Satya: The Truth About Lies and Healthy Aging

by Ram

Sun Through the Clouds by Brad Gibson

In the Sadhana Pada of the Yoga Sutras by Patanjali we are introduced to the yamas that serve as moral, ethical and societal guidelines for a harmonious living. The five positive guidelines help us to behave and relate to our surroundings and environment and to achieve oneness with it. Patanjali considered the yamas as universal vows and preached that they be practiced on all levels: by way of thoughts, actions, and words. Thus, the yamas serve as prized guides to lead a conscious, honest and ethical life. Satya, meaning truth, is one of the five yamas in the yoga sutras. Verse 2.36 defines satya as:

satya pratisthayam kriya phala ashrayatvam

Being well grounded/established (pratisthayam) in truthfulness (satya), the fruits (phala) of actions (kriya) naturally result (ashrayatvam) according to the will of the Yogi. —translation by Swami Jnaneshvara

Satya is also defined in Sanskrit as “sate hitam satyam,” which translates to “The path to truth is ultimate truth itself.” Thus, one who is always truthful in actions, speech, and thoughts, his or her will is naturally fulfilled since such behavior allows a natural flow of goodness or positive feelings. Truth is considered divine and should be spoken to maintain righteousness (dharma in Sanskrit). Truth connotes purity and is superior to silence. If we start living in truth, we may not have to tell lies at all at any point of time. Truth keeps us free from all kinds of emotional turmoil.

Telling the truth significantly improves a person’s mental and physical health, and has a positive impact on health and longevity, according to a “Science of Honesty” study presented at the American Psychological Association’s 120th Annual Convention. Anita Kelly and LiJuan Wang of Notre Dame recruited a group of 110 people from 18 to 71 years old, and told them that once a week for ten weeks they’d have to come in and, in a lie detector machine, report how many times in the previous week they had lied. Approximately half the participants were instructed to stop telling both major and minor lies for the duration of the 10-week study. The other half served as a control group that received no special instructions about lying. Both groups came to the laboratory weekly to complete health and relationship measures and to take a polygraph test assessing the number of major and white lies they had told during that week.

The results were astounding. Participants across both groups who lied less in a given week reported their physical health and mental health to be significantly better that week. Participants in the no-lie group reported improvements in their relationships, less trouble sleeping, less tension, fewer headaches, and fewer sore throats. Telling three fewer minor lies a week translated to four fewer mental health complaints, and three fewer physical complaints. According to the authors of the study when you are honest, you feel good about it and life gets better. Associated with this, there is less stress and fewer physical and mental problems.

Research on how lying affects health is scant, but lying is thought to trigger the release of stress hormones, increasing heart rate and blood pressure. Stress reduces the number of your body’s infection-fighting white blood cells, and over the years, could contribute to lower-back pain, tension headaches, a rapid heartbeat, menstrual problems, and even infertility. Moreover, research has linked telling lies to an increased risk of cancer, increased risk of obesity, anxiety, depression, addiction, gambling, poor work satisfaction, and poor relationships (see The Prevalence of Lying in America: Three Studies of Self-Reported Lies. According to these studies, lying and its negative effects are a two-sided problem: liars create physical and emotional problems for themselves and people with these underlying problems are more likely to lie. Lies not only imprison an individual, but the more we lie, the harder we have to work to protect those lies from being discovered. As a result, all the physical, mental and emotional energies are diverted into protecting those lies, and we live in constant fear that can lead to chronic stress, health problems and unhealthy aging

One method that has been suggested for cutting back on lies and telling the truth is to surround yourself with like-minded, honest folks who will encourage you to be a truthful person. There’s an adage “Truth hurts for a little while, but lies hurt forever.” So tell the truth and protect yourself from the insidious damage of chronic stress, as it will help you live healthier and even longer lives.

Satyameva Jayate
(Truth Alone Triumphs)

Yama Drama: Considering the First Branch of Yoga

by Nina

In classical yoga (the yoga of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras), there are eight “branches” or “constituents” of yoga.

Moral injunctions (yama), fixed observances (niyama), posture (asana), regulation of breath (pranayama), internalization of the senses toward their source (pratyahara), concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana), and absorption of the consciousness in the self (samadhi) are the eight constituents of yoga.

The five moral injunctions that make up the first branch, yama, are rules regarding our conduct with the outside world.

Non-violence (ahmisa), truth (satya), abstention from stealing (asteya), chastity (brahmacarya), absence of greed for possessions (aparigrahah) are the five pillars of yama.

If you are someone who is pursuing yoga as a spiritual path, conducting your life according to the yamas is the necessary first step on your path to union with the divine. But what if you are just—as many of us are—using yoga for your health and peace of mind? Reading this quote from Georg Feuerstein helped me understand how the yamas apply to way I conduct my own life.

For as long as we pursue a lifestyle that falls short of these moral virtues, our energies are scattered and we continue to harvest the negative repercussions of our actions. —The Deeper Dimensions of Yoga

For a brief time after college, I was addicted to an afternoon soap opera (“The Young and the Restless” if you must know). Ultimately tiring of all-to-predictable drama, I had an epiphany: if everyone on that show just stopped lying to each other, not much would happen on a given day. Sure people would fall in and out of love, have children, suffer from illness, and lose loved ones, but the bulk of the drama, including the violence, was the result of secrets and the lies everyone told to cover them up. Now I have met a few drama queens out there who seem to thrive on all that commotion, but for the rest of us a lot of drama is just plain stressful and disruptive.

And the rest of the yamas? You can probably figure it out. Nighttime television is filled with violence of every kind, and you can see over and over how one act of violence leads to another and then another (killing a second person to cover up the first murder usually turns out to be a rather poor strategy), quite the opposite of peace. When there is stealing, this, too, inevitably leads to harm of all kinds, including lies, violence, betrayal, and so on. Not very relaxing, that’s for sure.

A Hollow Trunk by Brad Gibson

Greed for possessions? Even if you don’t commit crimes to obtain the objects of your desire, the lust for material goods can cause you to overspend, even going into debt, which is not only stressful for you but can be ruinous for your family. Or maybe the desire for material possession simply means you work at a stressful, unsatisfying job or are continually dissatisfied with what you do have, both of which are impediments to peace of mind.

I saved chastity for last, because this is a complex one for our culture. To be honest, the original meaning in the Yoga Sutras certainly meant no sex at all for a yogi. But for us ordinary “householders, I like to think about brahmacarya as sexual responsibility. If you are reckless in your sexual conduct, well, we’re back to the soap opera territory: lies and violence, jealousy and pain. (I learned that lesson back in my college days, when I was under the illusion that there was such a thing as “free love.”)

I started this post a few weeks ago after I received a couple of requests for us to tackle the topic of yama, but it was very hard to write. And in the end, well, I chickened out. I mean, who am I to hold forth on topics of this nature? But some recent events (yama drama, you might say) gave me a little shove. I hope it at least gives you some food for thought.