Ahimsa: My First Step into Yoga Philosophy

There is no yoga without nonviolence.

I stumbled into yoga almost by accident… or more accurately, by injury.
I tore my pectoral in a jiu-jitsu sparring match, and since I couldn’t lift weights anymore, I looked elsewhere. My earliest yoga “practice” came through infomercials and biceps—P90X with Tony Horton. That was my gateway into western yoga, and honestly, I loved it.

From there I dove deeper into YouTube flows, DVDs from the library, and random classes—still mostly focused on the physical: stretching, sweating, pushing myself. I had no idea yoga held anything deeper. I was barely scratching the surface.

Stumbling Toward Something More

Eventually I reached a point where I knew I needed something different. My health was falling apart. My nervous system was burned out. The restaurant job was crushing me. I felt stuck in a loop of illness, stress, and the terrifying sense that there was nowhere to go for real resolution.

Inside me, something was aching to come out. I knew it had to do with holistic health. I suspected yoga was involved somehow, but I didn’t yet understand the depth of yoga or how much wisdom it carries about the human mechanism. I remember wondering, Do I really want to teach yoga classes? What could possibly be so special about yoga?

Back then, I had no idea.

Stuck in Survival Mode

My life at that time felt like one long, stressed-out shutdown response.

I was working long hours in a chaotic restaurant environment. My body was in too much discomfort to keep going, yet I didn’t see a way out. Simply surviving each day was a battle. Running a business on top of that was another battle I had no capacity to fight.

I felt skill-less, empty, like I had nothing of value to offer the world. My health was declining and my sense of self collapsed with it. Shame, exhaustion, self-judgment—they were my constant companions.

I believed deeply that the body could heal itself, and I believed nutrition was the key. I followed what I thought was a “healthy” eating lifestyle to fix my gut pain. But nutrition is confusing, and everyone claims their way is the right way. I ate whole foods and followed paleo because people I trusted told me it was the answer.

Still, my body kept failing.

Later, Ayurveda would completely transform my understanding of food, digestion, and what “healthy” actually means—but that wisdom came much later. At the time, all I knew was this:

I was not okay. And I couldn’t fix it with willpower alone.

My First Real Step Into Yoga

When I eventually enrolled in a yoga therapy program—right at the start of COVID, entirely over Zoom—I was completely ungroomed as a yogi. I knew nothing except poses. Yet there I was: signed up for a 1,000-hour training, committed to seeing it through.

That program cracked something open in me.

I began to actually study yoga—not just the shapes, but the philosophy. The depth of yoga was overwhelming at first. The sages who shaped this science were some of the most intelligent minds to ever live. Their teachings were dense, intricate, and profound. Hard to grasp at first… but captivating.

Slowly, the philosophy began to seep into me.
And what hit me the hardest was Ahimsa.

Ahimsa: The Foundation of Yoga

The first concept I truly met was Ahimsa—nonviolence.
It is the very first yama, the first branch of the first limb.
It is literally the beginning of yoga.

At first it seemed simple: Don’t be violent.
I wasn’t hitting anyone. I didn’t think of myself as harmful. I had no awareness of the subtle ways I punished myself, the frustration simmering inside me, the harshness I directed inward. So I thought:

“Okay, cool—what’s next?”

But as I sat with Ahimsa, something shifted.

I began to hear the violence that lived inside me.

Seeing My Own Violence

As I reflected on Ahimsa, I saw how deeply I was harming myself:

• the way I talked to myself

• the shame and self-blame

• the comparisons and judgments

• the constant inner criticism

• the pushing past my limits

• the overworking, the drinking, the refusal to rest

I realized that the deepest violence in my life wasn’t external.
It was internal.

Yoga teaches pratipaksha bhavana—cultivating the opposite.
When negative or harmful thoughts arise, we consciously shift toward their opposite: thoughts that are true, kind, supportive, aligned.

