Ahimsa: The Courage to Fly

Ahimsa is the first of the Yamas and means Non-Violence (Learn about the Yamas, the first of the Eight Limbs of Yoga, in my previous blog post: Grow your Yoga Practice by Understanding the Eight Limbs of Yoga). While my Western mind automatically equates violence with physical harm (insert ridiculous action movie scene here), Ahimsa is actually much more complex and nuanced. Ahimsa encapsulates the right relationships both externally and internally. Ahimsa requires us to build the right relationships not only with those around us but also with ourselves. The challenge of course is to build a relationship that is balanced. For example, we cannot build relationships with our friends and our family at the expense of ourselves. A relationship that is based on self-sacrifice ultimately causes harm to ourselves and does not allow us to truly honor ourselves and make space for our own inner thoughts and feelings.

Ahimsa must begin with the understanding of self. As we cultivate the skills to be non-violent with ourselves, we begin to project these skills outwards to those around us and learn to be non-violent with those around us as well.

As Deborah Adele says in her book The Yamas & Niyamas,

"Our capacity to be nonviolent depends on our proactive practice of courage, balance, love of self, and compassion for others."

Earlier this week I was struggling to find my voice and was avoiding writing this blog post. As I think back to why I was struggling so much to write this blog post, it ultimately boils down to the fact that I was not practicing Ahimsa with myself. I couldn't put pen to paper (or in this case hand to keyboard) because I was afraid to share my thoughts on a subject or a principle that I haven't mastered myself. Rather than practicing courage and overcoming my fear of what others would think, I was holding myself back because I was afraid to be vulnerable and I was afraid of not adding value. And if I'm truly honest with myself, this isn't the first time I've held myself back because of fear. Growing up in a first-generation Indian immigrant family and as the eldest of two sisters, I put a lot of pressure on myself to be perfect. I'm not really sure why I felt the need to perfect. My parents were extremely supportive and never placed the stereotypical immigrant parent pressures on me. But alas, I was the young girl who was too afraid to ask the teacher for help because I didn't want to seem stupid and who hid my "bad" grades from my parents because I didn't want them to be disappointed when I didn't get a perfect score on every test. Looking back, I realize that this fear was a form of violence towards myself. Rather than finding the courage to ask for help in order to better myself, I let my fear paralyze my ability to continually hone my skills and to become a better student.

While I'm still working on overcoming my fears and finding my inner courage, I've found that simply setting an intention of being fearless in different situations has been extremely beneficial. Up until recently, I had been too afraid to try inversions in my yoga practice. I remember going to yoga classes and hoping that crow pose wouldn’t be a part of the sequence. I was afraid to try the pose because I didn't know how to do it properly and I didn't want to feel like a failure while others in the class were able to fly. So rather than attempting crow pose each time it came up in a sequence, I just bowed out. Afraid of the failure, I grounded myself before I could even give myself an opportunity to fly.

Luckily for me though, as I went through yoga teacher training and continued to develop a commitment to my yoga practice, I was reminded of importance of finding my courage. At the beginning of most yoga classes I have taken, the teacher sets an intention or a statement that helps you channel your mind and focus for the remainder of class. Over and over again, I found that teachers were setting intentions of fearlessness and courage. As I continued going to yoga classes with these intentions, I found myself truly integrating these intentions into my practice and as I did, I found myself gaining more courage and slowly but surely I gained the inner strength to begin working on my crow pose. I finally realized that if I kept myself from trying new things, I would continue to close myself off from the opportunity to learn about myself and to grow as a human being. It is this growth that allows us to open ourselves up to more people, more experiences, and more opportunities and as we continue to grow, we find that we are less likely to be violent towards ourselves and towards those around us.

As a part of practicing Ahimsa in my everyday life, I am challenging myself to continue finding my courage by trying things that push me outside of my comfort zone. Off of my mat, I am challenging myself to be vulnerable to the outside world by asking questions when I need help and by taking on new roles that require me to take on more responsibility and think outside my normal boxes. On my mat, I am challenging myself to overcome my fear of new postures and deeper expressions or variations of postures already in my practice.

Of course, finding courage requires that we look inward to understand our fears and which fears are holding us back and which fears are instinctually keeping us safe. A clear understanding of self can only come from balance. As I continue interpreting balance in my own life, I hope to understand which fears are holding me back and work to overcome these fears both on and off my mat.

I encourage you to think about what fears are holding you back. Are there small actions that you can take to begin to build courage and overcome these fears?

With that, I leave you with an intention to take you forward into this week, turn your fear into courage - look at overcoming your fear as an opportunity to reach new heights.

As Erin Hanson writes,

"What if I fall? Oh, but my darling, what if you fly?"