There’s one book that has remained on my nightstand for a year and a half, since yoga found me.
It’s my copy of Rolf Gates’ Meditations from the Mat. It’s dog-eared, underlined, highlighted, scribbled on with all different colored ink. I’ve memorized passages, I’ve started it over from the beginning at least a dozen times, I’ve marked it up with sticky notes and I have yet to reach the end.
Sometimes I look at it with guilt; when I haven’t opened it in a while, I look at it like the cough syrup I know will make me feel better, but I can’t force it down. Sometimes I look at it like a lifeline, and I read the words over and over again. I write his sentences in my journal, I take them with me to my yoga classes.
Last week, I opened it after a long time away. And I felt very far away. There was a time when my life, my yoga practice, was in line with what Rolf Gates wrote about in his book. But I feel distant from it now, somehow.
It’s my copy of Rolf Gates’ Meditations from the Mat. It’s dog-eared, underlined, highlighted, scribbled on with all different colored ink. I’ve memorized passages, I’ve started it over from the beginning at least a dozen times, I’ve marked it up with sticky notes and I have yet to reach the end.
Sometimes I look at it with guilt; when I haven’t opened it in a while, I look at it like the cough syrup I know will make me feel better, but I can’t force it down. Sometimes I look at it like a lifeline, and I read the words over and over again. I write his sentences in my journal, I take them with me to my yoga classes.
Last week, I opened it after a long time away. And I felt very far away. There was a time when my life, my yoga practice, was in line with what Rolf Gates wrote about in his book. But I feel distant from it now, somehow.
So I’m diving back in, this time to study Pantajali’s Eight Limbs of Yoga. We barely scratched the surface of these during my teacher training, and I know it’s up to me to learn more about them, and find a way to incorporate them into my life. That’s the goal, anyway.
PSA: There’s more to yoga than rolling out your mat and getting into downward facing dog. The eight limbs of yoga cover all of the “more”, starting with the first limb, yama. There are five of those, the first of which is ahimsa.
Rolf Gates says the Sanskrit word ahimsa means nonharming. It means we should embrace nonviolence in everything we do, think or say.
Ahimsa asks us to abandon judgment, fear, harm, resistance, rejection, suffering, hatred, of ourselves and others It asks us, instead, to listen to the voice of lightness, he says.
Well, I had a hard time with that. It’s so simple and so complex at the same time. When I read his words, one question jumped out at me: What do I replace harmfulness with?
Because in my mind, you have to substitute one for another. The prefix “non” didn’t mean anything to me. I wanted to know – what’s the opposite of harmfulness?
I then turned to the Yoga Sutras, where ahimsa, and the rest of the yamas, first appeared. In the Sri Swama Satchidananda translation of The Yoga Sutras, Patanjali says when one establishes nonviolence, all hostility, all pain, disappears.
Then I turned to the internet, to Mind Body Green and to Reddit, and I ran into a whole deeper meaning of ahimsa. According to the internet, practicing ahimsa can mean not eating meat. It can mean saving the planet by riding a bike instead of driving a car. It can mean literally not hurting a fly.
From Mind Body Green, I learned ahimsa can mean anything that doesn’t serve you, that doesn’t positively support you in a non-violent way. That, obviously, is open to interpretation, like much of the yogic philosophy.
“The bottom line is that one needs to clearly define their own understanding of what ahimsa is and how it applies to their own lives,” Author Daniel Scott says in the article.
So I started the week simply observing the harmful thoughts, words and actions I indulged in.
I got irritated at drivers. I snapped at friends. I convinced myself I wasn’t wanted. I believed I was purposely being ignored. I got angry at work. I allowed myself to be treated badly by someone I didn’t know. I didn’t stand up for myself. I didn’t speak my mind. I cursed at the snow that kept me in all weekend. I got mad at myself for something outside of my control. I struggled to find motivation. I made myself feel guilty. I was jealous. I didn’t like myself. I indulged. I assumed things. I created negative scenarios in my head. I punished myself.
Every day this week, as I observed the negative thoughts take over my mind, I learned more about ahimsa. I learned the opposite of harmfulness is unconditional love, true compassion.
My understanding is that it doesn’t mean I need to banish all negative thoughts – it means I need to greet those negative thoughts consciously, and let them go. I need to recognize when I am harming myself or others, watch it come to awareness, and then watch it leave. I’m not replacing the negativity, the harmfulness, with something else. I’m simply letting it drift away instead of allowing it to encompass me.
I learned I have a lot to learn, and a long way to go. Gandhi spent his entire life practicing ahimsa, and even he said he never mastered it. It's a lifelong practice, just like all of yoga.
So, next time a harmful thought, word or action appears before you, simply observe it. Observe how it makes you feel. Observe your reaction to it. Observe others’ reactions to it. Observe it, and see if, instead of acting on it, allowing it to become you, you simply acknowledge it, and let it go. I’ll do the same.