Ahimsa - Non-Violence in Thoughts, Words, and Deeds

One of the first things we start with in yoga is Ahimsa, which means the absence of violence. Naturally, it would seem that we could use this to mean that we don't punch people or kill people. A society that practises ahimsa would for sure not be killing its citizens with capital punishment, for instance. That's sort of a big view. Sure, it's easy not to kill people everyday.

Then we take it down a level, to our words. What would it be like to have the absence of violence in our speech? Would that mean not swearing? Would that mean not yelling? Not yelling at people, again, pretty straightforward. I could not yell at anybody all day. I could even not swear, I'm thinking.  Some days that would be harder than others, of course.

Let's look at our thoughts. What would it be like to have the absence of violence in our thoughts? Does that mean we won't think bad things about other people? Not criticize, even in our minds? Would lightly editing a person be considered a type of violence? Perhaps. What about ourselves? Would having an absence of violence towards ourselves be possible while looking in a mirror in the morning? Could I refrain from thinking negative thoughts about my own plumper, aging self? These are questions only I can answer for myself. My thoughts are my own and don't always get shared.

But the body does vibrate with himsa, or violence, even when we think critical thoughts about ourselves. Just as though we were to take a violent action, the inner realms start to resonate with the frequency of negativity and begin to take on the flavour, even if it's just a hint, of the same spice that brings us violence towards others.

When you start to take a closer look at your life, you'll see that it becomes easy to notice things we think are benign, that are actually causing little sores in our subtle bodies. Sores that can ultimately cause us pain for real. Think about it. What you're thinking about matters a lot. Practising non-violence in actions, speech, and even our thoughts can be done towards others, but also and ultimately even more challenging, towards ourselves.

To explore more, please join us for Living Yoga 1, which starts Tuesday, September 21 and goes for 6  Tuesday evenings in total.

Living Yoga - Next Steps for Yogis

To be honest, living yoga and the yogic principles are not exactly the next steps for yogis, although they are that as well - please come and see my slide show presentation for more details on that - rather, living yoga and the yogic principles come before the place where most people in our society start on the path of yoga. Did that make sense?

We normally start with yoga poses and show up to a class and do this thing called, "yoga," which is really asana practice. Nothing wrong with that at all. It's just not the traditional order and sometimes, sometimes it happens that people do a yoga practice and don't learn much about the rest of yoga. I've heard of this happening!

As a result, learning about the principles of yoga, and a bit of yoga philosophy, often comes after we've already embarked on a yogic practice. Again, nothing wrong here. However, by learning about the yogic principles found in the yamas and niyamas, for instance, our practice of postures can go deeper and connect more with our lives as we live them, creating more alignment and sometimes a sense of purpose and direction, possibly leading to more fulfillment in our days.

Some people practice yoga once a week and I'd even say that's a great thing. Once a week, taking an hour or two to yourself, working on your health, thinking about things that matter, taking a deeper breath - these are all good things! But just like if you were to injure yourself in your practice or doing anything else, a good health care advisor would be more concerned with what you had been doing around that injury. How do you spend most of your time? What's your position like? How's your alignment?

So if you only spend an hour a week working on your alignment, that's great, but for even greater alignment and awareness, come learn and share about the yogic principles and how we're in positions all of the time. Take a look at what our alignment is like in our lives, not just our physical lives, but our relationships and jobs and attitudes, and see if this alignment is working for us or not.

The class will be held in a new location this season as Kat's house will no longer be available as she is moving soon. (Don't worry! She's just going to India to do her usual teaching and then will be readjusting to life in Ottawa given that she's managing an estate in the Laurentians, which hopefully will be the location of some retreats in the new year.) A possible location is at The Hub, which is downtown and I'm a member of. Let me know if you're interested in attending these six evenings. To register, as usual, just get in touch with me or Kat.

Living Yoga 1
Tuesday evenings September 16 - October 21, 7 - 9
Unit 1 of Makata Living Yoga Teacher Training Program
$240

Hoarding Workshop - Now that's Some Real "Living Yoga"

So this is maybe a longer story than just a blogpost but here's where I'm at. I'm in the middle of an 8-week "De-Cluttering Workshop" as the "guest" of someone who has identified themselves as someone who perhaps lives in what some people might call a "hoarded environment."

(My boyfriend is a hoarder. Or has been, up until recently.)

Okay, I have to fill you in a bit more so here goes. When I met Steve two and a half years ago we connected instantly and can remember the moment we first saw each other. We spent lots of time together and he started coming over to my place and hanging out. My sister said what's his place like and I said I didn't know I hadn't ever been inside and she threw out the phrase that hadn't even crossed my mind, "maybe he's a hoarder."

"Hey Steve, I was talking to my sister and she said maybe the reason I haven't ever been over to your place is because your a hoarder, ha ha ha." Silence. And to this day he recalls how he knew me well enough by then to know that a deal breaker would be lying, so he said something like, "yea, well, that's maybe one way to describe it, she has a point, heh, heh."

So we broke up. And obviously things happened to bring us closer together and there's more to the story...

Without going into the gory details, we have had a great relationship but how we did it was we had most of our relationship at my house and he kept his place mainly to himself until he was ready to do something about it.

That time came two months ago. Steve gave notice to his landlord and said he wanted to move out at the end of May. The pressure was on. I asked him if he was sure, could he do this, did he need to rent some space because he could see those things he'd been saving were not going to have room at my little place.

We had already established that it was probably better for our relationship for me to not be the one to help him sort through his stuff. Over the past couple of years when I went over there it was not good. Recently, he had an amazing friend help him do the daunting task of actually going through the stuff a bit at a time over eight weeks and making progress rather than tossing everything out, which we learned would be dangerous. I found I could be supportive from home and not have to go in and get upset by the space, because it was upsetting to me almost every time I went over.

In the meantime, I saw an ad for a Hoarding Support Group in the paper. I let Elaine Birchall know that Steve had already given notice so we were maybe a bit further along but she said it would still be helpful and we signed up. The Hoarding Support Group consists of a dozen or so people who have identified themselves as having a clutter problem and if they have someone who can be of help to them, those people are there too, for no extra charge.

We started a month ago and every week I want to jump up and down and say "do you guys know you're doing yoga?!?" To take a look at our lives and to take steps to create alignment that will allow the flow of energy and bring people into our space - there's yoga there. Taking a look at our objects and our attachment to them - that's yoga. Seeing how the false sense of comfort we get from our belongings that will deteriorate over time is holding us back in living our lives fully - that's yoga!

Sometimes I meet people who ask me if my boyfriend does yoga. He doesn't do yoga postures so much, but is he a yogi? Has he walked the path of looking at his life and bringing himself into greater alignment? Absolutely.

May 31st has come and gone and Steve's place is empty. Value Village has loads more things to sell and there's a lovely apartment for rent along the canal in Ottawa. A quiet miracle has happened to a special man in my life and I'm thrilled for him and inspired by the massive change that has come about through his transformation (he read Anthony De Mello's The Way to Love daily throughout all of this).

I love it when people take a look at their lives and see what's there. Every time, something good comes from it. I've never seen people take a look at their lives and have bad things happen from it. So whether it's Landmark Education workshops or Makata Living Yoga programs or Hoarding Support groups, I find yoga in wonderful, messy, human places and it lifts me up, inspiring me to keep looking at my life and shed light on the dusty, dark places in my own world.

(The images are from a sheet Elaine passed around at one of our last workshop sessions. It was used to rate your spaces. She has lots of tools!)