Ahimsa in Speech

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.