5th Limb · Bahiraṅga · the bridge
The Turning Inward — where the senses stop reaching outward.
Root: prati (against, back) + āhāra (intake, that which is taken in — the same root as “food”) — “drawing the intake backward.” One-line: the turning inward.
What is Pratyāhāra
The fifth limb — the hinge
The last of the five bahiraṅga limbs, and structurally the hinge of the whole system. Everything up to this point has concerned the practitioner's relationship to the outer world — conduct, posture, breath. Pratyāhāra is where that orientation turns: the senses stop reaching for their objects and start, instead, to follow the mind inward.
It doesn't yet arrive anywhere — Dhāraṇā, Dhyāna, and Samādhi still lie ahead — but it's the moment the direction of travel changes.
In the Ashtanga Tradition
A consequence of absorption
Consistent with how this lineage treats most of the subtler limbs, pratyāhāra isn't taught as an isolated technique. It's described as something that happens as a consequence of full absorption in breath, bandha, and dṛṣṭi — when those three are genuinely occupying attention, the pull of a phone buzzing outside the room, or a neighbour's practice, simply has less to grab onto.
Practising It
Somewhere for the eyes to rest
On the mat, dṛṣṭi — the fixed gaze point specific to each posture — is pratyāhāra in its most literal, trainable form: the eyes are given somewhere to rest so they stop wandering to whoever's next to you. Off the mat, it's the small, repeatable choice not to follow the reflexive reach for a phone the instant a thought or notification arrives.