Asteya: The Theft Nobody Talks About
Part Three of the Yamas Series
We can always make more money. Pick up another contract, take on an additional job, perhaps negotiate a raise.
We cannot create more hours.
And yet we behave as though our time is endless. We scroll, grind away, continuously perform, as if we are immune to the effects of time or a potential diagnosis.
Most of us don’t realize how much has been taken until it’s already gone. That’s how workplace theft works, not dramatically, not all at once, but quietly, cumulatively, until one day you look up and realize something essential is missing.
That’s Asteya. The third yama, typically translated as non-stealing. And like everything in this series, it goes so much deeper than the obvious interpretation.
Satya: The Truth Nobody Wants to Hear
Part Two of the Yamas Series
She asked, “Can Reiki heal me?”
Oof. Those four words hit me HARD.
I could only respond in a way that felt honest. No false hope. I would want someone to tell me the truth, with care and compassion, so I could wrap my head around it and move forward.
My response: no. Not in the way she meant.
But I also told her what I had seen with others. That healing goes beyond the physical body. In my experience, Reiki helped other people find peace in their terminal diagnoses. The healing energy goes where it needs to go, not where we want it to go. Every experience is different.
She seemed disappointed but not surprised. I think she already knew. She was hoping I would tell her something different.
I was at her home for about an hour. I shared Reiki with her. She shared with me what she felt in her body, a warmth in her feet.
I left knowing I would never see her again. She died within two weeks.
That is Satya. The most intimate, courageous act a human being can perform. Telling the truth because you respect someone enough not to lie to them.
Ahimsa: The Principle Corporate Culture Keeps Violating
Part One of the Yamas Series
My Reiki master teacher, whose wisdom has a way of landing exactly when I need it most, once pointed out something I haven’t been able to forget.
Consider the word spelling. As in spelling a word out loud. There’s a reason it shares its root with the word spell. Words don’t just describe; they shape our reality. Our words cast a spell on ourselves and on others. Every story we build about a person, a team, a leader, once spoken and further repeated, becomes the operating narrative that everyone acts from.
That is not metaphor. That is how organizations actually function.
Ahimsa is the first of the five yamas, the ethical guidelines that form the first branch of Patanjali’s eight limbs of yoga. Ahimsa is typically translated as non-violence or non-harming. Most people hear that and think: I’ve never punched my coworker in the face, so I’m good.
Nah, hold up.
Ahimsa extends far beyond physical violence. It includes words spoken flippantly, chatter designed to exclude, and behavior that normalizes harm so thoroughly that people stop recognizing it as harm at all. After 25 years inside corporate environments and two years observing them from the outside as a consultant, I can tell you that ahimsa violations happen before most people finish their morning coffee.
Diary of a Corporate Yogi
An Introduction
I started my career as an actuary. Numbers, models, risk calculations…I spoke that language, but I could never get excited about pension legislation and mortality tables like my actuarial peers. I moved into HR, where I was more analytical than most of my colleagues. I practiced yoga while my fitness friends outran and outlifted me. I starting teaching yoga and my corporate friends wondered what happened to my ambition.
I have never felt like I fully belonged anywhere.
It took me a long time to understand that this was not a flaw. It was by design. In fact, it’s my superpower.
There’s a Kanye lyric that has stayed with me: everything I’m not made me everything I am. Yes, I know he can be controversial, but it really resonates with me. I come back to that line every time I feel like I don’t quite fit. The actuarial world. The HR world. The consulting world. The yoga world. Never fully belonging to any of them turned out to be the whole point. The gaps between the worlds are exactly where I learned to see.
Because here’s what moving across all of those worlds has given me: I’ve learned to see connections that others don’t. Between ancient yogic philosophy and modern organizational dysfunction. Between what the dying say at the bedside and what the living do in the boardroom. Between a child laughing on the banks of the Ganges in tattered clothes and a burned out director staring at their phone at 11pm wondering if the next promotion will finally make them feel like enough.
I see the threads. That’s what this newsletter is about.