I almost entitled this post “children, children, go away” because I’ve been on vacation from my kids this past week. (My oldest and youngest were in MA with their grandparents and my middle one was in PA with the other grandparents.) I’m looking forward to seeing my kids again on Saturday but like any good vacation, I have definitely enjoyed the time away. My experience this week has reminded of the practice of pratyahara, the fifth limb of yoga’s eightfold path as described in Patanajli’s Yoga Sutras.
Pratyahara is often translated as withdrawal of the senses. Interestingly, the Sanskrit word prati means “towards” and ahara means “to bring near or fetch”. I understand this to mean that during the practice of pratyahara, we are separating from the input of our five senses – smell, taste, touch, hearing, sight – and as a result we are bringing near, fetching, the awareness and bringing it toward us. This part of yoga gives us a way to fix our awareness on the internal instead of being distracted by the information we receive from our senses. With pratyahara we move from the outer to the inner with yoga.
Imagine, or perhaps even remember, a time when you were still and quiet in savasana and you noticed some sound in the room but you thought to yourself, “I hear a sound. I don’t care about that sound and am not going to do anything about it.” Judith Hanson Lasater explains this experience as a part of pratyahara practice called ashinya. She refers to it as withdrawal of the senses plus lack of motivation.
This a brilliant place to visit. We teach our body and mind quite a bit by spending time in an pratyahara-induced ashinya space. It is a calm place where we have the opportunity to notice what is important before we react. It’s like being in a place where we can consciously and calmly choose the things that deserves our attention.
That sounds just like my vacation away from my kiddos, as I’m sure you can imagine. This past week, I had time to do what I wanted to do; I prioritized my own time and paid attention to the things that interested me. (Read: no playgrounds, Legos, Daniel Tiger or Minecraft!)
However, practicing pratyahara or getting access to this ashinya state is not an aim of yoga or life in the long term. We need to come back to the world. We receive important information about our surroundings and even about ourselves through our senses. We need to reopen to our senses in order to be in communication and relationship with people and things around us.
The skilled yogi can move in and out with her awareness, and pratyhara is the first step in practicing the movement inward. But just like a vacation from kids or a vacation from your regular work and routines, being a householder yogi in the modern world requires a return to the things we can experience through our five senses. And I think the most skilled yogi can apply what she discovers through pratyahara and ashinya to everyday life.
So if I would have called this post “children, children, go away,” I’d most definitely follow it up with the end of the rhyme and say “come back again another day.” For now, I’m going to enjoy my last few hours of kid-free pratyahara. Enjoy your vacation time this summer, friends!