Finding Balance Through Ahimsa: Making Facemasks

Finding Balance Through Ahimsa

Making Facemasks: A Lesson on Ahimsa

By Christine Boyd Miller

Ahimsa is an ancient yogic principle rooted in nonviolence. It means causing no harm toward any living thing; the earth itself. I’ve been trying to live my life according to this principle and it has had a profound effect on my general outlook and how I react to conflict. My greatest conflicts lie within though, and practicing ahimsa inwardly is more challenging for me than practicing it toward others. As I grow daily through my ahimsa practice toward the earth and other living beings, I am becoming kinder to myself.

I have struggled on and off with depression for several years and recently have been trudging through the deepest depression of my life since my sister died seven months ago. In the dense fog of tragedy and pain, practicing ahimsa has been a saving grace. It has also become crystal clear to me that if I don’t take care of myself with love and kindness, I don’t have the energy to express ahimsa outwardly.

I’ve always thrown myself into taking care of others as a way to avoid dealing with my problems. After a while, my reserves become depleted and I have a convenient excuse for not taking care of myself. Like the proverbial oxygen mask - if I’m not healthy, I can’t practice ahimsa toward the earth and all its beings.

When the shelter-in-place (SIP) orders began, I used the opportunity to throw myself into my yoga practice. My local yoga studio took all of its classes online so I could, and still can, practice yoga in real-time with my teacher and fellow yogis every day. In the beginning, I even attended two classes a day sometimes. My goal was to bring yoga into my quarantine routine. After a few weeks, a combination of factors interrupted my new routine, I pretty much stopped attending my virtual classes. I was hard on myself about it at first, but once I remembered to look at the disruption through an ahimsa lens, I started to feel better about it. I’m struggling to get back to a regular yoga practice, perhaps a less ambitious one. I’ve realized that practicing ahimsa every day keeps my yoga practice alive even if I’m not attending class.

Shortly after the SIP, a friend of mine started a mask drive for our county’s homeless population. I have a sewing machine that, until a couple of months ago, I could barely figure out how to thread. Next to my barely used sewing machine was a bin full of fabrics that I had intended for years to turn into beautiful clothes. I’ve always wanted to learn how to sew but have never been able to move it up the chain of ever-piling priorities. The mask drive was the ideal opportunity to both practice ahimsa toward my community and learn how to sew.

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Making Facemasks: A Lesson on Ahimsa

For weeks, I threw myself in making masks for the drive and anyone in our small town who needed one. It felt energizing at first to do something helpful for my community. Ultimately though, I fell into my typical pattern of helping others as an excuse to neglect my own needs. The weeks of mask-making coincided with the six-month anniversary of my sister’s death, her birthday, and my canceled trip back east to plant an oak sapling above her body. Making masks became a good distraction from the pain. I kept myself too busy to confront my pain and work on healing it.

Eventually, the masks took over and I found myself exhausted from staying up too late. An old rib injury flared up from sitting for hours at a time, hunched over the sewing machine. I could no longer keep up with the constant mess scattering the house as my four-year-old who I was too busy to play with, turned every room and piece of furniture into some new imaginative, and very messy world. I haven’t attended more than a yoga class every week or two since I started making masks. The lack of exercise and exhaustion combined with avoiding my emotional pain and depression predictably led to the resurgence of bad habits and self-neglect. How quickly mask-making went from a conscious practice of ahimsa to a breakdown in its purpose.

I still have a tall pile of mask squares cut out and ready to sew. I haven’t sewn a mask in six days. I will sew them when I can do so with balance. I’m taking some time off to think about what it means to practice ahimsa. If I am neglecting my own needs, I cannot practice ahimsa toward others. These last few days, I’ve caught up on overdue playtime with my son and am slowly cleaning my way through my messy house. I am allowing my pain and grief to surface, so I can process it, difficult as it is. I have a long way to go before I break free of the deeply learned self-harming tools that only serve to indulge my depression.

Practicing ahimsa requires balance as well as the acknowledgment that I am a living being so therefore worthy of receiving the very ahimsa I seek to spread toward others. Taking the time to make a healthy meal, brush my teeth, or go for a walk in the woods with my son all contribute to living my life with ahimsa as my guiding principle. So does making masks for my community, just not too many.