Yoga
Practice Satya and Find Your Truth
Practicing Satya in Yoga means being truthful in our feelings, thoughts, words, and deeds. Learn more about Satya and how it improves your self-awareness and self-expression for a more truthful life.
“You can’t handle the truth.”,
said yogi Jack Nicholson in the 1992 movie: A Few Good Men. As Col. Nathan R. Jessep, Jack certainly wasn’t talking to us yogis.
We are constantly trying hard to see the real truth and embody the truth. Satya, meaning “truth” or “not lying”, is the second of the five Yamas — the ethical underpinnings of yoga for living in right and ethical relationship. The Yamas can also be thought of as guides in how we live.
In a sense, Satya requires willpower or the determination not to lie. However, the word sat literally translates as “true essence” or “true nature” or “that which is unchangeable.” In its most philosophical sense, sat, therefore, means “the ultimate reality.”
Our thoughts, emotions, and moods are constantly fluctuating. Yet, these are the things that create our own reality, truth, and whole life experience. If sat means “unchangeable” or “that which has no distortion,” then it can make us realize what life brings by paying more attention to that, which changes rather than the unchanging truth.
Being truthful to yourself by practicing Satya
Practicing Satya means being truthful in our feelings, thoughts, words, and deeds.
Beyond simply “not lying,” practicing Satya means living in a way that aligns with your highest truth. It means being honest with yourself and with others and making sure that you speak and act with thought and intention.
Yoga Sutra 2.36 says: satya-pratiṣthāyāṁ kriyā-phala-āśrayatvam, which translates to “When one is established in truthfulness, actions begin to bear fruit.” You may not always know the truth or the whole truth. But you know if you are creating, exaggerating, or distorting something.
According to the sutra, the words of a truthful person are always infallible, and you can be ensured of the fruition of their actions. When you are around someone and truly situated in truthfulness, you can sense it and know you would never be exploited or manipulated. Thus, their actions always bear fruit. They might even invoke this virtue in others.
This ultimately means that by continuously practicing truthfulness and honesty, our life experiences become the results of this honesty and truth and are thus not based on fear or ignorance.
Ultimately, the practice of yoga is about becoming deeply self-aware.
Empowering self-awareness through Yoga practice
The more you practice yoga, the more you become aware of your perceptions and beliefs and acknowledge they are only your individual perceptions and beliefs. To speak as if they are “truth” with a capital “T” is not to live in reality, and it’s certainly not the practice of Satya.
We must be honest with ourselves first. It requires a bit of space, stillness, or slowing down of the mind. When we react rather than respond, we are not seeing the truth.
With a daily practice of yoga and mindfulness, we can see that we are not our thoughts, and we can un-identify with the soap opera in our heads. It means seeing a thought as it arises, watching it and not getting caught up in it.
Noticing that emotions and situations come and go, and are impermanent and not true, helps us realize that maybe life isn’t as complicated as it might seem sometimes. To establish ourselves in truthfulness, we have to see ourselves and our world with a clear vision.
Practicing Satya on your mat
When you are on your yoga mat, there is nowhere to hide.
You get to take a good look at yourself, your habits, and your state of mind. You can’t ignore the truths your body speaks. Yoga practice is meant to serve your body and mind, not harm your joints and ligaments.
How often do you push through a limitation? Are you honest with yourself about what you really need on the mat?
Physically and emotionally, we are always changing. Telling ourselves that we should be able to do a backbend today and judging ourselves for it, or the efficacy of the pose for that matter, is not practicing Satya.
More importantly, we have the opportunity on the mat or meditation cushion to see past our conditioned, constantly changing, untrue ways of thinking.
Safely practicing asana is about being honest with ourselves. When we are honest, we deepen our self-awareness, leading to growth in our practice.
Embracing Satya Practice and expressing the truth
The self-awareness we develop in yoga is the foundation for self-expression.
When we speak from the truth of our own direct experience, we have a lot more power because there is less to dispute or argue. Patanjali places Satya right after the Yama of Ahimsa or non-violence. Obviously, he did not want us to confuse Satya with a speech that might be factually accurate but harmful.
In Buddhism, “Right Speech” is one of the main precepts. This means speech that is non-harming and which has the intention to support all living beings too. He defined it as “abstinence from false speech, abstinence from malicious speech, abstinence from harsh speech, and abstinence from idle chatter.”
Mindfulness makes it possible to recognize what we are about to say before we say it. With mindfulness, just as in yoga, we train the heart to more frequently incline towards wholesome states such as love, kindness, and empathy and, thus, Right Speech naturally arises.
It is often said that our words should be true, necessary, and kind. It is not the truth that hurts, but rather our reaction to it. The pain is from the shattering of the illusions of our false beliefs. Truth matters, and words matter. What we say has a profound power to affect our consciousness.
Ultimately, the awareness of the truth helps us break free of illusions that cause pain and leads to greater happiness.
Breaking free from illusions to be happier
Gandhi coined the term Satyagraha or “holding onto truth.”
He believed in the power that comes from being aligned with the truth and that one could not find truth without practicing non-violence. Truth is something universal and self-evident and not something clouded by our thoughts and opinions.
When we are not attached to our ideas or about things, then we can get connected and open to the truth. As Rumi eloquently states,
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
When we practice Satya, it is more than just not lying. It is being honest, authentic, and telling the truth.
