The last couple of weeks, I’ve been starting my classes with a brief discussion of the Yamas. The Yamas are the 1st of the 8 limbs of yoga as outlined in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. They are a set of moral or ethical guidelines that practitioners of yoga aspire to. These guidelines or restraints are more outwardly focused, external guidelines, while the Niyamas, the 2nd or the 8 limbs, are more internal practices. I like to think of the yamas as having both an intrinsic value (ethics and morals to adhere to because they are good in and of themselves) and a very practical value. As your yoga practice deepens, without the framework of the yamas, your practice will inevitably hit some stumbling blocks. They support and nourish the other 7 limbs.

Ahimsa means non-violence or non-harm. Not only does this mean not harming people or ourselves physically, but developing compassionate thoughts, feelings, and words. Things like our own internal self-talk can be either harmful (why am I unable to get into this pose. I’m so unflexible), or compassionate. Ahimsa asks us to treat all beings (including ourselves) with care and love.

Satya means truth, or non lying. This Yama, like the others, has both an obvious and a subtle meaning. It can be taken to mean don’t tell blatant lies, and it also means not fooling yourself when it comes to your thoughts, feelings, and abilities. In other words, being honest with yourself, even when you don’t like what you see. When you expand your vision far enough, this truth ends up being nourishing, helping you to grow and develop.

Asteya translates as non-stealing. This means both not taking physical things that are not yours and also adjusting your mindset so that you move from an outlook of lack and scarcity to one that recognizes the abundance available when let go of that mindset. When you fill your reservoir internally, you are not left empty when those outside objects, attention, energy, etc. goes away.

Brahmacharya means moderation of our life energy. This is often highlighted as sexual energy as that is the most easy to get lost in, but can really be the energy behind any desire or activity. It’s not a puritanical moral restraint, rather the idea that the energy behind our desires can either control us, or we can learn to work with it consciously so that it supports us on our path.

Aparigraha means non-greed or non-hording. This yama encourages us to not covet that which isn’t ours (both physical and mental) and instead, by not succumbing to greed, find the space to let ourselves grow. Instead of trying to get ahead by trying to accumulate that which others have, this yama asks that we instead try to find our own true selves, free from comparison and jealousy.

Together, the Yamas are the foundation that will support the rest of the 8 limbs. When committed to, they bring depth to your yoga practice and help to expand your practice to encompass the whole of your life.

I’m essentially a lazy person. I can be perfectly content to sit around and do pretty much nothing. Given that there are things that I want to accomplish and that I want a full, active life, this presents a slight problem. It means that I have to be smart about how I start my day. If I begin my day by lazing around for too long, I’ll generally stay at rest, not get the movement my body and mind need and I end up feeling slightly unhealthy and unhappy with my day. On the other hand, if I start my day by doing something active and/ or creative, I can keep that energy going throughout the day. This leads to feeling generally more healthy and fulfilled.

I read a book by a guy named the Barefoot Doctor a long time ago (The Barefoot Doctor’s Guide to the Tao), where he talks about one of the most important things in living the Tao is to have a ritual that you do no matter what in the morning. It could be a yoga practice, a run, or simply making tea and being present while doing it. A way to connect and center yourself and get ready for the day ahead. I have found this to be very useful advice. What you do in the morning sets the stage for your day. However inertia takes hold is likely to carry you through your day, and if it starts out with being too much at rest, both mentally and physically, it can be quite hard to turn that around.

The only thing I’ll add here is that I’ve also found from experience, that having a morning ritual that is too hard or complicated can lead to not doing it at all, or only doing it sometimes, which defeats the whole purpose. The trick is in finding something that you can commit to and stick with that will give you a chance to move into your day, be present, and get energy moving.

I’ve been thinking about desire a lot lately. How it relates to being able to be present, how it manifests itself, and what we can learn from it. Most of the time, especially if we haven’t spent time working with our desires, they can take over, pulling us out of the moment and towards some unrealized future in which we have achieved whatever it is that we want. We see something, we want it, and that’s all there is to it. We don’t usually grow from that experience, it just repeats itself the next time we see something we want. Part of what I’ve been trying to figure out is the following: When can desire be a good thing? And when it’s harming us, bringing us closer to attachment and suffering, how do we recognize the difference and how can we work with it?

