LifeSoup by Cherie Dawn Haas

Every week I choose one or two daily goals from a list I keep. The list includes healthy goals like “drink 8 glasses of water” and “get 10,000 steps.” (Stay tuned ~ I’ll share my full list in a future blog post.)

As part of my yoga journey, I thought I’d start incorporating parts of the Eight Limbs of Yoga each week. This is to help me continue to practice them intentionally and to help me remember them! 🙂 The first two limbs include several sub-limbs, if you will, so it’s a little confusing at first. That said, the concepts are simple, timeless, and you’re probably already trying to practice some of them.

(The contemporary book, “Do Your Om Thing” by Rebecca Pacheco fabulously explains the eight limbs.)

Which brings me to “Ahimsa,” or the yoga practice to “do no harm.”

Sounds pretty easy, for those of us who already try to be a nice person. But during this week of keeping it on the forefront of my mind, I found that it’s not.

I won’t go into what “do no harm” means according to yoga philosophy (because it varies and I’m not an expert).

But I will tell you that I learned that sometimes we can do harm by what we don’t do.

This week I learned that I hurt the feelings of some people that I love dearly because of something I didn’t do.

Why didn’t I do this gesture? I have a list of excuses that’s a mile long, but they don’t matter. What it comes down to is that I didn’t prioritize this. I let it slip through the cracks during a hectic week in my life, when I should’ve put it on the forefront.

This same week, another loved one randomly mentioned how, when I thought I was saying something funny, I had hurt her feelings with something I had said years ago. I apologized.

I’m taking many lessons from these experiences, one of which is that I should never get too smug about how “peaceful” or non-harming I think am.

We can’t control how other people respond to what we do or don’t do. And we should stop ourselves when we start making up scenarios about it. Don’t guess what the other person is thinking, especially if it’s causing you to be more upset. Try to give them compassion.

Do no harm. Oof. Not as easy as it sounds, huh? Part of this includes to do no harm toward yourself, and so I need to remember that I’m doing my best and forgive myself as well. This includes negative self-talk that so many of us are in the habit of, so check your mental conversations about your body, my friends. ❤

If you want, give this a try ~ write “do no harm” in your calendar and consider ways that you could create a more peaceful existence, at least for one week. Here’s an article to help you understand more ways to do no harm in your life and in your yoga poses: What is Ahimsa and How to Practice It In Everyday Life

Let me know how it goes, and good luck.

Peace, love, and fire,
Cherie Dawn