yoga sutra 2.54
sva-vi
aya-asa
prayoge cittasya sva-rūpānukara iva indriyā
ā pratyāhāra
“Withdrawing the senses” requires that we disengage them from their objects, so that they may follow the form of the mind's true nature instead
Pratyāhāra is the fifth of the eight limbs of yoga; it follows prāāyāma and is the last topic in Chapter 2 of the Yoga Sūtra. It precedes the discussion of the “inner limbs” (dhāra
ā, dhyāna and samādhi) that deal with the stages of meditation and which open Chapter 3. Pratyāhāra is a state of withdrawing the senses so that we are no longer distracted by external perceptions inconsistent with our direction of focus. When the focus is deeply inwards it may become temporarily unaware of external sensory events. The senses are described “as if following the form of the mind,” which, in the highest state of nirodha, is very clear and still.
In his commentary, Vyāsa uses a beautiful image to describe the senses in pratyāhāra: they are like bees who follow, and rest with, the queen bee. The mind is the queen bee and the senses are her faithful servants who become still when their mistress is still. When the senses are at the service of the mind, we are able to choose where to “place” them, rather than being controlled by them.
The state of the senses is an enduring topic of discussion throughout the Indian spiritual tradition. When uncontrolled they are like unruly horses that tug us this way and that, dragging the mind along with them. They therefore have to be restrained and taught who is boss. In Sanskrit the senses are called indriya, which indicates that they are (ideally) at the service of Indra, the Lord of the Gods. In this context, our “Indra” is puru
a, the transcendental Self. Our senses and mind1 are thus in the service of purua; the senses present us with experiences and the mind digests them.
According to the Yoga Sūtra, pratyāhāra is not a practice, but rather a state arising from our meditative focus. Prā
āyāma is the primary means to cultivate this interiorized state. Investigating the nature of the senses, paying them conscious attention and using techniques that actively engage the senses are important means to engaging the mind, but are not technically pratyāhāra. However, they are very useful and are certainly part of the rich tapestry of yoga practice.
The power of the senses has been acknowledged throughout the history of yoga. They are our interface to the world, the very means by which we experience reality. No wonder the senses and objects of sensual experience have such power over us.
Anything that can be experienced through the senses is termed vi
aya. This word is used for any object of the senses and often refers to an area of focus in meditation. The word viaya may be derived from the root si, meaning “to bind,” and thus a viaya is any object that in some sense binds us through the senses. In meditation, where we deliberately use a chosen direction of focus, this property can be useful. However, in daily life this “binding” action of sensory objects can be unconscious and often unhelpful. A single chocolate can turn into half a dozen before you know it!
We have already met the kleśa—and rāga (desire) and dvea (aversion) in particular. Although desire and aversion are impulses in the mind, they relate to sensory experiences of the past. It is through our senses that our desires and fears are founded, and through them also that they can be subsequently fulfilled or thwarted. Although du
kha (suffering) is a psychological phenomenon, the senses are almost always implicated, like accessories in a crime.
So, what is wrong with sensual experience? It is, after all, an important part of being human. The answer from this perspective is that nothing is wrong: it is the very thing that allows us to enjoy the richness of life. However, it is problematic when the senses lead us towards behaviors that have negative consequences, cause us suffering (even if not immediately) and distract us from, or undermine, what we are seeking to achieve. In Chapter 6 we met the antarāya of avirati, an overindulgence of the senses which is either an over-reliance on sensory stimulation or a situation where sensual experience pulls us away from our focus.
In the Upani
ads there are a number of passages where the senses and vital energies of the body are described as deva, deities. In the Vedic tradition, the lord of the various deities is Indra, so the indriya (senses) are the powers (deva) that are at the service of Indra. In yoga there are ten, or sometimes eleven, indriya. The first five, the jñāna indriya (the senses of knowing—jñāna), are the five senses with which we are all familiar (hearing, touching, seeing, tasting and smelling). We could think of these as our “inputs,” the ways that we receive the world. The second five are our “outputs,” the way we act on the world, and are known as karma indriya (the senses of action—karma). They are the “organs” of speech, grasping, movement, procreation and excretion. Although these are also commonly translated as “senses,” it is better to think of the karma indriya as the “instruments of action”—the instruments by which we have an impact on the world around us. We project speech, we hold and manipulate things, we move about, we create children and we excrete, leaving various deposits! Sometimes the mind, or at least the aspect of the mind which coordinates and reasons (manas), is included as an eleventh instrument.
