Practicing Yamas and Niyamas in Everyday Life – In Our 40’s

If you’ve explored yoga beyond the asanas, you may find interest in ways to practice the Yamas and Niyamas in everyday life. These two yogic limbs can be tricky when we are in our 40’s. While experiences differ significantly in this transitional decade, there are some similar activities many share. Leveraging the Yamas and Niyamas in everyday life as a practice in our 40’s will help to achieve peace and contentment as we continue to age gracefully – or reduce aging in mid-life.

Here is a broad definition of the Yamas and Niyamas, the first of the 8-limbed path of yoga, attributed to Patanjali from the sacred yoga sutras text:

• Yamas – restraints or guideposts to living in the world
• Niyamas – perspectives or personal promises we adopt as a way of being

The Yamas continue with 5 sub-categories:

• Nonviolence 
• Truthfulness 
• Nonstealing
• Nonexcess 
• Nonpossessiveness 

The Niyamas have 5 sub-categories of their own: 

• Purity 
• Contentment 
• Self-discipline
• Self-study 
• Surrender

While these concepts can seem simultaneously, complex and elemental, let’s simplify bringing the Yamas and Niyamas into everyday life. We will explore specific things that require our attention as we enter into our 40’s. Instead of tying these concepts directly back to the ethical practices of the first two limbs of yoga, we will use natural language and offer specific and simple steps to work the benefits of the Yamas and Niyamas into your life.  

Family Commitments

Family dynamics can look very different for all of us as we enter into our 40’s. Some of us are starting our families while others are sending children off to college. Many are still enjoying being single, while others may be caring for aging parents. Regardless of what the family unit looks like, practicing the Yamas and Niyamas in everyday life is vital as we enter into mid-life.

This time offers a bridge from our youth to our golden years. As family commitments increase and become more taxing, we also appreciate the impermanence and ever-changing view of the family unit during this time in our lives. 

Tips for Practicing the Yamas and Niyamas in Everyday Life: Family

• Notice, honor, and appreciate how your family dynamic is uniquely yours. Perhaps your friends are your family – identify the unique experiences that exist with that dynamic. Maybe your family includes your furry friends – how do they partake in shaping your family unit? 

• Journal about the role you get to (not have to) play in your family. Changing the languaging from “have to” to “get to” is a beautiful opportunity to alter our perspective on our current setup.  
• Ask others in the family how they need you to show up for them and communicate how you’d like them to show up for you.
• Create spaces and time in the calendar to organize activities with family members that incorporate your passions and desires. Having a family does not mean abandoning who you were before. Instead, honor the family by introducing them to other layers that existed with or without their participation.  
• Identify “normal” moments in the day to leverage as bonding opportunities – homework help, meal prep, bath time, doctor’s appointments, taking the dog out, etc. Pairing everyday tasks with another family member creates memorable experiences together.
• Leave time and space for the exact opposite of what your family requires of you – if you are someone needed to give attention to many loved ones, ensure you leave time for yourself (see self-care below). If you only have yourself to care for – identify ways you can help take care of others; volunteer at a homeless shelter for people or animals. Help a neighbor or make a meal for the local Ronald McDonald House.  

Housework

Writing about family obligations and how we fit into the family unit in our 40’s, it was challenging not to conflate “housework” and “family.” This observation alone lends itself to working through the Yamas and Niyamas in everyday life and how to experience their benefits during these years. Today is an opportunity to detach the family experience from the needs of the household.

Tips for Practicing the Yamas and Niyamas in Everyday Life: Housework

• Share and delegate household chores equally across abled housemates. Spreading out the workload will provide everyone with a sense of purpose and self-worth.  

• Allow each person the time and space to complete their tasks on their timeline – not yours (ugh-harder than it sounds!)
• Decide what level of cleanliness is acceptable for you and your unit – do no more and no less. Acknowledge that your standards may differ from your housemates and accept their standards as their best work (restrain yourself from “re-doing” the work).   
• Use housework as an opportunity to declutter, detach, and remove items that no longer serve your household. Strive to eliminate one article per week during the cleaning process. It could be a piece of clothing for donation, a spoiled food item, or a knick-knack that no longer provides joy in the household.  
• Have people over without tidying up before they arrive. Bonus points if you can keep from explaining why you didn’t clean the home before their arrival.
• Spend some time reflecting on how the activities above (in action OR thought made you feel). Take additional time to journal about what those thoughts can reveal to you.  

Friends 

In mid-life, we begin to sharpen the pencil as we consider who to include on our list of friends. We may have friends we’ve made in early childhood and throughout the schooling years. Some friends are made as a result of our jobs or spending time with our partner’s circle. If we have children, becoming friends with other parents is also very natural. Where we live may also determine who we spend time with and consider a friend vs. an acquaintance.  

While we may have encountered many people by this point in our lives, it can be cumbersome to stay connected to everyone. Toss in social media “friends” and “connections,” we can quickly lose ourselves to the commitments necessary to keep up these relationships. By practicing the Yamas and Niyamas in everyday life and friendships, we can curate our connections to those providing the most reward.  

