Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, the foundational text of classical yoga philosophy, open their ethical program with the yamas, five restraints a practitioner must observe before more advanced stages of yogic discipline are undertaken. Sutra 2.30 names them in order: ahimsa, satya, asteya, brahmacharya and aparigraha, non-injury, truthfulness, non-stealing, continence and non-possessiveness. Ahimsa comes first, and commentarial tradition treats that placement as significant, since the remaining yamas are frequently read as elaborations or specific applications of the same underlying restraint from causing harm.
Classical commentary, notably Vyasa's Yoga Bhashya, glosses ahimsa broadly, as refraining from causing injury to any living being in any manner, at any time, whether through action, word or thought, and through any motive. This threefold scope, encompassing intention as well as deed, distinguishes the yogic formulation from a narrower prohibition on physical violence alone, extending the restraint to speech that wounds and to harboring harmful intent even where no outward act follows. Later sutras describe ahimsa, once firmly established in a practitioner, as radiating outward: Yoga Sutra 2.35 holds that in the presence of one grounded in non-injury, hostility itself is abandoned by those nearby, a claim about the practice's transformative social effect rather than only its personal ethical content.