Fallen Star: A Return to Self through the Eight Limbs of Yoga

Ahimsa: Nonviolence

I am eleven, resting on the small slope of ground by the tennis courts near our summer cottage. On my back, knees bent, I playfully tap one foot and then the other, and squint at flashes of sunshine that break through passing clouds. A cold lump of hard dirt presses annoyingly into the small of my back, so I shift my body to the left and brush my fingertips along blades of evenly cut grass. I miss summer and my friends. I just started fifth grade at a new school, and I feel more connection to the summer cottage and its surroundings than anything at home.

My family has come up to Lake Geneva just for the day. I am alone. Open space surrounds me; mature pine trees line the edges of the lawn and create a barrier between the protected neighborhood and the busy road on the other side. The creek rushes steadily downhill and toward the lake. This sloped spot on the earth holds and supports me. When I finally close my eyes, twinkles of greenish light flash in the center of my forehead as my sight adjusts from bright daylight to a darkness inside. My parents will say it’s time to get back in the car soon. I keep my eyes closed for as long as I can and try to remember who I am.

The first yama is ahimsa, which means “non-violence.” This first yama is said to be the foundation and the true practice from which all eight limbs of yoga can be achieved. As humans, if we could master the practice of non-violence, no other yoga or meditation practices would be needed.To practice ahimsa means we practice non-violence to all living beings, including animals, people, the Earth, and ourselves. Even if we consider ourselves to be nonviolent people, violence plays out in subtle ways both on our yoga mats and in daily life. Critical self-talk, unforgivingness, judgment, eating disorders, and addictions are examples of how we turn violent toward ourselves. We hold onto expectations of what we want our world to be like, and we react uncompassionately when life doesn’t go our way. We blame ourselves. We blame others. We grab at the illusion of control, thinking it will bring relief.

BALASANA

In yoga we rest in balasana—child’s pose. We bow our body to sit on our heels, lower our forehead, and place our arms in front of us, outstretched but surrendering. We invite the rest. We honor our accomplishments as well as our falls. In the practice of rest, we know there is nothing to do in this moment and that nothing matters beyond this pose. Rest creates a gap between what needs to be done and what is happening right now.

I want rest. I want to let go of my quivering thigh muscles in warrior one, relieve my outstretched arms and let them make contact with the mat. I want to fold my body over itself and feel my heart rate slow in my chest. I want to rest my stomach heavily between my open thighs and surrender my breath, my life force.

I also want answers. I want to know if my husband is cheating. So I seek insight inside the darkness that exists behind closed eyes. Folded over, I breathe. I sense the gap between breaths before allowing the air to come fully in. I pause between the strenuous poses and stretches of life and evaluate the sensations—the shakiness, the fear, the sore muscles, and my heart’s stinging pain.

I want to relinquish control and maybe actually listen this time. I focus on my forehead, solid on the ground in front of me. I slowly rock it back and forth and gently massage my third eye to coax awake my intuition. How long have I kept her quiet?

*

Yamas, the first limb of yoga, are five moral principles for living an ethical life. Moral character serves as a beginning, a foundation upon which to achieve lasting happiness. Before doing any poses, we are fulfilled through our character.

Rather than relying on our inner self to be happy, we tend to rely on objects, roles, and relationships. Our desire to be happy drives our desire to grow up, get married, succeed in a career, buy a house, have children, and discover our purpose in the world. We believe collecting these roles and “good things” will make us happy. However, if we betray ourself along the way, if we ignore the five yamas, no amount of external “goodness” will bring happiness.

When we practice the five yamas—the five restraints—we learn kindness and compassion, not only in how we view and treat others, but maybe more importantly, how we view and treat ourselves. The five yamas are: ahimsa: non-violence; satya: truthfulness; asteya: nonstealing; brahmacharya: nonexcess; and aparigraha: ungrasping.

Despite good intentions, we likely dishonor and misinterpret all five yamas regularly. Practicing the five yamas starts us on a path of self- awareness, one on which we pay attention to our bodies, our thoughts, and actions. We might discover that in subtle ways, we harm ourselves and others. We see that we violently steal from the earth. We want too much and are never satisfied.

We look outside for things to complete us, without first looking inside ourselves. We get married and decide to have children. We decide not to have children. We can’t have children. We choose our career. We juggle a family and a career. We implement date nights and sex nights and girls-night-out nights. We smile sympathetically at women in restaurants as they wrangle screaming babies. Then we go home and cry after opening the baby shower invitation that arrives in the mail. We try to do it all, fulfilling all our roles—wife, mother, lover, sister, daughter, friend. We do not surrender our desires with an open palm, as the fifth yama suggests. Instead, we grasp, we cling, we hang on tightly, and then, when something we want appears to be slipping away, we squeeze even harder, maybe even manipulate the situation to get our way. We grab. We compare. We fail. We fall. We do not get what we want, and we are confused.

In the process of grabbing at all things good, we lose ourselves, we betray our personal truths, and we fall deeper into the false belief that something else, something “new” will fulfill us. We turn outward instead of inward, where a shift in perception, and possibly an admission, exists.

*

“Hey, girl, you’re so thin!” Our instructor Andrea leans in to give me a hug before class starts. “How are you doing?”

