Sometimes, in conversations with people around me, the idea comes up that yoga shouldn't be mixed with social or political issues. That they are separate registers, or that it's best to keep them apart.
I don't quite see it that way. Not because I want to turn the practice into a space for activism, but because I find it increasingly difficult to maintain that separation. I understand yoga less as a form of escape and more as a way of seeing and inhabiting the world with greater clarity and consciousness.
Lately, I've been wondering what it means to practise and teach yoga when what's happening outside continues to be present within. I don't have a clear answer.
But the questions persist:
What does it mean to speak of ahimsa (non-violence) in a society where a woman is m*rdered every 30 hours? Can a practice focused on mindfulness ignore the social conditions that produce suffering? Where does personal practice end and collective responsibility begin? Is working on oneself enough?
In contemporary yoga practice, ahimsa often appears to be associated with the idea of “not harming anyone”, understood in terms of personal behaviour: being kind, avoiding conflict, regulating one's means of expression or relating. This interpretation has great value, but it also leaves out an important part of the issue.
Because violence does not always present itself as an obvious individual act. Sometimes it is inherent in the structures that organise daily life, in material conditions, in inequality, in the way certain bodies are more exposed than others to suffering.
At that point, ahimsa ceases to be solely a rule of conduct and becomes a question. Not just “how not to harm,” but what is my relationship with a world where harm is already happening, systematically and persistently.
Reducing yoga to “being present” to avoid or lessen suffering leaves it as a partial and, for want of a better word, reductionist version. Yoga is not an avoidant practice; rather, it involves bringing to consciousness that which already exists.
This does not mean producing suffering or dwelling on it, but rather modifying one's relationship with what appears: perceptions, patterns, automatisms, ways of reacting. In this sense, practice does not always lead to a more comfortable experience, but to a less distorted one, and therefore an uncomfortable one.
When the distortion lessens, some things stop being so easily ignored. Not because yoga “makes you see more things” in a mystical sense, but because it reduces certain avoidance mechanisms we normally use to sustain everyday experience.
Here a consequence arises that isn't always mentioned: a practice centered on consciousness does not necessarily distance one from suffering; sometimes, and perhaps as a preliminary step, it makes it more evident.
At that point, it becomes difficult to maintain a clear idea of separation between the internal and the external. There is no internal practice that is not already permeated by external conditions.
And perhaps that's why I find it difficult to think of yoga purely as a tool to feel better, regulate myself, or be at peace with myself. All of that can be part of the practice, but if the journey ends there, something is left out.
Because we practice with others. We teach others. We live among others. And the awareness we cultivate on the mat doesn't appear in a vacuum, but in a shared world.
I don't know exactly what to do with all of this. I don't know where practice ends and responsibility begins. But I'm finding it increasingly difficult to think that yoga is solely about turning inwards.
