Satya: The Truth You Don't Speak Will Cost You

Here’s a truth that rarely gets talked about in yoga spaces:

We can’t heal what we won’t name.

We can’t reclaim our energy from the people and patterns draining us if we keep pretending everything’s fine.

And we definitely can’t evolve if we keep telling half-truths—to others, or to ourselves—about what we really want.

In yogic philosophy, Satya the second Yama, usually translated as truthfulness.

But Satya isn’t about being brutally honest with the world.

It’s about being courageously honest with ourselves.

It’s not the kind of truth we can arrive at by rationalizing with a friend.

It’s the kind that stirs deep in our bones when we’re still and quiet.

Satya is about living in right relationship with what’s real—internally and externally.

And I know what it costs to stay silent…

For years, I overextended myself—professionally, romantically, in friendship, in community.

I thought that was love.

I thought being needed was the same as being valued.

I stayed in dynamics that drained me, hoping someone would eventually give back what I kept offering freely.

I told myself I was being patient, being generous, being loyal.

What I was really being… was avoidant of my truth.

Sometimes, the pain that cracks us open isn’t a betrayal—it’s a mirror.

And sometimes the truth is: we saw it all along… we just weren’t ready to name it.

There was a time I became deeply involved with someone who told me I was the love of his life, his best friend.

That a connection like ours doesn’t come twice.

I believed him.

I adjusted my career for him.

I set aside my dreams of becoming a mother to raise his children.

Said yes when I wanted to say no.

Inserted myself into his life and family, thinking I was building a future.

And then—months after it ended—he married someone else.

It gutted me to realize the whispered promises I had built my life around were never real.

To face that I had sacrificed my twenties for something that turned out to be an illusion.

But the deeper devastation came when I recognized:

I had abandoned myself long before he did.

I want to be clear: I was never perfect.

I was a mess for much of that relationship, and he loved me through a lot.

It was me who walked away when he couldn’t accept who I was becoming—when I began gathering the pieces of my shattered world and forging strength from them.

This isn’t a story about a man though—it’s a story about a pattern.

One I had to see clearly to change.

And it didn’t stop there.

I began to notice the same pattern.

I once made a gesture of pure gratitude—an offering of long-term support for someone I believed had paved the way for me.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that they had been quietly taking from me all along.

While I was pouring from the heart, they were siphoning from the shadows.

I’ve asked friends for space to talk vulnerably—and been met with silence.

I’ve made clear requests—gentle, human, honest—and watched relationships dissolve in their wake.

And you know what?

That’s truth doing its damn job.

When we stop being wells with no bottom, when we grow a backbone, the ones who were only here to pull… disappear.

And that isn’t rejection. That’s revelation.

The ones who fall away were never aligned with our truth.

The ones who stay… are craving it.

The people who are meant to walk with us don’t need us to play small, stay silent, or self-abandon.

They want the real us.

And our bodies do too.

Because when truth is buried, it doesn’t stay dormant—it festers.

It becomes fatigue. Burnout. Irritability. Resentment.

It becomes a life that looks fine on the outside but feels hollow inside.

So I’ll ask you, dear reader, what I had to ask myself:

Where are you pretending it’s okay when it’s not?

Where are you afraid to tell the truth because it might change things?

Where are you offering energy that isn’t being honored?

Your truth isn’t a liability.

It doesn’t make you difficult.

It’s the gatekeeper to your healing.

It wasn’t until I wrote down everything—my harms, my patterns, my resentments—and spoke them aloud to a trusted witness that I began to reclaim my power.

This is the quiet miracle of Satya:

The moment we name what’s real, the weight starts to lift.

I’ve since guided others through this process in private work.

I can tell you: it rarely begins with the big things.

Sometimes we just start by making space for one small truth.

Because truth is like breath—it expands when we stop holding it in.