Far away, in the land of Pratyahara

And here I write again.
It has been a long while...Two months since my last post, since my last writing, since my last desire to be «public» or to share parts of my contemplations.
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I lost the desire to share widely, and social media became a friend I connect with only occasionally.
A new friend sneaked into my life without much warning: «Pratyahara», which has significantly reduced my appetite for external stimuli.
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I have struggled with the overuse of screens and with the virtual world, while I also realize the magnificence of those tools in helping us connect with each another and in raising awareness on important topics.

“Indigestion” is the word that comes to my mind and in my guts as I evoke this current phase of my life. Indigestion of news, of opinions, of polarities, of images, of yoga poses, of emotions, including my own, rather erratic, if I humbly confess.
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And right "here" is where “Pratyahara” has come to me.
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Traditionally, we would translate that Sanskrit word as the “withdrawal of senses”, but there is much more into this. As I deconstruct the meaning of this word (two words: prati - a preposition meaning away or against, and ahara- food, or anything taken into ourselves), we reach a notion around ingestion, the "weaning away from ahara". In other words, this seems to be about "gaining mastery over external influences”, without, however, disappearing from the world...well, except if we choose the path of a renunciate.

Indeed, a renunciate would simplify and restrict what he or she takes into his or her system to free the mind from stimulation and make it easier to go into a space of meditation. However, from a tantric perspective, which lineage is closer to the resonance of my heart, Pratyahara may be experienced slightly differently. This would be about minimizing undue or excessive stimulation, especially when felt out of alignment. This feels to me as rather “Refining” what I take into my system to deeply feel from a place of inner resonance. This is easing the practice of living and feeling mindfully what is HERE.
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Some would also refer to Pratyahara as a celebration of the "play of consciousness". But personally, even if I love immersing myself into the magic of words, I find that this can be a concept a bit difficult to experience. Instead: what if you could imagine allowing yourself to open to all that is around us, as Spirit or God if this resonates in your vocabulary or just as what IS, in my own vocabulary. Pratyahara is some kind of «technology» to help us find the space of still being where we can be in the world of the senses without being tangled up and bound by it as such. Does this definition resonates in you?
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That practice can take effort as we feel the pressure to be “seen” onto this virtual world, to do and act. But according to the texts, Pratyahara is actually a space where “action does not exist”, at least not a forceful one. The Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras would even refer to “There you will find your intellect filled with ultimate Truth.” Let’s see...hmm...
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I have to remember not to force myself into the felt sense of some of those "big words", as fancy as they sound, but if I can just hear and see without being too entangled into the stories, capturing unnecessarily my attention, that would be Pratyahara for me, allowing the noise, including my own, to appear as a far-off whisper.

Pratyahara seems to me as feeling more mindfully and deeply, absorbing what is, without the need to overdo, to have any opinion over anything, to enjoy a (temporary) reduction of the noise (or stimuli) to that helps us LISTEN to what is HERE and to what is NOW.

And this, this, my friends chéris, feels immensely healing.
This is healing me. Healing me right here and right now.
Healing the wound most of us holds: the wound to be seen, to be heard and recognized.
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Humbly, as I continue on my path to honor the felt sense of Life, in a body, in my desire to continue self-evolve into Awareness, I confess that this is not always joyful. Experiencing humanness in all its shades seems pretty far off, at least in my own experience, from some of the "new age" words we as yogis, love throwing here and there, and also far from positive thinking or the law of attraction type of stuff. Right in this place, this can feel truly RAW, in the resonance of Existence. This can be about deconstructing the layers of mental/societal conditioning, including the yoga ones and/or dogmas I see left and right everywhere, and that process of deconstruction can bring immense discomfort. In a way, we remove oneself from the known or habits as we dwell into a space that could feel like so far away from what we know or want to know/feel.
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It takes practice to truly become one-self. Not the version one wishes to feel or not the version our peers or teachers would, unconsciously, love us to become....And what if the Yogic path was only about the path of becoming a truly embodied human?
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Pratyahara hit me when I was ready, I suppose, as I close my eyes on distracting externalities. And right now, I enjoy opening my inner eyes and feeling my breath, in my body, as simple as it seems.

And right there, I find myself, increasingly into a space of what I call, for the lack of better words for now, the “less is more” space where silence can be found and where I can listen, observe, feel, and that's the place where I feel I will dwell for a bit more.

To this space of Silence, I bow.🙏🤍✨