Adore Yoga Blog

The third Yama: Asteya - Non-covetousness

This is the third instalment of my modern take on Patanjali's yoga sutras,  looking at real-world applications of the Yamas and Niyamas, the 'ten commandments' of yoga. 

I first experienced covetousness when I was 4 years old. My next door neighbour, also 4, had a toy record player that played nursery rhymes when you inserted a bright plastic disc. I wanted that toy so much it hurt. I begged and pleaded for one. I even tried to steal it, hiding it at the bottom of the garden with the intention of going back for it when nobody was looking.  I’d always played nicely with the girl next door until she got that record player. After that, I hated her.  

A few years later, my brother got a cassette player for his birthday. I desperately wanted to possess his (rather crappy and second hand as I now recall) tape player and I used to take it when he wasn’t looking (and sometimes when he was, just to annoy him).  When it came to that tape player, I felt pretty much the same way about my brother as I did about the girl with the toy record player.

Non-covetousness is the third Yama, and a very good one it is too. Keeping up with the Jones’s, or the little girl next door, is exhausting. All that energy used up in the longing for something that isn’t yours. Not to mention the damage it does to relationships – it’s very hard to be happy for somebody while you’re secretly desperate to possess their success or happiness for yourself. 

Asteya is often translated as ‘non-stealing’, but I like TKV Desikachar’s translation: “Noncovetousness or the ability to resist a desire for that which does not belong to us.” Stealing is something that we’d NEVER do, oh no. Everybody knows that’s wrong. And while it’s pretty obvious if you steal something from a shop or fail to return something you borrowed from a friend, it’s much easier to conceal the desire for something that isn’t rightfully yours. A little bit of envy when your best friend lands the job you’ve been dreaming of isn’t going to ruin your life, but habitually longing for things that aren’t yours can have a serious impact on your levels happiness. Covetousness is more common and insidious than plain old stealing.

There’s another, very subtle way of stealing and that’s when you take away somebody’s self esteem, confidence or inner peace. If your envy of your friend’s great new job leads to snippy comments, even in jest, you’re taking some of her joy away. Saying or doing anything that undermines another person’s joy, trust or wellbeing is stealing. I should know, I did it recently and it makes me wince just to think about it. 

My six year old daughter, Ruby, desperately wanted to go on the ghost tour at the Manly Quarantine Station. Due to recent, erm, challenging behaviour, I decided to use the situation as an incentive to make some positive changes at home. 

Together we devised a wall chart that had ten squares in it. Every time I noticed her doing something lovely (which could be as simple as NOT tormenting her brother over dinner), she could draw a ghost in one of the squares. The idea was that once all ten squares contained a ghost, I’d take her on the ghost tour.

It worked a treat. The challenging behaviour disappeared overnight and my grumpy, fractious daughter turned in to a helpful and genuinely cheerful little trooper for two whole weeks. We made plans to go to the Quarantine Station and spent several days talking excitedly about it. But two days before the outing, I watched her extract a horrible revenge on her little brother, who had committed the unspeakable crime of removing the book mark from her book. I lost my temper and flew at her, shouting that she was a mean bully and that there would be no ghost tour after what I’d seen. 

When all the wailing and screaming (including mine) had abated, I realised what I had done. In my anger, I hadn’t been able to resist the desire to take something that didn’t belong to me – Ruby’s confidence in me to treat her in a fair and consistent way. Who’d trust a parent who gave with one hand, took with the other and shouted in your face while they did it? 

With a little bit of mindfulness, I could have handled the situation with greater skill, disciplining my daughter in a way that renewed her confidence in me rather than taking it away. Now she was giving me the cold shoulder with a degree of sophistication that made me fear for the teenage years. It was time to go back to Patanjali for inspiration on how to get myself out of yet another pickle of my own making. 

He starts by offering a great incentive to practice Asteya: 

“One who is trustworthy, because he does not covet what belongs to others, naturally has everyone’s confidence and everything is shared with him, however precious it might be.” Sutra 2.37

If you can be trusted with other people’s feelings and confidences, they are going to share their lives, thoughts and experiences with you. There’s no greater privilege than that. I reckon a 6 yr olds trust is pretty precious and if I wanted Ruby to share it with me, I had to demonstrate that I was trustworthy enough to deserve it. 