The mind is incredibly powerful.
It shapes our experience of reality.
It colors everything we perceive.
It can create us or destroy us.

If we repeat violent stories inside our mind, the body will live inside that violence.

Learning Ahimsa meant finally seeing this clearly—
and then slowly choosing a different direction.

Creating a Nonviolent Inner Environment

If healing is the goal, we must build an inner world that supports healing.

The body is unbelievably intelligent and wants to move toward balance.
But it cannot heal if the mind is constantly attacking it.

Ahimsa is not just “be kind.”
It is a radical commitment to:

• dropping shame and self-punishment

• interrupting cycles of judgment and comparison

• noticing where we are sharp, cruel, or impatient

• choosing thoughts and actions that support life, not harm it

Yogi Swami Rama said:
“Love all and exclude none.”

That includes ourselves.

If we want true health, we must become love within—not as sentimentality but as alignment with our true nature.

Violence is everywhere in the world. But it doesn’t have to live in us.

Ahimsa in Practice: Food, Animals, and Daily Life

For me, Ahimsa showed up in a clear and unexpected way: food.
I’ve been vegetarian or plant-based for years, but through Ahimsa, that choice deepened. It helped me see the subtle violence not only toward animals, but toward my own body and the earth.

Ahimsa became a practice of:

• nonviolence toward my body

• nonviolence toward other beings

• nonviolence toward the planet

And no, this doesn’t mean perfection.
Negativity still arises. Old patterns still surface. The mind still reacts.

But the practice becomes:

Notice. Breathe. Choose differently.

We can learn to stay grounded enough inside that we are not so easily pulled into reactive violence—whether in thought, word, or action.

No Yoga Without Ahimsa

Yoga is not about flexibility or strength.
It is about creating a mind and heart that can hold life without causing harm.

Ahimsa is the very beginning.
It is the root.
The ground of yoga.

Without nonviolence, there is no yoga—only performance, ego, or spiritual decoration.

Ahimsa reminds me:

• to speak more gently to myself

• to give my body time and space to heal

• to step out of self-destruction

• to move through the world with a little more care

If you want to explore your truest health, start here.
Notice where violence lives in your thoughts, your habits, your choices—then cultivate the opposite, little by little.

Healing is not just physical.
It is mental, emotional, and energetic.

Create a nonviolent inner environment, and the body will know what to do.

The Twist and the Cringe

How a Split-Second Trauma Shaped My Body for Twenty Years

My body reacted before I even knew what was happening.
One instant I was racing down the road on my Triumph Daytona — the next I was tumbling across the asphalt. My head tucked, my shoulders shrugged, and my entire body curled sharply to the left. I didn’t choose any of this. My nervous system did.

I remember the world spinning: sky, fields, asphalt, gravel — over and over.
I felt myself rolling like a stone skipping across water. I wasn’t resisting; I felt nothing, but saw everything. I was witnessing it happen as if it were a dream playing in the background.

My only conscious thought was, “Just stop rolling. just stop rolling…”

When I finally came to a stop, I stood up in shock. My shoes and socks were gone. My shirt shredded. My pants torn. And my motorcycle — the one I had so many close calls on — lay twisted on the ground in front of me. I had rolled directly behind it the whole way, watching it flip through the air as I tumbled after it.

I couldn’t believe where I stopped rolling — and that I did — for that matter. It was endless, I rolled so far, how I lived, I have no idea.

The Place I Crashed Was the Place I Once Found Peace

As I stood there shaking, adrenaline flooding my system, I looked around and realized exactly where I was.

The crash had happened right at the entrance of the Isaac Walton Wetland and Conservation Area — the place where I walk my dog, Murphy, almost every single day. I was here all the time, I loved this space, and would get lost there for hours. As I stood in the parking lot I looked back, the curve where I whipped out, was a long way away. How far did roll?

I knew that area so well.
I knew the fields, the river, the forests.
I had walked that path countless times.

