ahara and PratyAhAra

What is food?

Last week, we discussed Yama and Niyama.

Perhaps, now would be a good time to explore ‘ahara’ and ‘PratyAhAra’.

I made this visual a few moons ago and made a crucial change in the design after getting vital feedback from my Yoga mentor.

What is ahAra?

The easiest, and equally the most confusing English translation is food. ahAra is not just the food one consumes. It is the contents of what the senses feed on. And living in an age of information overload, in an environment with bottomless feeds, there has never been a more challenging environment to practice pratyAhAra -the practice of withdrawing our senses as a tortoise would do when it pulls back its limbs and practices yoga inside its shell.

What is pratyAhAra?

Withdrawal of the senses so that we discover ‘indriya jayam’ (victory over senses) and see our conditioned feeding of our senses. Accomplishing this is difficult and it requires preparatory work in terms of setting boundaries (yama and niyama), before we practice Asana and prANAyama.

pratyaAhAra is an experiment to discover that I am the root cause of my suffering. When that realization is visceral, pratyAhara unfolds.

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