The Yamas & Niyamas
An Introduction to Yoga’s Ethical Wisdom for Everyday Life.
Although yoga is often first encountered through movement, posture, and breath-work, these practices belong to a deeper path of inner steadiness, self-understanding, and conscious living. The yamas and niyamas are the first two limbs on the eight limbed path described by Patanjali, offering gentle guidance for how we meet the world around us and how we tend to our own inner life.
The yamas, of which there are five, are often seen as sacred principles for living in harmony with others, while the niyamas, of which there are also five, invite a more intimate practice of self-discipline, reflection, and devotion. Together, they form the ethical and spiritual ground of yoga. Rather than rigid rules, they are quiet invitations to live with greater awareness, compassion, and presence.
These teachings remain deeply relevant because they speak to the human experience across time. They can guide the way we speak, work, consume, rest, and respond when life feels unsettled. They do not ask us to be perfect. Instead, they invite us to continually return to a more truthful, compassionate, and grounded way of being. In eating disorder recovery, they invite us to reassess how we treat and think about ourselves. They allow for introspection, awareness and appreciation – often in a way we have never been able to experience before. Several years ago, I wrote a guest blog post about the role some of the yamas and niyamas played in my recovery from anorexia. If you are interested in reading that, it is available here.
The yamas and niyamas remind us that yoga is not only a physical practice, but a way of living with greater harmony, awareness, and reverence. Whether approached as spiritual teachings or gentle life principles, they offer a timeless foundation for meeting ourselves and the world with more care. In their quiet wisdom, we are invited not to become someone new, but to return more fully to what is already true within us.
Ahimsa
Satya
Asteya
Brahmacharya
Aparigraha
The 5 Yamas
Ahimsa
Ahimsa, or non-harming, is often considered the heart of all the yamas. It invites kindness, compassion, and tenderness in thought, word, and action. Ahimsa is practised through the way we speak to others, in the patience we offer during conflict, or in the care we bring to our own bodies and minds. It reminds us that peace begins in the subtle choices we make each day. In recovery, the willingness to take care off instead of harm our bodies, while speaking to ourselves with kindness and compassion, is why I found it so helpful and it is at the core of my yogic practices.
Satya
Satya means truthfulness, but not through harshness but instead sincerity. Satya asks us to live in alignment with what is real, speaking honestly while remaining rooted in compassion. It invites us to let go of pretence and to honour the quiet wisdom of what we truly know and feel. In my experience, I have cultivated satya by being honest with myself about what my body needs. Instead of telling myself I can keep going when I’m tired or trying to ignore my hunger cues, I allow myself to be honest and as a result give myself permission to offer myself and my body what it needs at any given moment.
Asteya
Asteya, or non-stealing, encourages acknowledgement for what belongs to others and gratitude for what is already present in our own lives. It can be practised not only in relation to possessions, but also in the way we honour time, attention, energy, and trust. Asteya gently turns us away from lack and towards appreciation. By learning to appreciate all the things my body allowed me to do rather than coveting others and how I seen them as having more or being better than me, it has cultivated a more positive attitude towards my body.
Brahmacharya
Brahmacharya is the wise, conscious direction of our energy. It asks us to notice where our attention is flowing and whether our habits leave us scattered or nourished. In modern life, this can mean choosing moderation, focus, and simplicity so that our energy may be offered to what truly matters. In eating disorder recovery it can be seen as making choices that support recovery by energising and nourishing us rather than using energy on harmful and draining ways.
Aparigraha
Aparigraha, or non-grasping, invites us to loosen the tight hold we may keep on possessions, outcomes, identities, or control. When we soften our attachment, we often discover a greater sense of spaciousness and ease. Aparigraha teaches the quiet freedom that comes from trust, simplicity, and letting life unfold with less resistance. In my recovery, practices aparigraha has been very much about letting go of what I think my body “should” look like and accepting and appreciating it exactly as it is.
Saucha
Santosha
Tapas
Svadhyaya
Ishvara Pranidhana
The 5 Niyamas
Saucha
Saucha refers to purity and clarity, both outward and inward. It may be reflected in the care of the body, the home, and the spaces we inhabit, but also in the quality of our thoughts and the influences we allow into our lives. Saucha invites a sense of lightness, order, and inner calm. Although saucha was a concept I struggled to understand in the realm of my recovery to begin with, the more attuned I became with my mind and body the more I realised that it was often the purity, or rather darkness of, my thoughts that fuelled the negativity towards myself and my body that fuelled the eating disorder. When I learned to notice and reframe those thoughts in a more kind, caring way, it allowed space for a deeper level of healing.
Santosha
Santosha is about finding contentment and a quiet acceptance of the present moment, exactly as it is. It doesn’t ignore our human desire for personal growth and development, but it softens the restless belief that peace will only come later. Through Santosha, we learn to recognise sufficiency, gratitude, and the simple fullness of what is already here. The acceptance of my body and the contentment I feel when I can appreciate all that it enables me to do has been one of the greatest gifts of yoga in my recovery.
Tapas
Tapas is the inner fire of discipline and devoted effort. It is the steady willingness to return to what nourishes growth. Rather than force, tapas can be understood as a sacred commitment to transformation, carried with patience and purpose. Given how long I lived with anorexia and how disciplined everything had to be in order to stick to the rules and regulations I’d created for myself, there have been times when I have had lapses (and one significant relapse) when the principle of tapas has worked against me. But there is a huge difference between practicing discipline rigidly, like we often do with eating disorder behaviours, and the way it can be cultivated when we consciously choose recovery. Because recovery is about putting in the work and trusting that, even if we can’t see the reward immediately, it will be worth it. I’m so glad to say I live the full, blessed life I have today because I continue to put the work in.
Svadhyaya
Svadhyaya means self-study, the practice of turning inward with honesty and curiosity. It offers us the ability to observe our thoughts, patterns, beliefs, and responses without judgement, and to use the information attained to guide us towards a more peaceful, enlightened path. Through svadhyaya, self-awareness becomes a doorway to wisdom and with that wisdom we can start to notice just how much eating disorders are costing us, how they isolate us from others, destroy our self-trust and stop us from living a life full of joy and contentment.
Ishvara Pranidhana
Ishvara Pranidhana is often described as the surrender to something greater than the individual self. For some, this is a devotional relationship with the divine; for others, it is the practice of humility, trust, and release. It reminds us that not everything must be controlled, and that there is wisdom in softening into reverence. For me, it was about learning to trust myself and lean into the inner knowing (my intuition) to figure out what I needed to recover. Not just that, but to also find the right connections to help in that recovery. Anorexia left me feeling isolated and alone, completely disconnected from myself an everything and everyone around me. Now, I feel a connection to the energy and universe around me, because yoga has allowed me to be still and calm enough to notice.
Living the Yamas & Niyamas in Everyday Life
One of the things I have found most useful with the yamas and niyamas is that they are not confined to formal practice. They can accompany us through ordinary moments: in the tone of a conversation, in the pace of our day, in the way we consume, pause, choose, and begin again. These teachings offer a gentle compass for moving through modern life with more intention and grace
A simple way to work with them is to focus on one principle at a time. You might carry it quietly through the week, noticing where it arises in your choices, reactions, and relationships. This kind of reflection is not about self-criticism. It is about learning to see more clearly, so that your actions can emerge from greater awareness.
Above all, the yamas and niyamas ask for humility and patience. They are not a measure of perfection, but a lifelong practice of returning. Each moment offers another opportunity to choose kindness, truth, simplicity, devotion, and steadiness. In that returning, the path of yoga becomes something quietly lived rather than just a practice that we dip in and out of.