Please enjoy this wonderful piece of writing shared by Sky Yoga student, Kim Wilson. During a time when TV and social media is bombarded with unsettling news of violence, it is appropriate to take a moment to see how we, ourselves, can manage the amount of violence we allow in our daily lives. Kim's piece is very relevant in our study in yoga as we work to change the narrative of how we speak from himsa to ahimsa.
love, katrina www.skyyogalv.com
“Peaceful Parlance:
Taking Violence Out of Our Speech”
By Kim D. Wilson
I’m not always the most
graceful person. About two months ago, I
slipped and fell –really hard –on my rear end.
No serious damage, but I had a giant bruise that was pretty
uncomfortable for a week or so. During
that time, I went to my regular yoga class.
Katrina was offering to help us with a pose but promised that she
wouldn’t actually touch us if we didn’t want her to.
She knew about my bruise, and
I said, “You’d better not touch my butt or I’ll kill you!”
I heard my words echo in the
peaceful space of the yoga room. I
couldn’t believe I had said them. And to
my yoga teacher, of all people! Fortunately for me, Katrina, as you may know, is
a very accepting, non-judgmental person. She said with mock disapproval, “Kim! That’s not very peaceful language!” And we all laughed.
But it did cause me to ponder
more deeply something that I had been observing in myself for a while.
More recently, Katrina was
talking to us about how, when it comes to yoga poses that require balance, we
need to be aware of the point at which we are better off not trying to recover
our balance and we need to fall. She
said that we need to let go of the pose so we can fall “well” and not hurt
ourselves. Falling out of headstand, for
example.
I can do headstand but I do
it close to the wall so that if I start to go over, my feet just touch the
wall. I’d love to be able to do it away
from the wall, but I’m afraid of falling and hurting myself. So I asked Katrina, “Would you be willing to
demonstrate how you would fall out of headstand?”
She paused for just a moment,
and then she did show us, and it was helpful for me to see how she did it. Later, though, she admitted that when I asked
her, she thought to herself, “I want to kill Kim!” And again, we both laughed at how we say
these violent things even though we study a discipline that specifically
teaches non-violence.
So I keep having these
moments of awareness, in myself and sometimes in what I read or hear elsewhere,
of the violence in our everyday language.
We know that most human societies engage in violence, whether it’s
one-on-one aggression, one group against another or entire nations at war with one
other. So it’s only natural that in our
language, we use words that come from those acts of violence. They add a little spice, or drama, to what
we’re saying. They “kick things up a
notch,” you could say.
I love language, and I’m
often curious about the origins of words.
So the more I started noticing words that had connections with war or
other forms of violence, the more I became aware of just how prevalent they
are. And the more I became aware of how
much of my own language contained violent words. Ever since then, avoiding violence in my
speech has been a constant battle (pun intended).
Writer Richard Lederer
addresses the issue of violent speech in a short piece, in which he examines
the prolific use of violent terms in business and sports, among other
topics. He asks the reader, “If language is truly a window to the
world and if the words and expressions we use truly affect the way we think,
can we ever really stamp out violence (pun intended)?”
I am sure my language affects my thinking. And reducing or eliminating violence from my
speech is something I want to do. I want
to make this change as a person who is committed to living a peaceful life. I made this commitment a long time ago, but I
continue to learn new ways to apply it to my life.
I recently began studying the yoga sutras with Katrina, which are the
philosophical underpinnings of the practice of asanas. When we say we do yoga, usually we mean that
we practice yoga poses. But there are
seven additional parts of what yoga includes, called limbs. One of those limbs is a set of ethical
principles, called yamas.
The first yama, called ahimsa, addresses violence. Yoga instructor Judith Hanson Lasater, founder of “Yoga Journal,” says,
“ahimsa is usually translated as ‘nonviolence.’ This refers not only to physical violence, but
also to the violence of words or thoughts. What we think about ourselves or others can be
as powerful as any physical attempt to harm. To practice ahimsa is to be constantly vigilant, to observe ourselves in
interaction with others and to notice our thoughts and intentions.”
Peaceful parlance is about
awareness and intentionality. When we
can bring what has been unconscious to our consciousness, then we can increase
our awareness of it, and once we become aware, we can be more intentional. Living life with intentionality is a way of
constantly creating and refining the person we want to be.
I want to be a person who,
as much as possible, is not a part of perpetuating the violence that is woven
into the fabric of our society.
Monitoring my choice of words is one way that I can contribute to that
goal. Mahatma Gandhi, a champion of
nonviolence in India, said, “As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in
being able to remake the world…as in being able to remake ourselves.” For Gandhi, the yama ahimsa, nonviolence, was his guiding principle and something
he believed people needed to develop as much as they could.
When we use violent language,
we are saying implicitly that we accept it.
It’s a little bit like a bystander witnessing a fist fight. If I’m that bystander, I can say I didn’t do
anything contribute to the violence, but then again, I didn’t do anything to
stop it. The bystander does bear some
responsibility.
We are bystanders to the
violence in our language. We didn’t
create it, but we can do something to stop it.
If we change ourselves, we will change the world around us. If we change how we think, often it changes
how we feel and what actions we take. As
Gandhi said, “Our beliefs become our thoughts; our thoughts become our words;
our words become our actions.”
The use of violence in our
language is a norm that I think we need to question and I think we need to
examine its true effects on our own spirits.
I believe that whatever we speak of gains strength in our minds and
hearts. If I complain about something unpleasant
that happened, I build it up in my mind, and I end up feeling worse about
it. If I make a mean comment about a public
figure, I think more mean thoughts and I become a little less
compassionate. What’s happening in my
mind and heart if I talk about “killing” someone? Talking that way is not helping me to become
the person I want to be.
As yoga students, I think
it’s important for us to be intentional about expressing ourselves in ways that
reflect our true values. We do this work
for ourselves and we do it for those around us.
As Gandhi said, “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.” May it be so.
