As discussed in a previous post, the yamas (social disciplines) and niyamas (personal disciplines) are the foundation of the eight limbs of yoga. To recap, the five yamas are ahiṃsā (non-violence), satya (truthfulness), asteya (non-stealing), brahmacharya (chastity), and aparigraha (non-possessiveness). The five niyamas are śauca (purity), saṃtoṣa (contentment), tapas (austerity), svādhyāya (self-study) and īśvarapraṇidhāna (devotion to the supreme being). But does it really matter to your practice of prānāyāma if you engage in asteya or your journey towards pratyāhāra if you don’t have a sense of saṃtoṣa? In other words, do social and individual principles matter for what I’m doing on my mat?
Like we said in the post on the eight limbs of yoga, yoga is more than the poses - the practice on the mat is part of the greater journey to samādhi. Yamas and niyamas aren’t just part of the journey towards samādhi, but they can create real barriers if we are suffering from any of them. They’re the ethical guidelines that make yoga so much more than touching your toes and balancing on one leg. The barriers or blockages will impact all of our yoga practices, including our āsana and prānāyāma practice. It is difficult be sthira and sukha in an āsana when our minds and thoughts are on a lie you told earlier, violating satya. When we try to relax into a pose, such as an intense external hip rotation, we may feel pain or tension by going deeper than we should. This is an example of taking more than we need, a transgression of asteya.
For myself and my practice, yamas and niyamas bridge the space between my mat and the values I hold in my life. I think it’s important as teachers that we find a way to include the disciplines into teaching and remind students of the impact our lives can have on our practice on the mat. And as students, we should remember to take time before our practice to consider where we are in each of the yamas and niyamas. We should pay careful attention to the ones that we struggle with, with the hope that drawing awareness to them means we will begin to understand the root of that struggle. Yamas and niyamas remind us of the importance of checking in with the way we treat ourselves and our actions towards one another, something we all can take a moment to do when we roll out our mat.
We’re going to go through all of the ten yama and niyamas in the next couple of posts, posing some examples of how to incorporate them into our practice.
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