Ahimsa: Non-harming

I believe there is something divine present in each of us. I close my in-person yoga classes with an invitation to join voices in “om,” and my final word as a teacher is “namaste.” Neither is a ritual performed out of habit, but an intentional and deeply felt expression of connection. For me, these moments invite us to attune to something larger and ongoing, while also honoring the presence I believe we each carry — the understanding that the divine light in me recognizes the divine light in you.

And at the same time, I hold that as humans, we cannot live without impact — without, at times, causing harm.

This tension informs how I understand the first of the yamas: ahimsa, or non-harming. In Sanskrit, himsa (हिंसा) means harm, violence, or injury. The prefix a- is a negation, so ahimsa (अहिंसा) is often translated as non-harming. But lately I've been thinking about the practice of ahimsa as less as a directive and more as an ongoing orientation toward reducing harm in thought, word, and action — a continual practice of awareness and care in how we move through the world.

The Yoga Sūtras, foundational to yoga philosophy, begin not with physical postures but with the yamas and niyamas, the ethical precepts and personal observances. These are not rules in a rigid sense, but lived inquiries into alignment. Ways of asking, moment by moment: how do I participate in life in a way that is honest, responsible, and aware?

Ahimsa is the first of these for a reason. It is foundational. It points to something we already intuitively understand. Nearly every major spiritual or ethical tradition, in some form, centers the aspiration to reduce suffering or live in greater harmony with others. And yet ahimsa cannot be reduced to an idea of perfection because, simply by living, we cause harm.

We may make thoughtful choices: speaking out against violence or injustice and trying to act with integrity and care in our relationships and daily lives. And still, we will say something careless. Miss someone’s need. Act in ways we later come to understand more clearly. We all, even the most well-intentioned among us, live inside contradiction.

I see this in my own life in small, everyday ways — the kinds of contradictions that are easier to notice and name than others. I eat a plant-based diet, in part out of care for the environment and respect for life, and still kill the cave crickets that make their way into my basement. I try to move through the world with mindfulness, and still get snappy with family members when I’m frustrated or exhausted. I love deeply, and have also hurt people I care about.

And there are other layers that sit alongside this — less visible, and arguably more difficult to hold. There are forms of harm that are devastating — violence, exploitation, abuse. There are ways humans harm one another that are not accidental or careless, but profound violations of trust, safety, and dignity. And there are also quieter forms of participation — the ways we look away, the ways we benefit from systems that allow suffering to continue, the ways harm can be sustained within communities or institutions, even those that speak the language of care or spirituality.

This, too, is part of the same reality we must face when we consider ahimsa.

There are also the more private contradictions — the places we may carry quietly. Moments where we’ve betrayed our own values, or someone else’s trust. These are not abstract ideas; they live in real relationships, with real impact. Some of these actions may, in fact, be experienced — by ourselves or others — as moral failures. Ahimsa does not ask us to deny this. It asks us to stay with it. To resist the impulse to turn away, and instead to meet ourselves with enough honesty that change becomes possible.

None of this is meant to soften the reality of the impact: that harm matters, that our actions have consequences, sometimes lasting ones. But I also don’t believe that collapsing into shame brings us any closer to alignment. Ahimsa, as I understand it, asks something more difficult.

It asks us to look clearly. To take responsibility where we can. And to remain in relationship with what we see, rather than distancing ourselves from it.

Ahimsa, then, is not the absence of harm. It is the willingness to see it. It is the practice of noticing, taking responsibility where we can, and returning again and again to greater alignment — not once, but continuously.

Patañjali offers: “When one is firmly established in ahimsa, all beings around cease to feel hostility.” (Yoga Sūtra II.35). To be “firmly established” may sound like an endpoint, but in practice it reflects something cultivated — a steadiness that emerges through repeated attention and realignment. It assumes missteps, reflection, and return. The text does not presume perfection; it presumes practice.

This is why ahimsa is better understood as an aspiration than a destination. Not a static purity, but a living relationship with our own capacity to impact others — and with what we do when we recognize that impact. We harm. We repair. We misunderstand. We learn. We fall out of alignment and try again. This is yoga in its most grounded sense: staying awake within imperfection.

There is also something useful in noticing how we relate to ideas of strength and morality. I’ve often thought that the poses called “warrior” in yoga can feel contradictory at first — how does that align with non-harming?

But if we stay with it metaphorically, the “warrior” becomes less about conquest and more about discernment. Not a figure moving toward battle, but perhaps one who has returned, carrying the weight of having experienced harm — both witnessing it and participating in it. One who is now asked to face what is real. A kind of inner reckoning.

Strength here is not about domination, but about presence — the capacity to stay with discomfort, to see clearly what we have done, what we are part of, and what we are being asked to respond to. I’ve come to imagine the back foot as what we carry from the past, and the front foot as what we are stepping into. Between them is the ongoing work of integration.

And at the heart of it is humility. Not shame, which turns away, but humility as a kind of inward bowing — the willingness to say: I am part of this complexity. I am capable of harm. And I am still learning how to meet life with more care. Ahimsa lives right there. Not in certainty, but in relationship. Not in purity, but in awareness.

It is relatively easy to identify with ethical ideals when they remain abstract. It is harder when they meet the friction of lived experience. For example, it can be simple to hold a commitment to compassion in principle, and far more complex when faced with the small, inconvenient, or uncomfortable moments where our reactions don’t match our intentions. These are the places where practice becomes real. Ahimsa deepens in those moments — not when we succeed, but when we notice, pause, and return.

The Bhagavad Gītā speaks to this tension. Arjuna stands in a field of conflict, paralyzed by moral uncertainty. The text is often read as a call to action, but more deeply it is an inquiry into how action can arise from clarity rather than ego, fear, or delusion. Symbolically, the battlefield becomes an interior one: the movement between confusion and insight, contraction and clarity, avoidance and responsibility. Krishna’s teaching is not a celebration of violence, but an exploration of right action — action rooted in self-awareness rather than reactivity. When seen this way, ahimsa is not simply “non-violence” in a literal sense, but a commitment to not act from ignorance, hatred, or separation. It is a commitment to alignment with truth as best we can perceive it.

And this remains complex in practice. Life does not offer clean lines. We do our best, and still find ourselves participating in harm in ways both visible and subtle. We return again and again to the question: how do I meet what I have done, and how do I continue? This is where the practice becomes deeply human. Not about becoming untouched by harm, but about becoming more honest within it. More accountable. More willing to stay present with what is difficult without collapsing into denial or self-condemnation.

Ahimsa becomes about learning to sit inside the full reality of being human — and continuing to choose awareness over avoidance, care over indifference, and repair over withdrawal. The divine is not somewhere beyond this complexity; it is found in how we meet it.