We are left with the question of who, or what, is the Indra which the indriya should serve. Who is the lord of our domain? The conventional answer is the mind, as it is the mind that decides where we will focus when we consciously direct the senses. However, in the philosophy of yoga, it is purua that is the ultimate source of consciousness and thus we should consider Indra here to refer to purua. The indriya (and the mind) are ultimately at the service of the Self (purua), to present experience for a journey of awakening. From a practical point of view, however, we can say that the senses should be at the service of the mind, and the mind is then in the service of the Self. We must be masters of our senses rather than their slaves.
In the Ka
ha Upaniad we find a very famous metaphor of the chariot driven by the charioteer and carrying a warrior into battle. The horses are the senses (indriya), the reins are the mind (manas), the charioteer is the discerning faculty of the mind (buddhi), and the warrior is the Self (purua). If uncontrolled, the horses pull against each other and take the chariot along a random path, dragging the reins with them. But if the charioteer is strong and accomplished, he uses the reins to control the horses so that they pull together and take the chariot in the desired direction. The warrior ultimately directs the charioteer to steer their course. In a similar way, the Self can be taken on a wild uncontrolled ride through life, or, if everything is at its service, the journey of life can be directed where it needs to go.
Yoga teaches the cultivation of awareness of all aspects of our lives. This requires us to become increasingly conscious of how we function, and this naturally includes the senses. We spend much of our lives on autopilot, often preoccupied with thoughts of one thing while doing another. Although our senses are functioning at some level all the time, we are unaware of much of what is being presented to us and, indeed, the effect it has upon us. We are masters of filtering out unwanted familiar sensory input. City dwellers sleep soundly next to busy roads. Ironically when visiting the quiet of the country, they may be disturbed by the early morning cockerel that their country hosts no longer even “hear.” This automatic pilot and filtering function allows us to focus on what is essential, but it comes at a price: it can deaden us to the richness that our sensory life has to offer.
There is a well-known mindfulness exercise in which participants are invited to eat a raisin.2 They pretend to have arrived from another planet where there are no raisins, and encounter it for the first time. They take time to examine and feel the raisin's shape and texture, and then eat it as consciously as possible, giving time to feel it in their mouths and allowing its flavor to unfold and fully develop. Taking time to really notice what our senses come into contact with can open up a whole new panorama of sensual experience that we normally miss. This is a simple way to bring more color and joy into many aspects of our lives, while also creating conditions where we are focused and fully present.
When we focus on our sensory experiences they can have a magnetic effect on our minds. Unexpected stimuli, such as a sudden noise, can pull us sharply away from our point of focus and easily create distraction and disturbance. However, we can also use the pull of the senses consciously in our practice to help us engage. In fact, using the senses on all levels has been a strong feature of many Indian rituals and meditative practices: chanting, bells and drums feed the ears, incense feeds the sense of smell, elaborate forms and symbols (whether real or visualized) feed our eyes, and ritual gestures feed our sense of touch.
In our regular āsana practice, the more we cultivate our felt sense, as we move into, hold or move out of postures, the more deeply engaged we become. The use of bhāvana (specific feelings or ideas to cultivate, imagine and feel) employs this very process where we combine something imagined with something real that can be “felt.” We deliberately cultivate a two-way interaction between the mind and the senses in order to deepen and refresh our experiences.
