When I first came across the yamas and niyamas, they immediately caught my attention. I am Christian, and I grew up knowing the Ten Commandments. So when I learned that Patanjali’s system of yoga begins with five yamas and five niyamas—five restraints followed by five observances—I naturally started comparing them with ideas I already knew. I am not saying that the yamas and niyamas are simply the “Ten Commandments of yoga.” They belong to different religious, historical and philosophical traditions. But personally, the comparison was difficult for me to ignore.
Ideas such as not harming others, telling the truth, not stealing, controlling desire and not becoming consumed by possessions did not feel completely foreign to me. What was new was the way yoga made me examine those ideas. It wasn’t simply about being told:
Don’t do this. Do that.
It made me ask something I have increasingly found myself asking about almost everything:
Why?
Why should I control this desire? Why do I want this thing so badly? Why did my mind go there? Why did I react that way? And perhaps most importantly, am I actually living according to the principles I say I believe in?
That question is what made Yama interesting to me.
What Is Yama in Yoga?
Yama is the first of the eight limbs of yoga described by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras. The Sanskrit word is often translated as restraint, ethical restraint or moral discipline, although—as with many Sanskrit terms—no single English word captures every aspect of its meaning.
In Yoga Sutra 2.29, Patanjali lists eight limbs:
- Yama — restraint
- Niyama — observance
- Asana — posture
- Pranayama — regulation of breath
- Pratyahara — withdrawal of the senses
- Dharana — concentration
- Dhyana — meditation
- Samadhi — meditative absorption
The order itself is interesting. Many people today first encounter yoga through physical postures, but in Patanjali’s eight-limbed system, asana is the third limb. Yama and niyama come first.
Patanjali identifies the five yamas in Yoga Sutra 2.30:
Ahimsa, Satya, Asteya, Brahmacharya and Aparigraha.
They are commonly translated as:
| Yama | Common English translation | Basic idea |
|---|---|---|
| Ahimsa | Non-harming / non-violence | Refraining from harm |
| Satya | Truthfulness | Commitment to truth |
| Asteya | Non-stealing | Not taking what is not given |
| Brahmacharya | Chastity / continence / restraint | Discipline concerning desire and conduct |
| Aparigraha | Non-grasping / non-possessiveness | Freedom from grasping and accumulation |
These translations are useful starting points, but they should not be mistaken for complete definitions. Sanskrit concepts have histories, contexts and commentarial interpretations that can disappear when they are reduced to one convenient English word.
This becomes particularly important with terms such as brahmacharya and aparigraha.
Yama as Mahavrata: The “Great Vow”
Patanjali doesn’t stop after listing the five yamas.
In Yoga Sutra 2.31, they are described collectively as mahavrata, commonly translated as the “great vow.” The sutra presents them as universal rather than restricted according to considerations such as social status or class, place, time or circumstance.
That changes how I read them.
If Yama were simply a list of useful lifestyle tips, it would be easy to follow them only when convenient. Don’t harm people—unless you’re angry. Tell the truth—unless lying benefits you. Don’t be greedy—unless something you really want appears.
But the idea of mahavrata makes the demand much stronger.
A principle becomes meaningful precisely when following it is inconvenient.
That doesn’t mean I live perfectly according to these principles. I don’t. But it does make me question the habit of treating ethics as something that changes whenever circumstances become uncomfortable.
Why Yama Felt Familiar to Me
Even as a child, I was interested in principles about how a person should behave. I never particularly liked immediately dividing everyone into “good people” and “bad people.”
My own thinking gradually became that I would rather begin by treating people as good and deserving of kindness unless their actions give me a reason to think otherwise—particularly when those actions deliberately hurt someone physically or mentally.
Different religion, different culture, different country, different lifestyle or a different way of thinking does not automatically make someone bad.
My Christian upbringing had already introduced me to moral principles concerning truth, stealing, desire, possessions and how we treat other people. So when I encountered Ahimsa, Satya, Asteya, Brahmacharya and Aparigraha, I didn’t feel as though I had discovered five completely alien ideas.
