The niyama we’ll focus on today is Saucha – or cleanliness. At the grossest level this is about keeping our living and office spaces clean. At a little more subtle level this is about wearing clean clothes and keeping our bodies internally and externally clean. At a still more deep level this niyama is about living as truthfully and purely as you can. Your behavior, words and actions should reflect the truth and purity you believe in. Is your house really clean and organized? Or are there cupboards you’d be mortified if your guests saw? Do you have beautiful laundry hampers that contain months of of dirty laundry? When you go to your yoga class, do you make it a point not to step on other people’s mats and props? At a deeper level, do you constantly share your feelings of helplessness, anger, hurt, depression etc with others? We all go through a hard time once in a while, but do you constantly crib whenever you find a listener? Analyze why you do that, and then stop doing it. You are disturbing someone else’s peace and creating an imbalance in their energy. Look around you and analyze if you live clean, think clean and eat clean. If you don’t, make the change today.
Saucha can be divided into internal and external saucha. Today we’ve covered how we can implement saucha externally. From tomorrow we’ll look at internal saucha. To maintain internal cleanliness and purity we must get rid of: kama, krodha, lobha, moha, mada and matsarya. One each day, so tune in every day! 🙂