Ahimsa, why kindness is the first rule of yoga

I spent some time this past week writing a social post about kindness. And I spent most of this month getting tested on it. That is how it works I think. You decide to teach something and the universe goes, oh cute, let’s see if you actually can practice what you teach.

We launched a ten week series on the yamas and niyamas last week. If you have never heard of them, they are the first two limbs of yoga, the important part that comes before the actual poses. Ten teachings on how to live. The first one is ahimsa, which means non-harming. Our trainers always tell our trainees that this is the one you get to spend your whole life practicing. The poses you can get better at in a few weeks with consistent practice. Ahimsa you are never done with.

I have taught this for years. I say some version of it in almost every class. Be kind to yourself first, so you can be kind to others. It’s true. The relationship we have with ourselves a lot of the time is how we show up around others.

And then like clockwork life handed me a month full of chances to practice.

This month tested me. Running a business with 100 team members, raising a 2 year old, showing up for a community who always shows up for us... Hard conversations. Decisions where someone ends up disappointed no matter what you choose. Moments that asked me to be kind and firm in the same breath. It turns out those are not opposites. They are just hard to hold at once.

What I continue to learn about ahimsa is that it's easy when things are going well. Letting someone merge in traffic on a day you are early is not a practice, it's a good mood. The practice is when you are late. The practice is when you are tired and someone hands you a perfectly good reason to be short with them, and you have every right to take it, and you don't.

I would love to tell you I have this one figured out all the time. What I can tell you is that I think about it constantly. That is the thing about yoga nobody warns you about when you take your first class. The poses are the entry point, but the practice follows you through your life. It is in the car, at home with your kids, in the email, the text you are about to send. What I have gotten a little better at is noticing. There is a half second between the feeling and the reaction, and that half second is where the whole practice lives. Some weeks I catch it. Some weeks I catch it after the fact and have to go back and fix it. That counts too right? 

The other half, the half I always forget first, is the part I say in class. Be kind to yourself first. You can handle hard things well, stay calm, make the right call, and still be unkind to yourself about it afterward. Replaying a conversation that already went fine. Holding yourself to a standard you would never put on anyone else. That is not reflection. It is "himsa", pointed inward, where nobody can see it. And it does not stay there. Hurt people hurt people, and that includes the hurt we do to ourselves.

Quinn, my husband, my team, the lady at the grocery store, the flight attendant. They all get whatever version of me I have been giving myself. It all connects.

I think about this a lot in the context of Dose. We built a place where people come to move their bodies and sweat and breathe and be quiet for an hour, and I have always believed it was more than that. What has changed lately is how much I feel it. The way people treat each other out there is not something a yoga studio can fix. But we have a few hundred people walking through our doors every day, and every one of them walks back out into the world, into their car, their kitchen, their office. If even a fraction of them leave a little softer than they came in, that is not nothing. That is the job. I understand that more now than I ever have.

So that is ahimsa. It is not about being agreeable, and it is not about being a doormat. One of my fav quotes is "do no harm, but take no shit" and that is the closest translation I have found. It is choosing, in the moment where you have every reason not to, to not add to the hurt. With other people and with yourself.

Satya is next week. Truthfulness.

xo

Emily