. Surrendering our minds to sensory overload is the equivalent of giving children a constant diet of sweets and caffeinated drinks. (Our son-in-law, Christopher, likes to say, “In goes the sugar, out comes the crazy.”) If your mind is connected to a feeding tube of mental junk, how can it stay sharp, aware, and attentive? The more sensations you are bombarded with, the more stimulation and excitement you crave—it is all too easy to become addicted. This leaves you in a state of being constantly wired while simultaneously skating on the edge of exhaustion.

Just as children need boundaries and guidance to become calm, disciplined, and well-behaved, the mind can benefit from training and setting limitations. This doesn’t require you to completely remove yourself from the environment—it would be hard to get work done from a cave! Nor is the goal to constantly suppress your senses or your mind. It is, however, possible to gain mental mastery so that the external senses don’t always rule your thoughts and actions.

Our teacher, Mary Bruce, travels with the country-rock band Sugarland. Her role is to lead the musicians and crew through a yoga practice before each show. In the summer of 2011, Mary and the band were waiting in an underground bunker that led to the stage moments before a show was scheduled to begin in Indianapolis. Just as they were forming their customary pre-show prayer circle, they heard the crowd’s cheers devolve into a burst of panicked screaming. A micro-instant later, Mary and the others were knocked down by a thunderous impact. The bunker turned dark, accompanied by an ominous soundtrack of hysterical screams and cries for help. “We knew the set had collapsed, but that’s all,” Mary recalls. “We had no idea what was going on. We just knew it was bad.” The exits from the bunker were blocked, and the group was terrified the bunker would collapse on top of them. “We couldn’t get out. We all ran to a corner and huddled together.”

INSTINCTUAL MINDFULNESS

Due to her years of intensive yoga training, Mary’s response was instinctual. “I stayed with my breath the entire time, and immediately began reciting a mantra” she says. This helped lead her to pratyahara, erecting a mental barrier against the frightening sensations. She was able to access the state described by Desikachar where “the links between mind, senses, and external objects that have nothing to do with the breath are cut.” She stayed with her silent mantra as the lights flickered on, and she helped others stay calm. Then they waited. For 45 minutes they waited, until at last the emergency crew managed to unblock an entrance and free them. It seemed miraculous that no one in the bunker had been seriously injured.

It wasn’t until Mary got back to her hotel room that the full realization of what had happened became clear. Watching a television news report, she learned a fierce gust of wind had lifted and then blown over scaffolding, sound equipment, and the set, which crashed onto the stage as it collapsed. The accident killed seven spectators and injured many others. If Mary and the band had been on stage even five seconds earlier, they surely would have died.

Throughout the traumatic events, yoga helped Mary tune in to herself and stay present. “The whole time, I stayed centered, observing, participating, but not reactionary. When I finally saw it on TV, it shocked me. It wasn’t really until then that I felt it in my physical body.”

Pratyahara has also been a crucial work tool for Gina, who is constantly confronted with life-and-death decisions while working as a physician’s assistant in hospital emergency rooms. She has found pratyahara, which she learned about in her yoga training, to be invaluable in serving patients. “On average, healthcare providers in the ER are interrupted once every six minutes. And even when we are not being interrupted, a din of activity is going on all around us. In that environment, it can be very hard to concentrate on the details of a patient’s situation, analyze test results, and make solid, educated decisions on the best course of care.”

Gina’s job requires her to efficiently integrate information from patients, their families, nurses, technicians, and specialists to make decisions that have serious, life-altering consequences. Overlooking minor details can be disastrous. Pratyahara helps her filter out the unneeded sensations that distract from a laser focus on patients’ needs.

“I have to let go of the strange smells, the sounds, and the close confines of my work space,” Gina says. “I dial down my senses and find that place inside that allows me to focus from a clear and peaceful place so I can make smart and safe decisions. One patient at a time.”

Five suggestions for practicing pratyahara

1. Identify and list the people or places at work where drama, over-stimulation, and/or boundary issues “hook” you. What sensations do you experience? Can you minimize contact with these situations? If not, visualize “unhooking” or “unplugging” yourself when you’re in those circumstances. Notice what changes for you.

2. Do a technology fast. Commit to a time where phones are turned off, computers unplugged, television screens are blank. Set aside newspapers and magazines. If you can’t manage a full day in the beginning, start with an hour, and work your way up.

3. Practice withdrawing unwelcome impressions from your mind. When you imagine failure, skip the thought away, like a pebble on a lake. Are you mentally reenacting arguments with your boss or a coworker? Close your eyes, focus on breath, and reconnect to the present moment.

4. Attend a silent retreat, or create your own by spending the day alone in a natural setting or quiet sanctuary, soaking in the quiet. Train your mind by noticing just one thing: the blue sky, the clouds, leaves on a tree, pebbles in a stream. Do you find yourself bored and restless? Can you hang with the discomfort? If your mind can’t turn off, try using pranayama to settle it.

5. Instead of just drifting off to sleep, shut down your senses, one at a time, as you lie in bed. Close your eyes. Notice the ambient sounds, and then withdraw your hearing. What can you smell? Take it in, then let it go. Feel the sensation of your body on the mattress, your head on the pillow. Bring the sensations inward, one body part at a time.