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. They're simpler than we've made them. Basic hygiene of the heart. Keeping your inner house clean because it's nicer to live in a clean house. You might just be a little freer, a little lighter, a little more at home in your own skin.
SAUCHA (CLEANLINESS) Start with the simple things. A clean body, clean clothes, a space that doesn't suffocate you with clutter. Then move inward. What we consume matters: the news we scroll, the conversations we replay, the stories we tell ourselves. Notice what makes you feel heavy, cloudy, stuck. Clean out the closet, clear the table, take a shower. The inner work follows. The cleaner we are, inside and out, the clearer we become.
SANTOSHA (CONTENTMENT) Contentment means giving up the fight with what is. We spend so much energy wishing things were different. That resistance is exhausting and it doesn't change anything except how much we suffer. You can want things to change and still be content. You just stop treating this moment like an enemy while you move toward the next one. This is it, right now, as messy and imperfect as it is. You can rest here even while you move.
TAPAS (DISCIPLINE) Tapas means heat, the kind that burns away what's not essential. Discipline is really about commitment to whatever you've decided matters. Showing up when you don't feel like it. Staying when everything in you wants to leave. Small things repeated. This builds dignity in you, the quiet strength that comes from keeping your word to yourself. Tapas doesn't make you harder. It refines you, burns off the excess, leaves behind what's true.
SVADHYAYA (SELF-STUDY) Self-study is the practice of actually looking at yourself, at your patterns, at the stories running your life without your permission. Notice what sets you off, what you avoid, what you reach for when you're uncomfortable. This takes courage and kindness. You can't study yourself with hatred in your eyes. When you study yourself long enough, you stop taking yourself so seriously. You see the repetition, the predictability. That seeing is liberating. You can't change what you don't see.
ISHVARA PRANIDHANA (SURRENDER) Surrender to something larger than yourself. Whether you call it life, consciousness, the great mystery, or the flow of things. Admit you're not in control. You can plan and work and do everything right, and things will still unfold their own way. Surrender means doing your work and releasing the outcome. Offering your effort without clutching at results. Live freely because it is worth living. Trust that something larger is holding this. When we surrender, we align ourselves with what is instead of insisting on what we think should be.