But yoga gave me a different framework through which to question them.
And questioning them became much more interesting than simply memorising their definitions.
1. Ahimsa: What Does It Mean Not to Harm?
Ahimsa is commonly translated as non-violence or non-harming. It is the first of Patanjali’s five yamas.
At first, the principle seems obvious: don’t hurt people.
But what exactly counts as harm?
Physical violence clearly causes harm, but human beings don’t need to physically attack each other to cause pain. Words can hurt. Humiliation can hurt. Manipulation can hurt. Deliberately destroying someone’s confidence can hurt.
This is where ahimsa connects strongly with something I had already believed for a long time.
My Experience With Ahimsa
I try not to decide that someone is a bad person simply because they are different from me or because I disagree with them. For me, a more important question is whether someone’s actions deliberately harm another person physically or mentally.
That doesn’t mean I always behave perfectly according to that principle. I can get angry. I can say the wrong thing. Sometimes we hurt people without even realising that we have done it.
That is actually what makes ahimsa difficult.
It is easy to believe in non-violence when nobody is testing your patience. The real test appears when you are angry, insulted, jealous or frustrated.
What do you do then?
Knowing the word ahimsa is easy. Practising it repeatedly requires discipline.
What Patanjali Says Happens When Ahimsa Is Established
Yoga Sutra 2.35 goes further than simply telling the practitioner to avoid harm. Patanjali associates being firmly established in ahimsa with the abandonment or cessation of hostility in that person’s presence.
That is a much stronger claim than simply saying, “Non-violence makes you a better person.”
I don’t think passages like this should automatically be converted into scientific or psychological claims. The sutra should first be understood within the philosophical and yogic framework in which it appears.
Still, the image is powerful: non-harming becomes so established in a person that hostility itself is said to fall away around them.
Whether someone reads that literally, spiritually or philosophically, it presents ahimsa as something deeper than merely avoiding physical violence.
2. Satya: Being Truthful With Others and Yourself
Satya is commonly translated as truthfulness.
Again, I was already familiar with the basic moral principle: don’t lie. But studying a principle becomes more interesting when you turn it towards yourself.
We are sometimes very good at demanding honesty from other people while creating clever explanations for our own behaviour.
I have done this myself.
I can tell myself, “I need this,” when the more honest statement might be, “I really want this.”
I can say, “This is ambition,” when part of it may actually be greed.
Satya therefore makes me think about more than whether the sentence coming out of my mouth is technically true. It makes me ask whether I am being honest with myself about why I am doing something.
That kind of truth can be much more uncomfortable.
What Patanjali Says About Satya
In Yoga Sutra 2.36, Patanjali associates becoming established in satya with a relationship between action and its fruit or result.
Translations differ in exactly how they express this compact sutra. That is one reason I don’t think we should turn it into a modern promise such as, “Always tell the truth and everything you want will happen.”
The safer approach is to acknowledge what the text says and also acknowledge that interpreting what it means requires more than replacing the Sanskrit words with English ones.
For me, the practical question remains simpler: Am I telling myself the truth even when the truth doesn’t flatter me?
3. Asteya: Not Taking What Isn’t Yours
Asteya is commonly translated as non-stealing.
Its most obvious meaning is straightforward: do not take what has not been given to you. That principle was already familiar to me through my upbringing.
But it also made me think more broadly about entitlement.
Money and physical possessions are obvious examples. Modern interpretations sometimes apply asteya more broadly to another person’s time, work, ideas, opportunities or trust.
Those modern applications should not automatically be presented as Patanjali’s exact words. Still, they can produce a useful question:
Am I taking something I have no right to take?
That question can extend beyond someone’s wallet.
What Patanjali Says About Asteya
Yoga Sutra 2.37 says that when a person becomes established in asteya, sarva-ratna, often translated in terms of all jewels or treasures, become available or present themselves.
This is exactly the kind of sutra that needs careful reading.
It would be easy to turn it into clickbait:
“Practise asteya and the universe will make you rich.”
