The first five blog posts of the series I will do about the 8 limbs of yoga will be about the Yamas, which are moral behaviours and attitudes, or sometimes called the "to-don'ts". In contrast, the next 5 afterwards are the Niyamas, which are more like the "to-do's". It has a ten commandment feel about them, and are guidelines for how to live our lives in the best way we can.

Ahimsa is the first yama and it is about doing no harm to ourselves or others. Usually translated as non-violence, it could be easily skipped over, as you might think, I am not a violent person anyway. But many of our imbalances are created when we partake in harmful mental patterns like criticism, jealousy, doubt, fear, unnecessary hurry, gossip, negative thinking, anger, feelings of lack, lying, hatred... you get it, the list could continue. Forgiveness and understanding beat all these self-condemning states. It is in our nature to be of service to others, but we can only give from our overflow, not from the bottom of our cup. This is about considering the impact of our words, actions and intentions through a lens of self-awareness, compassion and humility.

Peace is the attitude here then. Peace, which goes hand in hand with acceptance, helps us to make wiser decisions rather than reactive or ignorant ones. But its not easy. So I found myself in a negative mood because my day wasn't going according to my expectations and then I reacted to the internal dissatisfaction by judging other random people unkindly in my head because it made me feel better somehow. That is a form of harmful thinking, even if its subtle. So the teaching is to catch yourself in these little (or big) states of mind, whether they are a one-off or a repetitive pattern. I am frequently visiting this because my kids annoy me when they don't go to bed and yell my name over and over. How can I not be reactive and snappy? Another thing I have learned is not to judge myself too harshly, because being nasty to yourself for being nasty in the first place isn't useful either. We're all just humans. Another big part of our modern lives is the way we treat ourselves with food and body image. A lot of harmful thoughts about oneself can arise from simply feeling too full or making a bad decision with food. It takes work and skilfulness to pay attention to how we treat ourselves.

If you are your naked body, and your style is just the garments you put on, but it isn't actually you, that is like the ego... its a garment, or a style, or an identification. The ego likes to justify all of its emotions and engage in many types of conflict to satisfy its own needs. What we allow inside of ourselves, like how we treat ourselves, we allow outside of ourselves in our relationships with others.

When we are at peace, we are attuned with Soul. I heard a saying from Richard Rohr (not a direct quote) that peace of mind is a funny saying because we are not at peace when we are in our minds and we are not in our minds when we are at peace.

Thought AND action need to match up. You may be the nicest person in the world, but if your self talk is harmful and mean, then thought and action don't match. If we can reflect on the ways in which we cause harm, we can have the awareness to break the unconscious patterning and be free of limiting beliefs.

Reflect:

How do my thoughts, words, and actions cause harm?

What negative thought patterns could I change?