PRATYAHARA ~ Awareness of the Senses | The Fifth Limb | The WISDOM podcast | S3 E65

<p></p> <p> </p> <p style="text-align:center;">PRATYAHARA ~ Awareness of the Senses ~ </p> <p style="text-align:center;">The Fifth Limb of The Yoga Sutras</p> <p style="text-align:center;">The WISDOM podcast  Season 3  Episode 65</p> <p style="text-align:center;"> </p> <p style="text-align:center;">~ See without the <a href='https://yogastudies.org/sanskrit/indriya/'>senses</a> distracting or pulling the <a href='https://yogastudies.org/sanskrit/manas/'>mind</a>,  ~</p> <p style="text-align:center;">💜</p> <p style="text-align:center;"> </p> <p>*Pratyahara is the fifth limb of yoga in the Ashtanga yoga system—also called the eight-limbed path of the yoga sutras—and it serves as a foundation for the practice of <a href='https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-meditate'>meditation</a>. </p> <p> </p> <p>Through meditation, you can better understand how to hone your awareness, connect to the present moment, and find inner peace or calm. </p> <p> </p> <p>In the practice of pratyahara you draw your mind inward ~ you release the urge to immediately react to incoming sensation. You approach stilling the mind by shifting the act of sensing from an external to an internal orientation. </p> <p> </p> <p>Through the practice of pratyahara, you develop concentrative powers that could be called supra ~ above sensory because the act of seeing or feeling becomes heightened to a tremendous degree. It is as though you have new eyes and ears, new senses. You perceive colour more vividly and enjoy your food more, and as you truly wake your senses, you awaken to and value the inner psychological and spiritual dimensions that are the substance and source of what you feel, see, taste, smell and hear.</p> <p> </p> <p>Your attention in the practice of pratyahara is directed inwards, being totally aware of where the impulse to breathe in and breathe out arises. The total awareness of this itself is pratyahara – or drawing one’s attention into and within oneself. </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p>I liken this to what I call a state of bliss. And