Safety: Ahimsa in Action

Nobody got hurt. That's a good thing.

I have written before about our being our own best teachers, and I'm not the kind of person who will discourage someone from taking actions in their practice that they feel are best for them. There are, I believe, relatively few instances during practice where a person is truly in danger of imminent injury. I might even have gotten up on a little bit of a high horse in that regard.

When we, as teachers, begin to see actions that do in fact look like they can cause imminent injury, we have the obligation to speak up. First we can try to incorporate the ideas of steadiness and ease in our practice, and of focusing primarily on the breath. We make sure that we talk about Ahimsa, or the idea of non-harm. A gentle yet insistent approach is often pretty effective, thankfully. When it isn't, we need to get down in the dirt.

Yoga does not require you to beat yourself up, wear yourself out, and make yourself hurt. If you think that's the practice, then you need to think again. Some of us need strong and challenging physical practices to get out of our own heads but there's a different between that and practicing until you have no energy or wherewithal for the rest of your life. That's distraction and dissociation. That's not yoga.

I never want to discourage someone from practicing. Goodness knows I've used the physical practice as a way to get away from "regular life" from time to time. And goodness knows I've had my share of injury throughout the decades I've practiced but I've stuck with it, changing what I needed and attempting to be content with that changed practice. It's not easy, for sure, and that's also part of the practice.

If you find yourself pushing far, fast, and hard towards something that leads towards a lack of safety for yourself or those surrounding you*, it's time to remember that you're getting away from the practice in that case. We can challenge ourselves while still maintaining an awareness of Ahimsa for ourselves and others. It's important that we not conflate physical prowess with being "good at" yoga. Physical prowess is simply that, while Yoga is a complete system of moral philosophy in which we use Asana as a tool and a method of exploration.

So it's important to take a moment and really think about what you're trying to do and why. Are you disregarding the guiding principles of the practice in order to go harder, faster, fancier? What does that mean for your safety and that of others? Are you actually practicing Yoga or are you content with staying in the purely physical realm? All of these are up to you. But as a teacher, if you're doing something that I believe is unsafe I will call you in to reflect on it.

*Let me be quite clear. When your practice causes other people to fear injury from your falling on them, this is not an acceptable level of awareness or Ahimsa. This is one specific example of how your physical Asana practice can impact others' experience of safety.