The Yamas: A lighter path

The yamas—these ancient ethical principles of yoga—have been treated like commandments for too long. Serious faces, crossed legs, the weight of spiritual achievement pressing down on everyone's shoulders. The moment we make these principles heavy, we've already missed the point.

Life is art. Joy is the compass. If your spiritual practice makes you more rigid, more judgmental, more separate from the wild, messy beauty of being human, then something has gone sideways.

What if we approached these differently? Moving through the world with a little more grace, a little more ease. Recognizing that peace lives underneath all the striving.

Read these lightly. Let them land where they want to land. If they make you smile instead of making you serious, you're probably onto something.

AHIMSA (NON-VIOLENCE)

Beneath the violence of the world lives something quieter.

We exist in a violent reality—not just wars and cruelty, but the subtle violence of constant striving, endless busyness, the way we push ourselves and others. Layer upon layer of it.

But if we peel those layers back, from the obvious to the barely visible, we find non-violence. Peace. Our true nature.

It's not something we create. It's what remains when we stop creating so much noise.

This place has no name that fully captures it, though people have tried. It's what lives underneath all the names—the part of us that isn't separate from anything else.

We cultivate it through simple things: acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude for the strange gift of being alive at all. When we rest in this peace, it radiates outward naturally. We don't have to force it.

Even our accomplishments can disturb it. Even our productivity. The constant motion we mistake for living.

To be content with what is—to allow balance instead of always reaching—this is ahimsa.

There's no greater gift we can offer each other than presence, than love, than this quiet space beneath it all.

May we find joy on the path home.

SATYA (TRUTHFULNESS)

Truth shapes the world we live in—not abstract truth, but the small, daily kind. The truth of how we speak, what we admit, what we hide.

When we stop lying—to others, to ourselves—something shifts. Fear has less room. We stop spending so much energy maintaining false versions of ourselves.

Truthfulness requires compassion. Without it, truth becomes a weapon. With it, truth becomes a doorway.

Living honestly humbles us. It opens our hearts to how things actually are, not how we wish they were. In that opening, we find acceptance.

This takes roots. Deep self-knowledge. The kind that comes from sitting with ourselves long enough to see clearly.

When we practice truthfulness, we naturally move toward non-violence. We start to see, with softer eyes, that everyone suffers. Everyone struggles. We've all been lost. We've all pretended. We've all hurt others and ourselves.

Remembering this makes compassion easier.

Truthfulness creates trust—in ourselves, in others, in this moment as it is. When we trust what's here, we stop fighting so hard. We align with what is instead of what we think should be.

Satya isn't about moral perfection. It's about living freely. Being honest enough with ourselves that we don't have to hide anymore.

That's the path—not to some elevated state, but to being fully here, open to all of it.

ASTEYA (NON-STEALING)

Non-stealing sounds simple. Don't take what isn't yours.

But it goes deeper than that.

Stealing comes from lack. From believing there isn't enough, that we aren't enough. We take from others to fill some void in ourselves.

The irony is that stealing deepens the emptiness. When we dishonor what belongs to someone else—their possessions, their ideas, their time, their credit—we lose dignity within ourselves.

It's subtle. We can steal without ever touching anything physical. We steal attention by dominating conversations. We steal energy by constantly needing reassurance. We steal time by arriving late, by not showing up, by half-listening while planning what we'll say next.

We steal joy from ourselves by comparing, by wanting what others have instead of tending what's ours.

When we practice non-stealing, we practice contentment. We stop grasping. We trust that what we have, what we are, is enough.

A flower doesn't steal beauty from the flower beside it. It simply blooms. In doing so, it makes the whole garden more beautiful.

That's asteya—knowing you don't need to take from anyone else to be whole. You already are.

BRAHMACHARYA (CONTROL OF DESIRES)

Brahmacharya is often translated as celibacy, but it's really about energy—where we direct it, what we let consume us.

Desires arise. That's normal. That's human. The practice isn't to eliminate desire, but to not be controlled by it.

If we acted on every impulse, we'd be scattered. Pulled in a thousand directions. Chasing one thing, then another, never satisfied, never still.

Each desire we feed invites more. Like guests at a party who bring friends who bring more friends until the house is full of strangers and we've forgotten why we opened the door in the first place.

Brahmacharya asks: what deserves your energy?

Not everything that calls for our attention deserves it. Not every craving needs to be satisfied. Not every impulse needs to become action.

When we pause—when we notice a desire without immediately following it—we create space. In that space, we can choose. We can ask: does this serve me? Does this serve others? Or am I just restless, reaching for something to fill the quiet?

Channeling our energy toward what matters instead of scattering it toward everything that sparkles. Not suppression, but direction.

When we stop chasing every desire, we find peace. Not because we've transcended our humanity, but because we've stopped exhausting ourselves trying to satisfy the unsatisfiable.

That's brahmacharya—knowing where to place your energy, and having the dignity to say no to everything else.

APARIGRAHA (NON-POSSESSIVENESS)

We spend so much time collecting things. Objects, achievements, identities, versions of how life should look. We hold them close, convinced that if we let go, we'll have nothing.

But what if the opposite is true?

The tighter we grip, the smaller our hands become. The more we try to possess, the more possessed we are. By our things, our plans, our ideas of who we should be.

Aparigraha means open hands. Not because possessions are bad, but because clinging is exhausting.

Watch a child play. They pick up a toy, delight in it completely, then drop it and move on to the next wonder. No attachment. No story about what it means to have or not have that toy. Pure presence with what is, then release.

Somewhere along the way, we forget this. We start building walls around our lives. This is mine. That is yours. I need to keep this. I can't lose that. We accumulate not just objects, but grudges, expectations, fixed ideas about how things must be.

The irony is that nothing can be truly possessed anyway. Everything is borrowed—our bodies, our relationships, even our thoughts. All of it passes through like water.

When we practice non-possessiveness, we release the grip. Enjoy what's here without needing to own it. Trust that life will provide what we need, when we need it.

Joy lives in the open hand, the light touch, the ability to receive and release without making it all so serious.

You can love something fully and still let it be free. You can work hard without clinging to outcomes. You can care deeply without trying to control.

That's aparigraha—knowing that you came into this world with nothing, you'll leave with nothing, and in between, you're just playing with borrowed stardust.

So play. Hold things lightly. Dance with life instead of trying to pin it down.

That's the whole practice, really. All of it. This lightness.

A CLOSING THOUGHT

These five principles—ahimsa, satya, asteya, brahmacharya, aparigraha—they're more like songs than rules. You don't master a song. You sing it, you forget the words, you hum it in the shower, you let it change as you change.

The ancient yogis understood something we keep forgetting: the path is supposed to make you more alive, not more rigid. More human, not less. More joyful, not more serious.

If your practice makes you judge others, you've wandered off. If it makes you judge yourself, same thing. If it turns you into someone who can't laugh at their own contradictions, who can't dance badly, who can't admit they still want things and mess up and occasionally eat the whole pizza—then what's the point?

Softening instead of hardening. Meeting yourself and others with kindness instead of measurement.

So yes, practice non-violence. But don't weaponize it against yourself every time you have an unkind thought. Practice truthfulness, but remember that truth without compassion is just cruelty in disguise. Practice non-stealing, desire management, non-possessiveness. Do it with a smile, knowing that you'll stumble, you'll forget, you'll grab onto things you said you wouldn't.

And that's okay. Coming back. Starting again. Laughing at yourself. Trying once more.

Being human more fully, more freely. Less suffering. More joy.

Now go live your life. Lightly. Truthfully. Joyfully.

The world needs your particular kind of lightness.