In this particular tradition, we often use sound as a means to enhance the power of an āsana. Simple sounds are often best, such as a sustained ā sound in, for example, a standing forward bend. The sound directly engages the senses of hearing and feeling (we feel the vibration as well as hear it), and we cannot help but be drawn into the whole experience. It also requires us to commit something of ourselves in a way that doing the posture silently may not require, and it touches us emotionally in a manner that can be quite unexpected. After all, on the surface, bending forwards making the sound ā is nothing profound. But in reality, directly engaging the senses through both making and receiving sound can touch us deeply. It can act as a shortcut to the very core of our being.
We have seen how the senses can lead us astray. We have also seen how investigating the senses and using them to support our engagement in practice can be a very beneficial journey. However, as our practice becomes more inwards in focus there is more of a need to temper the senses because they can easily pull us outwards once again. The Bhagavad Gītā famously advises the yogin to withdraw the senses as a tortoise withdraws its limbs.3
Generally, unless we are consciously using the senses as a support (e.g., sound in āsana), we seek to minimise the distractions that the senses might cause. Ideally, the space where we practice should be clear, uncluttered and relatively quiet. On a very practical level, we advise that the eyes are kept closed except when sight is useful for maintaining balance. Similarly, we advise new group-class students to try to avoid looking around the room and becoming distracted by their fellow students, to avoid talking and to remain as self-contained as possible, even if there are outside distractions. Once students know basically what they are doing, we tend to instruct with minimal demonstration. We want them to inhabit their own practice with as little outside sensory input as possible.
Patañjali lists pratyāhāra, the withdrawal of the senses, as the fifth of the eight limbs of yoga. It is the last of the “outer” limbs, and prior to the three “inner” limbs, which deal with the process of meditation and the mind itself. If we consider the eight limbs as ordered from outer to inner, pratyāhāra marks the interface between the external world of relationships, body and breath, to the inner world of the mind. Whereas the activity of the senses usually takes our attention outwards, through pratyāhāra, our attention is contained within, opening the door to inner experience.
The word pratyāhāra derives from the root h
meaning “to withdraw” or “lead away,” with the prefixes prati and ā indicating the opposite to their usual direction of travel (so inwards, rather than outwards). Alternatively, the word may be seen as comprising prati + āhāra, where āhāra is food, and therefore pratyāhāra is where the senses are led away from their usual “food”—the world and its objects that can be “eaten” by the senses.
Pratyāhāra is not a state that is required or even recommended during daily life. It is desirable only during the meditative journey where we are seeking to direct the mind inwards and we wish to prevent the mind's usual tendency to follow the senses and their outward connections. This is important to appreciate, lest we consider the senses as enemies to be permanently overcome. They have an essential role in allowing us to navigate, experience and act in the world.
Pratyāhāra is sometimes described as the forgotten practice in yoga and students ask if there are specific practices for pratyāhāra. It is misleading to say that there are pratyāhāra practices as such. The key to pratyāhāra is to understand that in a state when the mind is directed inwards (or is very still), the senses follow the mind, and so pratyāhāra is a consequence of the state of the mind. As we have seen, Vyāsa reinforces this with the image of the bees (the senses) following their queen (the mind) so that when the queen rests, they rest also and thus disengage from their usual objects. When the mind withdraws from its normal activity, the senses follow and “other means for mastery of the senses are unnecessary.”4 As Desikachar puts it, “it is very difficult to find a technique for the practice of pratyāhāra itself, because the more we use the senses the more they focus on their objects. All we can do is create a condition in which the senses lose their habitual significance and only help the mind in the state of dhyāna.”5
This situation would apparently put pratyāhāra as a consequence of the limbs that follow it (dhāra
ā, dhyāna and samādhi). This is true in some sense, and is why we must be careful not to see the eight limbs as simply a linear order of practices. However, as we have stated, the tradition maintains that the practice that really cultivates the inner focus encouraging the state of pratyāhāra is, in fact, its preceding limb, prā
āyāma. Prāāyāma has a special role in pacifying the habitually turbulent nature of the mind, and thereby stabilizes the senses.