Jack Kornfield, in his wonderful book A Path with Heart, makes a distinction in types of desire, naming the negative parts grasping and wanting. “Grasping and Wanting are two names for the most painful aspects of desire.” He says. “There are beneficial desires such as the desire for the well being of others, the desire for awakening, the creative desires that express the positive aspects of passion and beauty. There are painful aspects of desire – the desires of addiction, greed, blind ambition, or unending inner hunger.” Given how similar the two can feel on the surface, how do we notice when the desire is beneficial or painful?

Like all of our emotions and thought, it takes bringing real conscious attention in order for us to be able to see our own patterns and how those emotions play out. Kornfield suggests paying attention to desire when it arises and noting certain aspects of it. “How long does this kind of desire last? Does it intensify first or just fade away? How does it feel in the body? When it is present, are you happy or agitated, open or closed?”

For me, when I unconsciously follow a desire, it can be surprising how the thing I thought I wanted, suddenly doesn’t seem so appealing once I see the whole picture. How it fits in with the rest of my life, the work that might be needed to maintain it, etc. And of the flip side, once you bring consciousness to a desire and are able to see the whole picture, it can also be easier to identify the desires which are healthy.

Bringing attention to desire can also help us to identify places in our life where we need attention and nourishing. When we trace painful desires back to their root, they can point the way to things in our life that we might be neglecting. Which can help us to grow and learn about ourselves and bring about positive change.

This year, I’ve decided to not make any resolutions. This may actually be the first year I’ve chosen not to make any. I did a little poking around at my resolutions of years past and have realized (not for the first time) that I don’t follow up on most of them. I’ve also had a lot of conversations with friends where we all laugh about how few of the resolutions we make in January become reality.

For some people, resolutions can be a valuable tool to help motivate, but it can also be a source of guilt and the yardsticks we set out don’t actually measure our success in growing and dealing with changing circumstances. Intent can be a great thing and I think it’s important to check in with intent on an ongoing basis, but I think keeping an open mind to what the right path for you is at that moment is very important.

Intent can become dogma when we think that somehow setting it down in stone is the only way to move forward. It can be a brute force approach to change. Life changes and those things which were the right things for you in January may not be right for you in June. So this year, I resolve (heh) to keep my eyes and heart open to my changing circumstances and make decisions based on a hopefully growing awareness of myself and the world around me.

One of the things that I love about both yoga and acrobatics is that they call on ever new forms of strength and flexibility. In order to progress, you need to work in new ways that involve very specific muscles and muscle combinations that you probably have not used much before (at least not in that specific way). You build on what you have done previously, but there is always new work to be done. (This applies to the mental aspects of exercise as well, but I’m sticking with the physical for now)

The latest challenge for me is press handstands. I’ve done so many handstands over the last year or so and have developed a fair amount of strength and stability there, but am no closer to a press handstand than I was a year ago. I love that. There is always something new. I get excited to explore a new thing and it helps to keep my exercise from getting stale. For me, I’ve found that this is really key to keeping me committed to a workout program. My motivation usually stems from that moment when something first clicks, when something physically challenging all at once becomes accessible. Other people have different ways of being motivated and I think it’s important to know what those are. Without knowing where that motivation comes from in you, exercise is just something that we feel a sense of obligation to do. Where is the fun in that?

Update – So, miraculously, all of a sudden, today I can do a press handstand! This morning I’m writing about it being my latest challenge and today, it just clicked into place. I can only think that somehow, placing conscious attention on it was all that was needed. I wonder what else I should be bringing conscious attention to

One of our homework assignments last month in yoga teacher training was to come up with a list of ethics and personal boundries, then write a paragraph about the process. The most interesting thing for me as I was doing this was seeing how situational they all are. When I really thought about a lot of things which I would normally think of as my ethics, I realize that it all depends on the circumstances.

Non-violence is really one of the only ones I could come up with that I felt I would probably hold as an ideal no matter what (even if I can conceive of situations where I probably wouldn’t practice it – out of fear, etc. – , I would still feel like non-violence would be the better choice ultimately). For everything else, it seems to me like the situation needs to be analyzed on it’s own merits.

Which also got me thinking about dogma in general. It seems so easy to have a list of things which define how you are going to behave in the world, as it means you don’t really have to think about each situation (or at least, it has often meant that for me). It can mean that awareness of the unique circumstances of each moment is lost. And it can also mean (or again, has meant that for me in the past) that we attach to these things as somehow defining who we are.

So, how do we walk the path of integrity despite this? I think by bringing conscious attention to each decision and making sure that our motives come from a altruistic and loving place. Easier said than done, but it’s a work in progress.