Today, wherever you are — standing on the street, watching television or reading a magazine — you are sure to see something related to yoga. As a nation, we are heading towards the mat, flooding yoga schools, halls and yoga retreats, and looking for something beyond the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

Every person comes to yoga in search of something. Sometimes it is physical pain that will compel someone to go to a yoga school or maybe it is a low-level dissatisfaction with life, a yearning for more space or quietness. Whatever the reason, if you start a yoga practice you are sure to gain benefits beyond your initial expectations.

In society today we often measure our self-worth by how much we earn, where we live or what we are going to do with our life. We are conditioned to achieve and forge ahead at all costs and are left with very little time to really get to know ourselves and question what we really value or want in our life.

Working long hours and experiencing workplace stress can take their toll, and in the few hours you get off you might squeeze in a yoga class. However, if you are burdened with the message of “Work hard and keep going at all costs”, what are you bringing to your yoga practice?

Watching newcomers huff and puff their way through yoga, I often recall my first few months on the mat. I’d push myself hard, with breath shallow and muscles almost screaming, intent on making my body relax! The frustration and confusion would overwhelm me. I was there because a friend assured me yoga was good for anxiety and relaxation, but all I was doing was getting myself worked up into a lather of frustration and anxiety.

How did the calm, serene woman teaching the class expect us to execute the postures, breathe and find the quietness within? What quietness? My body and mind were on overload. After the class I questioned her about the gap between how it should be and how it was. It was then that I was introduced to the notion of non-violence, or ahimsa.

Ahimsa and interconnectivity

Ahimsa is a Sanskrit term meaning non-violence, or non-harming. Within the eight limbs of ashtanga yoga, ahimsa is the first of the yamas and is concerned with right conduct. Of all the yamas (that is, all the guidelines helping us relate to the external world) ahimsa is at the very core.

Within the Hindu belief system, divinity is all-pervasive. Everything, from stars to rocks to humans, is a manifestation of the divine. The entire world is holy ground. Everything is sacred and interconnected. The same divine spirit that runs through you runs through the entire universe.

While we may hold different beliefs from the Hindu system, the interconnectivity of all life is increasingly apparent. For example, a person at work might yell at you, so you go home to your family that night feeling upset and, in turn, may take your anger out on the ones you love. The rubbish we don’t recycle ends up polluting the earth. People carelessly harm each other, the earth and themselves because they are not living their lives with compassion and awareness. We often live in a state that is opposite to ahimsa, which is known in The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali as himsa, inflicting violence and harm on ourselves, others and the earth.