Yamas and Llamas: Bet You Didn't Know You Needed Both

You already know how to be kind to others. But how kind are you to yourself? In this episode we get into Ahimsa, the first of the ancient yogic principles called the Yamas and Niyamas, and what it actually means to practice non violence toward yourself. Spoiler: it starts with how you talk to yourself when nobody is listening. Plus a miniature llama named Yama who somehow ended up at the center of all of it. Come for the llama. Stay for the thousand year old wisdom.

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Transcript

Yamas and Llamas: Bet you didn't know you needed both | A Beautiful Fix

A miniature llama. Yes, I said llama. A Michael Jackson movie, and a principle that I have been violating my whole life without knowing it had a name. What do those three things have in common? That is what we are getting into today.

Welcome to A Beautiful Fix. I'm Tracy Hill. Each week we'll dive into the latest thought gem, recharging and reconnecting with what lights you up and makes you feel alive. Let's discover your next beautiful fix together.

Hey, real quick before we dive in, you're powerful, and sometimes you just need someone to remind you what's already in you. That's what human design does. It's the difference between guessing and knowing. So you can stop searching outside yourself and start trusting the answers within. I promise you they're there.

Grab your free chart at abeautifulfix.com, and when you're ready to go deeper, book a one-to-one session with me. All right. Let's get into the episode.

I wanna introduce you to someone. His name is Yama. He's a miniature llama.

He lives on my shelf. He's about four inches tall. He's as cute as he can be. You see, a few weeks ago, I was visiting my brother in Pennsylvania, and we went to see the new Michael Jackson movie. And can I just... Can we just go on a tangent for a second? If you have not seen the Michael Jackson movie, please go see it.

If you grew up anywhere around the '80s, or if you just have access to screens and you know about Michael Jackson, go see it. It was just like going down memory lane, and I wasn't ready for it. I was not prepared for how much his nephew could nail his level of talent. I, I still don't know how he did it, but after a while, you feel like you are genuinely watching Michael Jackson.

Anyway, I grew up loving that man. I had his posters all over my walls, had all of his albums, and I would've given anything to meet him. But, you know, after watching that movie, I wanted to meet him. I, I felt like sadness. Like, I wish I could have met him, but not for the reasons that I would have wanted to when I was a teenager.

This time, it was just because I wish I could have been his friend. That man needed a friend, someone who did not want anything from him, but just to be a friend more than anyone I know. We would have had a blast. He would have loved me. He loves animals. I had forgotten how much he loved animals and for that reason alone, we would have hit it off.

But anyway, sorry, back to my story about this llama. See, we were trying to kill some time before the movie, so, um, I ended up picking up this little llama at the World Market. You know, the store that has furnishings and pillows and little knick-knacks from all over the world, and you don't need any of them, but suddenly you go in there and you think, "Oh my God, I totally need to remodel my home in a completely different, you know, culture."

It's, it's... I try not to go in there. It's a slippery slope, but I was there. And I saw this little llama. He was just, you know, in a bin, and I just had to have him. No reason. I tried to talk myself out of it. I said, "Tracy, why do you need a miniature llama? W- w- why?" But He's here with me, so you know how that, that ended.

I just... He was just so cute. But anyway, I also had the urge to place him on my tray at the movie. He sat right next to my large bucket of popcorn. Cannot watch a movie without popcorn. And it got some giggles, but the thing is, I had completely forgotten that Michael Jackson had a pet llama, and that llama had a fairly significant role in the film.

And every time he appeared on the screen, I just looked at my little llama sitting there and thought, "You can't make this stuff up." And later on that trip, my husband kept mistakenly calling him Yama instead of llama, and that got some laughs. And I decided right there and then that that would be his name.

My husband had no idea at the time that Yama was an actual word that meant something, and neither did I. But it turns out he was right. Because today I wanna talk about the yamas, and specifically the first one. It is called ahimsa, and I have been violating it my whole life without knowing it had a name.

You see, let's back up a little bit. I'm getting certified to become a yoga teacher. Yeah. If you had told me six months ago I would be doing this, I would've laughed in your face. I am midlife curiosity on steroids. My endless curiosity said yes when the opportunity sprang out of nowhere, and, well, here we are.

And one of the required readings introduced me to the yamas and niyamas. I had never heard those terms before. There are 10 of them in total, the five yamas and there are five niyamas, and the yamas are about how we relate to the world around us, and the niyamas are about how we relate to ourselves. And together, they form the ethical and personal foundations of a yogic life.

So most of us think of yoga as the postures. I know I did originally. The mat, the stretching. But there is so much more to it than the asanas, the, the postures. The yamas and niyamas, they're ancient principles about the way a yogi moves through the world and through themselves, and I fell completely in love with them.

They're very simple. They're full of common sense. If the world embraced these, we would enjoy a much gentler and kinder place And today I wanna share the first one with you. And you may hear me reference these, you know, moving forward. But before I do that, I just... A little bit more background. I said yes to yoga teacher training because it, it just kinda dropped in my lap, and it felt interesting.