So, how do we go about cultivating Astyea? Barring kleptomania, making up you mind not to steal material things is easy. It’s a lot harder to change the subtle behaviours that lead to the theft of other people’s joy, confidence or self esteem. 

Bringing other people down is a habit.  The easiest way to kick this kind of habit is to create new habits that gradually take over from the old ones. And the best way to create a new habit is practise. Patanjali provides a simple exercise to help us to practise Asteya:

“If we can be pleased with others who are happier than ourselves, compassionate towards those who are unhappy, joyful with those doing praiseworthy things, and remain undisturbed by the errors of others, our mind will be very tranquil.” Sutra 1:33

If we can cultivate the positive, compassionate feelings that Patanjali recommends, we will no longer feel the compulsion to chip away at other people’s wellbeing.

I decided to meditate on this sutra as part of my morning yoga practise, considering what it meant and how I could apply it. After a couple of days, my contemplation of the sutra started to seep into my every day interactions. I remembered to practice compassion rather than impatience when the kids were tired and whingy (mostly). And just reminding myself to ‘remain undisturbed’ when the challenging behaviour set it gave me enough breathing space to step back and think before saying or doing anything I would regret. Contemplating sutra 1:33 didn’t fix all my problems over night, but sustained practise made it a lot easier for me to make better choices.  

I think that’s the real power of yoga. A few minutes of concentrated mindfulness can have a positive effect on the way you think, feel and behave, long after you’ve finished your formal practice.

The changes in my behaviour had a huge impact on Ruby’s behaviour. She became more contented and cooperative as my parenting became more consistent and compassionate. I was reminded of the saying “The definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.” Output is directly related to input. I became acutely aware of this as I realised that the way Ruby treated her little brother was (usually) a direct reflection of how I was treating her. 

We did go to on the Ghost Tour, we just postponed it for a week to give everyone time to settle down. I reckon Patanjali would have made a pretty good parent. 

The second Yama: Satya - Communicate honestly and kindly

This is the second instalment of my modern take on Patanjali's yoga sutras., looking at real-world applications of the Yamas and Niyamas, the 'ten commandments' of yoga. The second yama is all about communication.

 The Sanskrit term used in this Sutra is ‘Satya’. I was taught that this meant ‘Truthfulness’, but TKV Desikachar describes it as ‘right communication’. Now for me, that’s much more challenging than plain old ‘tell the truth’ - I’ve never had a problem with telling it like it is. But the idea of ‘right communication’ is far less black and white. It’s about dealing with others fairly and kindly, sparing feelings as well as speaking the truth. For me, it was about being less scary.

Recently, I was leafing through some student feedback forms for a yoga teacher training course I had delivered. One of the students had written “I thought the lecturer was a bit scary.” Now, I knew I could be forthright, but I didn’t think that anybody would be scared of me. I mentioned this to friends and colleagues who, sticking to the principle of Satya, gently told me that I could come across as, well, a bit strident. They were right. I can get rather carried away when I’m passionate about something and, I had to admit, my teaching style could be pretty confrontational. 

I started to think more carefully about how I communicated. I knew that some students really liked my ‘no holds barred’ approach, but not everybody enjoyed my abrasive style. As a teacher, it’s my job to help every student reach their full potential and that wasn’t going to happen while I was acting in a ‘scary’ way. It was time to get serious about NVC.

I was introduced to Non-Violent Communication (NVC) by Judith Lasater, a US based yoga teacher, back in 2004. NVC reasons that we all share the same basic human needs and that once we acknowledge those needs, we can communicate effectively and authentically. I started by trying out the NVC formula on my children.

Eddie (aged 3): I hate you mummy (I’ve just told him he can’t bring the huge, wet, filthy stick he found in the park into the car)

Me: You need to be able to make your own decisions don’t you? Well I need to protect the inside of the car or Daddy will go mad. Would you be willing to put down the stick and then you can choose which CD to listen to on the way home?

Eddie: I’m not going home, I hate you.

NVC is supposed to work well with children, so I tried again with Ruby (aged 6).

Me: Ruby, please let your brother have a go on the trampoline

Ruby: No, he’s annoying

Me: I hear that you need some time without your brother to do some big-girl stuff.  I need to make Eddie stop screaming at the top of his lungs. Would you be willing to let Eddie have a turn then you and I can do something special together after dinner?