Every time I drive there I come from the east, always entering the lot from the opposite direction — never from the side I rode in from that day. The curve was sharper than I anticipated, I hit gravel, and my bike disappeared from underneath me.

I was surprisingly unbroken, barefoot and trembling, I stood in the parking lot where my daily walks used to begin… except this time, my motorcycle was lying wrecked beside me, and my body was buzzing with shock, and ripped with road rash.

A place that had once been part of my routine, a place of familiar comfort, suddenly became the scene of a violent trauma.

And after that day —
after the rolling, the tumbling, the impact, and the month in the hospital —
I never returned.

It wasn’t a conscious choice.
My nervous system made that choice for me — drawing a boundary around the place where danger became real. Even years later, I stayed away without fully understanding why.

It would take two decades before the deeper significance of this accident, finally revealed itself.

The Imprint That Never Left

It wasn’t until twenty years later that I began to feel the echo of this trauma.
One day, while practicing Mountain Pose, I felt a subtle internal pull. I let it happen — curious, patient, open — and my body moved on its own:

My chin tucked left.
My shoulders spiraled left.
My abdomen cinched and braced left.
My entire left side curled inward.

And instantly, the memory of the motorcycle accident rushed back.

I had completely forgotten how violent the crash was. I always focused on cancer as the major trauma of my life. I never considered that this accident had shaped my posture, breath, and health just as much — maybe even more.

But in that moment, it was undeniable.
My body had been remembering all along.

Trauma Changes Posture

The protective shape I curled into during the crash became the pattern I lived in for decades. It became the hidden blueprint for how I stood, moved, breathed, and coped.

That twist became:

• chronic low back pain

• shoulder and neck tension

• emotional heaviness

• fatigue and depression

• digestive issues

• breath restriction

• a constant sense of imbalance

Working in a kitchen amplified it.
Cancer amplified it.
My lifestyle amplified it.

I believed that training hard, eating paleo, and pushing myself mentally would heal me.

It didn’t.
It made the trauma pattern stronger.

I didn’t understand that trauma lives not in memory but in shape.
I didn’t understand that the nervous system stores protection in posture, and breathing.
I didn’t understand that the body keeps reenacting the moment it braced — until it feels safe enough to unwind.

The Nervous System Never Forgets

Even when the mind forgets, the body doesn’t.
When trauma goes unresolved, the nervous system keeps replaying the event — not through conscious memory, but through:

• tension

• posture

• reflexes

• breath

• emotion

• movement patterns

Mine replayed as a leftward spiral.
A kink.
A guard.
A cringe.

A shape learned in a split second and practiced unconsciously for twenty years.

Somatic Awareness: A Way Back

When I finally let my body show me its truth, something shifted.
Somatic practice taught me to:

• feel the twist instead of collapsing into it

• follow the pull without fear

• explore the protective shape gently

• unwind the trauma pattern slowly

• retrain my breath and posture

• rebuild a sense of internal safety

It’s not easy to sense misalignment when it’s all you’ve ever known. Even after a tremendous amount of practice. It can veil itself from our focused awareness with ease, and requires patience, persistence and positivity to shine the light into our darkest areas.
And, as awareness grows, the body reveals its story.

And with that story comes the possibility of change.

We can reprocess old experiences.
We can rebuild safety.
We can retrain the nervous system to let go.

A Shape of Protection, Not Failure

That twist — that cringe — was not weakness.
It was survival.
It saved my life. And is deeply ingrained in my being.

But survival mode is not meant to be permanent.

Yoga therapy, somatic movement, and breathwork helped me release the imprint, retrain my system, and come back toward center.

I’m still working on it.
Twenty years of a trauma pattern doesn’t disappear overnight.
But with consistent, dedicated work I continue to learn a new way, a way that not only feels great, but is reshaping the entire fabric of my well being. I know I will only continue to improve up until the day I die.

Healing isn’t magic. Your body IS the magic.
And every step — every breath — every moment of awareness can reshape your existence.