Integrity in yoga practice

Updated August 2025

Being able to touch your toes is pretty cool—but did you know yoga can also help you live with greater integrity? Integrity is the alignment of your actions, thoughts, and values; it means you are who you say you are, even when no one is watching. Unlike perfectionism, integrity isn’t about never making mistakes—it’s about living honestly, authentically, and with moral responsibility. It’s a quality we admire in leaders, teachers, friends, and in ourselves.

So how does yoga help us cultivate integrity, especially when we face struggle or discomfort? Let’s explore a few pathways:

1. Yamas & Niyamas — Moral Integrity

The first two limbs of the eight-limbed path, the yamas and niyamas, offer ethical principles and personal disciplines for living more consciously and compassionately. They illuminate the thought and behavior patterns that create suffering, while guiding us toward alignment with our values and core self.
On the mat, practice becomes a living laboratory. Can you move in ways that are kind to your body and the earth? Are you performing your practice for appearance’s sake, or are you tuning in honestly to what your body needs today?

2. Asana — Physical Integrity

In the postures, integrity means moving with awareness of safety, stability, and energy. It’s about building each pose from the ground up, with attention to joint and spinal health. At PALM + PINE, we design classes around these principles and share nuggets of knowledge about healthy movement patterns you can explore. The more you understand how your body works and what it needs to stay balanced, the easier it becomes to practice with confidence and empowerment.

3. Pranayama — Energy Integrity

In Sanskrit, prana means life energy and yama means regulation. Together, pranayama is the practice of regulating the breath—and by extension, your life force. Breath integrity means sustaining a steady, balanced rhythm throughout practice.
While asana builds physical vitality, pranayama equips us to meet discomfort with steadiness, both on and off the mat. Every technique offers a tool for self-regulation, helping us create space between stimulus and response—a cornerstone of living with integrity in daily life.

4. Drishti — Focal Integrity

Drishti translates to “gaze” or “sight.” Cultivating single-pointed focus steadies the nervous system in a world that constantly pulls us in many directions. In balancing postures, choosing an unmoving external drishti brings stability to the body by first stabilizing the mind.
In meditation, drishti becomes an inner focal point—like the base of the nostrils or the rise and fall of the breath. Over time, this practice creates inner spaciousness, helping us better understand our thoughts, words, and actions, while giving peace, joy, and freedom more room to grow.

Expanding Our Sense of Self & Yoga Practice: The Eight-Limb Path of Yoga

The eight-limb path of yoga give us a foundation for a well-rounded approach to yoga and health. We are holistic beings, meaning our body, mind, and spirit are interconnected and all play an important part in how we feel. Time on the yoga mat is intended to be time for personalized medicine; a practice of tuning in to the experience of our own body and mind, and listening or responding compassionately and honestly. And if we’re truly paying attention we need different intentions or practices on different days. 

Each time you arrive on your yoga mat, take an intentional pause to check-in with yourself. Discern what your departure point is for that day and what limb or limbs can offer the best recovery or discovery!

Here’s a high-level look at the eight-limb path of yoga:

Yamas, the first limb, are ethical restraints for getting over ourselves and positively impacting the world around us. The five yamas are:
Ahimsa: nonviolence
Satya: truthfulness
Asteya: nonstealing
Brahmacharya: moderation
Aparigraha: non-attachment

Niyamas, the second limb, are ethical observances for letting a spiritual life take place within our lives. The five niyamas are:
Saucha: cleanliness or purity
Santosa: contentment
Tapas: self-discipline
Svadhyaya: study of spiritual texts and of one’s self
Isvara pranidhana: surrender to the God of your own understanding

Asana, the third limb, is physical postures. In the yogic view, the body is a temple for the spirit. We practice asana to bring greater physical stability and ease to the other moments of our day-to-day life.

 Pranayama, the fourth limb, is translated as extension of vitality or breath control. It consists of techniques designed to awaken the power of our breath to enhance our physical, mental, and energetic state.

Pratyahara, the fifth limb, is withdrawal of our senses or outwardly distractions and stimulations, and turning our awareness inwards.

Dharana, the sixth, limb is concentration and focusing on a single point.

Dhyana, the seventh limb, is meditation or techniques for a contemplative, conscious state of being.

Samadhi, the eight limb, is union; feeling peacefully at home within ourselves and connected equally to the spirit within all beings.

Each time we come to the mat, we have an opportunity to work the entire path, moment by moment. As we move through the postures we are constantly enacting each aspect of the path. Our bodies, our breath, our minds, and our choices are being refined in the laboratory that is our yoga mat. As this symphony becomes established on our mats, it becomes established in our lives as well. Driving to work, mailing a letter, meeting a friend for lunch all become part of the uninterrupted flow of our yoga practice. We are doing our yoga all the time.”  - Meditations from the Mat

Resources:
“Meditations from the Mat” by Rolf Gates
“Heart of Yoga” by TKV Desikachar