Sometimes the stages or steps of yoga are described as a ladder; you progress in an orderly fashion from one stage to the next. At other times the stages of yoga are described as spokes of a wheel that radiate in toward a center. In either case, the point is to be working toward a more highly evolved state, or Samadhi. In reality, the stages tend to overlap each other and lack of progress in one stage may send you back to one of the other stages looking for answers.
For instance, say you want to work on meditation, but you have a hard time sitting still; you can’t get comfortable, you have difficulty concentrating and you find your mind filled with thoughts of anger. If you have trouble sitting, maybe you need to look at the third step on the path: asana. Perhaps doing more asana would help you open your hips to sit more comfortably, or learning how to prop yourself into a more comfortable positions would be a good idea. If you have difficulty concentrating (Dharana) it might be because you feel strongly pulled by your senses (Pratyhara) and have trouble closing your eyes and turning your attention inward. You might need to go back one step and look at where your attention is being pulled to. Or, especially if you are struggling with negative emotions like anger, you would have to go all of the way back to the Yamas and the Niyamas and see where you are being tripped up by not observing moral restraints (Yama) or your personal observances (Niyama).
In one of her contemplation articles, Swami Nirmalanda talks about this:
"You are the light of consciousness, manifested in a unique and individualized form. That light shines through your eyes, fills your heart and sparks your greatest ideas. The light of your own being arises from its source, spills into your life and fills your relationships with light and love and joy.
This happens consistently and reliably only when you have cleared the pathway. The pathway for the light of consciousness is your mind. This means you must do some yogic work on your mind, not just yoga for your body and breath. I would like to make two related points here: 1) working on your body is not enough; 2) when you work on your body, more begins to open up.
Working on Your Body Is Not Enough
Perhaps you expect your yoga practice to perfect your body. If so, is this a reasonable prediction of your future? I know many yogis who have been practicing for decades. This means they are now decades older than when they began. While their aging process is profoundly different than any non-yogi, none of them expect their body to return to the condition it was in when they were 15 or 25 years old (assuming it was perfect back then).
Still, if your goal is to perfect your body, does that mean you will shine with the light of consciousness when your body is perfect? If so, the fashion models, TV & movie stars, professional athletes and singer-dancers would be enlightened. This is clearly not the case!
Thus working on your body is not enough. You must begin aligning your life with the principles of light by following yoga’s precepts for living, so your own inner radiance can shine through your life. Yoga’s precepts for living are titled the Yamas and Niyamas. There are five of each, which we’ll explore in next few months."
The Eight Stages of Yoga are:
Yama – moral restraints. There are five of these: Ahimsa (non-violence), Satya (truthfulness), Asteya (non-stealing), Brahmacarya (restraint), Aparigraha (non-hoarding)
Niyama – observances. There are five of these: Saucha (cleanliness), Santosha (contentment), Tapas (effort), Svadhyaya (study), Ishvara Pranidhana (surrender to something greater than yourself).
Asana – physical postures
Pranayama – breath work
Pratyhara – withdrawal of the senses
Dharana - concentration
Dhyana - meditation
Samadhi – enlightenment
In my teacher training, I talk about the stages of yoga in a ladder form. We always start with the first Yama, which is Ahimsa. The Sanskrit word Himsa means violence. Whenever you put an “a” in front of a word, it means “not that”. So, Ahimsa means non-violence. I think most of us would describe ourselves as non-violent. And I hope that is true. We don’t go around killing each other, or even hitting each other. I remember when I adopted my son I had to sign an agreement with the adoption agency that I would not use corporal punishment as a means of disciplining my child. Maybe because my parents used to hit me, I had no intention of ever hitting my child, but still, signing the form was interesting and reinforced my practice of ahimsa.
But is outward violence the only form of violence? I like to think of these practices as having layers or a series of concentric circles; you can get closer to the core, or you can be working out on the periphery. You may not act out in a violent way, but do you have murderous thoughts? Have you ever said to your kid (not meaning it literally) “If you get mud on my clean floor again, I’m going to kill you”? Of course you aren’t going to kill your kid, but what does the choice of language do to our psyche? How angry are we? Sometimes students will ask what the difference is if I think these thoughts but I never act on them; nobody will know but me. And I would say to them, but, you will know. Why are you so unimportant that you are willing to harbor those thoughts? This is your mind, your conscience, your soul that you are talking about. Inside of your head, you are the only one who matters. This is a deep level of integrity to practice non-violence at this level. It is also you alone who sits on your meditation cushion and practices turning inward. If you have even these seemingly innocuous thoughts of violence in there, is the inside of your head a comfortable place to be?