“Great!” I answer. “I gave up gluten”—because I feel I need to provide an explanation.

In class I rest in wide-legged child’s pose. My knees open to the edges of my mat, my body folds snugly between my thighs, and I focus on my third eye, the center of my forehead as it comes in contact with the hard, wooden floor. Once folded into child’s pose, I realize I have wanted this break my entire life. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to rest, to lie down, refrain from battling, and receive.

I don’t realize I am thin, at least not to the point that anyone would notice except me. But it’s not the first time this week someone has mentioned my appearance or my eating habits. My mother, the other night at dinner: “What, are you not eating bread?” My sister, walking behind me on our way up the stairs: “You look good, but like you’ve lost weight.” Obviously, I didn’t drop overnight. Any weight lost from my body and my face has been gradual. Yet today, and to others, it appears to have happened all at once.

I don’t like the eyes on me. I dislike that anyone has noticed anything about my body or my habits. If they comment on my body, my subtle acts of violence against myself are more difficult to hide.

As we move slowly out of child’s pose and onto all fours for cat/cow, I tip my chin further toward my chest and allow my eyes to peek back at my stomach. The extra skin droops and smushes together like wilted petals.

I study the limp, hanging mass around my belly button. Pale stretch marks from two pregnancies drag like raked sand across my flesh. The hole from the belly button ring I got while in Spain glares a visible pink hue. For a moment, I consider getting it pierced again, which might look better than the now sagging scar. But then I remember the fat needle that popped into my belly and how badly it hurt and the several glasses of Rioja I consumed before lying down on a strange man’s table. I’m not that young college girl anymore, and the dancing house parties, swirling nights at home drinking wine across the counter from my parents, and confusing rides in the back of police cars have begun to catch up with me.

I inhale fully into cow pose and lift my heart upward. I tilt my tailbone and elevate my eyes to the sky. The exhale arrives, and I follow it down and inward, curling my back up like a cat. I close my eyes and tuck my chin as the end of my breath squeezes out. The spot behind my forehead is dark but provides comfort.

I extend my belly down again into cow pose and let my abdomen fill unflatteringly with air. The bloated sensation in my stomach reminds me that I haven’t had sex with my husband in seven months. Before curving my spine up again into cat, I open my eyes to look at Andrea, our beautiful yoga instructor, arched perfectly on her mat at the front of the room. Her pony tail is long and blonde. Her butt and thighs curve sumptuously beneath tight leggings.

I suspect my husband David is having an affair and that I must have done something to deserve being cheated on. Of course David would choose another woman with curvier legs and fuller breasts and a less defensive demeanor.

The safety of my yoga mat keeps me temporarily away from my obsessive search for evidence that he is cheating. While David is away on business trips, I frantically dig through drawers that aren’t mine. I open shoeboxes and analyze receipts. My months of hunting have turned up no tangible proof, yet I cannot stop. All of my searching is a tireless attempt to validate my own intuition. I want evidence that my husband does not love me because I don’t know how else to trust myself.

“Molly, you don’t need to have proof to leave your husband,” my friend Sadie said to me on the phone one day as I talked her ear off about all the things that annoyed me about David, all the excuses and reasons I had to believe he was cheating. Her response shocked me and made me stop. What she meant was: You can leave your husband if that is how you feel. Your feelings are valid enough.

I can examine my belly or close my eyes. I can talk to my body gently, or I can berate and abuse it like I have most of my life. The violence imposed on women’s bodies, both self- and societally inflicted, causes eating disorders, addiction, and a fragmented sense of self. I obsess over my body in a disowned yet possessive way; I give my appearance too much influence and power while simultaneously regarding my body as an object to rail against. Like my compulsive digging for proof of David’s affair, I get high on the thrill of the search, but my heart sinks a little each time I think I may have uncovered the truth. Being called out as thin gives me a rush of validation, and so I continue to compare my body with others and disown its traits in order to control and walk about this earth with a sense of purpose. If I loved the way I looked, there would be nothing to fix. If I were satisfied in my marriage, there would be nothing to uncover.

What would it be like to simply exist in the present? I have always been on the hunt for something else, something perfect that will complete me.

The inhale arrives, and we continue the cat/cow movement to the rhythm of our own breath. The stickiness of the mat holds my palms in place as I arch and curl, open and close, breathe in and out. In yoga, my mat keeps me safely grounded in the present moment, at least for glimpses of time, which grants enough relief and peaks my curiosity. I trust my body in the pose. I inquire if my view of the world is true or if the truth is here, inside my body and focused on my breath.

In cat/cow, if I close my eyes, my own inhale and exhale direct my body when to tuck and when to uncurl. Rather than chide myself for what is wrong with my body, the single focus on breath guides my awareness to the strength in my arms and the important muscles that effort behind my abdomen. In the darkness behind my third eye, love and compassion slowly emerge, and I taste their sweet acceptance for what is. I no longer see myself or anyone else in the room. I no longer compare.

After several rounds of cat/cow, the distraction of society dissipates, and the booming critical voice in my mind softens to a whisper. On my mat, I am able to hear: What if, Molly? What if you are good just as you are?