aligning with yoga's principles: the yamas
Practices for a new year. Gain comfort in your own skin and build precious integrity.
As we bring in this new year, let’s pay attention for a moment here to yoga basics, beginning with the yamas — the disciplines, the injunctions for how to move toward greater inner integrity as the foundation for yoga practice
Right after Patanjalis description of what it takes to practice yoga he begins to parse out how in the world you might do this thing. He is presenting his system — the eight limbs of yoga. The yamas and niyamas are the first and second of the eight limbs.
The yamas and niyamas are undeniably the foundations of yoga practice. They set the tone for the challenges that are to come.
They speak to developing ethical relationships and behavior with self, others, our environment, and the very processes of living. They encapsulate yoga's guidelines about what is useful and life supportive behavior and what is not. Wise practitioners return to them over and over again to support a lifetime of inquiry.
The five yamas and five niyamas highlight the need to take personal responsibility for who we are, what we do, and how we do it.
Yamas are principles directed at restraining and reining in some of the most destructive ways we wreak havoc in our lives, hurting ourselves, others, and creating more suffering and confusion for everyone in the bargain. The yamas outline five main categories of the most serious behaviors to avoid. They warn us against being violent and harmful in our actions. They propose we be truthful and not take what is not ours. They ask us not to waste our vital energy and to uncover and release our own greed, jealousy, and materialism.
Niyamas are directed toward the positive actions that we can, and must take. In doing away with the most flagrant of negative patterns addressed by the yamas, the niyamas build the positive principles that when enhanced, support increasing calm, comfort, and joy for the practitioner. What supports the positive direction of the practitioner also encourages a more peaceful atmosphere in the environment.
If there is any such thing as “alignment” in yoga the yamas and the niyamas are it. Align with the ethical and moral principles of integrity outlined here for the sake of building an integrated and principled life that supports yoga's purpose of deepening awareness.
For more background, check in with the post below as well.
THE YAMAS
The yamas are actually extraordinarily challenging. Coming first as they do in the eight limbs, the implication is, "Okay, you really want to gain clarity of mind? First of all you are going to need to address your behavior."
The yamas are foundational guidelines for choosing to engage an ethical life. When it comes down to it, many of our not-so-great ways of being arise from inner discomfort, a place of insecurity, fear, self-protection, and the like. What are we protecting? Good question. We do need to clarify what does and does not need protecting. Some of our fears are legitimate and healthy. They need to remain, while others have out lived their usefulness and might be better dismantled.
The yamas contain and limit some of our most destructive behaviors. They apply to our inner and outer worlds; how we relate to ourselves, others, and the world at large. Learning to incorporate them necessarily involves self-reflection and usually a good deal of self-restraint. As we practice them they become increasingly natural and easy to incorporate into our active lives. These are goals and they are also process. How do we act from these principles in all we do. How do we embody the yamas? How do they become second nature?
One of the keys to moving toward mastery of these principles is to own them — to embody them — rather than simply trying to stop yourself from acting negatively. Might it be possible to cultivate and find these qualities within? What is the source of acting with kindness, honesty and love? How do we make that our first and automatic choice? Is there an inner place that is inherently caring, generous, grateful, and fair?
Living with an active inquiry into the yamas continues to reveal deeper meaning. Learning to meet each layer with equanimity and grace we say, "Okay yes, and what else is offered here? Is there an even deeper understanding of this principle? When taken to heart and explored with curiosity and persistence we find the yamas to be keys for taming the self-protective armor of an insecure ego.
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There are five yamas.
1. Cultivate kindness — ahimsa (non-violence)
2. Embody honesty — satyam (truthfulness)
3. Claim only what is yours — asteya (don't steal or misappropriate)
4. Choose love — brahmacharya (action that perpetuates recognizing a larger truth)
5. Cultivate altruism— aparigraha (non-covetousness, freedom from greed and avarice)
Questions posed by the yamas:
Do I take full responsibility for my actions?
Do I treat myself with respect?
Do I perceive accurately in my relationships with others?
How do those perceptions inform my actions?
What are the effects of my actions?
Do my actions create more or less harmony?
How do I feel when I secretly take what is not mine?
How can I find more ease and truthfulness inside?
The yamas invite us into an ongoing journey and continually call upon us to go deeper. Each step is a revelation. Each revelation brings a wave of gratitude and release. Not to be taken lightly, the Yamas are powerful tools, prompts, to lead us in the path toward clarity of consciousness and inner peace.
THE YAMAS
1. ahimsa: non-violence, non-injury, harmlessness
The first of the yamas, ahimsa forms a solid foundation for practice. Ahimsa sets the conditions for wise inquiry. First, do no harm. Ahimsa implores us not to damage, hurt, or ignore that which is precious. Non-violence is present in the ways we do not harm and it is also present in the ways we actively protect others from harm.
