SSE Week 10: Tapas

Introduction to Tapas

This week, our focus turns toward tapas, or action! Tapas is the third of the five niyamas, or personal practices, with which we’ve been engaging over that last couple weeks. It’s an important area of focus because it serves as a means to an end, so to speak. Tapas has many meanings and implications in its translation from Sanskrit, including heat, discipline, passion, and drive, all of which serve the greater definition of tapas in the context of the niyamas: “The practice of actually implementing our plan for self-improvement.”

In The Path of the Yoga Sutras, Nicolai Bachman explains,

The word tapas derives from tap, meaning ‘to heat.’ Real and permanent change in behavior creates heat from the friction of a new, positive pattern rubbing up against and old, negative one. This priceless heat of discomfort is the result of tapas. It can arise while we are exercising (such as during yoga asana), breaking an old habit, changing our direction in life, or doing any other activity that causes positive change. The heat generated by practicing tapas will incinerate physical, mental, and emotional impurities, and refine the body, sensory organs, and heart-mind.

Woah! There’s a lot to unpack in all of that. I think one of the most important aspects to keep in mind when practicing or cultivating tapas, is that discomfort will arise. The very nature of change can be an uncomfortable process, if not for you, then for someone else involved.

But just as change is inherently uncomfortable, so is it forever transient, and its benefits potentially innumerable: Strong healthy bones can last a lot longer than the growing pains that accompanied their formation.

In fact, discomfort is a very good indication that change is happening, that tapas, the “priceless heat of real change” is forging our path forward. Further, “If we are aware that the discomfort is good for us, it becomes a desirable effect and may encourage our continued practice.”

Home Exercise: Tapas

Embrace the heat this week! Choose an old habit that you’ve been wanting to get rid of, and do it! When the discomfort arises, can you focus your mind on the image of a flame, the sensation of heat, or the picture of your life without the habit, to get you through?

Tapas is not easy to practice — it takes determination, strength, a willingness to sit with and accept uncomfortable situations, thoughts, emotions, sensations… But it shifts the landscape of your human experience in extremely profound ways, the ripple effects of which can improve and benefit you for the rest of your life. This practice is not about self-flagellation or punishment — that would go against ahimsa, non-violence; it’s about carefully and mindfully testing your own boundaries, cultivating as much tapas as you can, and allowing your life to shift and change.

“Real and permanent change in behavior creates heat from the friction of a new, positive pattern rubbing up against an old, negative one. This priceless heat of discomfort is the result of tapas.”

– The Path of the Yoga Sutras