Satya is the second Yama, or yoga ethical guideline. Satya means truthfulness or “that which is”. Before you begin to think this guideline is easy to put into practice, being truthful is more than not telling a lie. This guideline asks you to be honest and truthful with your words, thoughts, and actions. It’s about living your life authentically and with integrity.
The Challenge with Truthfulness
There are some challenges with Satya. To be honest and authentic, you also have to be brave and vulnerable. Brave to stop numbing our true emotions or looking outside ourselves for the answers to “what should I be doing with my life”, “what would make me happy”, “if I had looked this way, I would finally be accepted”, etc. Being vulnerable to allow your authenticity to shine through without fear of rejection, judgment, or criticism.
As you explore your truth, you will discover things in your life that you have chosen to ignore. You will come across false limitations that you have set up for yourself or that someone else set up for you that you believed were true. Practicing Satya also asks you to stop lying to yourself and take responsibility for your life and how you live it.
Evolving Truth
Gabrielle Harris, author of The Language of Yin, describes truth as a “moving target”. You see the world through your own lens. Your lens can create a skewed view of the truth. You can have several different people recount the same event and their version of the truth or what happened may all be different or the details of what they remember could be different.
You have influences all around you that help shape your truths. You are influenced by different groups of people you interact with-family, community, and friends. Lies from your past may influence your truth in the present moment. What you believe, your old patterns and stories, shape your reality. As you explore your truth, you may be able to get rid of those thoughts and beliefs that no longer serve you and move forward living as your truest, authentic self.
As you move through your life, you must continuously ask, ‘what is true at this moment?’. This inquiry will help you clean your lenses through which you see the world.
Being Truthful is Kind
Sometimes you aren’t always honest because you don’t want to be mean or upset someone. You want to be nice. Nice is a perception of how you think you should act, what you think you should say, or what you think you should be. “Nice” people can grow resentful keeping their truth buried inside until they one day explode and speak their truth in a harmful or hurtful way.
This happens in business as well. In Brene Brown’s research, she discovered that people want to maintain the cultural norm of “nice and polite”. People will tell people lies or not the full truth to make them feel better but it can be harmful. When you don’t give someone clear expectations and honest feedback, how can you hold them accountable for their results?
But what if you were real instead of nice? Real is trustworthy. Real is the friend who you go to when you want trusted advice even if it isn’t exactly what you want to hear. When you have tough conversations and give honest feedback, you create trust and avoid having to clean up a mess later down the road.
“Real asks us to live from a place where there is nothing to defend and nothing to manage.”
-Deborah Adele, Yamas & Niyamas
Remember, Satya is the second Yama and gets paired with Ahimsa, the first Yama meaning nonviolence. The truth is not meant to be used as a weapon. The truth is clear and kind. If there is a question on whether the truth or being honest may be used for harm or violence, think carefully before you act.
Living as Your Truest Self
You are unique and have special gifts that you were put on this earth to use. When you don’t allow them to shine, you are not showing up authentically. If you suppress your uniqueness, you will eventually look outside yourself to fulfill what you are suppressing. This could be in the form of overeating or overworking rather than doing what you really want to do. Suppressing the life you want to live takes up a lot of energy. What would it feel like to live as your authentic self?
Belonging vs. Fitting In
The groups you belong to influence and shape your belief systems with their rules and guidelines, some spoken and some not. Have you ever noticed that you show up differently to different groups? You adjust your behavior to what they think is acceptable. As humans, we are designed for community for survival. We innately want to belong to a group. But what’s the difference between belonging to a group and fitting in?
“Belonging is being somewhere where you want to be, and they want you. Fitting in is being somewhere where you really want to be, but they don’t care one way or the other. Belonging is being accepted for you. Fitting in is being accepted for being like everyone else. I get to be me if I belong. I have to be like you to fit in.”
-Brene Brown, Daring Greatly
There is safety in belonging, but you can also get used to that comfort and become stagnant. What happens when your values or your need to grow conflict with that of the group? Do you risk speaking or acting on your truth with the potential to lose your group or do you stay and potentially quiet your truth and stifle your opportunity for growth? There is no right or wrong. Sometimes it is best to leave the group for growth and sometimes it is best to stay. Creating the opportunity to explore the truth and be honest with yourself will ultimately reveal what’s best for you at that time in your life.
Truthfulness on the Mat
As always, your yoga asana practice is your chance to explore these ethical principles. As you begin your practice, tune in honestly with how you are feeling in your mind, body, and spirit. Are you tired, frustrated, future tripping, well rested, hungry, etc.? Tune in again throughout your practice. Are you flowing with ease or are you holding tension somewhere in the body? Be honest about your limitations and strengths on the mat. Can you find the balance between structure or strength and ease or flexibility in the poses? Use your breath throughout your practice to truthfully reconnect with yourself. If you can’t take a full complete breath in a posture, do you need to back out of the pose so you can? And finally, check back in with yourself at the end of your practice. How are you honestly feeling?
Like most of the Yamas and Niyamas, Satya seems simple on the surface. As you dive in deeper, you realize that simple doesn’t always mean easy. The more you self-study, the more layers you uncover to reveal your truest, more authentic self. I will leave you with this quote from Om Swami in The Big Questions of Life, “The more truthful and real you are in your thoughts, speech and conduct, the more positive and happy you’ll be.”
Much Love & Health,
Carrie
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Resources:
Adele, D. (2009). The Yamas & Niyamas. On-Word Bound Books, LLC.
Brown, B. (2018, October 15). Clear is Kind. Unclear is Unkind. https://brenebrown.com/articles/2018/10/15/clear-is-kind-unclear-is-unkind.