I don’t think that is responsible.
The sutra belongs to Patanjali’s philosophical system and has been interpreted through a long commentarial tradition. A statement about “treasures” should not automatically be converted into a promise that practising non-stealing will increase your bank balance.
For me, the more immediate lesson is almost the opposite of chasing wealth: asteya makes me examine my belief that I am entitled to possess something simply because I want it.
4. Brahmacharya: Restraint, Desire and Energy
Brahmacharya is one of the yamas I think we should be particularly careful about simplifying.
The term has a history beyond Patanjali and has been translated or interpreted in different contexts as celibacy, chastity, continence, sexual restraint or disciplined conduct. Modern yoga discussions also frequently explain brahmacharya more broadly in terms of moderation or conserving and directing one’s energy.
So I would not simply say:
“Brahmacharya means conserving energy.”
The history is more complicated than that.
But the question of what we do with desire, attention and energy is the part that became particularly meaningful to me.
My Mind Goes Everywhere
I have double thoughts about almost everything. My mind can be focused on something useful and suddenly travel somewhere completely different.
Sometimes it goes somewhere productive. Sometimes somewhere stupid. Sometimes somewhere I don’t particularly want it to go.
My earlier idea of discipline was closer to suppression:
Don’t think that. Stop feeling that. Control it.
But suppression and direction are not necessarily the same thing.
The question that interests me now is whether I can acknowledge an impulse without automatically following it.
If my mind is restless, can I write? Can I exercise? Can I study, work, create something or help someone?
For me, discipline is increasingly about direction rather than pretending the energy doesn’t exist.
I am not presenting this as the single historical definition of brahmacharya. It is my personal application of one aspect of the concept.
That distinction matters.
Brahmacharya and Virya in Yoga Sutra 2.38
Yoga Sutra 2.38 says that when brahmacharya is firmly established, there is virya-labha.
The Sanskrit term virya has been translated in different ways, including vigor, vitality, strength or potency. This is one reason the popular idea of brahmacharya as “energy conservation” deserves more careful treatment than it often receives online.
There is a textual connection between brahmacharya and virya in Patanjali. But explaining exactly what kind of “energy” Patanjali meant requires attention to language and commentary rather than automatically equating virya with a modern biological concept.
Personally, though, the idea makes me think about something very practical: where is my attention going, and what am I allowing to consume it?
5. Aparigraha: The Yama That Challenged My Greed
Aparigraha is commonly translated as non-grasping, non-possessiveness or freedom from accumulation.
This may be the most personal yama for me.
Because I like material things.
I like tasty food. I want money. I like bikes and cars. I want to be successful and financially comfortable.
And yes, sometimes I become greedy about those things.
For a long time, I had a convenient justification:
You need greed.
My thinking was that if I didn’t badly want money, success, a better bike, a better car or a better lifestyle, I wouldn’t have enough motivation to work for them.
I was confusing greed with ambition.
Aparigraha made me reconsider that.
Wanting Something Is Different From Being Controlled by It
I don’t think I need to stop liking cars. I don’t think earning money is wrong, and I don’t think enjoying delicious food makes someone morally inferior.
I certainly don’t think ambition is automatically a problem.
What changed for me was understanding that wanting something and being controlled by the desire for it are different things.
Suppose I want a particular bike. I can work hard, save money and eventually buy it.
But if I spend every day feeling miserable because I don’t have it yet, the bike is already controlling part of my life without even being in my garage.
The same thing can happen with money.
There is a difference between “I want to earn more” and “I will never have enough.”
That distinction changed how I understand greed.
For me, aparigraha does not mean abandoning every ambition and waiting for the universe to hand me what I need. It means trying to work with focus without allowing the reward to consume the entire purpose of the work.
I still struggle with this.
That is exactly why the idea interests me.
Aparigraha leaves me with one of my favourite questions from studying Yama:
Do I control what I want, or does what I want control me?
What Patanjali Says About Aparigraha
Interestingly, Patanjali doesn’t say in Yoga Sutra 2.39 that aparigraha will make someone materially successful.
