Ways You Can Incorporate Yoga Principles into Your Lifestyle

Yoga is a practice that brings many benefits to you physically, mentally, and spiritually. You can use yoga to improve strength and flexibility and it can be a wonderful source of relaxation and focus. Yoga is an ancient Indian practice that includes many principles that you can apply to your life as a whole. 

Satya – Truthfulness

To put it simply, satya is the principle of being both truthful with others and yourself. Those who practice satya don’t tell lies of any kind. This includes lies of convenience. When you have mastered satya, you live a truthful life and you radiate truth. In order to master being truthful in life, you need to start with being truthful with yourself. Once you can be honest with yourself, you can be honest in other aspects of your life including your relationships with others. 

One way you can work on truthfulness with yourself is through meditation and reflection. To know and understand yourself, you need to master thinking before reacting. Your brain will want to respond to things emotionally first, but you can train yourself to pause and think about the stimuli in your life before you react to it. Taking this time to think more critically about the things in your life can help you to be more truthful by better understanding your natural responses and shaping them to reflect the kind of person you want to be. 

Ahimsa – Non-Violence

When practicing ahimsa, your goal is to not inflict injury of any kind to others. Traditionally, you might think of avoiding causing any physical injury. However, you should also take into account other kinds of injury such as mental or emotional injury. To truly incorporate the idea of ahimsa, or non-violence, into your life, you need to live in a way that does not cause harm to others. You might be conscious of your words or tone of voice when speaking to others. You can also think about how your actions might affect others. In addition to being non-violent towards other people, you can also apply ahimsa to the world as a whole. Specifically, you can do your best to not cause harm to the environment. This could be done through recycling or using more environmentally friendly products. Agave straws are completely biodegradable, which is one of the characteristics that points to them being an environmentally friendly straw to use. 

Aparigraha – Non-Coveting

Aparigraha is a principle that can be translated in a couple ways. It can be thought of as non-coveting, non-grasping, or non-possessiveness. Through this practice, you learn to let go of things and detach yourself from certain emotions. Jealousy is one emotion that aparigraha strives to release. To incorporate this principle into your daily life, you can begin by acknowledging the things that you don’t need. It’s easy to see what others have and to want it. That’s a natural reaction. However, once you have this initial reaction you can pause and tell yourself that you don’t need whatever it is you covet. Accept what you have in your life presently and don’t feel like you need something just because someone else has it. There is a yoga sequence and mantra you can perform to help you embrace this principle. 

Svadhyaya – Study

The principles of svadhyaya is another principle that could be interpreted in a couple of ways. Svadhyaya is often translated to mean study or reading. This principle could be applied to any sort of study that benefits you individually. If you are religious, your study could include reading religious texts. You could also study other topics that enlighten your mind. One of the best things you can study is yourself. Self-study is a practice that helps you to be more aware of your habits and behaviors. You can then understand what behaviors are helpful in your life and which may not be beneficial. Your self-study can include journaling, meditation, or studying the wisdom of others. 

Tapas – Self-Discipline

Tapas directly translates as “heat” and is often used to refer to the heat generated when doing yoga. Overtime, the term tapas has changed to mean inner fire and self-discipline. Everyone has tapas, some of that inner fire that motivates them. The goal is to grow that inner fire and develop your self-discipline. When you increase your self-discipline, you are more able to achieve your goals and to work on them with all your efforts. One way to increase your tapas is by doing small things over time. For example, you could do a short meditation every morning rather than trying to spend half an hour meditating every day. Even small efforts can make a difference and you can begin increasing these efforts as you grow more accustomed to them. In the end, increasing your self-discipline is a process. 

Saucha – Cleanliness

Another important principle of yoga is saucha which translates to purity and cleanliness. You should strive for this cleanliness in both your mind and body. Mentally, you can be conscious of your thoughts and strive to keep them clean and positive. For example, you can try to reduce negative thoughts you have about yourself or others. Physically, saucha can be applied to include good personal hygiene. 

Dharana – Concentration

To elevate your life as a whole, you want to incorporate the principle of dharana or concentration. You need to be focused in life. It’s important to learn how to avoid being pulled every which way and instead keep yourself focused on a goal or idea. You can get better at dharana by meditating or doing breathing exercises. These practices help you become accustomed to focusing on one thing at a time. 

Santosha – Contentment

Santosha is the principle of contentment in life. While everyone aims to have happiness, you need to start by being content with what you have. An example of this is acknowledging what exists in your life and accepting it without changing it. Many people have the mindset of always trying to get more than what they have and while progress and improvement are both positive things, your mindset shouldn’t be centered on improving just for the sake of improving. When you are content with what you have, you are better prepared to take on more in your life. 

There are many wonderful things you can learn from yoga beyond different ways to stretch and move your body. Yoga is essentially a lifestyle and you take its main principles and apply them to your life.

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