The Niyamas: Tending your inner garden

The niyamas are the inner practices of yoga. While the yamas guide how we move through the world with others, the niyamas are about how we tend to ourselves.

And here's where things get tricky. Because self-care has become another performance, another way to feel inadequate. Another checklist. Another reason to feel like we're not doing enough.

But that's not what this is.

The niyamas are simpler than we've made them. They're about basic hygiene of the heart. Keeping your inner house clean, not because you're trying to be holy, but because it's nicer to live in a clean house.

Nobody's grading you. There's no spiritual report card. You won't be more enlightened at the end. You might just be a little freer, a little lighter, a little more at home in your own skin.

That's enough.

SAUCHA (CLEANLINESS)

Start with the simple things. A clean body. Clean clothes. A space that doesn't suffocate you with clutter.

Saucha begins there, in the ordinary.

But it moves inward too. What we consume matters—not just food, but everything we take in. The news we scroll through. The conversations we replay. The stories we tell ourselves on repeat.

Some of this stuff is garbage. And we keep eating it.

When we practice cleanliness, we start to notice what dirties us. What makes us feel heavy, cloudy, stuck. We notice, and slowly, we make different choices.

Clean out the closet. Clear the table. Take a shower. These aren't metaphors. Do the literal things first. The inner work follows.

You can't think your way to clarity while living in chaos.

This includes what comes out of us, too. Clean speech. Not perfect, not polite, but honest without being cruel. Words that don't leave a residue.

Purity sounds like a loaded word. Like something you either have or don't. But saucha is more practical than that. It's washing the dishes. Opening the windows. Letting fresh air move through stale spaces.

The cleaner we are—inside and out—the clearer we become. We can see what's actually here instead of looking through layers of film.

That's saucha. Basic maintenance. Nothing fancy.

Just tending to yourself the way you'd tend to anything you want to keep beautiful.

SANTOSHA (CONTENTMENT)

Contentment doesn't mean giving up. It means giving up the fight with what is.

We spend so much energy wishing things were different. This moment, this body, this life, this weather, this person beside us. Anything but what's actually here.

That resistance is exhausting. And it doesn't change anything except how much we suffer.

Santosha is putting down the argument. Saying okay to what's true right now, even if you're going to work toward something different tomorrow.

You can want things to change and still be content. Those aren't opposites. You just stop treating this moment like an enemy while you move toward the next one.

Watch a cat in the sun. That's santosha. Complete presence with what is. No story about how the sun should be warmer or the spot should be softer. Just this warmth, this spot, this moment.

We've forgotten how to do this.

We're always five steps ahead, planning, worrying, reaching for the next thing before we've even touched this one. Or five steps behind, replaying what should have been different.

Contentment is arriving. Being here. Not because here is perfect, but because here is all we ever have.

When we practice santosha, we stop exhausting ourselves with comparison. Stop measuring our life against someone else's highlight reel. Stop postponing happiness until conditions are right.

This is it. Right now. As messy and imperfect as it is.

You can rest here. Even while you move. Even while you work. Even while things are hard.

That's the practice. Finding the still point inside the spinning.

TAPAS (DISCIPLINE)

Tapas means heat. The kind that burns away what's not essential.

Discipline sounds like punishment to most people. Something rigid, joyless. But tapas is really about commitment—to whatever you've decided matters.

We all have fire in us. The question is what we're burning.

Most of us scatter our energy. A little here, a little there, never enough sustained heat to actually transform anything. We want to write but we scroll. We want to grow but we avoid discomfort. We want to change but we won't do the thing that would change us.

Tapas is showing up when you don't feel like it. Sitting when your mind says run. Staying when everything in you wants to leave.

It's not suffering for suffering's sake. It's the willingness to be uncomfortable in service of something that matters to you.

A seed doesn't become a tree without the pressure of soil, the strain of pushing through earth. That pressure is tapas. The transforming heat.

You choose what to commit to. Nobody else can tell you what deserves your fire. But once you choose, you show up for it. Again and again. Even on the days it's hard. Especially on the days it's hard.

This builds something in you. Not perfection. Dignity. The quiet strength that comes from keeping your word to yourself.

Small things repeated. That's how anything real gets built.

Tapas doesn't make you harder. It refines you. Burns off the excess. Leaves behind what's true.

And yes, sometimes it hurts. Growth usually does. But there's a difference between the pain that breaks you and the pain that makes you.

Tapas is the second kind.

SVADHYAYA (SELF-STUDY)

Know thyself. Oldest wisdom in the book.

Svadhyaya is the practice of actually looking. At yourself, at your patterns, at the stories running your life without your permission.

Most of us don't really want to look. We prefer our comfortable delusions. But those delusions cost us.

Self-study starts with noticing. What sets you off? What do you avoid? What do you reach for when you're uncomfortable? Where do you lie to yourself?