Peace and Ahimsa
In her book Practicing Peace in times of War, Pema Chodron, an American Buddhist nun, talks about how to cultivate peace. She says:
“War and Peace start in the hearts of individuals. Strangely enough, even though all beings would like to live in peace, our method for obtaining peace over the generations seems not to be very effective: we seek peace and happiness by going to war. This can occur at the level of our domestic situation, in our relationships with those close to us. Maybe we come home from work and we’re tired and we just want some peace; but at home all hell is breaking loose for one reason or another, and so we start yelling at people. What is our motivation? We want some happiness and ease and peace, but what we do is get even more worked up and we get everyone else worked up, too. This is a familiar scenario in our homes, our workplaces, in our communities, even when we are just driving our cars. We’re just driving along and someone cuts in front of us and then what? Well, we don’t like it, so we roll down the window and scream at them.”
“War begins when we harden our hearts, and we harden them easily – in minor ways and then in quite serious, major ways, such as hatred and prejudice – whenever we feel uncomfortable. It’s so sad, really, because our motivation in hardening our hearts is to find some kind of ease, some freedom from the distress that we’re feeling.”
“Someone once gave me a poem with a line in it that offers a good definition of peace: “Softening what is rigid in our hearts.” We can talk about ending war, we can do everything in our power, but war is never going to end as long as our hearts are hardened against each other.”
In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali gives us a way to measure our practice of Ahimsa:
Ahimsaa-pratishthaayaam tat-samnidhau vaira-tyaagah. Patanjali Y.S. 2.35
All others will cease to feel hostility in the presence of one who is firmly established in ahimsa.
If you are firmly established in the practice of non-violence, others will cease to be violent in your presence. This means that you don’t feel hostility towards anyone. It even means that you don’t think harmful thoughts towards anyone. Not only do you refrain from hitting someone, you even refrain from yelling at them or from making snide or sarcastic remarks. (Yes, to that deep a level!) But, as human beings we have violent impulses. What do we do when they arise? First, we acknowledge these feelings or impulses. Second, we wait with them. Remember the old count to ten technique? Do it! Breathe. Wait it out. If you truly practice this, the violent urge or impulse will fade and eventually disappear.
Again, Swami Nirmalanda says:
"This is not suppression, denial or avoidance. You’ve already tried these strategies and know that they don’t work. Now you’re taking the intelligent path: simply don’t hurt others. You’re only tempted to hurt them because you’re not getting your own way. But don’t take it out on them. Even if they could improve the situation, hurting them is not the most effective way to make progress. Thus intelligence demands that you don’t act on your harm-causing impulses, even though they will continue to arise inside for some time. It takes time to eradicate your own violent tendencies.
You have violent impulses because you are a human being. It is a human characteristic. Everyone feels this way sometimes, until they’ve used yoga to become free. You will feel like hurting someone but, since you’re a yogi, you are simply not going to do it. What do you do instead? Simply feel it. Feel the violent impulse. Don’t deny that you feel like killing that person, but don’t kill them. The yogic key is this: you must be aware that you feel like killing them. Let the feeling arise; don’t even put words to it. Just feel it, and while you are feeling it, don’t act on it.
If you let it arise, and you don’t lie to yourself about the feeling, it will only last a short time. It might last 45 seconds, or it might last 3 minutes. But it won’t last long. If it lasts longer, you weren’t actually allowing yourself to feel it; you were trying to justify it, or trying to figure out what to do about it. Just feel it. It dissolves, like fog in sunlight.
That is exactly what it is, brain-fog. It is the clouds of confusion, the mists of delusion, and the fog of dependency mucking up your innards. When you go outside and stand in the fog, which I love to do especially at sunrise, the sun comes up and shines through the fog. Slowly the fog dissipates. It melts away.
You must do the same thing with your brain-fog. Stand in the fog, being aware of the fog. Your awareness is the sunlight. It is the light of consciousness, and it dissolves the fog. It dissolves your anger and fear; it dissolves your desire, need and greed; it dissolves your regret and worry; it dissolves your blame and guilt. It dissolves all the reasons you want to hurt someone or something."
Discussing Ahimsa is very interesting. As you can see, it is not just outward violence that we are talking about, it is subtle violence. It can be found in thoughts inside our heads or in snide or sarcastic remarks. Have you ever made a snarky remark to someone where you thought you were being funny and that other person just didn’t take it that way? (Has that only happened to me???)
The beautiful thing about the Yoga Sutras is that all it says is “non-violence”. It is up to us to think about it, tease it apart and understand it on any and all levels. It is up to us to examine and question ourselves. I like to ask my yoga teacher trainees this question. They are always surprised when I ask it. o, let me leave you with this question to think about: “Is texting and act of violence?”
What do you think? Leave an answer in the comments below.
