Beginner Spirit Guide to Ahimsa
Our spirit guide to practice Ahimsa within your modern life. In this article I will talk about the teachings I have personally experienced, my opinion on them during the time of those teachings and my perspective in retrospect. If there is a piece within this article that triggers you or makes you feel uncomfortable, observe the trigger and see if you can sense it within the body, then I challenge you to read it all the way through.
First, let’s translate the Sanskrit word, Ahimsa, into english. Ahimsa means non-violence, it is the first Yama of Patanjali's Yoga Sutra. The eightfold path is called ashtanga, which literally means “eight limbs” (ashta=eight, anga=limb). The Yamas are translated into, our moral discipline, which is another way of saying it is our own individual ethics and integrity with how we relate to our lives. If you only remember one Yama, practice Ahimsa, it will transform the way you interact with the world.
The Yamas are a reminder our Yoga practice is more than just showing up to your physical practice on your mat. Our practice is a never ending journey to reveal to us the infinite potential we have within.
The Yoga philosophy begins with the Yamas because you are meant to go inward to find the answers. For your entire life you have been conditioned to seek external guidance, direction and clarity. You have calibrated to other people's energy, passions, prejudices, fears, and trauma. Maybe you have been strongly indoctrinated and experience judgment so tight you can’t sleep at night.
When we accept other people’s truth, we take on their trauma and karma. We give away our creative power to a life we may not even fully agree with but find safe because it's all we know.
Taking the first step inward can seem the most daunting. It is the unknown and a great leap of faith to journey to a place you have been shamed or guilted to go. There are many cultures and traditions that make finding the answers within you scary, dangerous, or taboo. If you’re breaking free from communities like these, keep following your heart! I am writing an article about how I left a cult disguised as a multi marketing business and will link the article when I am done.
Growing up, I was taught that God was outside of me, my parents knew everything, and the adults around me had it all figured out. When I first started my practice I realized how backward everything was. For me, Yoga was the key to the answer I didn't even know I was asking.
Who am I?
Atha yoganusasanam: and now we begin the practice of Yoga.
We begin with Ahimsa because our entire lives, from the way we think, speak and act, has been a form of self sacrifice and compromise. Our English language was formed in a way that evokes judgment, disconnection, doubt, and duality. The language was created for us to speak and give our power away to those who created it.
We weren’t educated on the proper ways to access our true wants, needs, and desires. When we are disconnected from our own core desires, emotions, wants and needs we lack the ability to clearly express ourselves or those around us.
Possibly, for the first time in your life, you are doing something for you. You are giving yourself the gift to pursue that indescribable feeling in your heart calling you toward this path. You are reconnecting yourself.
Yoga gives you the foundation you need to take the first step toward you. Many have taken the path of self discovery and even though the road map is the same, the journey is completely different. When you are finally fed up with the chatter in the mind and ready to know true peace and stillness the path will find you.
The first step to Ahimsa is closing your eyes with a willingness to listen from your heart. This isn’t about instantly changing how you think or finding a quick fix to suddenly make your life better. We have to go in to get out of the illusion of chaos and separation.
We are finally at the doors of the most important relationship we will ever have in our lives. The one with ourselves. If we have practiced ignoring ourselves our entire lives by focusing on the confused wants and needs of everyone around us this can feel pretty intimidating.
The beautiful thing about Yoga is that it is a practice. We come into it when we create space for it and every time is different. However, the more we come back to it, the more we get from it. You get the results based on the amount of energy you put into it. Another way of saying it, is you get what you give. One Yoga class, one meditation, one year is not going to have the same shifts as someone who sees their life as one meditation.
We are cultivating a relationship with ourselves and this is something to take with you as a reminder. You are learning how to unconditionally love yourself, hold yourself, and finally listen to yourself. It takes time and the willingness to learn, listen, and implement.
When we first begin, the mind may focus on your initial excitement of ‘getting somewhere’. You are ‘getting the time’, you’re finally ‘going inward’, or accomplishing another task on your list. The mind is doing its thing!
You carry the energy of one thousand suns. You may be familiar with the concept that your thoughts create your reality. Every thought sends an electromagnetic frequency within the brain and emits energy to the space around you. When we practice lighting up a particular thought or part in the brain often, we create emotions. Our thoughts become feelings that eventually program the way you respond to the world around you. You then attract similar situations, conditions or people to trigger those familiar thoughts and feelings thus solidifying your concept of reality.
The best way to do this is through meditation. The number one way to cultivate a greater sense of self is to sit with yourself. You have to close your eyes and breathe.
For those newer to the concept of meditation, I would recommend a different approach. There are many, many, many ways to meditate and they all have profound intentions and results. But to really get to you, you need to sit with you and observe with no intention. We are not here to change the mind, judge the mind, or shame the mind. In the beginning, we are here to witness and observe the mind.
When we begin, we listen to our breath. Our breath becomes our tether as we practice awareness. We create space and hold space for its fluctuations. When we carve out time from our day, we find physical space to sit, breath, listen, and observe whatever wants to move through us at that moment. Whenever you notice you have followed a breadcrumb trail of a thought, that's when you practice gently guiding yourself back to the breath.
That is my practice, being open to witness yourself being distracted, and having the patience to refocus on your breath. As many times as you need. The meditation becomes a recentering on the easy flow of your cadence of breath. You want to be gentle with yourself, if you’re new to this, because you are new to this.
I think for first time practitioners, even myself, I attempt to do all these things. When I first started, I was honestly afraid of what would go through my mind. I didn’t want to create ‘that’ so I looped in a fear of becoming too aware and ended up resenting the process of becoming aware. I self sabotaged a little bit because I believed ignorance was bliss. I would rather pretend I didn’t know than actually do the work. The resistance I created through pretending I was unaware created a lot of unnecessary friction for me emotionally and literally.
Observing the mind is very similar to watching a spaghetti bowl of traffic from a bird’s eye view. There are so many cars! So many colors, makes, and models that it’s hard to not follow one, or maybe five different ones. The more you focus on one car, the more you start to feel into the story of where it's going, who's driving it, why they are driving it, how long they have been driving, yada yada yada. The mind creates stories, especially when stimulated with your physical senses. We have 93 billion neurons within the human body. Our senses stimulate them.
When we practice pulling back, closing our eyes and focusing on our breath. The images of the cars (heavy stimulation) starts to fade. We can probably still hear, see, or sense the cars driving but now the practice begins. The mind will get louder, your emotions will get intense, and the body will start imagining all the times we have driven or the places we need to go. There may be really loud voices in your head about wasting your time, finding things to do and being more productive but when you start to relax with your breath that's where the magic of space seeps in.
