Yamas and Niyamas Discussion: Tapas and Yoga

The yamas and niyamas Overview:

The Yamas and Niyamas are the first two limbs of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras — this post will discuss the niyama called tapas. The yamas and niyamas can accurately be described as ten guidelines to purifying life and reaching true freedom and mental emancipation.

The Niyamas Overview:

The Sanskrit word Niyama can be translated to mean “guideline.” There are five niyamas that Patanjali passed down in his Yoga Sutras which is what most scholars agree to be the most oldest, most instructive yogic text. Our teacher, Rory Trollen recently wrote a terrific post for the Lucid Practice community on one of the five Niayamas, Tapas. Here it is:

An Introduction to the Niyama called “Tapas”

Sadhana Pada, Sutra 43 in Patanjalis Yoga Sutras: 

(Sanskrit) kaya indriya siddhih asuddhiksayat tapasah

(English translation) Self discipline (tapas) burns away impurities and kindles the spark of divinity.

A start to the new year often thrusts upon us a ravenous hunger for change, often panicky and knee jerk…results must be gained now!

I’ve taught Yoga full time for 7 years and I can tell you that boom time business wise is January every year…why? You probably guessed it – New Years resolutions. The new calendar tells us that it’s time for re birth, resurrection and change! “If I sign up for 30 Yoga classes I’ll go to them all”, “if I sign up for  year at the gym I’ll go 4 times a week”…just because you wrote your name (“yes that’s me, the new owner of…the new me!”), signed on the dotted line and paid some hard earned cash doesn’t necessarily mean that your festive chrysalis will metamorphose into a new years butterfly, you can’t buy will power. I’ve seen people try and try and buy and buy, consumerism is far removed from the realms of evolution and personal growth.

Willpower is free, there is an ocean of the stuff at our disposal and to borrow an old Tibetan proverb that encapsulates our current dilemma “some people die of thirst whilst sitting at the edge of a lake”. We must tap into this reservoir of mightiness. How is this done? By borrowing a strategy, a secret from the ancient system of Yoga that has stood the test of time, vanquished forgotten resolutions and broken promises – we must make and take a Tapas. (Sadly not at your local Spanish eatery…a restaurant critic, I am not).

What is Tapas? An ancient practice of strengthening ones willpower and self discipline, to create true synergy between goal setting and goal achieving, as far as I believe first documented by Maharishi Patanjali 2,500yrs ago in his Yoga Sutras. A Yogi would take a Tapas, most probably several over a lifetime as acts of austerity, to strengthen resolve, to build fitness physically, emotionally and spiritually…to a point where everything (that being no-thing) is Realised.

Rory Practicing Meditation (image credit: tribe-yoga.com)

Applying Tapas to Goals

Whatever ones ambition from sensory to extra sensory, tapas is a strategy and an age old practice that works, and here’s how it does:

For the most part the mind works very simply, if I think to myself “I’m going to have a drink of water”. I pick up the glass, I have a drink. The mind registers that as a win – I set out what I was going to achieve. My will power is actually galvanised by that, albeit in a very small way!

Rory Trollen Practicing (image credit: tribe-yoga.com)

However if I say “I’m going to go for a yoga class/meditation/gym session/run” and I don’t, my will power also remembers that and registers it as a loss. When that happens, two things usually occur, we chastise ourselves for failing, engage in a bit of domestic abuse (yes, your own inner dialogue) and set a higher more demanding next mission that our now flabby willpower will laugh at in it’s state of lethargy…and we fail again….repeat pattern over years and we have the once magnificent Samurai becoming the simple Jellyfish.

If we equate will power to a muscle, and we wish to train and strengthen said muscle from it’s atrophied/inert state we work to training slowly, gradually, progressively. We start with light weights and gradually build up….if we start with the big heavy stuff we injure ourselves and success is thwarted. We must learn to walk before we can run.

This is Tapas; we set ourselves goals that yes will challenge us but we know we can attain. We start small over finite periods of time and slowly build our power of will to a point that we achieve exactly what it is we say we will do, we move from talking the talk to walking the walk.

How Tapas Can Help Develop your Home Practice

So let’s say you want to build a Yoga self practice but have never succeeded because procrastination always vanquishes action….you start with a Tapas like “6 days a week for the next month, I’ll stand at the end of my Yoga mat, lift my arms up over head on an inhale, look to my thumbs and bring my hands back to heart centre on an exhale”. That is your Tapas potentially.

What will that do? Well from experience I know that most probably you will do that because it’s easy, and what’s more the chances are that you’ll end up doing maybe even a forward fold and hey while I’m at it and there’s no pressure to do lots I’ll do a cheeky wee plank pose…that was easy you say…I might do a wee down dog…etc etc….

What started as a 5 second practice turns into a minute long practice….you’re will power has just registered that as a win! You give yourself a suitable pat on the back and look forward to tomorrows practice…and most probably you’ll end up doing that little bit more. I guarantee you when the self created pressure is off it’ll be easier to do what you set out to do….the background aspiration to push things forward is always there but the feeling of obligation isn’t.

It works.

As you successfully complete each Tapas you set the next one will be that little bit more challenging and progressive but now that your willpower is playing ball it’ll be that little bit easier to achieve.

