After about a month of exploring the Yamas together, we’ve come to brahmacharya, the fourth of the fifth Yamas, and possibly the most controversial. According to John Philp, the root word is brahma, Sanskrit for “deity”; char means “walk” and ya means “actively”. Hence, the literal translation is “walking with God”. In layman terms, it means self-control or abstention from sensual indulgence which can include everything from over-eating to hoarding.
The reason why it is considered controversial is because brahmacharya is almost always translated to mean celibacy. I do not know why such a broad term has been coined in such a narrow manner. I actually find it strikingly ironic that we pigeon-holed brahmacharya to mean celibacy in a time where sex is more and more present in advertising and entertainment and even Yoga (The Love Guru, anyone?).
Yes, broken boundaries of Gurus sleeping with students while preaching the importance of celibacy. This “allegedly” happens. But unfortunately, I will not talk about any of those alleged incidents here (I’ll leave it up to the curious to research on your own) because I am trying to integrate ahimsa and satya as much and as best I can, and talking about what Gurus (might) have done in the past is neither along the lines of the first two Yamas. “If I’m not going to talk about it then why bother bringing it up?” you ask? Because I think it’s important to know that too much of a “good” thing can be bad, and that at the end of the day, Yoga is about balance.
For example, Richad Faulds from the Kripalu board of trustees told Yoga Journal, “Brahmacharya was over-emphasized, and to the extent that we enforced it as a lifestyle, we created dysfunction.”
As a result, I (very) loosely interpret brahmacharya to simply mean not over-doing things. For those who know me well, you know that I am extreme in many ways, giving things 150% or nothing, and this is not an easy Yama for me. I felt the need to mention that so you don’t interpret this Yama or this blog post as a finger wagging at you, but rather as a reminder that we all struggle and we all need to be reminded to use our energy wisely.
Being an extremist can mean different things to different people: working out incessantly, over-eating, over-shopping, spending too much time on the Internet, constantly cutting people off while they’re talking, hoarding, even reading too many Yoga and/or meditation books, and the list can go on and on. What I try to do when working with this Yama is to pick one thing that I do excessively (start off small so you don’t shock your system) and then practicing not doing it. A lot of times, at least for me, I am avoiding something when I act out my over-excessiveness. Instead, I try to be with whatever rises (usually anxiety at the beginning) and see what acting or not acting out this habit can reveal to me. Often times, I am surprised. By simply being aware of the emotion or memory you are avoiding, it gets easier not acting out. But like a diet, it is a lifestyle, not a one-time exercise. Constant practice and awareness is usually needed to keep habits of over excess in check.
As I like to do, I am going to leave you with a quote from T. Guillemets: “If I’m losing balance in a pose, I stretch higher and God reaches down to steady me. It works every time, and not just in yoga.”
