I eat ahimsa for breakfast

. . . which is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Ahimsa, the yama of non-violence, seems obvious at first. Don't start fights. Be nice. Make love, not war. But there are so many more practices this encompasses; a thought which I became familiar with at the Holiday Inn Express breakfast buffet on a recent business trip.

As a yogi, I am stereotypically yet happily committed to shopping at Whole Foods. So it comes naturally to buy cage-free eggs, organic milk and just about anything else that is respects the life from which is was pasteurized.

But walking up to the pre-made omelets and quart sized cartons of 2% milk at the Holiday Inn Express, I realized that the food I have become accustomed to eating has not yet made it's way to the breakfast buffets of middle America.

As Food Inc. as it sounds, I couldn't look at the hard boiled eggs and yogurt cups without imaging the farms from which they had been churned out. The images of chickens in their cages that appear in every Peta Pamphlet and cows who never see the light of day bounced through my head as I selected oatmeal and a coffee.

It's amazing the little ways I can and do practice ahimsa without even noticing. Consuming the foods I do makes me feel connected to this yama and safe from the violence that comes with the mass production of common foods. It's these little facets of my life where I can connect to and appreciate the living the life of a yogi.