This takes courage. And kindness. You can't study yourself with hatred in your eyes.

The traditional practice includes reading sacred texts—the Bhagavad Gita, the sutras, whatever speaks to your particular hunger. Not to become more knowledgeable, but to see yourself reflected. To find the universal in your personal mess.

Every story worth reading is your story.

But svadhyaya goes beyond books. It's watching your mind like you'd watch weather. Noticing the patterns without getting swept up in them. Seeing how often the same thoughts return, the same fears, the same small angers.

We're not as complicated as we think. We have maybe five core wounds that show up in ten thousand disguises.

When you study yourself long enough, you stop taking yourself so seriously. You see the repetition. The predictability. How often you're just reacting to old pain, not responding to what's actually here.

That seeing is liberating. You can't change what you don't see. But once you see it, you can't unsee it. And in that clear seeing, change becomes possible.

Not because you force it. Because you've stopped being unconscious.

Self-study includes examining your dreams, your projections, your shadows. All the parts you've pushed away. They're still running the show from backstage.

Bring them into the light. Look at them. They're less scary than you think.

Svadhyaya means becoming intimate with yourself. Not the polished version you show the world, but the messy, scared, hopeful, contradictory whole of you.

That's who you actually are. And that's who deserves your attention.

ISHVARA PRANIDHANA (SURRENDER)

Here's where the yogis start talking about God and everyone gets uncomfortable.

It’s understandable because practicing surrender is the subtlest play of the ego. After all, who is the one doing the surrendering?

The way surrender is taught and exemplified 99% of the time in yoga communities is dangerous. It feeds the ego of the one surrendering, and those admiring the humility of that devotee.

Rather than teach surrendering to a power or being that is separate from yourself, I believe that a more conscious approach is to teach surrender to life, while respecting yourself by doing your best.

Ishvara pranidhana means surrender to something larger than yourself. Whether you call it God, the universe, life, consciousness, the great mystery, or just the flow of things—doesn't matter.

What matters is admitting you're not in control. Not really.

Ishvara Pranidhana is more about letting go and trusting that you are supported, than it is wearing certain clothes or bowing to the feet of other people or statues. There is a time and place to pay respects, but not to give away your power. The entire point is that it’s all within, and that innermost self is also the fullest expression of the way things are.

You can plan, you can work, you can do everything right, and things will still fall apart sometimes. Or come together in ways you never imagined. Life has its own intelligence, and it's far bigger than your ideas about how things should go.

Surrender means doing your work and releasing the outcome. Offering your effort without clutching at results.

This takes practice. We're trained to believe that if we just try hard enough, control enough, worry enough, we can make life comply.

But life doesn't comply. It unfolds. And you can either fight that or dance with it.

Ishvara pranidhana is dancing. Showing up fully, then letting go. Working with your whole heart, then opening your hands.

The Bhagavad Gita says to act without attachment to the fruits of action. That's this. Do the thing because the thing is worth doing, not because you need it to make you feel successful or validated or safe.

Trust that something larger is holding this. That your life is part of a pattern too complex for you to see from where you're standing.

This doesn't mean passive acceptance. You still act, still choose, still engage. You just stop pretending you know how it all should work out.

When we surrender, we relax. Not because everything is okay, but because we've stopped fighting reality. We align ourselves with what is instead of insisting on what we think should be.

That alignment brings peace. Not the peace of getting what you want, but the peace of being in harmony with how things actually are.

You're part of something vast and mysterious. You always have been. Surrender is remembering that. And resting in it.

Even when you don't understand. Especially then.

A CLOSING THOUGHT

The niyamas are maintenance practices. Ways of keeping yourself clean, content, committed, aware, and surrendered to something larger.

None of them will make you a better person in some cosmic sense. They'll just make you more available to your own life.

People turn these practices into achievement systems. Track their progress, measure their growth, compete over who's more disciplined or self-aware. But that's missing the point so completely it's almost funny.

You practice because it feels better to live this way. Because a clean house is nicer than a dirty one. Because showing up for yourself builds self-respect. Because fighting reality all day is exhausting.

Simple as that.

These practices soften you. Make you more permeable to what's actually happening. Less defended, less rigid, less convinced you know how everything should be.

They won't make you special. They'll make you ordinary in the best way. Present. Real. Less burdened by your own story.

Do them badly. Do them inconsistently. Do them when you remember and forget them when you don't. They'll still work.

Because the practice is just this: paying attention to your life. Tending to it. Being here for it.

That's all the niyamas are asking. That you show up. That you notice. That you care for yourself the way you'd care for anything precious.

Because you are precious. Even when you forget. Even when you're messy. Even when you're failing at all of this.

Practice anyway. With joy. With lightness. With as much kindness as you can manage.

The world will keep spinning. You might as well tend your inner garden while it does.