The final sūtra of the second chapter describes the fruit of pratyāhāra: the highest state of pratyāhāra, which gives complete control of the senses. Vyāsa reaffirms that through one-pointedness of mind, the senses naturally disconnect from their objects and this indeed is pratyāhāra. It is interesting that Vyāsa also lists a series of other understandings of pratyāhāra that he emphatically refutes, in the context of the aā
ga yoga system at least. These alternative views define pratyāhāra as follows:
All of these seem sensible to varying degrees, but what is important to appreciate here is the specific technical meaning given to pratyāhāra in the Yoga Sūtra: where the mind is stable and internally focused, resulting in the withdrawal of the senses from external stimuli. As Vyāsa also states, in such a situation no other means for guarding the senses are necessary, as the senses are following their true master. Rather than applying external constraints or disciplines, the activity of the senses has been temporarily suspended at source.
Sādhana: Minimizing distractions, engaging the senses, resting the senses
Patañjali's definition of pratyāhāra as a state arising from a profound one-pointedness of mind makes it potentially difficult to achieve. In practice, we are often more concerned with the habitual functioning of the senses and their role in directing the mind. There are some simple practical things that we do to either minimise their distracting influences, or alternatively to engage the senses positively.
The simplest example of reducing sensory distraction is to close the eyes during the practice when it is appropriate. This acknowledges the strong pull of visual stimuli that draw us out into the world and away from ourselves. In āsana we use a simple rule of thumb: eyes open for standing, and closed for everything else. In standing postures the eyes are useful for maintaining balance, but even in standing, for the simplest of movements where balance is not important, closing the eyes can be beneficial. This can transform the practice for new students: as soon as the eyes are closed for a couple of postures, a new inner focus and calm arise.
In teaching group classes, the most dramatic example of the difference between eyes open and closed is often in a seated twist (fig 14.1) where the spine is rotated and the head turned as if looking over one shoulder.
Because of the turning of the head, new students commonly keep their eyes open and gaze over their shoulder to the edges of the room. The posture remains a very outer experience and this is often marked by distraction and fidgeting when the posture is completed. The seated twist is essentially an inner, meditative posture where the attention is held within, in the central axis between the head and sacrum. If the posture is initiated, maintained and completed with eyes closed, this inner focus is supported and the effect on the student is noticeably different. This is just one example, but the principle holds in many postures, particularly where they lend themselves to less movement and longer periods of stay.
In some traditions, by contrast, the visual sense is actively engaged during āsana (and sometimes prāāyāma) through deliberate “gazing” at key points in the body. By binding the visual sense to a single point, the focus of the mind is supported. In this approach, although we don't tend to use gazing so frequently, we often use sound as a deliberate means to engage the senses. As we have already discussed, bending forwards while making a simple sound for the duration of the movement can be very useful on many levels. It is an obvious means to encourage a long and full exhale (you have to exhale to make the sound), but it is also a very sensual experience that engages the voice, hearing and feeling as we experience the vibrations in our body. It also requires a level of engagement and commitment in a way that is quite different from breathing alone. We can be both engaged strongly through the senses and touched deeply, and using sound can be an emotional experience for many students.
Finally, there are some techniques that directly attempt to reduce the external sensory inputs and encourage us to reorientate internally. An example of this would be śamukhī mudrā where the “gateways” into the head are symbolically closed:
The elbows are held at shoulder height and the posture is maintained for a minute or so. This can lead to tension in the shoulders and neck, and so we need to slowly develop our capacity for comfortably staying in the posture over a period of time. The experience is interesting in that it is very interiorizing, leaving the practitioner feeling somehow more centerd and sensually rested. It also brings a freshness to the senses, and particularly to the sense of hearing. Krishnamacharya felt that this was a very useful practice.6
For most of us, the vastly dominant sense is that of sight, since the majority of our understanding of the world comes from what we can see. A modified version of śamukhī mudrā which addresses only the eyes is the technique of palming. Here, the heel of the hand rests lightly at the base of the eye socket, and the fingers are up over the hairline. The eyes themselves are closed and rest in the middle of the palm. This can be done very effectively in both seated and lying positions and has the added benefit that it does not build up tension in the neck and shoulders in the same way. It is also easy to practice dynamically, or even asymmetrically where we cover first one eye, and then the other.
