Śivasaṃhitā 3.33

The Śivasaṃhitā builds an ethics of the practitioner not from abstract morality but from practical efficacy: these twenty-three elements are avoided because they harm practice, not because they are intrinsically evil. It is a functional ethics at the service of sādhana. The text equates without hierarchy dietary, behavioral, and social restrictions under the sole criterion of yogic suitability.

The list includes dietary restrictions (āmla, sour; tīkṣṇa, pungent; lavaṇa, salty) that coincide with classical āyurveda regarding their disturbing effect on pitta doṣa. The prohibition of upoṣaṇa (fasting) is striking: the Śivasaṃhitā does not value ascetic mortification. Only mokṣacintā — thoughts oriented toward liberation — is what the yogin cultivates mentally.

The warning against strīsaṅgama (association with women) reflects the medieval masculine monastic context. Later masters contextualized this as abstention from sexual dissipation in general. More significant is the prohibition of bahvālāpa — excessive talking: in prānic physiology, speech consumes udāna vāyu and disperses energy accumulated in practice with devastating efficiency.