Instead, the sutra connects becoming firmly established in aparigraha with knowledge concerning the “how” or circumstances of births or existence. Different translations phrase this differently.
Whatever interpretation one follows, the original sutra is considerably more philosophical than the modern idea that non-attachment will simply make the universe reward you with money.
That distinction changed my own thinking too.
I can work hard for wealth without assuming that wealth is a spiritual reward. And I can question my attachment to material things without pretending that I no longer enjoy them.
What Do You Do When Your Mind Goes Against Yama?
This is one of the most interesting parts of Patanjali’s discussion, because he doesn’t simply list the rules and move on.
In Yoga Sutra 2.33, Patanjali introduces pratipaksha-bhavana. Translations vary, but the basic idea involves cultivating or contemplating the opposite when thoughts contrary to yogic discipline arise.
This immediately connected with my own struggle with the mind.
I said earlier that I don’t find the idea of simply suppressing every unwanted thought particularly useful. A thought can appear without my deliberately choosing it.
The more important question is:
What do I do next?
If anger appears, do I feed it?
If greed appears, do I immediately act on it?
If my attention goes somewhere unhelpful, do I continue following it simply because the thought has already appeared?
This is where discipline becomes active rather than theoretical.
For me, redirecting attention toward something productive—work, exercise, study, writing or reflection—is one practical way I think about this. That is my application, not a claim that Patanjali specifically told people to go to the gym or start writing whenever an unwanted thought appeared.
The distinction between the ancient text and my modern application is important.
Yama Includes More Than What We Personally Do
Yoga Sutra 2.34 makes the ethical discussion even more demanding.
The sutra discusses harmful or contrary actions as things that may be done by oneself, caused to be done by others, or approved of. It also associates them with motives such as greed, anger and delusion, and speaks of them in varying degrees of intensity.
That made me stop for a moment.
Ethics becomes much easier when I judge only what I physically do with my own hands.
But what about something harmful I encourage someone else to do?
What about something I know is wrong but approve of because it benefits me?
What about remaining comfortable with another person’s harmful behaviour because confronting it would be inconvenient?
The sutra makes the problem broader than simply:
“I didn’t do it.”
That is one of the reasons I think Yama becomes much more interesting when we actually read the surrounding sutras rather than memorising five definitions from a chart.
The Five Yamas and Their Results in the Yoga Sutras
Patanjali discusses becoming established in each of the five yamas in Yoga Sutras 2.35–2.39.
In simplified form:
| Yama | Sutra | What the text associates with becoming established in it |
|---|---|---|
| Ahimsa | 2.35 | Hostility or enmity falls away in one’s presence |
| Satya | 2.36 | A special relationship between actions and their fruits |
| Asteya | 2.37 | Treasures or jewels become present |
| Brahmacharya | 2.38 | Acquisition of virya—translated variously as vigor, vitality, strength or potency |
| Aparigraha | 2.39 | Knowledge concerning the circumstances or “how” of births/existence |
These statements are important because they show that Patanjali’s treatment of Yama extends beyond ordinary moral advice. At the same time, they shouldn’t be converted carelessly into modern promises. I would not tell someone that practising asteya guarantees financial wealth, that brahmacharya has a scientifically proven effect on some undefined “energy,” or that aparigraha gives scientifically demonstrable knowledge of previous lives.
Those would go beyond what we can responsibly establish. A historical and philosophical article should first tell readers what the text says, then distinguish that from how it has been interpreted and from what we personally believe about it. That distinction is central to how I approach yoga philosophy on Knowgens.
Yama Requires Practice, Not Just Understanding
This is probably the biggest lesson I have taken from the five yamas. Reading them takes a few minutes. Living them doesn’t. It is easy to agree that we shouldn’t harm people, shouldn’t lie, shouldn’t steal, should practise restraint and shouldn’t be consumed by possessions.
The difficult part begins afterwards.
Can I remember ahimsa when I’m angry?
Can I practise satya when admitting the truth makes me look bad?
Can I question entitlement when I really want something?