Questions posed by ahimsa:
What is violence?
What are layers of violence?
Do I participate in acts of violence or harming every day?
Do I hurt myself? How often do I think ill of someone?
Might I be able to learn to cease self-harming? What would that entail?
Am I kind? Does someone need to deserve my kindness, or are they always deserving?
What are the limits of my kindness?
2. satyam: truthfulness, honesty
Satyam speaks to truthfulness in thought, word, and deed. It's a high order. It takes willingness to be honest with oneself to even begin a serious journey into self recognition and eventual freedom.
In some situations, knowing or speaking the truth is easy, and yet we all have ways we are dishonest with ourselves, let alone others. Often our willingness to be truthful is limited by emotions or rigid thought patterns that we may not even be aware of.
When we are less than truthful we create turbulence in our minds. Dishonesty sets the conditions for experiencing waves of guilt and discomfort. We feel bad, we think about what we should have done, what we shouldn't have said, etc. We experience disturbance and agitation in our minds (vrittis).
Satyam has the power to guide us through our thoughts and feelings toward the more potent truth of calm underneath the agitation. As we learn to live in more truthfulness, our minds become less preoccupied with uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. Satyam involves persistent inquiry into truthfulness, honesty, and acting in accordance with that principle.
Questions posed by satyam:
What is truthfulness?
Am I honest with myself?
How honest am I in my relationships?
Will my truthful expression hurt someone else?
Does truthfulness sometimes need to be tempered by kindness (ahimsa)?
How do I feel inside when I am less than truthful?
Do I present myself to be different than I am?
What can be gained by cultivating a deeper relationship with the truth?
3. asteya: non-stealing, non-misappropriation
Asteya—non-stealing and non-misappropriation—is basic respect for boundaries and differences. Do not take what is not yours.
Asteya necessitates abiding respect for the clear differentiation of what is yours, and what is not. Respect for others, their thoughts, their work, their time and energy, their property, belongings, and everything else that is theirs… not yours.
Respect for others is grounded in self-respect. We need to know who we are and take serious account of what we ourselves have. Why would we want something that is not our own? Learning about non-stealing and non-misappropriation ultimately leads to discriminative self-inquiry. It takes strength of character to accept one's self as enough without having to usurp the strength of others.
Questions posed by asteya.
Who am I? Who am I not?
What is mine and what is not mine?
Do I steal from others in more ways than I think?
Do I claim ideas that are not my own for the purpose of self aggrandizement?
Might I actually be enough so I don't need to steal from others?
4. brahmacharya: to maintain and cherish one’s life-force, to always direct ones thought and actions in the direction of truth
Brahma is a Hindu name for the source of all, the realm, the holder of supreme knowledge. Acharya is the injunction to move in that specific direction. We are asked "to move in the direction of life's unified source".
Brahmacharya warns us not to squander our valuable life force in meaningless and unhelpful ways. We are asked to direct all our actions toward the ultimate experience of truth.
Traditionally defined as celibacy, brahmacharya certainly warns us against sexual excess. However, without making a direct judgment about pleasure itself, brahmacharya insists that all actions — including the most pleasurable — be explored from the perspective of one's overriding intention to witness everything with ultimate clarity.
Questions posed by brahmacharya:
What does it mean to "move in the direction of truth"?
In what ways do I squander my life-force?
Does experiencing pleasure derail my practice?
Is it possible to use pleasure wisely as a vehicle for practice?
5. aparigraha: non-covetousness, freedom from avarice, without greed, non-grasping
Aparigraha, like all the yamas, asks a lot of us. Covetousness, jealousy, avarice, and greed are deep and driving emotions. Under their sway we feel we are not enough and that having something more will help. Someone else has better stuff, better relationships, is smarter, all of it. We want more of everything, hoping to fill an inner void we carry.
These are hard feelings to hold with equanimity. Greed and jealousy feed one another. Look for all the little ways you want something more….and more…and more. Ask yourself, "Really…why? Why this insidious craving for more or something someone else has?”
Feeling inherently deficient, we can default to frantically trying to build up our egoic frames in order to shield ourselves from our inner sense of lacking. Something out there will relieve our pain. Something will solve this lurking emptiness. Of course, it never does. It just goes on and on. Best to see it for what it is, make space for something else to occupy your mind, and move on, “in the direction of truth”.
Questions posed by aparigraha:
Do I have enough?
What am I afraid of when I find myself grasping for more?
Where do I feel jealousy, greed, and craving in my body?
Is it alright to not have as much as someone I admire?
Is my self-respect contingent on my performance?
Why do I want that thing? What will it really do for me?
Do I have too many “things”? Am I willing to go through my closets and clear out half of what is in there?
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Bows to you too, Sean.