Ruby: Eddie, I’ll only let you on the trampoline if you give me your party bag (from the morning’s birthday party).

Eddie: OK!

Conflict resolved.

While NVC is a great tool, I found it hard to stick to the formula (and reverted to type as soon as it didn’t work). So I started to pay attention to the times when my communication tipped over from compassionate to scary.  I realised that my most abrasive moments were reserved for the times when I felt most vulnerable – being scary was a defence mechanism. Now, owning up to my own vulnerability was a whole lot more confronting than simply being ‘nicer’, but this observation opened up a whole new way of thinking about ‘right communication.’ It’s not what you say, it’s the mental and emotional state you’re inhabiting when you say it.

Using a variation of the old ‘count to ten’ method of holding back before speaking in anger, I started to deploy a little physical trick whenever I noticed myself feeling challenged or overwhelmed. I call it the Rag Doll technique. Here’s how to do it:

• Simultaneously exhale and relax every muscle in my body - floppy hands, face, lips, belly, shoulders, everything (well, there’s just enough tension in the key postural muscles to stay upright!) 
• Switch off from all the sounds and sights around you and turn all your attention inwards 
• Watch yourself as you take a single, slow breath in this passive state. 

All this takes about 5 seconds (and it gets easier with practise). 

What does it achieve? It removes the ‘charge’ from the situation. There’s a powerful reflex, like an electrical charge, that is triggered by feelings of anxiety, fear or vulnerability. This charge can lead to defensive or hostile reactions for even negative self-talk and despair. I discovered that by diffusing that charge, I can communicate from a calm and balanced place (running and swimming also diffuse this charge for me, but it’s not so easy to do a few laps in the middle of teaching a yoga class or disciplining children!)

The Rag Doll technique is just one way of practising mindfulness, the holy grail of yoga. There are plenty of other ways of stepping back from the overwhelm and becoming aware of unwanted patterns of behaviour as they creep up. Affirmations, mantra, visualisation – these are all ways of short circuiting the ‘charge’ so that we can actually choose how we respond to situations rather than falling into bad habits that cause you more problems (like scaring students).

One of the best ways to observe our patterns of behaviour is to watch how we respond to challenges on the yoga mat. What is your mind-talk when holding your least favourite pose? How do you feel when performing a breathing practise that makes you uncomfortable? Start watching your reactions on the mat and notice what techniques help you get that Rag Doll effect.

The first 'Yama': Be considerate (Ahimsa)

In the last blog post, I introduced the Yamas and Niyamas, ten lifestyle recommendations made by the great sage Patanjali, around 2000 years ago.  Over the Christmas period, I had a reminder about the first of these, Ahimsa, or ‘Consideration’.

“It’s the middle of Summer and I’m eating roast turkey and Brussels sprouts . It’s one of the quirks of Christmas in Australia that I’ll never get used to. And I’m paying the price for it with flushed cheeks, a heavy stomach and a strong urge to lie down (if only my 3 year old did). Feeling like this makes me grumpy and I start to feel sorry for myself. If only my kids would give me a break. If only I had air conditioning. How come it’s down to me to do all the Christmas preparation? No wonder I’m exhausted. And boy, it’s been tough doing it on a tight budget this year. By Boxing Day, I’m thoroughly demoralised. 

Then I open an email from my brother, Chris, back in the UK. While my mum’s visiting us here in Sydney for Christmas, Chris has been responsible for looking after our elderly grandmother and our dad who has dementia. His account of Christmas Day reads like a dark comedy, involving burned turkey, stewed vegetables, unspeakable bathroom escapades and an interrupted night filled with the confusion and fear that grips dad when he’s upset. It’s a brutal reality check and I realise it’s time to practise the first of Patanjali’s "Ten Commandments", the Yamas and Niyamas. 

Ahimsa - Be considerate

Patanjali uses the Sanskrit term Ahimsa, which is often translated as ‘do no harm’. However, the great yoga teacher TKV Desikachar translates Ahimsa as “Consideration for all living things, especially those who are innocent, in difficulty, or worse off than we are.” Many yoga students see this as advocating vegetarianism. But I’ve already polished off the turkey and I decide that my family back in the UK need my consideration more than the unfortunate bird.  

