I’ve never been much into reading what I used to think were dull self-help and spiritual books; I’m fond of a little excitement in my reading, so I’m more of a classics and mysteries kind of gal. Although I don’t attend church every Sunday, I consider myself spiritual and I meditate, or pray if you will, to something divine and dissimilar to God as described in the bible, the Koran, or the Torah of some organized religions. Despite my positive experiences getting picked up and dropped off by the Sunday school bus in Santa Paula, California, and hanging out at Wednesday evening bonfires and playing volleyball on the Ventura beach with the youth group, I hate to admit that I find organized religion kind of scary. So I take a little of this and a dash of that and hold my own simple belief: do good and be good.

My parents experimented with a lot of different religions before they had my sister and me and when we were growing up. Let’s see…my mom finished catechism school, so obviously she grew up with a smidgen of a Catholic background; my parents were married as Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Kingdom Hall where my dad was a frequent “preacher” at services before he was disfellowshiped and subsequently shunned by his own mother; and we had a brief stint with Scientology when I was about six or seven—I even saw John Travolta from a distance at some big gathering my parents dragged us to. But that verges on opening an entirely different can of worms that I usually try to keep sealed, and my purpose here is to write about the ethics of yoga and how they are seeping into my life and helping me grow and find balance.

So on to more yogic things. I’ve been reading a book, The Yamas & Niyamas: Exploring Yoga’s Ethical Practice by Deborah Adele, that fits into that self-help and spiritual category that I mentioned before, but it’s far from dull. The book straightforwardly outlines the ten basic principles that guide one’s path to living a fulfilling life with yoga. The first five chapters of the book outline five Yamas and five Niyamas. The Yamas (Sanskrit for “restraints”) and Niyamas (observances) seem simple enough that in a perfect world where everyone “does good and is good,” most people would be practicing them on a daily basis already. Alas, our world is far from perfect, so violence, lies, theft, excessiveness, and materialism—all practices that the Yamas discourage—inundate our existence to the core.  We are subjected to them in children’s entertainment, on most news channels, even next door, and in our own homes. Strangely enough, the concepts discussed in the Yamas and Niyamas aren’t as simple as they seem.

The first Yama is ahimsa, or nonviolence, against ourselves, others, animals, and Mother Nature; “Thou shalt not kill” simple enough right? Wrong, it’s really not so simple. Violence by definition is “physical force used to inflict injury or damage” (Dictionary.com). Most sane people don’t consciously go about using physical force to cause pain to others, but many people unconsciously damage others with their negativity. We are often oblivious to the random acts of violence that we inadvertently commit against ourselves and others every day. We harm ourselves by not taking enough “me” time. We harm ourselves by working too hard for too many hours. We harm ourselves by not eating a healthy diet or not getting enough sleep. We harm ourselves by not spending enough quality time with our families. We harm others when we don’t take the time to listen to them. We harm others when we lose our patience and we snap at them. We harm ourselves by comparing our lives with others’ lives, whether by admiring what someone else has and secretly envying them, or by comparing your fitter figure with someone else’s fuller one. We harm others when we judge them, even if only in our own minds. It might not be apparent at first, but all of the negative energy we emanate can eat away at one’s self-confidence or contribute to one’s already bursting ego.

I have been guilty of all of those acts of violence. I am guilty of violence when I don’t manage my time wisely and I find myself scrambling at the last minute to throw together a lesson plan for a class that starts in ten minutes. I am guilty of violence when I don’t give myself enough time to plan effective lessons, and my students don’t learn. I am guilty of violence when I don’t balance doing the laundry and washing the dishes with a quiet family dinner and a bedtime story with my four year old. When I commit those random acts of violence I find myself on edge. If I’m on edge, everyone around me suffers as my patience dwindles. So this week I am going to try find that work-life balance that is so difficult to come by in America. I’m going to color with my daughter. I’m going to have a meaningful conversation with my significant other. I’m going to set aside quality time for my yoga practice. I’m going to consciously practice ahimsa and try to work toward self-love serenity.

Next week I will inventory my level of balance and build from there.