The Pull of the Senses: On Aparigraha and Pratyahara
By Bibi Lorenzetti, Newburgh Yoga Shala
The word aparigraha is usually translated as “non-grasping” or “non-possessiveness,” and when I first encountered it, I understood it the way most of us do — as a reminder not to be greedy, not to accumulate more than we need. That understanding isn’t wrong. But over years of practice and study, I’ve come to feel it much more viscerally than that.
Pari means “all sides.” Graha means “to seize, to grab, to take.” And here’s the piece that always stops me: graha is also the Sanskrit word for planet. The planets — the grahas — exert gravitational pull on everything around them. Think about the tides and the moon. That’s not a metaphor. That’s physics. And in the same way, our sense organs are constantly pulling us outward, toward experience, toward contact, toward the next thing.
Aparigraha asks us to become aware of that pull — from all sides — and to choose.
It’s important to say: the pull itself is not something to be ashamed of or feared. The senses do what they are designed to do. An object appears, and a reaction arises — attraction, aversion, curiosity, desire. Opposites arise naturally in this encounter. What is pleasant and what is unpleasant, what brings joy and what brings sorrow: all of this is the ordinary texture of being alive and embodied.
The question the practice places before us is not “how do I stop feeling pulled?” but rather “who is it that notices the pull?”
This is the thread that runs between aparigraha and pratyahara. Pratyahara — the fifth limb of the eight-limbed path — is often described as “withdrawal of the senses.” But I think that translation can sound like a closing down, a shutting out. What it really points to is a turning inward: recognizing the pull when it arises and choosing, with will and clarity, to redirect that energy back toward the self.
Our practice is, at its heart, a training in this distinction. There is the experience — the sensation, the emotion, the thought, the desire — and there is that which observes the experience. The practice slowly, gradually, and not always comfortably, loosens our identification with the former so we can rest more and more stably in the latter.
Patanjali is surprisingly spare on the subject of postures. In the Yoga Sutras, he says what matters is that you are calm, that your mind is filled with ease, that your effort is steady, measured, and peaceful — and that within each posture, the mind moves toward expanded awareness. When that happens, he says, the inevitable ups and downs of life do not throw you from your center. Interestingly, there is not a single word about stretching.
What he describes instead is sthita prajna — steady wisdom. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna describes the person of steady wisdom as someone who is not shaken by suffering or overly excited by pleasure; who does not swing wildly between elation and despair; who is able to live with friendliness and compassion toward all beings. This is not emotional flatness. It is the quality of someone who knows who they are, at a level beneath the flux of experience.
This is why vinyasa — the linking of movement to breath — is so central to what we do here. When we tie the mind to the breath and the movement to the breath, we are not simply warming the body or building a sequence. We are practicing pratyahara in real time. Thich Nhat Hanh calls this mindfulness: the capacity to abide within ourselves even as the body moves, even as the world makes its constant demands.
The tools of our practice — asana, pranayama, drishti, bandha — are not ends in themselves. They are instruments of yoking. We bind ourselves, deliberately, to this breath, this moment, this body. And through that binding, something loosens. The grip of the senses. The automatic lurch toward what we want or away from what we don’t. The pull, from all sides, begins to ease.
This month I’ve also been sitting with the story of Durga, and I find it speaks directly to both of these teachings.
The story goes like this: the asuras — the forces of darkness and ego — have overpowered the devas and stolen their realm. The demon Mahishasura had received a boon that no male entity could kill him. He assumed, with the arrogance of ignorance, that no woman could possibly pose a threat.
And so from the concentrated wrath of the masculine trinity — Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma — a radiant light emerged and spread across all three worlds. From that light, Shakti arose in the form of Goddess Durga. She was given Shiva’s trident of sacred endings, Vishnu’s spinning discus that severs the perpetuation of ignorance, Bramha’s prayer beads, and holy water amongst other things. Armed and luminous, she went to battle — and won.
What strikes me about this story is the origin of that power. It was not born from scattered, reactive emotion. It was born from emotion that had been gathered, processed, and channeled through a clear and steady mind. The anger of the devas did not destroy them — it became radiant light. It became Durga.
This is the moral I keep returning to: when we are able to gather the power of our emotions and sense organs inwardly, and process them through the filter of a clear mind — rather than being swept outward by every gravitational pull — we access something extraordinary. A sharp, lucid intelligence. The ability to see the truth. The capacity to act with precision and in service of something greater than the immediate moment.
None of this happens all at once, or in a straight line. The path Patanjali describes is held by two principles working in tandem: abhyasa — consistent, devoted practice — and vairagya — the willingness to release attachment to the fruits of that practice. We show up, we practice, and we let go of needing it to look a particular way.
Viveka — discernment — is what develops as a result. The capacity to distinguish between the pull and the self who notices the pull. Between the experience and the one who is experiencing. Between what is transient and what, in us, is steady.
Can we feel the pull of the senses — in a difficult posture, in a moment of wanting to rush through, in the temptation to push or to collapse — and choose, instead, to rest within? Can we turn that gravitational energy into will? Can we be, even briefly, like Durga: not untouched by the battle, but not undone by it?
I look forward to practicing with you.