It felt random at the time. See, I have been practicing yin yoga for about a year. It'll be a year in June. Yin yoga is all about holding deep stretches while breathing, and we practice it at one of my friend's beautiful homes. Just think, you know, dimmed lights, beautiful music, candlelight, blankets, an amazing instructor who always knows exactly what we need, and she always knows exactly what we need to hear.

She holds such beautiful space for us. Yin yoga is the one space where I can quiet my mind. In human design, I have what they call a defined head and ajna. They're two energy centers that gives me a lot of mental definition, so my mind is always on. It's always thinking. So having a focus on breathing during these deep stretches, it makes me very present, and it helps to quiet the noise.

And in addition to yin yoga, I also recently traveled to the Isha Institute in Tennessee, which is a 1,400-acre yoga and meditation retreat founded by Sadhguru. I talked about that trip in my episode Mr. No Almost Won. Definitely go back and listen to that one if you have not heard it. But the point is, I ended up at a world-renowned yogic center before I fully understood what I had said yes to with this certification.

Then I came home and, you know, started reading. I'm always reading, like, five books at once. And all of them were chosen for completely unrelated reasons, but they kept circling back to yoga. And then my husband accidentally named a miniature llama after an ancient yogic principle he had never heard of.

Synchronicity? Coincidence? I'm not sure, but I am definitely paying attention because look where it led me, to a principle that has been around for thousands of years that I needed to hear right now and that I think you might need to hear too. So ahimsa. Ahimsa is the first of the five yamas, and it translates as nonviolence, non-harming, compassion.

And when you first hear that, you think, "Okay, do not hurt people. Do not be cruel. Treat others the way you wanna be treated." Most of us already try to live that way, I, I hope. But ahimsa goes deeper than that You see, it's not just about how you treat others, it is about how you treat yourself. Self-love, the words you use about yourself, the thoughts you allow, the way you speak to yourself when nobody's listening.

And that, for most of us, at least for me, is a completely different story. Think about it. You would never walk up to your best friend and say, "You are not enough." You would never say that to your daughter, your sister, the woman at the checkout counter. But you say it to yourself. Maybe you don't say these words out loud.

Maybe they're just in your head on a Tuesday morning when something goes really, really wrong, when you look in the mirror, when you try something new and stumble. That is harm. According to a principle that has been around for thousands of years, that is a form of violence. I had never thought of it that way.

And a lot of us have been doing this to ourselves for so long, you don't even notice it when you're doing it. My version of this sounds like, "I am not enough." It shows up mostly when I'm trying something new, when I'm in a room full of people who seem to already know the thing that I'm just learning. I always feel like I need to know more.

It's probably why I'm reading five books at one time. And I was not like this when I was little. I approached almost everything with an I-can-do-this attitude. You know, I may not know it now, but certainly I can learn it. Almost anything I tried, I just approached it with that thought. With the exception of boys, they always made me nervous.

But everything else, I just had this original belief that I could figure it out. And I'm not sure when I started to doubt myself. I think the more that I interacted with the world, with people, that confidence started to get just chipped away gradually You know, and, and when I say that, it's not with bitterness, it's with an awareness that I have now.

Because Maya Angelou said it best, "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better." I did not know I was harming myself. Now I do, and it makes me wanna watch what I say to myself in the same way I watch what I say to others. It makes me not wanna harm myself in that way anymore, you know?

It also kind of turns life into a bit of a playful game. Look at what happens when you let your body lead, when you follow the breadcrumbs of curiosity. When you listen to your body, when you honor it, when you say yes to life, look at where it leads you, and where else might it lead you. I could not have sat down and mapped any of this out.

It wouldn't have made any sense. I did not know I needed to learn more about yoga. I did not know its philosophy could touch every area of living a beautiful life. I did not know about the yamas and niyamas, and I definitely did not know I needed a miniature llama named Yama in my life. Apparently, I did.

Isn't life beautiful?

So this week, I just want you to pay attention to how you talk to yourself. Just notice, and maybe you'll find that you don't say mean things to yourself. And if that is the case, pat yourself on the back. Give yourself a big attagirl, a big hug, 'cause that's powerful And if you do, when does that unkind voice show up and what does it say?

And would you say that to someone you love? And if you are kind to yourself, then maybe think about are you unkind in other areas of your life? Are you kind to other people? Are you kind to other, um, types of life? Animals, insects. That's a big one for me. Are you kind to the environment?

There's so many different ways you can take it. That is where the practice starts, right there, in your own head with your own words about yourself, about others. Now we know better and until next time, keep getting high on life, one beautiful fix at a time.

Thanks for listening to A Beautiful Fix. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe and leave a quick review to help others find us. And if you'd like to share your own beautiful fix or join me as a guest, reach out any time at tracy@abeautifulfix.com. Looking forward to next time