As the energy of the season turns inward and autumn invites us to slow down, October feels like a beautiful time to contemplate the first of the Niyamas: Śauca, often translated as cleanliness, purity or clarity.
Patañjali places Śauca at the very beginning of the Niyamas and speaks of both outer and inner purification. The Bhagavad Gītā also includes śauca among the qualities of knowledge and the divine qualities (daivī sampad).
But what does Śauca, purity, really mean?
To me, Śauca is not about conforming to ideas of morality that change with time, culture or society. It is about creating the conditions for clarity; caring for the body, tending to the mind, and having the courage to meet our emotions honestly.
Sometimes purification simply means allowing what is no longer serving us to leave.
A limiting belief. An old pattern. An emotion we have avoided feeling. Even that ten-year-old dress sitting in the wardrobe because … Maybe I will wear it someday!
We don’t have to fight these things. We can acknowledge them, feel them, learn from them, and allow them to move through us.
And this is where the practice becomes deeper. Purification is not about becoming some idealised version of ourselves. It is about removing what clouds our ability to see clearly.
Patañjali tells us that from Śauca arises sattva-śuddhi - clarity and purity of being - followed by saumanasya, a peaceful and harmonious mind, one-pointedness, mastery of the senses, and ultimately a mind made capable of seeing the Self.
A clear mind does not mean a mind without thoughts. It is a mind that can discern without being clouded. Like a clear mirror, it becomes capable of reflecting the light of consciousness.
And perhaps, this is where spirituality becomes very real. It is not something lofty or removed from our human experience. We practise it in the way we enter a meeting, prepare a meal, speak to another person, care for our home, or meet ourselves at the end of the day.
Spirituality is not somewhere “up there”. It is here - in the ordinary, the human, the everyday. It lives in how consciously we move through our lives.
Perhaps this is also Śauca: bringing clarity, presence and care into the seemingly mundane, until we begin to recognise that nothing is really separate from the practice.