My cousin recommended me some months ago to follow an account on Instagram called Yo Soy Fermentista (I am ‘fermenter” – someone who ferments) owned by a woman who calls herself Katita. I think she’s American but she mostly posts in Spanish. I don’t agree with everything she says and don’t find everything she does related to what I am interested in, but last week, she posted a video that caught my attention. She explained that she was low in energy and that she was eating raw chicken hearts to feel better. I didn’t really bother to watch the whole video. Still, I did hope that Mexicans following her were cautious with raw chicken meat since it can easily be contaminated with Salmonella.

Some days later, she posted another video saying that she had received a lot of criticism for the video about chicken hearts. One of the comments she got was that she was being irresponsible for encouraging people to do something that can put their lives in danger to which she responded that when she talks about what works for her, she expects people to do their research and make choices that are right for them.

I connected this to my studies in the Yoga Sutras this Summer. I have been thinking about the Yama Satya translated to Truthfulness. Its first meaning is connected to the truth that is based on facts, but it is also an encouragement to live our own truth. This is easier said than done and very important in order to cultivate a calmer state of mind. It requires that we spend some time reflecting on what is important to us and try to live a life in line with our chosen values and priorities. By choosing our core values, we avoid acting in ways that harm us and/or others, and by choosing our priorities, we avoid feeling that we are constantly missing out on something or that we are not doing the ‘right’ thing or even worse, that we are not doing ‘enough’. Thirdly, we choose a lifestyle based on these values, priorities and knowledge we gather about our body, mind and what helps them thrive. What to eat and how much, sleep higiene, exercise, rest and activities that feed us in a constructive way.

I think, however, that every once in a while we need to question and evaluate our truths as objectively as possible and adjust if necessary but avoid jumping from one idea to another without thorough reflection. We live in a world with an overload of information, thousands of ‘influencers’ and ‘experts’ willing to tell us how is a ‘better’ way to live our lives, but at the end of the day, we need to develop enough insight to know what makes sense for us.

Lastly, and maybe most importantly, the truths that we create in our minds, are not absolute truths. My truth is not necessarily your truth, so why not let people choose their own truths? According to Yoga, there is one Truth that can only be accessed once we manage to liberate our mind from its limitations, and the more in opposition we are with the world around us, the more ripples of distress, restlessness, and stress we create in our own minds moving thus further away from the Truth that we might want to reach.