Yoga Teacher Training Journeys

If only there’d been yoga at Copenhagen!

We’ve just witnessed the greatest assembly of world leaders gathered in the name of the environment in the one city and at the one time. Some 15,000 delegates and 100 world leaders representing 192 countries attended a two week climate change summit in Denmark. That got me thinking. Is there an opportunity for a yogic response to the way we might respond to arguably the biggest environmental challenge the world has ever seen? Yes there is!

It’s in the yamas, the first of the eight limbs of yoga. The yamas contain five precepts, of which the third is called ‘asteya’, often translated as ‘non-stealing – not taking that which is not given.’ Asteya calls for a life lived with less while not craving for what others already have. The yamas and niyamas are a foundation of yoga teacher training and form part of the philosophical approach in yoga retreats. It asks we live simply, a message one might argue seemed a little lost as the world debated the road ahead in Copenhagen.

An evolving yoga practice brings many blessings. Among them, there emerges a stillness and calming of the mind. Writers Rham and Gill, in ‘The Spirit of Yoga’ say, when there’s stillness, the “moral restraint of yama begins to emerge naturally from within”. What would it have been like if those men and women in power could have adopted the philosophy of asteya? Instead of individual nations striving to deliver a political outcome to appease their constituents, could we have seen a heightened awareness of the need to live with less and to more equitably share the spoils of what over two centuries of industrialisation have already delivered.

Simply put, while developing countries continue to strive towards a greater level of ‘development’, and rich nations resist calls to curb their considered luxurious lifestyle, we’re probably not going to get too far! The developing world wants what the developed already has. Why can’t we agree to live with what we have, while moving towards a more long term sustainable lifestyle? As the 13th century Persian poet Rumi puts it, it’s time we “gave up wanting what other people have”.

Asteya offers an answer to a world in which many blame our current environmental woes on people wanting too much. Taking the ‘longing out of living’ is a first key step in moving towards a world more at harmony with the limitations of nature. A yoga retreat especially one which takes place within a natural environment, echoes this principle and key to living.Why can’t the so-called ‘rich west’ offer a promise to give, share and rejoice with the developing world in the spirit of asteya so that the world’s majority might live longer and healthier lives?

For too long, it can be argued western society has lived well beyond its environmental means. That’s never more evident than at Christmas, when the toils of a year of work are spent in a flash in the tills of shopping centres across every nation. People are urged to spend for the economic good of the nation, with the season of goodwill evaluated by a financial figure expressed as a dollar and cent (insert your own currency here) turnover. Ah, how much simpler the season would be if we were urged instead to question our material needs before landing in ever deeper consumer debt.

By removing the need for more, we learn to live with less. If we stop striving for more, and make do with what we have, we’re acting in not just in line with the practice of asteya, but also in a highly responsible and environmental way which lets the earth breathe. Why not live simply, so that others may simply live? Put another way, remove the urge for more if we want to increase our blessings.

Our yoga practice can guide us along this path. Could it have been the answer the earth and it’s leaders were looking for as they gathered in the cold of Copenhagen over the first two weeks of December 2009?

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