Concept
Pratyahara
Pratyahara is interiorization, or sensory withdrawal: attention turning inward from the senses until body and breath drop from awareness. Taught as the crux of meditation, required before dharana, dhyana and samadhi, it is a gradual dimmer-switch process begun through HRV resonance and equated with the freeze response.
Start with these
The Crux of Yogic Meditation - Yogi Explain
Shows why interiorization is the turning point that the rest of meditation depends on, reached through HRV resonance into the freeze response.
01:38Watch from here
Pratyahara Myths of Sensory Withdrawal
Walks through the route from stretching, resonant breathing and sitting still into the freeze response, and the gradual signs that withdrawal is under way.
00:47Watch from here
The Sliding Scale of Realization
Lays out the progression as a sliding scale, from HRV resonance through the Four Proofs, breath states and freeze response to complete interiorization.
02:19Watch from hereWhere it comes up
01:38“None of this really begins until I have interiorization, pratyahara.”00:47“As we are meditating, as we go deep into meditation, there is a natural process of sensory withdrawal, and the yogis call this pratyahara.”01:05“This is very, very deep, because the freeze response is pratyahara.”02:19“The Sanskrit word for this is pratyahara, and so what we're talking about is that usually our whole sense of being is focused outward.”04:25“So there's this process in yoga of interiorization, and in this process, the body disappears.”00:52“First of all, the thing about pratyahara is it's a process.”00:01“I want to talk again about pratyahara and heart rate variability because this is the crux of the issue.”14:00“So breath states equal heart rate variability, which equals pratyahara.”07:34“But let's understand that interiorization only happens when you can no longer sense your body, when you can no longer sense your breath.”06:16“Now you can have you can have spiritual experiences without pratyahara, and and that's what most people are after.”08:57“When Patanjali is talking about pratyahara, interiorization, how does that happen?”14:29“Pratyahara, freeze response, same thing.”07:57“So you read the Yoga Sutras, and what does Patanjali tell us about pratyahara?”09:10“That pratyahara. I am withdrawing my attention from the outward world.”07:02“So the internal mapping that the brain does of the body is interrupted by the freeze response.”04:49“So that's another experience of this internal state of interiorization. Which is pratyahara.”17:58“So pratyahara brings us back into the brain, into the truth, which is the spiritual eye.”10:42“So we talk a lot about pratyahara, interoception.”04:54“It's the energy reverting back through the nerves, and as it does, it creates a sensation.”11:26“That list will transfer you all the way into pratyahara, and that my friend is an extremely extremely deep place.”03:19“Now all these are beautiful, wonderful, deep experiences, but pratyahara is deeper than all of those, and that's important to understand.”06:00“Now, once we've reached pratyahara and we're in the spine, that means there's no body consciousness, no breath, no body, no sensations of the world.”01:10“This is also why it's so important to understand and to talk about what pratyahara really is, so we don't get confused.”04:49“How do I how do I experience pratyahara?”01:22“If you're not experiencing pratyahara at this moment, then you you're not ready at this moment to experience samyama.”02:55“That means the five senses and our awareness of the body and the breath are gone, and that is pratyahara.”03:36“This is what the yogis are using for interiorization, pratyahara.”09:07“The freeze response will culminate in clarity, pratyahara, that interiorization of the freeze response.”02:44“Pratyahara.”02:32“If I'm not doing that, I'm not following Patanjali, because the next thing that will arise is this interiorization, pratyahara.”11:20“When Patanjali talks about sense withdrawal, that is the freeze response.”06:02“It is the freeze response which creates the sense withdrawal in the yogi pratyahara.”13:37“You are on your way to the freeze response, and that is what creates pratyahara.”04:10“That is pratyahara.”19:33“So I was getting really, really deep into sense withdrawal through the freeze response, and I kept getting this sensation as if I was the body had dimmed out completely from my awareness.”25:35“We had the freeze response, that is sense withdrawal.”04:20“And so with that in mind, let's look at these numbers, and they are 12 kriyas, 12 breaths equals pratyahara or interiorization.”1:01:13“So there's a state which yogis know about, which is called pratyahara, and that just means interiorization.”00:13“Through practicing pratyahara, I had an intuition”07:24“It is not a energy technique that leads to pratyahara necessarily.”