Tips for Practicing the Yamas and Niyamas in Everyday Life: Friendships

• Identify those in your inner circle – those you can trust and depend on; prioritize those relationships differently.

• Download an app that limits your daily time on social media.
• Determine how friendships work best for you – some people need daily contact with their friends, while others are fine with only touching base once every six months. Identify your preference, share with your friends, learn their preferences, and then agree on how best to “friend” one another.  
• Say what you mean and mean what you say – with kindness and compassion. This honesty includes acknowledging when you have grown apart.
• Have different friends for different things and keep those activities separate. Friends for contemplating life, friends you exercise with, friends while at school activities. Not every relationship has to be given the same priority as another.  
• Eliminate the comparison trap amongst friends. There is no need to keep up with your neighbors, your old classmates, or the parents of your children’s friends.  

Career

Again, careers can look very different for us in mid-life. Whether you have been at the same job for 20+ years, have taken yourself out of the workforce, switched careers, or started a venture in entrepreneurship, it’s only natural that we begin to question how we are earning a living in our  40’s.  

Mid-life can open a door for introspection and a desire to fulfill a greater purpose. It can also deliver fearful and dreadful thoughts focused on, “Is this how I am going to spend the rest of my days?” The Japanese concept of Ikigai has recently misrepresented finding one’s purpose in a career.

Over the last ten years or so, Ikigai has been touted as finding the intersection between one’s passion, skill, community need, and the desire for others to pay for the service or good you can provide. Unfortunately, this is a Western world misinterpretation.

The translation of Ikigai is actually “a reason for being.” Your Ikigai can be anything from simply taking the time to enjoy your morning coffee to reading a great book to working towards a life-defining goal. Combining this concept with Yamas and Niyamas to everyday life, concerning our careers, perhaps we can find more fulfillment and joy as we exchange time for money.

Tips for Practicing the Yamas and Niyamas in Everyday Life: Career

• Know your worth and the value of your time in exchange for money—reevaluate on a set schedule. Make changes or requests as necessary.  
• If your work isn’t your passion, find some time to allocate towards activities that make your heart sing.
• If you are a manager of people, distribute and allocate the workload evenly across the team. Include yourself in that equal distribution. Being a manager doesn’t mean that you must do more execution than others!
• Leave time in your schedule for self-reflection. Are you showing up in your job in a way that aligns with your core values?
• Start and end your day with meditation, journaling, gratitude practice, or breathing exercises. Do anything that increases the “length of your fuse.” Practicing mindfulness activities or things that bring you joy will increase your contentment and happiness and positively impact others.  
• Create boundaries around work and communicate those boundaries to everyone! Family, friends, co-workers, managers, and subordinates. Allow work time to be productive, family time to be loving, and playtime to be fun.  
• Be an advocate for yourself. Unfortunately, in most companies, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Additional money, a better seat, time off, or promotion is not often awarded in exchange for loyalty unless you ask for it. Advocating for oneself can be challenging, but the only way to receive something we deeply desire is to communicate the want explicitly to someone with authority to grant it.    

Self-Care

Ideas around self-care traditionally relate to our physical bodies. For example, exercise, massages, baths, and manicures are typical ideas presented to us as self-care. However, the Yamas and Niyamas offer a deeper and more meaningful act of self-care in our everyday life.

Acts of self-care in our 40’s are also about self-love. To fall in love with ourselves and honor our minds, bodies, and spirits, we must first get to know ourselves on a deeper level. Even with the increased demands on us in mid-life, this is the perfect time to carve out time for self-care.

Tips for Practicing the Yamas and Niyamas in Everyday Life: Self-Care

• Make a list of five things that you love and believe about yourself.
• Identify stuff you enjoyed in your childhood that still holds today.
• Ask your friends and loved ones what they most admire about you. Create a list and keep it on your nightstand, mirror, fridge, or another place you will see it often.  
• Watch a movie or TV show guilt-free.
• Give yourself a facial and a foot rub.
• Turn on your favorite playlist and surrender to the music.
• Write down three things you dislike about yourself – scratch them out with a thick black marker and toss them in the trash.

Yamas and Niyamas in Everyday Life In Our 40’s – Balancing Family, Lifestyles, Career, Friendships, Housework, Self-care

While our 40’s can look dramatically different from one person to the next, we typically have similar themes that provide an opportunity to exercise the gifts offered through the Yamas and Niyamas in everyday life. Our family, lifestyles, careers, friendships, housework, and even how we care for ourselves offer up opportunities for purity, self-reflection, sharing, surrender, contentment, and much more.  

Mid-life offers a time for healing our past, learning and accepting ourselves, and modeling the behavior we hope to experience in the world around us. Exploring the Yamas and Niyamas in everyday life as it applies to our 40’s is a great way to assist in these endeavors. These guideposts offer perspectives to identify attachment issues, eliminate worry and feelings of inadequacy that can creep up in new ways during this season of life. Although traveling the road from young adulthood to mid-life can be tricky and scary, it can also be incredibly rewarding.  

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*This article was originally published at L’Aquila Active and was reposted with full permissions.

You can read the original article here: “Practicing Yamas and Niyamas in Everyday Life – In Our 40’s”