Five Guidelines for taking a Tapas:

• Be specific (the goal ‘to attain enlightenment by June’ is not a Tapas nor a strategy) you have to make it practical and progressive
• Dedicate your Tapas to an aspect of divinity that inspires you: Shiva/Buddha/Ganesha etc…it transcends a simple promise or New Years resolution
• Set it for a finite period of time 1-2 weeks in the beginning, longer as you find your willpower growing
• Write it down and be detailed, “6 days a week for the next 3 weeks I will sit down for a 2 minute breath awareness meditation, at the end of 3 weeks I’ll review my Tapas”
• Don’t talk about what your doing to people, just do it! This is a pact between your self and the higher Self.

Yamas and Niyamas, Tapas:

This is a very simple yet very effective system towards building inner strength, will power and emotional fitness. I personally have used this system for years and probably will forever more. Without setting my first Tapas many moons ago I’d probably still be talking about self evolution as opposed to actually partaking in it.

Leave questions/comments in the comments section, happy to hear your take on Tapas and/or to help you set your first Tapas! Onwards and ever upwards!

~Rory

Rory Trollen (image credit: tribe-yoga.com)

This post was written by our teacher, Rory Trollen. Rory is simply an amazing person and teacher. Rory has altered our life’s path — he’s had an enormous positive impact on us through his teachings. Rory will be contributing to Lucid Practice on a regular basis, sharing his lucid insights on yoga and life. Rory will be contributing an article to the Lucid Practice Community about once per month. You can read his previous article here:

• Rory on Svadhyaya (self study)

Here’s what we’d like to hear in the comments section:

Tell us about your life experiences in building willpower.

Will you set your first tapas??

“One of the best ways to cultivate gratitude is to establish a daily practice in which you remind yourself of the gifts, grace, benefits, and good things you enjoy. One of the best ways to do this is keeping a daily journal in which you record the blessings you are grateful for. My research has shown… that this technique makes people happier. When we are grateful, we affirm that a source of goodness exists in our lives. By writing each day, we magnify and expand upon these sources of goodness. Setting aside time on a daily basis to recall moments of gratitude associated with even mundane or ordinary events, your personal attributes, or valued people in your life gives you the potential to interweave and thread together a sustainable life theme of gratefulness, just as it nourishes a fundamental life stance whose thrust is decidedly affirming.” ~ Robert Emmons from Thanks!

The final chapter in the book is about “Practicing Gratitude” where Emmons outlines “ten evidence-based prescriptions for becoming more grateful.”

#1?

Keeping a gratitude journal.

Basic idea is really simple: Every day, write down five things for which you feel grateful. You want to avoid “gratitude fatigue” by keeping your list fresh but otherwise, keep it simple and just take the few moments to identify a handful of specific things you feel grateful for!!

As Emmons tells us: “a daily regimen is what’s required.”

Via Entheos.com and Brian Johnson

Image via Google Commons

Yoga is wonderful. I have taught many different yoga courses and retreats and things like this, and I have seen people come pillar to post. People who have problems – emotional problems, psychological problems, whatever it may be – physical problems as well. People who have gone from therapist to therapist, psychologist to whatever it is. And they are always looking for someone else to help them. This is the beautiful thing about a yoga practice. Not just an agama practice but very much an agama practice as well. A yoga practice, it puts the honus on the individual for a level of self-responsibility.  And that instantly gives a level of self-empowerment. The honus is not on the teacher or the person passing the information through. You can teach the same information to a hundred people but it is what the actual individual does with that information – and that is the most empowering thing – it is the fact that they actually realize they have done something for themselves. It gains that level of self-love, self-respect, self-empowerment, self-responsibility, everything. And then ideally which is again that paradox of spirituality, self-transcendence….. eventually.

~Rory Trollen

Wright Thompson could potentially be the best sports journalist and writer in the US right now. He delivered this epic portrayal of Michael Jordan at age 50. We featured his last major piece about racism and soccer on Lucid Practice. He has done magical work again. His latest article on Montana, Tom and Gerri Morgan, and fly fishing is all-time.

Check it out — here.

It’s a story set in Manhattan, Montana.

“A man named Tom Morgan lives here, making some of the most expensive and sought-after fly fishing rods in the world, which he does despite having been paralyzed from the neck down for the past 17 years. He’s revered for what he calls “thought rods,” where the instrument functions as an extension of the mind, delivering the fly where you imagine it will go, not where a series of clumsy physical muscle movements try to direct it.

Tom’s wife? She read “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and decided that she needed to make a change or risk living an ordinary life. She looked at a map, found Livingston, Mont., and applied for a job. She felt restless there, too, overhearing the sad conversations in the teacher’s lounge, where her colleagues counted off the years until retirement and the beginning of their lives. Gerri quit and joined the Peace Corps. When she returned, a friend set her up with a newly single rod designer. She noticed that he limped.

“I choose to be happy,” he says.

He’s always been disciplined. In the morning, he plays exactly one game of solitaire, using his voice-activated software. He’s calm at his center, palpably so, making the space around him feel peaceful. Being with Tom is like being with a bodhisattva. That’s what sticks with people who meet him, even more than the inspiration from how he handles his disease with grace. There’s something comforting about him. His discipline and calm allow him to control his world, even his desire to retreat into his memories. “I’ve spent a lot of time with Tom,” his friend Bruce Richards says, “and I’ve seen him down one time, and that I think was the first time I came over and was casting some new rods for him. He was outside on the porch. I was casting. I noticed he had tears in his eyes. He just wanted to cast so bad. He said, ‘I just wish I could do that one more time.'”