I start with my Gramdmother. She loves to receive photos and stories about my kids, so I set to work preparing a photo-book of our Christmas to send to her. I also get my 6 year old on the phone to say thank you for her presents (even at 86, Great Grandma picked some winners with a fairy frock for Ruby and a Spiderman outfit for Ed). But I can’t think how to show my dad and brother that I’m thinking of them and soon the everyday chaos takes over and I realise a week has gone past and I still haven’t got in touch with them. 

Being overtaken by events is fairly common round here and I note sadly that I only communicate with my friends and family in the UK on birthdays and Christmases. I decide that I need to put some kind of system in place if I’m to follow Patanjali’s advice and remember show consideration for others. So, I created a kind of chart to stick next to my bed. I resolved to check the chart daily to ensure that I do something considerate every day, no matter how hectic things get at home. At first, I got a bit overwhelmed by all the ways I could be considerate. So I made a list of all my ‘roles’  (Mother, Sister, Daughter, Partner, Teacher, Employer, Friend etc.) and aimed to do something kind and considerate in at least one of those roles every day. 

On the first Monday I put a check mark in the ‘Granddaughter’ box because I’d made the photo book for my grandmother. Then, just by constantly reminding myself of my resolutions by looking at the chart every day, ways of behaving considerately towards my dad and brother started to emerge. I had a BFO (Blinding Flash of the Obvious, I’m probably going to have a few of those as we go on). Consistency was the key. This was what had been missing from my previous attempts to follow Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, indeed missing from every resolution and endeavour I’d ever half-succeeded at. I needed the discipline of regular, routine consistency. From then on, I knew I was destined to be a chart freak. 

By the end of the week I had sent my dad a compilation of artwork created by my kids, along with a thank you card for the books he sent us for Christmas (he’s not so great on the phone these days) and I sent my brother a funny e-card and a voucher for a golf lesson, something he loves but hasn’t done for a long time.  Although I’d only sent little things, the thought certainly counted. My family responded warmly to their gifts and we felt much closer together, despite the geographical distance. I felt a deep sense of satisfaction, a little reminder of what TKV Desikachar said about Ahimsa: “The more considerate one is, the more one stimulates friendly feelings among all in one’s presence.” It seems that, with modern technology, you can stimulate those feelings among those who are far away from one’s presence too.

Next time: Satya - Truth

Did you know that your true, deep down natural state of being is absolute bliss? When my first yoga teacher told me that way back when, I snorted out loud. I was 21 and having the worst year of my life. I was in my final year of university and coping badly with the pressure. A combination of poor diet, lack of exercise and way too much partying was already taking its toll. And then the panic attacks began. Great big, horrible black holes of fear that swallowed up my vitality and confined me to my room. It certainly wasn’t conducive to study and my final exams were looming. I packed up my little room at university and headed home to my parents place, scared and unhappy.

My mum suggested I try yoga to help me relax, so one morning I joined a group of chatty middle-aged ladies at my local community centre where the teacher did his best to get me out of ‘rabbit in headlights’ mode by asking me to pay close attention to my body and breath. At that point I was willing to try anything to make myself feel better. And sure enough, the yoga poses and breathing exercises did made me feel less anxious, but those things alone didn’t fix my panic attacks and bring happiness back into my life.  It took a crash course in the Yoga Sutras to do that.  

It was the no-nonsense teachings of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras that helped me understand a key life-truth: My basic nature is to be happy. Thanks to a few messy life experiences and some unhelpful habits I’d picked up along the way, I had managed to smother my fundamental happiness with layers of anxiety and other mental detritus. The good news was that, along with these startling insights, Patanjali offered a road-map to get me back to that happy place where I’d started out. 

It took a fair bit of study and a lot of practise but in the space of a few short months I left behind my anxiety symptoms, graduated from university and started to live a happy, fulfilled life full of optimism.

Fast forward twenty years I’ve travelled the world, enjoyed careers in the arts and corporate world, migrated from England to Australia, found true love, birthed two perfect babies and trained as a yoga teacher.  Then, in 2009, my partner lost two jobs in quick succession. With a mortgage and two children under 5yrs, we had to do some fancy footwork to stay afloat. I became absorbed in my work, trying to find ways to increase the family’s income. Sacrifices were made, teeth were gnashed and, over the next 12 months we found ourselves adrift on a sea of unpaid bills and unwelcome austerity. My back and neck seized up as I stayed up late working and I was waking up each morning with clenched teeth.  Slowly, it began to dawn on me that, although I wasn’t experiencing panic attacks, I had slipped back into a pattern of anxiety. I wasn’t living a happy, fulfilled and optimistic life any more.  

