Pratyahara

Pratyahara is the fifth element of Patanjali's Ashtanga Yoga, and it means the "withdrawal of the senses". Ordinarily our five senses — sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch — are drawn constantly outward towards the objects of the world, and the mind follows them. In Pratyahara the practitioner deliberately withdraws the five senses from these external objects, turning awareness inward instead.

Pratyahara holds a special place in the path. The first four limbs — Yama, Niyama, Asana and Pranayama — discipline a person's conduct, body and breath and are directed outward; the last three — Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi — are concerned wholly with the mind. Pratyahara is the bridge between the two: having steadied the body and the breath, the practitioner now draws the senses in, and so crosses over from outward preparation to the inner practice of concentration.

Control of the senses in this way is necessary before the mind can be focused. As long as the senses remain open and active, the mind is continually distracted and cannot settle. By withdrawing the senses, Pratyahara removes the very source of distraction and gathers the mind's energy inward — making the concentration of the next limb possible. (In the six-branch yoga of the Buddhist Kalachakra tradition, Pratyahara similarly refers to withdrawing the senses from external objects, to be replaced by inner, mentally-created perceptions.)

A concrete way to understand Pratyahara

A simple example helps: a person deep in a book on a noisy bus does not really "hear" the noise around them — their senses are technically active, but attention has withdrawn from them. Pratyahara trains this same withdrawal deliberately and at will, rather than as an accident of absorption, so a practitioner can turn inward whenever they choose, regardless of what is happening in the environment.

Why it is difficult and how it is cultivated …