Can I practise restraint when my mind wants immediate satisfaction?
Can I remember aparigraha when I see something expensive that I suddenly convince myself I “need”?
For me, these principles only become meaningful through discipline and constant practice.
You fail. You notice. You try again. That process interests me much more than pretending to have mastered them.
From Yama to a Bigger Question: Why?
Studying these principles also strengthened something that was already part of my personality. I started asking why more often. Why do I want this? Why do I consider this person successful? Why do we behave this way? Why does society tell us that a particular path is the correct one?
Take education. Many of us grow up with a simple formula:
Study → Degree → Job → Money → Success
Education obviously has enormous value. But then you enter the real world and may see someone with several degrees struggling financially while a plumber, mechanic or shop owner with much less formal education earns considerably more. So I started asking:
Who decided that one path automatically represents success?
That doesn’t mean the opposite is automatically true either. An example of a successful person without formal education doesn’t prove that education is useless. The point is the question. Once you seriously start asking why, one question produces another. Some things have good reasons behind them. Some are traditions. Some are social conventions. Some made sense in another time. And some things we continue doing simply because we have never stopped to examine them.
This habit of questioning connects for me with another yogic concept that became important to me: svadhyaya, one of the five niyamas. Svadhyaya has a deeper textual history than simply the modern phrase “self-study,” so I don’t want to reduce it to overthinking or questioning society. I explore the term separately in my guide to the five niyamas. Personally, however, encountering these ideas strengthened my interest in examining my own assumptions.
Are Yama and the Ten Commandments the Same?
No.
This is important because my personal story could easily create the wrong impression. The Ten Commandments and Patanjali’s yamas belong to different religious, historical and philosophical traditions. I am not claiming that one developed from the other, and I would not describe the yamas as an “upgraded version” of the Ten Commandments.
That was closer to my initial personal reaction when I first encountered them. What I find interesting now is subtler. Different traditions can confront human beings with surprisingly familiar problems: violence, truth, theft, desire, possessions, self-control and our responsibilities toward other people.
Their answers do not have to be identical. For me, comparison became a doorway. My familiarity with Christian moral teachings initially made me curious about the yamas. Studying them more carefully then made me interested in where the traditions differ, not just where they appear similar. That is much more interesting to me than trying to prove that one tradition copied, improved or replaced another.
Yama and Niyama: What Is the Difference?
Yama and niyama are the first two limbs in Patanjali’s eight-limbed system. A useful starting distinction is that Yama deals with restraints and ethical conduct, while Niyama deals with observances and disciplines cultivated by the practitioner.
In Yoga Sutra 2.32, Patanjali lists the five niyamas:
- Saucha — purity or cleanliness
- Santosha — contentment
- Tapas — discipline or austerity
- Svadhyaya — study/recitation, a term with an important textual history
- Ishvara Pranidhana — dedication or devotion to Ishvara
Calling them simply “five don’ts and five dos” can be useful as a memory aid, but it also oversimplifies them. I explore the second limb separately in Niyama in Yoga: The Five Personal Observances Explained.
Where Yama Fits in the Eight Limbs of Yoga
Patanjali’s sequence is:
Yama → Niyama → Asana → Pranayama → Pratyahara → Dharana → Dhyana → Samadhi
I find the order itself interesting. Today, many people’s first encounter with yoga is physical posture. Patanjali begins his eight-limbed sequence with ethics and personal discipline. Before asana comes the question of conduct. Before concentration and meditation comes the question of how we deal with harm, truth, possessions, desire and our behaviour toward other people. That gives a very different picture of yoga from one based entirely on physical flexibility.
Is Yama Only for People Who Practise Yoga?
Within the Yoga Sutras, Yama belongs to Patanjali’s path of yoga, so it should first be understood in that context.
But the questions raised by the yamas are not difficult to recognise outside yoga.
How should I treat another person?
When am I lying to myself?
How much is enough?
What should I do with desire?
When does ambition become greed?
Those questions can interest someone even if they never perform an asana.
