Ahimsa

I first ran across the yogic concept of ahimsa during Module One of my 200 hour teacher training with Bo Forbes. Ahimsa, simply put, is non-violence. The concept was planted almost as a seed in the midst of a giant download of new and exciting information during that ten-day module. It has germinated and grown over the course of the summer and autumn into a full-fledged practice that has been life-altering.

Bo explained that ahimsa could be simply not harming other people in very basic ways, like The Golden Rule. It also could be applied to your choices in life - the foods you eat, purchases you make, friends you keep. It can be applied to yourself - non-harming the self, self-compassion. I had been studying up on self-compassion as a result of another seed planted by my good friend Paula. We went on a mommies lost weekend to Portland in the autumn last year, and she was reading Loving Kindness by Sharon Salzberg. I had been working on Loving Kindness off and on for a year or so, prompted by my mindfulness-based therapist and by continued studies in meditation. Most people can breeze through a loving kindness meditation - sending waves of love to your children or loved ones, a mentor, even the entire world of sentient beings, but when it's time to send love to themselves, they falter, breeze over it, give up. That had always been my experience with loving kindness meditation. I've got love for everyone, but I usually find myself falling short of being loveable.

My therapist had a trick for that - imagine loving yourself as a four year old child. This trick always made me cry, though, and I wasn't getting any closer to loving myself.

I decided to tackle the other parts of ahimsa first. Just like in a loving kindness meditation - practice non-harming on easier subjects first. I tackled my food choices. I was mostly a vegetarian anyway, and a seven-day detox invite from Yoga Journal came into my inbox at just the right moment. I dutifully followed the detox instructions, buying a week's worth of mung beans and giant packs of spices from my local Indian grocer. I was thrilled and excited by my tiny little containers of mung beans and rice ... for every meal ... for the first two days. Then I got a migraine. And it clung to me for days. I gave up the detox, figuring that it was definitely loving kindness on my part to give up and try to address the migraine.

Still, the two day detox that was supposed to be a seven day detox did me good in the long run (once I got over the migraine). Eating the same food for those six meals broke something in me. At this same time, I was reading Savor by Thich Nhat Hanh. Savor spends several chapters discussing how having extra weight and eating mindlessly causes suffering. It asks you to devote time to thinking about the harm you have caused yourself. If you have extra weight (at the time, I was holding an extra thirty or so pounds from my last pregnancy), list the ways that the weight hurts you - physical, emotional, psychological. My list was long and powerful. My feelings of ahimsa toward myself were growing.

My interest in losing this damaging weight and in eating mindfully prompted me to finally watch Forks Over Knives, a documentary about plant-based diets that had been sitting in my queue on Netflix for a while. It jived so well with what I was studying elsewhere - both the concept of ahimsa with regard to food choices and self and with the concepts of mindful eating covered in Savor - that I decided I would try it. I would try switching to a vegan diet.

I had read many people's thoughts on going vegan, and following the popularity of Forks Over Knives, there were more every day. I was turned off by Alicia Silverstone's glossy, air-headed veganism, but I was intrigued by some of the others. And after a couple of days, I really did feel better. My husband and I were both eating vegan. He instantly lost ten pounds. He wasn't overweight. I tried to practice loving kindness on myself while I waited for my weightloss.

One of my twins - he's six now - has been obsessed with my weight ever since we bought a Wii Fit two years ago. He likes me to weigh in so he can see if I'm still in the overweight category. As with all things in six-year old land, healthy weight is a black and white, do or die thing. Just as he has no shame in going up to a stranger smoking a butt on the corner and telling them that smoking isn't healthy, he has no shame in telling me that being overweight is not healthy and I should lose the weight. I wanted to lose the weight for him, too, and not in some high-and-mighty motherly way ("I should lose this weight so I'll live longer and be around for him") but in a purely selfish way ("God, if I lose this weight, maybe we can all focus on something else besides mommy being fat.").

Within two months of going mostly vegan, I had lost ten pounds. As of this writing, fifteen. I'm hovering three pounds over that coveted "Healthy Weight" category on the Wii Fit. My son says, understandably, I think, "Why don't you just lose those three pounds?!?!??" Deep breath. Loving kindness. Self-compassion. Ahimsa.

I've still got three pounds of mung beans. My husband has no pants that fit, as he's lost another five to ten pounds. He's happily vegan now. He doesn't even seem to miss cheese! I mean, COME ON. It's CHEESE. But my studies in ahimsa continue. My self-compassion is maybe budding? And I've still got love for everyone.