Ahimsa

by elizabeth yeter

Today at yoga, the instructor brought a new word into my life. If you’ve ever been to a yoga class, you know that Hindu phrases are peppered in here and there. Between the soothing music and my sweaty palms, these expressions are often lost on me. But this is a word worth remembering, a term that resonates with my daily experience of life. “Ahimsa,” she says, “is the practice of nonviolence, toward others, and yourself.” My ears perk immediately. Violence toward myself. Yea, I know a thing or two about that practice. But nonviolence?

How fitting that there’s a word for the opposite of self-harm. I guess self-love could be an adequate antonym, but for some reason I’ve never thought of it as such.  I’ve always regarded the opposite of self-harm to be, well, as silly as this sounds, not self-harming.

“When you practice ahimsa,” she continues, “you show kindness and consideration to all life.”

My face reddens. You see this new vocabulary comes at a particularly apropos time. That very morning I had been violent with my words toward my children. No cussing but definitely spews of anger about the mess they made of the house. On top of that, as I attempted to clean said mess, I dropped my favorite bowl – the one from my dearly departed grandpa’s restaurant – and shattered it into a gazillion pieces on the kitchen floor. So now I had two messes to clean up, and I didn’t yet know about ahimsa. Needless to say, I did not show kindness and consideration to my children.

Then I spent the rest of the day kicking myself over what a horrible mother I was for yelling at the kids. So instead of the cycle of violence ending when I apologized to them for my burst of anger, I turned it inwards and perpetuated the assault toward myself.

With my back pressed against the mat, in shavasana, the final resting pose, I breathe in ahimsa and breathe out relief. Now I have a better definition of what recovery is. It’s not just not self-harming. It’s letting go of violence where I once held on to it. Recovery is practicing ahimsa in every moment of my life.