That was true for me. What drew me toward Yama was not initially physical yoga. It was the fact that an old philosophical system was asking questions I had already been asking in other forms.
What Yama Means to Me Now
I didn’t discover ahimsa and suddenly become harmless. I didn’t learn satya and stop making excuses to myself. I didn’t read about brahmacharya and gain complete control over my mind. And studying aparigraha certainly didn’t make me stop wanting money, good food, bikes or cars. That’s not what studying these principles has done for me.
It has made me notice. I notice when desire starts becoming greed. I notice when ambition starts becoming obsession. I notice when the explanation I give myself isn’t completely honest. I notice where my attention is going, and I try to notice how my actions affect another person.
And then I ask:
Why?
That may be the most important thing Yama has given me so far. Not five perfect answers. Five reasons to examine how I live.
Frequently Asked Questions About Yama
What is Yama in yoga?
Yama is the first of the eight limbs described in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. It refers to a group of five restraints: ahimsa, satya, asteya, brahmacharya and aparigraha.
What are the five Yamas?
The five yamas are Ahimsa (non-harming), Satya (truthfulness), Asteya (non-stealing), Brahmacharya (commonly translated in terms of chastity, continence or restraint), and Aparigraha (non-grasping or non-possessiveness).
Which Yoga Sutra lists the five Yamas?
The five yamas are listed in Yoga Sutra 2.30. The eight limbs themselves are listed immediately before them in Yoga Sutra 2.29.
Why is Yama the first limb of yoga?
Patanjali lists Yama first in his eight-limbed system, before niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi. Its placement shows that ethical restraint is part of the foundation of the system rather than an optional addition to physical practice.
What does mahavrata mean in relation to Yama?
In Yoga Sutra 2.31, the yamas are described as mahavrata, commonly translated as the “great vow.” The sutra presents them as universal and not restricted by considerations such as place, time or circumstance.
What is the difference between Yama and Niyama?
Yama concerns restraints such as non-harming, truthfulness and non-grasping. Niyama concerns observances such as purity, contentment, tapas, svadhyaya and Ishvara Pranidhana. They are the first and second limbs respectively in Patanjali’s eightfold system.
Are Yama and the Ten Commandments the same?
No. They belong to different religious, historical and philosophical traditions. Comparisons can be interesting—particularly for someone like me who encountered Christian ethics before studying yoga—but similarity between individual ethical concerns does not establish that the systems are historically equivalent or directly related.
Does Yama mean “don’t”?
Calling the yamas the “five don’ts of yoga” is an easy way to remember their restraining character, but it oversimplifies the philosophy. Patanjali also discusses their universality, how contrary thoughts are handled, and what is associated with becoming established in each yama.
How I Researched This Article
I have tried to keep three things separate throughout this article: what Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras say, how particular concepts have been interpreted, and what these ideas mean to me personally. My Christian upbringing and comparison with the Ten Commandments are personal reflections. They are not evidence of a historical relationship between Christianity and Patanjali’s yoga tradition.
Likewise, when I discuss ambition, possessions, attention, greed or redirecting energy, I am describing how these concepts make me examine my own behaviour. I am not claiming that my personal interpretation is the only historical meaning of the Sanskrit terms. The primary textual foundation for this article is Yoga Sutras 2.29–2.39, particularly 2.30–2.31 for the definition and status of the yamas, 2.33–2.34 for pratipaksha-bhavana and contrary actions, and 2.35–2.39 for the statements associated with becoming established in each yama.
Because translations of compact Sanskrit sutras can differ substantially, I recommend comparing translations rather than treating one English rendering as though it were the Sanskrit text itself.
Sources and Further Reading
Primary text: Patanjali, Yoga Sutras, Sadhana Pada (Book II), particularly Sutras 2.29–2.39.
For deeper study, compare established translations and commentaries rather than relying only on modern yoga websites. Readers should pay particular attention to how translators handle mahavrata, pratipaksha-bhavana, brahmacharya, virya and aparigraha, because translating these concepts into a single English word can hide important differences in interpretation.