There was nothing for it but to turn to my dog-eared copy of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. As I read, I realised that I was going to have to do a lot more than take comfort in his wise words. I was going to have to live them, just as I had done twenty years earlier. In order to do this, I decided to focus on a key area of the book and build a daily practice around it. Like yoga poses, the yoga sutras have the most effect the more often you practice. 

Unpacking the Yoga Sutras

Patanjali’s book is made up of four chapters of sutras, or short sentences. The best know sutras are those describing the ‘eight limbs’ of yoga (listed below). If you’ve done a few yoga classes, you’ll probably be familiar with the some of these ‘branches’, which include yoga poses and breathing techniques. But even serious yoga students often don’t know much about the first two of 8 limbs – the Yamas and Niyamas.

These are sometimes called the ’10 Commandments’ of yoga and, according to the ancient texts, take priority over the more popular techniques such as the physical poses. So why are they neglected in the 21st Century? Simply put, they just don’t get much attention in most modern day yoga classes. But these ten simple instructions hold the keys to happiness. Here are those ’10 Commandments’ in the context of all 8 Limbs of Yoga:

The Eight Limbs of Yoga

1. Yamas – 5 instructions for getting on with others: 

• Be considerate 

• Communicate honestly and kindly

• Stop wishing you had what other people have

• Moderation 

• Don’t be greedy

2. Niyamas – 5 instructions for getting on with yourself: 

• Be clean and tidy

• Be content

• Make the effort

• Never stop learning

• Let go

3. Asana – yoga poses

4. Pranayama – breathing techniques

5. Pratyahara – stilling the mind by blocking outside distractions

6. Dharana - concentration

7. Dhyana – deep focussed concentration (meditation)

8. Samadhi – the deepest level of meditation

In the next post: The first two yamas - making ancient wisdom WORK in the modern world

I’ve got a new project. I’m creating practical ways to make the ancient wisdom of yoga’s most influential ancient text work in the modern world. Yes, I love a bit of a challenge.

The Yoga Sutras is a key yoga text, written in the 2nd century BC by a sage called Patanjali. It’s the corner stone of modern yoga, but it’s far from being a ‘how to’ manual for doing yoga poses. In fact, Patanjali only gives one instruction for how to do the kind of yoga that we 21st century students practice on our sticky mats (he says we need to have a balance of strength and softness in our poses, being neither too forceful nor too cruisey).  What the Yoga Sutras is really about is happiness. In fact, it’s kind of an ancient handbook for happiness.  

I’ve been studying these sutras for over ten years and I’m constantly amazed by how effective they are at providing practical tools for living a happy, contented life. There’s a common theme running through all of them: Be good to yourself, do good for others. I’ve adapted that into the personal mantra: “What can I learn and how can I help?”

Like all good ideas, Patanjali’s wisdom has to be put into practice before it gets you anywhere. So, my new year resolution for 2011 is to live the Yoga Sutra’s. Over the next 12 months, I’ll be focusing on ten very simple instructions for achieving happiness from Patanjali one of the world’s greatest philosophers, and exploring practical ways to integrate his ancient wisdom into a busy modern life. Here they are:

Patanjali’s “10 Commandments”

1. Be considerate

2. Communicate honestly and kindly

3. Stop wishing you had what other people have

4. Moderation 

5. Don’t be greedy

6. Be clean and tidy

7. Be content

8. Make the effort

9. Never stop learning

10. Let go

In the coming weeks and months I’ll be unpacking the Yoga Sutra’s, sharing their story and recording my journey as I find real-world ways to integrate their teachings in to my everyday life.  In the next post I’ll be offering an overview of the Yoga Sutra’s and putting the above ‘Ten Commandments” into their wider context.

Do you think that our present day happiness can be influenced by the ancient wisdom of the yogis? Have you found greater happiness through any of the practices of yoga? What tried and tested wisdom do you turn to in times of difficulty?